For Old Times’ Sake - Anne
Title: For Old Times’ Sake
Author: Anne
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,000
Pairing: L/V
Spoilers: Through 2.11 - Donut Run
Author’s Note: Written for the loveathons “You Must Remember This” challenge.
====================
Veronica forced her last smile of the night as the final customer exited Java the Hut. She was beginning to think the muscles in her face might permanently atrophy from being forced into that unnatural position every night for the last week.
But she owed pretty much everyone at the Hut for covering her shifts while she was out with the Duncan situation. She turned the key in the lock as she returned to the counter to grab a cloth and help with final clean-up. Situation. That barely began to cover everything that had happened over the last few weeks, from the moment Duncan had told her he was leaving and she offered, against her better judgment, to help. But Lamb had hauled her down to the station one last time, furious, so she knew he’d made it to Mexico at least. The rest?
The rest she couldn’t control. He was gone and she hoped that he and Lilly would be safe and well and . . . . She dabbed at her eyes with the cloth. True love stories might never end, but they didn’t always work out the way a girl hoped.
But he was gone and she was still here and if there was one thing the last few years had taught her, it was that you couldn’t live in the past.
She waved goodbye to the other waitresses as she edged out the door and into the brightly lit parking lot. There was one last thing she needed to do to close that door. Celeste would be sending someone to clear out Duncan’s things any day now and there were still a few things of hers in the suite. With her dad in Vegas, now was an optimum time to slide in, get her stuff, and get out. Plus, it being Friday night, Logan should be safely ensconced in the arms of some senorita on the seniors’ weekend in Tijuana that she’d heard Dick raving about. 09ers only of course.
She dug her keys from her pocket and loosened the buttons on her vest as she walked across the parking lot. In, out, done. It was time to move on.
===================
Logan was not supposed to be at home. Alone. On a Friday night. Maybe if a certain skanky stepmom was around, she’d have believed he wouldn’t be down in TJ.
But she had to do a double take at the sight of Logan home alone on a Friday night watching Casablanca in the dark and crying. Maybe she was more tired than she thought. She stepped into the living room.
“Logan?”
He started, nearly tossing the book in his lap to the floor before he rescued it and laid it on the coffee table as he dashed at his eyes.
“What the fuck? How’d you get in here, Veronica?” he demanded.
She held up the key and shrugged. “Sorry, Duncan gave me one, I thought you knew.”
“Yeah, well, if you haven’t noticed, Duncan doesn’t live here anymore. So consider your invite revoked. As of now,” he snarled.
“Logan, I just need to get some stuff I left here before Duncan’s room gets cleared out, alright? I didn’t think you’d be home tonight.”
He sat back on the couch and cocked his head to the side, face still flushed. “So you thought it would be fine to just come right in and help yourself when I wasn’t home, Goldilocks? You do know there are laws against that sort of thing, don’t you?”
“Logan, chill.” Veronica struggled to pull the key from her ring and moved to lay it on the table. “I just wanted to get my things. I’m sorry I . . .”
She stopped as she took in the book lying open before her, dappled by the soft lights of the television screen. Pages of clippings from the career of Lynn Echolls. Press shots, reviews, articles. She glanced back at Logan, his face marred by tear tracks and bloodshot eyes as he clutched a glass of whiskey in his hand. And it suddenly clicked.
It was the anniversary of the day Lynn Echolls had jumped from the Corrando Bridge. And her son was reliving it in the only way he knew how.
She laid the key down softly and sank onto the sofa beside him. “Logan? I’m sorry. I’d forgotten what today was.”
“Yeah, well, Access Hollywood didn’t. Trina managed to get a clip out of it to plug that fucking movie she’s doing.” He threw back the remainder of his glass and walked to the bar, reaching for more. “Whatever. It’s just another day.”
Veronica watched his back as he faced away and reached for the scrapbook, slowly flipping though the pages. The way she felt about Logan was barely covered by complicated, but tonight? Right now? He didn’t deserve to be alone with this. No matter how much of a jackass he might be, no one deserved this.
The early pages showed a young Lynn Lester, radiant, with a natural sparkle to her eyes. They almost didn’t appear to be photos of the shell of a woman she’d known as Logan’s mom, the one who was always a little too bright, a little too intense in the way of the chronically self-medicated.
“Logan? You mom was really beautiful,” she said sincerely.
“She wanted to be Ingrid Bergman.” He turned around and nodded to the screen. “It was her favorite movie growing up, they used to show it at revival houses. She told me she watched it hundreds of times, memorizing Isla’s lines. That’s why she came to Hollywood.”
Veronica flipped further through the book. Early head shots, some modeling work, clippings from columns that mentioned her name in passing for the bit parts she was able to string together in her early career. A slightly larger role in a slasher film, lots of blood and gore, but more media attention. And then her lucky break, the female love interest in The Pursuit of Happiness opposite rising star Aaron Echolls.
Veronica stopped turning the pages as Logan sat down beside her. “Where did you get this, Logan? I though everything in your house was ruined.”
“Mom had a storage unit she kept things in, stuff she didn’t want dad to get to, I guess. This was in there. She had it for as long as I can remember. She’d take it out sometimes when I was little and let me look through it, tell me stories about the movies.” He laughed harshly. “You’d think I, of all people, would know better, but she made it sound like magic.”
“Moms have a way of doing that.” Veronica smiled softly at him. She flipped another page.
“That was one of her favorites.” He pointed to the clipping. “Delta Blue Bombers.” He titled his head back. “I was maybe, I dunno, five or six, I guess? But I remember it, because we had to move to Mississippi for the summer while they filmed.” He shook his head. “I hated it, I couldn’t play outside because Mom was paranoid about the mosquitoes and the alligators. But she didn’t want to leave me all summer.”
“I don’t remember you going with them on location much.”
Logan shrugged. “I didn’t after I got older. They had a nanny for us at first. By the time I was twelve, Trina was a teenager and I guess they decided the housekeeper was good enough to watch us.”
He laid his head against the back of the couch and looked over at her. “She’d call me every night when she was gone back them. Sing me that song from Dumbo so I could fall asleep.”
Veronica chuckled, “Baby Mine? My mom used to sing that to me too.”
He smiled, “Yeah, that’s the one. And it was always good when she’d first come home. She always brought me something back. Not like expensive stuff, just little things she thought I’d want.”
“Like what?” Veronica curled her knees beneath her and turned to face him as she leaned into the couch.
“When I was seven, I was obsessed with trains. I so wanted to be an engineer. I had about fifteen miles of track laid out in my bedroom, engines and cars everywhere. And if you tell anyone that . . .” He gave her a menacing glare.
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll make my life hell. Been there, done that Echolls. Now tell me what she brought you,’ Veronica replied.
“She went to Vancouver that spring, I think it was,” he flipped through the pages, “yeah, Danger in the Dark. There was this guy there, who worked on the sets. She saw him carving stuff, and she got him to make me a train whistle, carved my name in the side of it and everything. It sounded like a real train, too. I drove everyone insane with that thing. I wish I still had it.”
His face darkened for a moment and she hesitated to ask him what had happened to the whistle. He tipped back his glass and drained it again. “You want one?” he asked, as he made his way carefully back to the bar.
She started to refuse but shrugged. “Sure. Just one, to remember your mom.”
He smiled wryly as he carried the two glasses back to the couch. “No better way to honor her.”
“To Lynn Echolls.” Veronica raised her glass.
“To Mom.” Logan clinked the crystal and took a swallow as Veronica did the same, shivering a little at the bite of the liquor rolling down her throat. They sat in silence for a few moments, watching as Rick waited in vain for Ilsa at the train station.
Veronica asked quietly, “Do you ever worry it will happen to you? I do sometimes.”
“What will happen?” he asked.
She raised her glass. “This. That we’ll become like them, slipping into another world because we just can’t face this one anymore.”
He rolled the glass back and forth in his hands. “Sometimes I think I’m already there. It’s easier to face everything when the edges are a little blurry, especially when there’s no one around.”
She swallowed another sip as she fought back the guilt. He hadn’t meant her specifically; he meant his father, his mother, his best friend, but not her, right? But then she’d left him too.
“It’s too quiet here, you know? I got use to having Duncan around, even when he was just in his room. Last summer . . .” He trailed off as he shot her a quick glance. “I missed him then and I miss him now. He was my best friend.”
He stared into his glass as he asked softly, “How is he, Veronica? Is he alright?”
She stiffened, took another larger sip to hide her nerves. “I don’t know, Logan, I wish I did.”
“Bullshit.” Logan shook his head. “Veronica, he managed to disappear with a baby, and you were right in the middle of it. I love Duncan like a brother, but he’d never have pulled that off on his own. He’d have needed you to do it.”
She killed the rest of her drink and sat the glass on the table, weighing her next words carefully. “Logan, I don’t know where he is, okay? I really don’t. But I know that he and Lilly are fine. They’re safe now. And that’s all I know.”
She reached for the scrapbook again as a distraction. Logan probably cared about Duncan more than any other person in Neptune besides herself, but she wasn’t ready to have a share session with him on the subject. It was all still too fresh and raw, with a big side of awkward, given their tangled history. She flipped the pages, stopping on another posed shot, ready made for the red carpet cameras, of a smiling Aaron and visibly pregnant Lynn, glowing for the world as she flashed her diamond ring.
“What’s this one?”
“The premiere of The Pursuit of Happiness. The thriller which brought about my very existence.”
Veronica raised an eyebrow. “I doubt you were the first child conceived in that pursuit.”
“Funny, Mars. No, Dad was separated from his first wife at that time and by the end of the shoot, Mom was pregnant with me. I guess she must have been something more than a quick roll between the sheets to him though, because he proposed to her at the wrap party. Great press, you know, wonderful human interest angle for the publicity machine. They got married and Pursuit had a huge box office take. Everyone was indeed happy,” he intoned sarcastically. He grabbed her glass and his and moved to pour them both another drink.
Veronica turned the page again and a loose picture fluttered free and towards the floor. She picked it up, its edges frayed, and studied it. It was a picture of Lynn, looking much the same age as she had in the previous shots from the Pursuit premiere. But this shot was unstudied and unposed. Lynn was dressed casually as she sat with a toddler who must be Logan in her arms. She seemed unaware of the camera, her attention focused solely on him. The love on her face was heartbreakingly beautiful and Veronica wondered what would cause a mother with that much love for her child to leave him.
She found Logan back at her side, studying the picture as tears ran down his face that he made no more attempts to hide. She handed it to him and gently sat the scrapbook on the table. The dam seemed to burst as she pulled him into a hug, the silent sobs making him shudder against her. She felt her own tears well up that she couldn’t halt as she held on to him, for the weight they carried knowing their mothers didn’t love them enough to stay and their losses of best friends and first loves and the life they once knew.
She wasn’t sure how long they stayed that way, holding onto to each other like a life line from a sinking ship. The credits had rolled and the screen gone black on Rick and Ilsa by the time Logan’s tears slowed and he shifted against her, his cheek rubbing against hers softly as he breathed a “thank you” into her ear.
She ran her hand down his face, wiping away a tear as she whispered back, “You’re welcome, Logan.”
There was a quiet between them as they sat together, almost numb from the catharsis of the tears. He leaned forward and his lips were soft against hers, the slightest brush one of comfort, not passion. She sighed against him as he kissed her again, and pulled him closer once again, wrapping herself in his arms.
It wasn’t like when he’d kissed her before, all fast and hot like a wildfire that crackled and burned everything in its path. As he feathered her lips with small kisses she could sense it, something slow and tender unfurling between them, fueled by alcohol and emotion and need to feel something besides loss.
She found the edge of his shirt and traced the muscles of his back as he lowered her on the couch, lost in kisses that didn’t end, just tumbled into the next with the slightest pause for breath. His fingers traced her face, her hair, her arms, until she pulled his hand to her breast and arched against him as he shaped the soft flesh, craving his touch, the contact of skin on skin.
Her shirt soon ended up on the floor after that and his followed before they stumbled towards the bedroom, never breaking contact as the landed together on the bed. The lights stayed off as they fumbled in the dark, hands everywhere seeking more flesh, more contact, more of each other. Clothes shed, she nodded as he pulled out a condom, and held on to him as he moved against her, his hard length sliding into her slickly, filling her completely. She could feel the tears gathering in the corners of eyes, until Logan kissed them away, his voice a soft chant of her name.
He rolled her to the side, their bodies joined as they rocked together towards something sweet and sad and not what she’d expected from Logan at all. When she came, it was like a slow wave that rippled across her, the tension of everything swallowed by the need between them as she felt him shudder within her.
She felt boneless and relaxed and oddly happy as they lay there, flushed and sweaty and alive. And then he pulled away from her, out of the bed and into the bathroom without a backward glance.
The bubble popped as she sat up, listening to the splash of water in the sink as she tried to find where her underwear had disappeared to. Moment done. She didn’t feel regret though; it had been comfort given and received that they had both needed.
She was still searching beneath the covers when he returned and sat beside her on the bed. His face looked older than she’d ever seen, half-shadowed in the light that spilled from the bathroom as he watched her.
“You don’t have to go, Veronica.”
“Logan, I’m not sure . . .”
“Neither am I. And right now’s not the best time to have a discussion.” He rubbed his hand over his face, the exhaustion clear. “The question is, are you willing to stick around so we can talk about it in the morning, or are you going to run away?”
She watched his face for a minute, taking in the guarded expression in his eyes before asking, “Does that offer include pancakes?”
“I can do that,” he replied, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Then you have a deal.” She pulled back the blanket and he slid back in beside her.
Author: Anne
Rating: R
Word Count: 3,000
Pairing: L/V
Spoilers: Through 2.11 - Donut Run
Author’s Note: Written for the loveathons “You Must Remember This” challenge.
====================
Veronica forced her last smile of the night as the final customer exited Java the Hut. She was beginning to think the muscles in her face might permanently atrophy from being forced into that unnatural position every night for the last week.
But she owed pretty much everyone at the Hut for covering her shifts while she was out with the Duncan situation. She turned the key in the lock as she returned to the counter to grab a cloth and help with final clean-up. Situation. That barely began to cover everything that had happened over the last few weeks, from the moment Duncan had told her he was leaving and she offered, against her better judgment, to help. But Lamb had hauled her down to the station one last time, furious, so she knew he’d made it to Mexico at least. The rest?
The rest she couldn’t control. He was gone and she hoped that he and Lilly would be safe and well and . . . . She dabbed at her eyes with the cloth. True love stories might never end, but they didn’t always work out the way a girl hoped.
But he was gone and she was still here and if there was one thing the last few years had taught her, it was that you couldn’t live in the past.
She waved goodbye to the other waitresses as she edged out the door and into the brightly lit parking lot. There was one last thing she needed to do to close that door. Celeste would be sending someone to clear out Duncan’s things any day now and there were still a few things of hers in the suite. With her dad in Vegas, now was an optimum time to slide in, get her stuff, and get out. Plus, it being Friday night, Logan should be safely ensconced in the arms of some senorita on the seniors’ weekend in Tijuana that she’d heard Dick raving about. 09ers only of course.
She dug her keys from her pocket and loosened the buttons on her vest as she walked across the parking lot. In, out, done. It was time to move on.
===================
Logan was not supposed to be at home. Alone. On a Friday night. Maybe if a certain skanky stepmom was around, she’d have believed he wouldn’t be down in TJ.
But she had to do a double take at the sight of Logan home alone on a Friday night watching Casablanca in the dark and crying. Maybe she was more tired than she thought. She stepped into the living room.
“Logan?”
He started, nearly tossing the book in his lap to the floor before he rescued it and laid it on the coffee table as he dashed at his eyes.
“What the fuck? How’d you get in here, Veronica?” he demanded.
She held up the key and shrugged. “Sorry, Duncan gave me one, I thought you knew.”
“Yeah, well, if you haven’t noticed, Duncan doesn’t live here anymore. So consider your invite revoked. As of now,” he snarled.
“Logan, I just need to get some stuff I left here before Duncan’s room gets cleared out, alright? I didn’t think you’d be home tonight.”
He sat back on the couch and cocked his head to the side, face still flushed. “So you thought it would be fine to just come right in and help yourself when I wasn’t home, Goldilocks? You do know there are laws against that sort of thing, don’t you?”
“Logan, chill.” Veronica struggled to pull the key from her ring and moved to lay it on the table. “I just wanted to get my things. I’m sorry I . . .”
She stopped as she took in the book lying open before her, dappled by the soft lights of the television screen. Pages of clippings from the career of Lynn Echolls. Press shots, reviews, articles. She glanced back at Logan, his face marred by tear tracks and bloodshot eyes as he clutched a glass of whiskey in his hand. And it suddenly clicked.
It was the anniversary of the day Lynn Echolls had jumped from the Corrando Bridge. And her son was reliving it in the only way he knew how.
She laid the key down softly and sank onto the sofa beside him. “Logan? I’m sorry. I’d forgotten what today was.”
“Yeah, well, Access Hollywood didn’t. Trina managed to get a clip out of it to plug that fucking movie she’s doing.” He threw back the remainder of his glass and walked to the bar, reaching for more. “Whatever. It’s just another day.”
Veronica watched his back as he faced away and reached for the scrapbook, slowly flipping though the pages. The way she felt about Logan was barely covered by complicated, but tonight? Right now? He didn’t deserve to be alone with this. No matter how much of a jackass he might be, no one deserved this.
The early pages showed a young Lynn Lester, radiant, with a natural sparkle to her eyes. They almost didn’t appear to be photos of the shell of a woman she’d known as Logan’s mom, the one who was always a little too bright, a little too intense in the way of the chronically self-medicated.
“Logan? You mom was really beautiful,” she said sincerely.
“She wanted to be Ingrid Bergman.” He turned around and nodded to the screen. “It was her favorite movie growing up, they used to show it at revival houses. She told me she watched it hundreds of times, memorizing Isla’s lines. That’s why she came to Hollywood.”
Veronica flipped further through the book. Early head shots, some modeling work, clippings from columns that mentioned her name in passing for the bit parts she was able to string together in her early career. A slightly larger role in a slasher film, lots of blood and gore, but more media attention. And then her lucky break, the female love interest in The Pursuit of Happiness opposite rising star Aaron Echolls.
Veronica stopped turning the pages as Logan sat down beside her. “Where did you get this, Logan? I though everything in your house was ruined.”
“Mom had a storage unit she kept things in, stuff she didn’t want dad to get to, I guess. This was in there. She had it for as long as I can remember. She’d take it out sometimes when I was little and let me look through it, tell me stories about the movies.” He laughed harshly. “You’d think I, of all people, would know better, but she made it sound like magic.”
“Moms have a way of doing that.” Veronica smiled softly at him. She flipped another page.
“That was one of her favorites.” He pointed to the clipping. “Delta Blue Bombers.” He titled his head back. “I was maybe, I dunno, five or six, I guess? But I remember it, because we had to move to Mississippi for the summer while they filmed.” He shook his head. “I hated it, I couldn’t play outside because Mom was paranoid about the mosquitoes and the alligators. But she didn’t want to leave me all summer.”
“I don’t remember you going with them on location much.”
Logan shrugged. “I didn’t after I got older. They had a nanny for us at first. By the time I was twelve, Trina was a teenager and I guess they decided the housekeeper was good enough to watch us.”
He laid his head against the back of the couch and looked over at her. “She’d call me every night when she was gone back them. Sing me that song from Dumbo so I could fall asleep.”
Veronica chuckled, “Baby Mine? My mom used to sing that to me too.”
He smiled, “Yeah, that’s the one. And it was always good when she’d first come home. She always brought me something back. Not like expensive stuff, just little things she thought I’d want.”
“Like what?” Veronica curled her knees beneath her and turned to face him as she leaned into the couch.
“When I was seven, I was obsessed with trains. I so wanted to be an engineer. I had about fifteen miles of track laid out in my bedroom, engines and cars everywhere. And if you tell anyone that . . .” He gave her a menacing glare.
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll make my life hell. Been there, done that Echolls. Now tell me what she brought you,’ Veronica replied.
“She went to Vancouver that spring, I think it was,” he flipped through the pages, “yeah, Danger in the Dark. There was this guy there, who worked on the sets. She saw him carving stuff, and she got him to make me a train whistle, carved my name in the side of it and everything. It sounded like a real train, too. I drove everyone insane with that thing. I wish I still had it.”
His face darkened for a moment and she hesitated to ask him what had happened to the whistle. He tipped back his glass and drained it again. “You want one?” he asked, as he made his way carefully back to the bar.
She started to refuse but shrugged. “Sure. Just one, to remember your mom.”
He smiled wryly as he carried the two glasses back to the couch. “No better way to honor her.”
“To Lynn Echolls.” Veronica raised her glass.
“To Mom.” Logan clinked the crystal and took a swallow as Veronica did the same, shivering a little at the bite of the liquor rolling down her throat. They sat in silence for a few moments, watching as Rick waited in vain for Ilsa at the train station.
Veronica asked quietly, “Do you ever worry it will happen to you? I do sometimes.”
“What will happen?” he asked.
She raised her glass. “This. That we’ll become like them, slipping into another world because we just can’t face this one anymore.”
He rolled the glass back and forth in his hands. “Sometimes I think I’m already there. It’s easier to face everything when the edges are a little blurry, especially when there’s no one around.”
She swallowed another sip as she fought back the guilt. He hadn’t meant her specifically; he meant his father, his mother, his best friend, but not her, right? But then she’d left him too.
“It’s too quiet here, you know? I got use to having Duncan around, even when he was just in his room. Last summer . . .” He trailed off as he shot her a quick glance. “I missed him then and I miss him now. He was my best friend.”
He stared into his glass as he asked softly, “How is he, Veronica? Is he alright?”
She stiffened, took another larger sip to hide her nerves. “I don’t know, Logan, I wish I did.”
“Bullshit.” Logan shook his head. “Veronica, he managed to disappear with a baby, and you were right in the middle of it. I love Duncan like a brother, but he’d never have pulled that off on his own. He’d have needed you to do it.”
She killed the rest of her drink and sat the glass on the table, weighing her next words carefully. “Logan, I don’t know where he is, okay? I really don’t. But I know that he and Lilly are fine. They’re safe now. And that’s all I know.”
She reached for the scrapbook again as a distraction. Logan probably cared about Duncan more than any other person in Neptune besides herself, but she wasn’t ready to have a share session with him on the subject. It was all still too fresh and raw, with a big side of awkward, given their tangled history. She flipped the pages, stopping on another posed shot, ready made for the red carpet cameras, of a smiling Aaron and visibly pregnant Lynn, glowing for the world as she flashed her diamond ring.
“What’s this one?”
“The premiere of The Pursuit of Happiness. The thriller which brought about my very existence.”
Veronica raised an eyebrow. “I doubt you were the first child conceived in that pursuit.”
“Funny, Mars. No, Dad was separated from his first wife at that time and by the end of the shoot, Mom was pregnant with me. I guess she must have been something more than a quick roll between the sheets to him though, because he proposed to her at the wrap party. Great press, you know, wonderful human interest angle for the publicity machine. They got married and Pursuit had a huge box office take. Everyone was indeed happy,” he intoned sarcastically. He grabbed her glass and his and moved to pour them both another drink.
Veronica turned the page again and a loose picture fluttered free and towards the floor. She picked it up, its edges frayed, and studied it. It was a picture of Lynn, looking much the same age as she had in the previous shots from the Pursuit premiere. But this shot was unstudied and unposed. Lynn was dressed casually as she sat with a toddler who must be Logan in her arms. She seemed unaware of the camera, her attention focused solely on him. The love on her face was heartbreakingly beautiful and Veronica wondered what would cause a mother with that much love for her child to leave him.
She found Logan back at her side, studying the picture as tears ran down his face that he made no more attempts to hide. She handed it to him and gently sat the scrapbook on the table. The dam seemed to burst as she pulled him into a hug, the silent sobs making him shudder against her. She felt her own tears well up that she couldn’t halt as she held on to him, for the weight they carried knowing their mothers didn’t love them enough to stay and their losses of best friends and first loves and the life they once knew.
She wasn’t sure how long they stayed that way, holding onto to each other like a life line from a sinking ship. The credits had rolled and the screen gone black on Rick and Ilsa by the time Logan’s tears slowed and he shifted against her, his cheek rubbing against hers softly as he breathed a “thank you” into her ear.
She ran her hand down his face, wiping away a tear as she whispered back, “You’re welcome, Logan.”
There was a quiet between them as they sat together, almost numb from the catharsis of the tears. He leaned forward and his lips were soft against hers, the slightest brush one of comfort, not passion. She sighed against him as he kissed her again, and pulled him closer once again, wrapping herself in his arms.
It wasn’t like when he’d kissed her before, all fast and hot like a wildfire that crackled and burned everything in its path. As he feathered her lips with small kisses she could sense it, something slow and tender unfurling between them, fueled by alcohol and emotion and need to feel something besides loss.
She found the edge of his shirt and traced the muscles of his back as he lowered her on the couch, lost in kisses that didn’t end, just tumbled into the next with the slightest pause for breath. His fingers traced her face, her hair, her arms, until she pulled his hand to her breast and arched against him as he shaped the soft flesh, craving his touch, the contact of skin on skin.
Her shirt soon ended up on the floor after that and his followed before they stumbled towards the bedroom, never breaking contact as the landed together on the bed. The lights stayed off as they fumbled in the dark, hands everywhere seeking more flesh, more contact, more of each other. Clothes shed, she nodded as he pulled out a condom, and held on to him as he moved against her, his hard length sliding into her slickly, filling her completely. She could feel the tears gathering in the corners of eyes, until Logan kissed them away, his voice a soft chant of her name.
He rolled her to the side, their bodies joined as they rocked together towards something sweet and sad and not what she’d expected from Logan at all. When she came, it was like a slow wave that rippled across her, the tension of everything swallowed by the need between them as she felt him shudder within her.
She felt boneless and relaxed and oddly happy as they lay there, flushed and sweaty and alive. And then he pulled away from her, out of the bed and into the bathroom without a backward glance.
The bubble popped as she sat up, listening to the splash of water in the sink as she tried to find where her underwear had disappeared to. Moment done. She didn’t feel regret though; it had been comfort given and received that they had both needed.
She was still searching beneath the covers when he returned and sat beside her on the bed. His face looked older than she’d ever seen, half-shadowed in the light that spilled from the bathroom as he watched her.
“You don’t have to go, Veronica.”
“Logan, I’m not sure . . .”
“Neither am I. And right now’s not the best time to have a discussion.” He rubbed his hand over his face, the exhaustion clear. “The question is, are you willing to stick around so we can talk about it in the morning, or are you going to run away?”
She watched his face for a minute, taking in the guarded expression in his eyes before asking, “Does that offer include pancakes?”
“I can do that,” he replied, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Then you have a deal.” She pulled back the blanket and he slid back in beside her.