Falling

25

Carson Hughes

Vinny was already awake and playing with my hair by the time I got up the next morning. He laid his head on my chest, his left hand in my hair while his right hand rested on my stomach. I stretched my arms above my head and kissed the top of Vinny's.

"Did you sleep good?" I asked him, my voice rough from having just woken up.

"Better than I thought I would," Vinny answered, his voice clear and sounding as if he had been awake for a while.

"You could've woken me up when you got up," I told him, pulling him tighter to me.

He glanced up at me and gave me a strange look. "Why the hell would I do that?"

I chuckled and grinned down at him. "So you wouldn't have to lie here all alone while I slept."

Vinny rolled his eyes and rested his face back down on my chest and snuggled into my hold on him.

"The silence was nice," he said, causing me to let out a snort of laugher. "And my family is cursed with waking up as soon as the sun is out, I wouldn't do that to you."

That reminded me, Logan was probably awake. Despite the night he had and how much he drank, I knew Logan would be downstairs with his eyes open and a pounding headache and hopefully no knowledge of the previous night. I usually didn't wish complete blackout on my friends, but this one time I really needed him to be in a haze about the previous night. Logan's reaction to finding out about Vinny and me was not something I was wanting to deal with this morning.

"I should go check on everyone downstairs," I begrudgingly said. All I wanted to do was stay in bed all day with Vinny. "Make sure no one is dead or throwing up."

"Logan's awake."

My eyes widened and I sat up with Vinny still in my arms, holding him out a little further so we could look at each other.

"Did he come up here?" I hissed.

Vinny shook his head. "No, but he's awake. I know he is."

"He won't remember last night," I assured him, though I was more trying to convince myself of that.

Vinny gave me a look that said he didn't quite believe that.

A moment later I was down the stairs, after walking down them as slowly as I could. Logan was sitting up on the couch with his arm around Dana while Hadley's head rested on his other shoulder. He stared straight ahead and for a moment I thought he was sleeping with his eyes open. That was until he turned his head and sent me an unreadable look.

"Morning," I said, trying to sound as normal as possible, but I knew I failed when Logan didn't even crack a smile at me.

"How was your night?" Logan asked, raising his eyebrows.

I stood still at the bottom of the stairs. "It was fine, didn't do much except watch TV."

Logan nodded, pressing his lips tightly together.

"How was yours?" I awkwardly asked. It was a dumb question considering he was in my house and knew that I knew how he had spent his evening.

"Fine," Logan said and the two of us just stared at each other for a few tense moments.

Logan and I rarely ever had any sort of tension surrounding us. It only started after I started keeping secrets from him and he started seeing right through me.

"Are you going to tell me?" Logan asked in a rough tone, his voice was sharp and his eyes were narrowed with a fiery emotion.

Just by how he looked, I knew there was no way out of this. He knew exactly what was going on and if I lied to him, I didn't know if I could ever get him to forgive me. It was one thing to keep something from him that I wasn't ready to talk about, it was another to lie to his face when he knew the truth.