Page after page of web browsers, account after account on Instagram. My eyes were starting to see double vision from all of the planning I had accomplished. Work this week was kicking my butt, but this morning we were finally able to get everything switched over to remote work.

Meaning I wouldn't have to go into the office until Logan returned from this next deployment.

This gave me yet another thing to look forward to. I'd rather work in the office than at home, that little moment of leaving my house was so crucial for me. Even that was being taken away from me. This was the right thing to do though, as I needed to be with Peter and Abby.

I needed to be with my family too, but that was just too much to ask for apparently.

"What are you working on?" Logan asks, placing his hand on my shoulder as I sit at my desk in our guest room. We may have a three-bedroom apartment, but there really wasn't much room for an in-home office.

"Trying to come up with different activities for the kids to do while I'm gone, and places we can go when I get back. Now that you've done a few deployments here, though, we are running out of ideas." I paused for a moment, pulling my list back up to show him. "Just need stuff to keep up busy on the weekend while you are away."

"Hey, that place looked really cool. I wanted to take the kids there." Logan points at the bug museum. My eyes shot towards his, and the slightest look of disappointment covered his face.

"We were going to go check it out once I got home from helping Peter and Abby," I mumbled, not really sure how to handle the situation.

"Ari, don't take them there. I want to take them there." Suddenly we were treating this like we were divorced parents and one of us had to win.

"What do you mean, I've never heard you mention that place?" I was thoroughly confused at his reaction.

"I've been so excited to take the kids there. I wanted to be with them the first time they went. But the damn military makes it almost impossible to do anything around here." He nearly growled, turning to walk about of the room as quickly as possible. He was genuinely hurt by this.

I closed out of the tab on my personal computer and shut down the laptop for work. Maybe we didn't need to go to the bug museum. That would be fine. It just means one more idea I would have to come up with the keep the kids entertained while Logan was away. My mother would do little craft like things with them, but they lived in a house and had lots more room than we did to play. The twins would probably just spend every waking moment they could outside, running around in the yard.

"Logan?" I called, waiting to hear a response, but there wasn't one.

We needed to talk about this and get it figured out. If there was something he didn't want me taking the kids to because he wanted that moment with them I needed to know, he didn't need to get mad about me about it though. But maybe he wasn't mad at me.

"Logan!" I said a little more firm, looking in our room for him. There was still no response. I ended up finding him on the living room couch, looking at pictures on his phone that I had taken during his last deployment. Usually when he first got back he would go through the photos on my phone and send himself all the ones of the kids and I that he wanted. I wasn't sure why he did this, as usually he didn't like to talk about or see the things he missed while he was gone, but this was his way of fully settling back into life on shore.

"Look Logan, I don't have to take them to the bug museum, it's not that big of a deal. I was just trying to come up with things to do with them while you were away. They miss you so much that it's hard and I need to keep them entertained so they don't sit around the house and cry all the time. Even though all I want to do is sit around the house and cry all the time too." I placed my hands on his shoulders, rubbing small slow circles with my thumbs.

"I know, it's just so hard when you miss so much of your kids life you feel like you really don't know anything about them at all." He shook he head, swiping to look at another photo. This one was of the kids and I at the amusement park not too far from my parents house. We had gone on one sunny day with them.

"See, like this, I've never taken the kids to this park. I've always been gone when you take them." He pointed towards the photo. I hadn't realized he was keeping count of things like this.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you would care so much? It's really just to keep us busy while you are gone. We'd rather you were there with us for every single adventure."

"But I can't be, and you guys need to keep doing fun stuff while I'm gone, it's just so hard to come back and see all the fun things you did without me." He shook his head. "It's not bad, it's just hard. I sometimes feel like you guys would be better off without me, because then you could do all these fun things all the time. We never seem to do them when I'm home so I must be the reason."

"That's not true at all! We go and do these things as a desperate attempt to not be worthless the whole time you are gone. Mazie can barely get out of bed for days after you leave. The news is going to devastate her when we finally tell them. Marcus thinks he needs to fill your role and take over the household so he can be just like his father. It's hard for them to just be kids every single time you leave. This is one way that I can help them remember it's okay to be happy, we all miss dad but we can continue living our life. We need to continue living our life. If we don't we will just be miserable for months."

"I know, I know." He shook his head, swiping to the next photo. "I don't want you guys to be miserable while I'm going, but I just hate seeing all the things I don't get to do with my kids. I don't know. I'm extra pissed off about this deployment in particular. I was supposed to be done with this."

I couldn't say I didn't agree with him. This one hurt more than all the others because it was added on. He wasn't supposed to do this one. The boat was supposed to be home for long enough he wouldn't have to go out again. But timing is always bad when it comes to the military. We were never able to plan any trips, or get our hopes up for anything.

"I'm so sorry." I wrapped my arms around him from behind, holding him as tight as I could. The tears started streaming down my face. I wanted to spend every last second with him celebrating our love and being happy to be together but it was so hard. With the looming doom of him leaving it was nearly impossible to focus on anything other than that. My heart broke for families just at the start of the military career.

"Don't be sorry baby." He grabbed my arm, holding it tightly. I think he needed the support of my hug as much as I just needed to feel him close.

"Momma what's going on?" Marcus asks. The kids had been playing in their room with their toys while I finished some things up for work. I hadn't realized it was already almost dinner time and they would be starving by now. Logan had picked them up from school on his way home from work so everything seemed to be so jumbled up in my schedule.

"Oh nothing sweetie, I'm going to get started on dinner. Are you hungry?" I asked, patting Logan's shoulders. She jumped from the couch and left for the kitchen as well.

"Yes I'm starving!" Marcus shouted, a little more excited than I had expected him to.

"Alright, go finish playing and I'll call for you two when dinner is ready." I smiled, trying my best to hide the fact that I had been crying. There was no way they didn't see how hard this was for us, and they must have known that some bad news was coming here soon. We needed to decide if we were going to tell them both things at the same time or if we were going to let one bomb drop and allow them to get through those emotions before we dropped the other.

Marcus turned on his heel and ran off back towards his room. When I entered the kitchen Logan had already pulled out a few pans, looking at the sheet on the fridge to see what was for dinner. Tonight was pasta night and we would be doing a shrimp alfredo. Logan got to work on thawing the shrimp out, and gathered the rest of the ingredients that we would need. I started boiling the noodles. We worked together in perfect harmony.

"It's been a while since we cooked like this." I smiled, looking at Logan to see the steam of the shrimp flowing past his face. He was so handsome.

"Yeah it's not really my thing, I don't think I'm very good at it." He winked, as he swirled the shrimp around the pan making sure to cook all sides evenly. He added some more butter and the sizzle from the pan came to life.

"Don't forget to throw in the seasonings with that butter." I pointed out, grabbing a few of the plates and the alfredo sauce out of the cupboards.

"You got it, chef." He said in a mocking tone, teasing me about the countless cooking shows I watched. I had to say it was a great pastime while he was away and gave me plenty of dinner ideas to try. Most of the stuff I'd learned how to make was based off of stuff I saw on those tv shows. I'd need something to help me out while he was gone.

"Oh hush up." I flung the spoon in his direction, splashing little droplets of hot pasta water onto his skin. He jumped, acting as if he was really hurt. The water hadn't even fully come to a boil yet.

"Ouch! You be careful over there, before I have to-"

"Have to what?" I teased, threatening to splash him once more with the water. It was starting to get to the point where it would actually hurt if I wasn't careful but he didn't need to know that.

Logan lunged across the kitchen, grabbing my hips as he pushed me up against the counter.

"Have to do something like this," He growled in my ear, his lips grazing the crook of my neck. My knees were attempting to fail me, quivering at the sudden sexual tension between us. If he wasn't careful we'd have to turn all the pans off and head to the bedroom before I could even manage to make it through dinner.

"What if I don't want this to stop?" I whimpered, my hand still holding the spoon.

Logan's lips crashed against mine before I could even respond. His kiss filled with hunger and desire. My hands found his hair, pulling him in closer to me. His arms wrapped around my body pulling me up onto the counter.

"Logan...the kids..." I muttered through breathless pants. I needed to catch my breath, but we also needed to get dinner ready.

"Fine," He backed up, but just slightly. "But tonight it's game on." He winked.