Chapter 20
I felt my cheeks flush. Oh shit. I immediately turned to head back to the rest area. No way was I going to let him see me looking like this. Nor could I bear looking at a half naked Logan.
As soon as I turned away, I heard my name.
“Hazel?”
I turned, looking down at the ground. “Yes?”
“Would you…um. I could use some help if you don’t mind?” Logan said, looking a little embarrassed himself.
“Of course, sir,” I said.
He walked back into the locker room, and I hesitated. Did he want me to follow him in there? Surely not. But…he kind of implied…
I stood frozen in place, my anxiety rising and my mind racing to make a decision.
“You can come in,” Logan called out from the locker room. “There’s no one else in here.”
I walked in. The steam from his recent shower made my glasses fog up and suddenly I couldn’t see anything. I took my glasses off and set them on top of my head. I was nearsighted, so I could get around okay enough without them, but the steam still made it a little hard to make anything out.
I slowly turned a corner and saw a form I assumed was Logan. I walked towards it and finally made out Logan sitting on a bench. By this time he had slipped on some athletic shorts, but he was still shirtless. He was holding a small tube of something in his hand.
“I’ve got some scratches on my back that I can’t reach. Would you mind putting some of this antibiotic on them?” Logan said.
I slowly stepped closer to him. Once I got close enough to see his back, I realized he’d been more injured than I initially thought. He had several scratch marks, like he’d gotten into a tussle with a cat street gang.
“Do you want me to take you to a hospital? Just in case?” I asked, awkwardly standing about a foot away from him.
“No,” he said. “It’s not that bad. And besides…I don’t want the press getting wind of this.”
I hadn’t even considered that. It must be tough living in the public eye like that, where you can’t even take a simple trip to the doctor without getting scrutinized by paparazzi.
He handed me the tube and turned his back towards me. I hesitated again. He was so big on boundaries and keeping his distance from his workers, I was surprised he had called me into the locker room to help him apply ointment. He surely would not have asked Elena to do something like this.
I squirted some of the antibiotic into my hand and caught a glimpse of my pajama bottoms. Oh.
Dylan’s words from earlier in the evening about my attire popped in my head. Maybe that’s why I was the one Logan trusted to be around the most, to do his shopping or stay at the office late. I was safe. No chance he would be tempted by me. His wife would take one look at me and be relieved. No threat here.
I gently patted the ointment onto his wounds. I guess at least that’s working in my favor at work now, I thought. Still, didn’t do much to soothe my bruised ego. I would do anything to be considered beautiful like Elena or even Natalie. To have men always swooning over me.
To have someone leave their girlfriend of several years to propose to me instead.
“You must think I’m pathetic,” Logan said suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.
“Wha…Why?” I said. Pathetic was the last word I would use to describe the man in front of me.
“Having your spouse call the police on you is not exactly something to be admired,” he said. “Dylan certainly had a good laugh at my expense. So go ahead, make your jokes now. Get them out of your system before Monday rolls around.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. He’d never even come close to having a personal and vulnerable conversation with me. Nor had I for that matter, with someone higher up than me.
“Sir, I would never make a joke over something like this,” I said.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “This is just not how I expected things to go this evening.”
I waited for him to continue, but he remained silent. My own recent failed proposal popped in my head, and I felt something nudge me to tell him the story.
My heart raced. I don’t think I had told anyone the story beside Maria. I was usually the type to keep things bottled up nice and tight inside. I hesitated for a moment. He seemed like he needed to hear he wasn’t alone in his romance woes. “Well, I had a somewhat similar evening fairly recently. At least, as far as it not going as planned with a significant other.”
He sat up and turned his head to look at me, “Oh?”
I squirted more ointment into my hand and applied it to his back as I recalled that evening. “Before a trip I took recently with my boyfriend, I had found a ring that he had purchased. Well, I knew what that meant. But it turned out that he hadn’t bought the ring for me. He had bought it for…someone else,” I couldn’t bring myself to say it was for my sister. “And then he proposed to her right in front of me.”
Logan’s expression remained unchanged while I told him the story. He turned his face from me and looked at the floor across the room, lost in thought. There were several moments of silence before he said simply, “I’m sorry.”
“Me too,” I said. Then quietly, “Thank you.”
I put the cap back on the tube of ointment and handed it back to him. I walked over to a sink to wash my hands. When I returned, I saw Logan had pulled a t-shirt on. Was it possible that he was even better looking in these casual clothes than his suits?
He still seemed quiet and somber as we walked out of the locker room together.
“I think you’re very brave for what you did earlier tonight,” I said.
“Brave? How so?”
“You stood up for your wife. I think that’s what women dream of, having a man that will protect them like you did her,” I shrugged.
He gave a small nod, his thoughts still seeming to be far off. Suddenly he turned to me and held my eyes with his. “Thank you, Hazel.”
The way he said my name sent chills throughout my body. All I could do was nod in response.
“I’m going to get some rest. You should too,” he said, starting down the hall towards his office.
“Goodnight,” I said. He gave a small wave, and I watched him until he was out of sight.
The following Monday morning, I greeted Maria on my way to my desk.
“Hey!” She gave me a hug. “How’s it going with the selection process for Logan’s assistant? I haven’t heard any updates in awhile.”
“I’m not sure, actually,” I said. I had hoped that because of all the special assignments I had gotten that I was at the top of the list, but I didn’t really know for sure. He very well could’ve been giving the others special assignments too that I didn’t know about.
As though he had heard us talking about him, Logan appeared in the middle of the room. “Can I please have all of the candidates up for the position of my assistant please join me?”
I looked at Maria, who grabbed my hands excitedly.
“I have an important announcement to make.”
