"I'm not wasting a lot of time on a dead end."
"Tell me how you really feel, doc."
"I'm not calling you a dead end, Logan. It's the age thing and the priorities thing. You're just starting your career. Mine is more established, and as a woman I have to consider when and how I'll have kids. Maybe a year ago I could have gone into something with you blindly, but I just can't now. Honestly, even agreeing to the rest of this season might be too ambitious."
"It's not," Logan says, giving me a long look. "That's really not going to be the problem."
A fizzy sensation develops in my chest at the way he's gazing at me, as though it's impossible for him to believe we'll ever get tired of each other. 
But I've been fooled before, and I'm not letting my heart run full throttle into something my head doesn't trust. My skull still bears the phantom ache from the last time I ran right into the brick wall of regret.
"Neither of us can know what will happen," I say. "I've become a lot more of a "hope for the best and plan for the worst" kind of person the last couple of years."
"Why's that?"
"Because I didn't used to, and I really should have."
"Why was your last relationship shitty?"
"All kinds of reasons."
"Stop evading the question."
"I can evade it if I want to. Why it was shitty doesn't matter. What happened with him won't happen to me again."
He smooths a wisp of my hair that's fallen on my cheek and tucks it behind my ear. "Am I just your rebound, doc?"
"You might be."
"Honest, probably. But I don't fucking like it."
"Because it's not winning?"
"I'm hyper competitive. Definitely my best and worst trait." A hint of a smile tips up a corner of his mouth. "You could call it winning, though. Since anyone could be your rebound, and you're picking me."
"Is that enough for you?"
"You don't make the big plays sitting on the bench."
"What does that mean?"
He leans back and crosses his arms, putting some distance between us again. "You're set on casual with a limited timeline?"
"I have to be."
My favorite scene in the movie between Wyatt and Ellie is playing. A real gut-wrenching one that would have me crying if that's what I was focused on right now.  
"I can't do it." He rubs his face, releases a deep sigh, and looks at me. The internal conflict and determination are clear in his eyes and his expression. "Audibly ticking clocks on relationships are a "no" for me. I want to—badly—but I can't. After the way I grew up, I just can't." 
The credits to the movie are rolling across the huge screen above the fireplace. 
"I wouldn't want either of us to do something we weren't comfortable with," I whisper, but even as I say the words all the anticipation that had been bubbling and fizzing inside me is dissolving, leaving behind a surprising amount of disappointment. We'd been headed somewhere. "I should probably go home."
"I have practice in the morning," Logan agrees and stands up, holding out a hand. 
I take it, but when he draws me up, we're far too close. Spearmint and peppermint invade my senses, and that familiar awareness crackles in the air. Maybe, like me, he'd been counting on a different outcome.
"Would one kiss really hurt?" His gaze shifts from my eyes to my lips and back again, and his hand is at the small of my back, easing me a little closer, tighter. "Satisfy our curiosity."
"We shouldn't." But my hands are on his chest, and I'm conscious of how easy it would be to rise onto my toes, loop my arms around his neck, and drag him down, make us both regret that I came here at all. "The line we've drawn is important."
"We can redraw it. Colleagues who kiss sometimes."
"Sometimes? I thought you said "one" kiss?"
"Is there a world in which one kiss would ever be enough? 'Cause I don't think I live in that one."
Right now, with my thumping heart and tingles down my spine, I'm almost high enough with desire to find out beyond any doubt which world I live in. 
"I should go," I say, stepping around him. 
He trails me to the front entrance, and when I step out and turn to thank him, one shoulder is propped against the doorway. There's something about the way his gaze sweeps over me, like he could eat me up and then beg for seconds that makes my whole lower half turn to liquid. 
That look should be illegal.
"If you change you mind..." Logan says. "You know where I live."
"I won't. But if you change yours..."
"I know where you live," he says with another almost smile. "But you'd have to invite me."
"True, and I'd only do that if you change your mind."
"I think we're at an impasse, doc. As much as I'd love to be almost anywhere else with you."
I can't help one last lingering glance at his tall, athletic build framed in the doorway. Neither of us seems willing to put our pasts aside, and maybe that's for the best. We're still in a place where we can work together without our relationship being strained, or at least I think we are. 
When I glance back just before I step into the elevator, he's still in the doorway watching me, and I wonder whether months of this raging sexual tension with no chance of an outlet might actually be the worst outcome of all. 
So close, yet so far. What will it take to overcome their impasse?
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