Fic: The Salt-Wound Routine, Part 3A: Capsized (V/L) R
Veronica Mars Fic
Title: The Salt-Wound Routine (3/3), Part 3: Capsized
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica
Word Count: 14,000+, 3A: 5,833
Rating: R (language)
Summary: Lilly’s death had fractured them apart, splintering them one from the other in different ways, but now that the truth was out, it was time. It was time to move on.
Spoilers/Warnings: Season one, picks up from 1x22
Notes: Part Three was too big for a single post, so I've split it up.
Part 1: Bridge / Part 2: Damage Control (A) / Part 2: Damage Control (B)
“So what are you going to do now?” Wallace asked around a mouthful of pizza. “Go see Logan?”
It was late, after ten, and they were sitting at the table of Veronica’s kitchen with a large box of take-out pizza between them, most of which they had managed to devour. Veronica looked at him quickly, and reached for her diet Coke to give herself time to think. It had been weighing on her all day.
She had promised she would go back to the boat to check in on Logan, but somehow during the day apart, all the warm feelings of the morning had, not disappeared exactly, but more like dissipated in the glare of hindsight, like early morning fog burning off in the sun. She had gone to the hospital and spent hours with her dad, and while she sat there, talking to him and making jokes to keep his spirits up, she knew she couldn’t tell him yet about Logan. It made her uncomfortable to keep a secret from her father. But she wasn’t ready to tell him-what? That she and Logan were trying to work things out? She wasn’t even sure if that’s what they were doing. Making amends? See, it was a problem if she didn’t even understand what was going on, much less to try to explain it to anyone else. She wasn’t sure how her understandably protective father would react to that information.
She had tried several times to tell him. And then she had tried again. Even if it was only to say why she had needed to find Logan, to explain that she regretted her betrayal when he really was innocent. But each time, the words stuck in her throat, and she would smile at her father instead and pick up the newspaper.
Telling him about Lianne had been hard enough.
“I have to tell you something.”
“Okay, honey.”
She looked down at her bandaged hands and struggled to phrase it gently. How to say it? Dad, I kicked Mom out last night. Just like that. So bald. I told her to leave.
“Honey, what is it?” her father asked patiently, and she looked up to see him watching her expectantly, but she also saw something else in his face: resignation.
She met his gaze as evenly as she could manage around the hurt of her mother’s abandonment. “I asked Mom to leave last night.”
He nodded, like she half-knew he would. “I had a feeling something happened between you two. When your mother wasn’t here last night, and Alicia said you called her…”
Veronica ducked her head as she explained. “She’s still drinking. Before I left for the Kanes’ last night-I found that water bottle she’s been drinking from, and-”
“-it was vodka, right? Or gin.”
“Vodka,” Veronica replied, looking up in surprise. “You knew?”
“I suspected. Veronica, I’ve been with your mom for a long time. I can see the signs. I think you were just so glad she was home that you didn’t notice them yourself.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” She fought to keep the accusation out of her voice.
“You seemed so happy, honey. I didn’t want to spoil that for you. And I hoped-for your sake-that-maybe I was wrong.”
They could only look at each other sadly.
Veronica had decided that was enough for the moment. There would be time enough later to tell him the rest: about rehab and her college money. Time enough later to talk about Logan.
“Hey, Veronica…Earth to Mars…”
Veronica came back to her kitchen as Wallace waved a hand in her face, and she blinked back at him sheepishly.
“Sorry, Wallace. Got a lot on my mind.”
“Yeah, I’ll say. Look, Veronica, it’s pretty late. You going tonight, or not?”
She looked down and toyed with the crust of her pizza slice. “I’m going tonight. I have to.”
“Why?” Glancing up, she could see the concern shining on his open, brown face. Wallace may have accepted what she had told him about Logan, but she knew Wallace was still suspicious of him. “Why do you have to go tonight? Why can’t you wait until tomorrow?”
She shook her head. “I just have to. I promised him I would come back today. I owe him that. I….” She stopped and took a long breath, looking away. “I think he was up on that bridge because I hurt him, and he needs a friend right now. Dealing with all this is going to be hard enough without thinking that your girlfriend still doesn’t trust you.”
“So you’re back together then?”
“Honestly, Wallace…I don’t really know yet. That’s something we still have to figure out.”
“Do you trust him?” Wallace asked seriously.
“Yes,” Veronica replied with conviction. “I do now. He didn’t have anything to do with Lilly’s murder.”
“But what about everything else? I mean-you know-how can you just forget everything he did to you since then?”
“I can’t forget it,” she said slowly, afraid to meet his eyes. “But he’s different now. He was different before. Before Lilly died. We were all friends-good friends. And now…”
“Just like that, he’s changed? Veronica, is that even possible?”
“I don’t know. I just know that he’s different with me. And I really care about him, and I can’t let him go through this alone.” She looked up and saw Wallace staring at her. “I can’t do that to him. He needs a friend. A real friend. I don’t see anyone else beating down his door.”
Wallace sighed and shrugged. “All right.”
“Wallace…”
“You do what you have to do, Veronica. I get it.” He gazed at her for a long moment, and then reached across the table to cover her hand with his own in a friendly squeeze.
“Thanks for understanding, Wallace.”
“Uh oh.” He shook his head as she opened her mouth again.
She grinned. “Do me a favor?”
He sighed theatrically, and assumed a martyred expression.
“Would you take Backup with you tonight?”
Wallace’s brown face lit up at that, and she sighed in relief.
Together they cleaned up in companionable silence. She did feel like Wallace understood, despite his misgivings-she thought that at least he got how complicated things were for her. He gave her a hug before he left with Backup and a bag of doggie supplies, and they pushed their fists together with a grin.
“Later, Veronica.”
“See ya, Wallace.”
She closed the door behind him and leaned against it.
Despite her conviction, an uneasy feeling had been growing in her belly all day: a nervousness of what would come next, not just with Logan, but in the fallout of Aaron’s arrest for murder and attempted homicide. Already she was trying to steel herself for it-the scrutiny of a rapacious media, the fanning of public opinion, the crazies who would inevitably come out of the woodwork-the whole three-ring-circus that would become their lives-hers, her father’s, Logan’s and Duncan’s. It was a daunting prospect. She wondered what Lilly would have thought about all this happening for the second time.
She decided that Lilly probably would have loved it, and that made her both sad and angry.
Lilly, she thought despairingly, what happened to you?
What’s happened to all of us?
***
When Veronica finally made it back to the boat, it was quite late. It had been a very long day after a traumatic night with little sleep, and she was utterly exhausted, both mentally and physically. Also, she was nervous, without entirely understanding why, so she half-wished she hadn’t sent Backup off with Wallace; seventy pounds of friendly dog by her side would have been really comforting in the thick darkness of the Neptune night.
As she approached along the wooden dock, she saw immediately that Logan had put up the cover on the boat to protect the deck from weather, but also she realized it was a shrewd move that afforded him more privacy on what was really a very tiny island of shelter from the prying eyes of the world. After having to dodge reporters during the day at the hospital, she understood all too well Logan’s desire to remain incognito for as long as possible.
Once she had gotten her bags aboard, she glanced around. The aft deck was barely lit by the golden glow of a single narrow pillar candle inside a lantern in the center of the table, near a basket of flame-colored flowers. When she realized that they were an arrangement of daylilies, tears sprang to her eyes.
“You know how things are going to be now, don’t you? You have to know.”
“Just like this. Just like this.”
She blinked away the beautiful, perfect memory of a dream and reached for the note that was propped against the vase. It read very simply “Veronica,” and she smiled a little and fingered the lovely blooms.
She was stalling.
Now that she was here on the boat, hesitating before what seemed like a fateful hatch, Veronica gave herself a swift mental kick. She took up the lantern from the table and quietly made her way down the short narrow steps into the cabin, the candlelight throwing odd shadows against the close walls of the chamber.
Veronica looked around curiously. The flowers on the aft deck were not the only new additions to the boat. A wheeled suitcase stood to the right of the lounge, and a charging cell phone lay on the lounge table next to a notepad covered in scrawled notes and a pile of navigational charts. She guessed that he’d had someone bring him things from home as she noted unfamiliar items that hadn’t been there when she’d left that morning. It wasn’t entirely tidy in the cabin but neither was it messy. It merely looked inhabited.
She placed the lantern on the galley counter and saw the small cluster of prescription bottles before she reluctantly turned her attention to the bed. Logan was fast asleep, sprawled face-down over the large roundish bed that dominated the space. Carefully walking across the gently rocking floor, she traversed the few steps to the foot of the bed, where she sat down on the far right side near a small mound of decorative pillows.
It had been a whirlwind, these last few weeks. Completely dizzying, in fact, and more often than not, Veronica had wondered just what the hell kind of crazy amusement park ride she had jumped on. Logan had been…a revelation. To wake up and discover his laser-like intensity focused on her, not in contempt or cruelty, but instead in warmth and affection had been disorienting, to say the least. But when she was being completely honest, she knew she had been waiting for the other shoe to drop all along. The kind of emotional whiplash they had gone through wasn’t the sort of thing that a kiss or three could erase. Friend to bitter enemy to whatever it was that they were becoming…and yet, a part of her had been sucked in by the whole hormonal rush, so finding out that Logan’d had GHB the night of Shelley Pomeroy’s party had left her sick with self-loathing that she could have been taken in.
Veronica hated playing the fool.
And yet…his shocked reaction had seemed genuine when she’d told him about the rape at Shelley’s party, but she’d ignored it in pursuit of finally discovering the truth about that night and exacting vengeance on the culprit. Funny how things turn out, she thought. Well, maybe not…funny, but. But if she hadn’t feared the betrayal, she wouldn’t have jumped to all those wrong conclusions: Logan as her rapist, Logan as amateur porn king, Logan as Lilly’s murderer. She had wanted to trust him, yet she never had. It was too easy not to trust him. Experience had taught her some hard lessons over the last year, and when it came to Logan, those lessons were rather harsh. Tonight, and for the foreseeable future, the role of ‘Psychotic Jackass’ will be played by Logan Echolls. It wasn’t easy to wipe the slate clean overnight like that.
As she watched him sleeping, she wondered how they would build trust between them. Lilly’s death had fractured the surviving three of them apart, splintering them one from the other in different ways, but now that the truth was out, it was time.
It was time to move on.
That was something she hadn’t been able to do, not really. Veronica realized with a tender thought, as she listened to his breathing, mingled with the lapping of waves against the boat’s hull, that Logan had tried to move on: for him, putting aside the memory of Lilly and embarking on a relationship with the best friend of his dead ex was a pretty big step. Defiantly acknowledging her in front of a room of 09ers was his outward expression of the faith he had in whatever had been growing between them. His faith in her. But her paranoia had ignored that gesture and sent her running away.
I have to stop doing that, she thought sadly. She remembered something that she had told her father ages ago in a moment of bitterness: the hero is the one who stays. But with Logan, she had run and run and run-based on the experience of a year of torment, so, not without reason-but she didn’t want to do that anymore. She knew she had to trust Logan, show some faith in him, and maybe that would begin to heal the wounds of the last week.
After all, she didn’t know exactly why he ended up on the Coronado Bridge, drunk and walking the rail. But she suspected, and suspicion was enough to make her rather ill at the thought of what might have happened if Weevil hadn’t found him-and for what? She had initially been wrong about Lilly’s murderer, and Logan could have ended up dead for her mistakes.
She suddenly felt very protective of the bruised and battered young man who slept obliviously nearby. He was going to need someone to believe in him out there, beyond the fragile hull of this boat, and despite her fear and misgivings of the pitfalls ahead, she wouldn’t let him face it alone. She smiled as she watched him, finally glad that she had come back.
***
Logan woke slowly to the realization that he was not alone. There was a dim golden glow in the cabin and vague shadows flickered against the close walls. It was in that faint light that he became aware of Veronica slumped against the pile of cushions on the far side of the bed that took up the entire forward of the cabin. She was still fully dressed in a short dark jacket over a pair of jeans, a narrow strip of a scarf twined around her neck and leather boots on the small feet that dangled just over the edge of the bed. Her shoulder bag was propped in front of her, the strap still draped over her shoulder, and he realized with growing consciousness that she looked like she had just sat down for a moment, and that she must have fallen asleep without the least intention of doing so. The dark cap covering her hair had been pushed askew when she had fallen asleep.
He could feel the bobbing of the boat in its slip, and he could tell that the weather had changed because it was now bumping against the dock with more vigor than during the previously calm day. He suspected that it was the increased tempo of the waves that had woken him. That, and a powerful thirst. His mouth was dry as an empty, dusty drawer.
He pushed himself up on his elbows and considered Veronica as she lay in repose near him. He tried to remember, searching back through the years that he had known her, during all that time between him and Lilly, her and Duncan, if he had ever seen her sleeping. She didn’t look peaceful like he might have imagined, but instead she simply looked exhausted, as though indelibly imprinted with weariness. He supposed the bruises and scrapes had something to do with it. She appeared so small and fragile that he found it hard to believe that this was the same girl who had wreaked so much havoc in Neptune, and in his life. His enemy. His girlfriend. His betrayer.
She was also the same girl who had been locked in a burning refrigerator-and who had held a gun on his father. She had more guts than anyone he knew. It was hard not admire her sometimes, when he was being honest with himself, even when he had hated her the most.
But now she just seemed tiny and vulnerable, and he just wanted to grab her and run as far away from Neptune as he could.
Quietly, Logan climbed out of the bed and took one step to the galley where he pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge. Twisting the top off, he drank thirstily, and then he went back to the bed and sat on the edge beside her. He could smell the faint scent of the candle that was now perched on the galley counter, and heard the creaking of the boat and the low intermittent thump as the hull bumped against the dock. He looked around at the cave-like compartment that now contained Veronica, and he realized that he never wanted to leave.
Eventually he pushed himself up, and after relieving himself in the tiny head (hoping that the flush wouldn’t wake Veronica), he washed his hands and grabbed the prescription bottles from the countertop. He downed some pills with a few swallows of water before turning his attention to Veronica.
Her breathing was quicker, he realized, and her eyes moved beneath her lids. Hoping that it meant she wouldn’t wake, he crouched in front of her and beginning with her shoes, he began to undress her.
***
The thick, sharp stink of gasoline and oily smoke filled the air, shrouding hidden masses of shouting 09ers waving green and yellow pom poms. They emerged from the smoke randomly, startling her as she frantically scanned past them. The pink-clad blonde woman was always just ahead of her, always on the verge of disappearing, but somehow Veronica managed to keep her in sight. She had this overwhelming sense that it was crucial not to lose sight of her.
Sometimes the woman seemed to be Lilly, and sometimes she was Lianne. Sometimes she turned and laughed, beckoning Veronica to follow. Sometimes she held up her arms in warning and mouthed “go back!” Veronica didn’t care; doggedly she kept pace. And when she lost sight of the woman entirely, she would spot Aaron Echolls, murderous and ranting as he charged back towards her-that was when Veronica ran away.
It was all so confusing.
Flashbulbs popped from shadows, and a board shorts-clad Dick Casablancas, with a striped tie hanging down over his bare chest, thrust a microphone into her face.
“Veronica Mars! How does it feel to solve the Lilly Kane murder?” he asked with a toothy grin, all tousled blonde hair and full-on swarm. She shoved his hand away and swerved around him.
It felt like the whole world was on fire. She choked on the acrid smoke, and glimpsed flames through the haze. The heat seared her as she began to run, only to be brought up short by Van Clemmons who seized her elbow and jerked her around.
“Veronica Mars, you’re going to have to come with me.”
“W-why?” she asked, trying to pull away.
“We have to talk about your Pirate Points.”
“What?” she asked him in bewilderment. The woman in pink disappeared past a thick knot of 09ers chanting “Who’s your daddy? Who’s your daddy? Keith or Jake?”
His mouth stretched in a wide, satisfied smile. “The school board has decided to award you permanent Pirate Points for killing your boyfriend. Well done, Veronica Mars.”
“What?”
The woman was gone, and Veronica shook Clemmons off and began to run through the crowd. I killed Logan?
In a panic, she raced on until she saw the woman in pink dead ahead. She was still trying to understand what Clemmons had meant-killed her boyfriend? Frightened and confused, she ran through smoke and fire until she crashed into the railing of the Coronado Bridge. Breathless, she looked over the edge into dizzying empty space and distant water far below, and she reeled backward. Nausea threatened ominously, so she clapped a hand to her mouth and tried to quell her rising gorge.
Veronica turned around and around, searching for a way out of the maze of smoke and flames, but there was no way out. Before her, and on all sides, there was only fire, and behind-behind, was the abyss: empty space and rock-hard distant water.
“Baby.”
Veronica whipped her head around to see her mother emerge from a wall of flame, perfect and unscathed. She was smiling.
“Mom?” she said tremulously, eyes and lungs stinging from the smoke.
“Yes, baby, it’s me.”
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, I don’t know, honey. Looks like the end of the world to me.” She shrugged, still smiling pleasantly, ignoring the flames that billowed around her. Veronica cringed against the bridge railing from the encroaching heat.
“Why did you leave without saying goodbye? Why are you always leaving me?” Veronica cried, tears streaming down her soot-streaked face as she covered her mouth and nose from the choking smoke.
Her mother didn’t answer. Instead, she only pointed at something behind Veronica.
She turned and looked up in horror to see Logan standing on the rail above her, precariously balanced on one foot.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. “Logan?”
Turning, he looked down at her, his face ugly from blood and bruises, and he shook his head. “Veronica Mars,” he said. “Were you always a heartless bitch, and I just forgot? How could I forget something like that?”
“Logan, I’m sorry,” she said brokenly, reaching up to him. “Please come down.”
“What for? So you can twist the knife a little more? Uh uh, don’t think so.” He faced her, looking down, while balancing on the rail, his heels hanging over the edge.
“Please, please come down, Logan. I’m sorry. Please, you have to believe me.”
“I don’t think he cares if you’re sorry, baby.” Veronica whirled at the sound of her mother’s voice behind her. “You should have thought of that before.”
Veronica clenched her teeth in despair. She was afraid to touch Logan for fear of inciting him further.
Well done, Veronica.
I killed Logan?
I could never-!
Her mother leaned in close then, her mouth at Veronica’s ear. “You told me to leave, Veronica. Why do you care how I do it?”
Veronica shook in anguish and disbelief, torn between them. “Mom-Logan-please don’t do this!”
Logan shrugged nonchalantly.
“See ya, Veronica,” he said with a mocking salute.
Casually, he stepped backwards into empty air and vanished below the rail.
Veronica screamed.
“Goodbye, Veronica,” she heard her mother say in her ear. And then strong hands pushed hard, toppling her over into the nothingness of the void, and she fell, screaming.
***
He had just removed her shoes and slipped the strap of her bag off her shoulder when she began to tremble. He eyed her warily as he took the bag and set it aside. He was sure she was dreaming. Concerned, Logan sat beside her and watched as the trembling intensified. Her head rocked slightly against the pile of pillows, and he was startled to see tears begin to leak from the corners of her eyes, as her face twisted in a low moan. She began to curl in upon herself.
Spurred into motion, he laid one hand lightly against her shoulder. She woke with a start, sobbing and reaching out, as though she were falling, falling, and might drown. He didn’t think she was entirely aware yet, but he held her, pulling her towards him until her head lay on his lap, and she quivered against him.
He wasn’t sure what to do. He was good at cracking self-aware jokes and deflecting difficult situations, but to actually deal? He usually bailed. It was much easier to mock and lash out. But he cared about Veronica, and her suffering struck him in a place that he had locked up for a very long time. Since Lilly had died.
Her hands clutched at him. This was different from that morning when he thought she had cried out of a reaction to the horror and fear of her trauma at Aaron’s hands. Now he instinctively knew it was something more. She was crying as though someone had died or something, and he didn’t think it could all be for Lilly. He thought about all the other things Veronica might have to cry about: her missing mother, her father in the hospital, homicidal Aaron, an entire year and a half of her world crumbling and becoming a pariah in Neptune, believing she had been raped, not to mention the abuse he had inflicted…Logan felt utterly helpless in the face of all that, so he was silent. He didn’t know what to say or to do with the enormity of the grief that was coming off her in waves until he felt almost choked by it, as though it was a poisonous cloud. He didn’t want to give in to the powerful emotions that swelled his own chest and threatened to capsize him. Not right now, anyway, when he realized he had to be strong enough for her.
Eventually she calmed, but when she would have drawn back, he held her still against him, his hands as steady and reassuring as he could manage, and he crooned soft encouraging words until she stiffened and moved back slowly. She looked awkward and rigid, and even embarrassed.
“I’m so sorry, I don’t know what-” she broke off, a confused, frightened expression in her eyes.
“Hey-hey,” he said softly, brushing the hair back from her face, and he wanted to leave his hands there, framing her lovely, tearstained face. But she shook her head, so he let her go and watched as she clambered back and stood in front of him. She wiped the tears from her eyes, and he noted that it was taking a while, so he lifted the end of her scarf with a crooked smile and handed it to her.
She smiled a little at that and dabbed further at her face. Then she looked away, and he could tell that she wanted to run. She looked like nothing so much as a trapped, panicking creature.
“Are you okay?”
She gave him one of her nods, the one that looked like she had taken a deep breath and was holding it. Like she was going to throw up.
He waited. When she didn’t speak, and the silence stretched out between them, he reached out and took her hand. She jerked away from him like his touch had burned her, and her eyes widened. Logan could only frown up at her in puzzlement and concern. She looked-he didn’t know to describe it. Shaken? Anguished?
“What is it, Veronica?” he asked, standing, and trying not to sound as urgent as he felt.
She just shook her head and took a step back, but she bumped into the curving padded arm of the banquette, nowhere to go. Then she whirled and ran up the steps.
“Veronica!” he called after her as he followed on her heels. Something was seriously wrong. He found her fumbling at the port aft corner in the dark, but he still didn’t understand why she was running away.
“Veronica, what is it? Come on, just tell me something…” He touched her shoulder, and she spun to face him.
“I just,” she gulped, “need some air.” Logan could only see a dim shape of her in the darkness of the covered aft deck.
“Okay,” he said, looking up and around. “We can do that. Allow me.” He leaned against her and reached past to one-handedly unfasten the cover from the side, his left hand curved around her waist for balance. Roughly he thrust the canvas aside and he pushed her gently against the gunwale as they both ducked and emerged into the Neptune night. In the light of the marina, he watched her take deep breaths, as though she had been oxygen-deprived. A light salty breeze lifted strands of her blonde hair and billowed his loose white shirt. He felt the deck roll beneath their feet with a sudden lurch. The waves were definitely picking up in tempo. It smelled like rain.
With closed eyes, Veronica’s chest frantically heaved. He was very close to her, and his hand still rested on her waist, so he felt her trembling. In a flash he felt the urgency that had gripped him transform irresistibly into something warm and desirous.
He tried to stop himself, but it was too late. Already his palm was against her jaw-line, fingertips brushing her earlobe, as he tilted her head up and brought his mouth down to hers. She was startled-she was not expecting it, and neither was he-
What he’d thought would just be a tender, comforting brush became something else entirely from the instant he touched her. He was shocked to feel her arms fly out to seize him and pull him to her, and their lips met hard. For a second he felt like he’d been slapped, but then he breathed in the scent of her, and tasted her, and oh, fuck was pretty much all he could manage.
He didn’t remember when he had grabbed her under the shoulders and lifted her up onto the gunwale, or when her hand had twined in his hair with a fierce grip, or when her thighs had spread around him like an opening blossom, drawing him in. There was only the harsh sound of their breathing against the background music of water and boats creaking and thudding as they shifted in their slips, and the coolness of the night breeze fanning the heat that shimmered between them. The deck rose up beneath his feet, and he leaned hard into her: for balance, he told himself. He didn’t remember wrapping an arm around her hips and crushing her to him until she whimpered into his mouth, and he had to stifle a groan as his own hips ground against her, driving her back against his other arm which had twisted around her back and up, his hand splayed against the back of her head.. He didn’t remember her legs twining around him, one leg hitching up around his waist as though he were an animal she would ride, or something she could climb. He twisted against her hopelessly, and he felt her likewise moving forward, their momentum like the inevitable crash of a perfect wave coming to shore.
For Logan, it was all a fast, dark blur, a confusion of tongues and lips and teeth, punctuated only by fuck alternating with back off, or you’ll scare her! But then he felt her insistent hands improbably greedy upon him, and the scrape of her teeth intermingled with the tease of her tongue, and it was mostly just fuck. She was beginning to scare him.
Dimly he heard a faint moan-whose he didn’t know-and there was sharp pain as she bit his lower lip, gone in a flash when she sucked hard against him. A red haze rose up, and in its wake he left a trail of bruising kisses down her neck, past her collarbone, his hands roaming until he felt something snap in the back of his head, and he felt her softness fill one palm entirely, until he heard a voice furiously cry out: stop! He stilled immediately, chest heaving as he rested his forehead against her, just below the hollow of her throat, and his palm burned where it lay against her. It was several seconds before he realized it had been his voice he’d heard, the voice of his conscience, a warning sign. He only hoped that it hadn’t been out loud.
“What-what is it?” She sounded startled by his withdrawal, disbelieving.
Logan sucked in a ragged breath, but he couldn’t move for several seconds, trying to gain control, feeling the waves wash over and through him, until he couldn’t resist tightening his hand against her, feeling her wonderful softness fill his palm, burning him, and he welcomed it.
“Fucking hell,” he muttered, and he wrenched himself away with an enormous effort. He stumbled backward into the darkness, rubbing one hand shakily through his hair, as he struggled not to fly back to her, to her touch, her mouth. He couldn’t think. But somehow, he knew this wasn’t right. Not like this.
He couldn’t think.
He lowered his hand to the back of his neck where he scrubbed restlessly, his body tingling in every extremity, and he could still taste her.
Amazingly, she was still there, perched just beyond the canvas, one sock-clad foot now resting on the deck that swayed beneath them rhythmically. She hadn’t bolted. She was still there.
Her other foot came down, and she ducked under the canvas back into the dimness of the enclosed aft deck, and he could see her shape moving toward him. He backed up another step until he collided with the table.
She approached another few steps-now, she stood very close, but she made no move to touch him.
“What’s wrong, Logan?” he heard her ask quietly.
He looked down at her speculatively, only able to see the faint shine of her eyes in the darkness. She was standing far too close, and he was choking on the oppressively close air, drowning in claustrophobia. It wasn’t her he was reacting to, he knew, as much as it was the situation that he found himself trapped in. Trying to hide from the world would be exhausting. He had the irresistible urge to grab her and run and keep on running, away from here, from Neptune…but he knew she needed to stay. She had people who loved her, who needed her here. Her father needed her. He wondered what that must be like.
So he thought that tonight, maybe he could settle for a change of scenery.
“What-what do you say we get out of here?” He swallowed nervously as he waited for her answer.
He felt more than saw her nod.
“What do you propose?” The terror was gone, and she sounded calm.
He hesitated a second, and then-“how about that boat ride?”
Part 3B