There have been nothing but moments. The moment she realized Lilly Kane would always be her best friend was when they were 8, and after Veronica had tripped and scraped her knee-effectively killing her chances of playing in the girl's soccer finals, Lilly had fallen too, and adding an extra flounce of pain in her step, and had sat on the sidelines with her friend. They'd cheered harder than ever, their throats red and raw by the game's end. They'd bought one of those "best friends" necklaces that day, and Veronica still had her piece, hidden in the false drawer in the table by her bed. Though she couldn't bear to look at it, it brought her solace to know it was so close.
The moment she'd fallen in love with Logan Echolls, she was 14, sitting practically topless on the Kane's pristine white couch as Lilly picked out rows and rows of rosethrorns from her back, throwing them haphazardly in the 18th century bleeding bowl her mother had bought for a small fortune and kept in a locked display in the foyer. Lilly had grown accustomed to picking locks-and always having been a klutz, Veronica's talent had escalated to new levels earlier that morning, when she'd fallen into the Kane's prize winning rose garden trying to catch up with Lilly's surprising agility. Already uncomfortable with the knowledge that Duncan was somewhere in the house, she'd practically died when Logan had walked in unannounced, as if he owned the place. Lilly laughed at the red tingeing her skin, remarking playfully that Logan saw her naked all the time-that there was nothing much he hadn't seen. But instead of joining in on the fun, Logan had merely glanced into her eyes and ducked his head, a light blush smattering across his cheeks. Without even trying to sneak a peak or make a joke, he'd walked right back out in search of Duncan, muttering something about going for a dip. She'd never forgotten the look in his eyes or that it had knocked the wind right out of her. But, she was only 14, and Logan was Lilly's. She'd even said so as he walked from earshot, pulling a particularly imbedded piece from Veronica's back, her words blowing themselves across her skin, smiling wickedly as she saw the goose bumps explode. "God, the things I could do to that ass." She'd murmured, biting her lip, a strand of honey colored hair falling across her cheek and brushing Veronica's back. Though she'd pretended to be scandalized, Veronica had secretly agreed, her cheeks once again heating. "And the things he'll do to mine." Her world had crashed back then, the way things were and how nothing would ever change resounding loudly in her brain. She would never have Logan-she didn't even want Logan, and tried instead to focus on what Duncan had asked her earlier that morning: to be his girlfriend. She resolved to say yes, trying to remember the moment as perfect as it had been-how the breeze had lightly fluttered his hair, the light way he held her hand…it had been like a movie, and for the rest of her life she would remember it.
She'd died at 16.
Oh, not entirely. Her eyes still opened, her heart still beat, but it wasn't the same. For months she couldn't sleep, the loss of her mother, her curtain of hair and best friend, too much to bear. She'd never shown it on the surface. On the surface she was tough-on the surface she could fight back lower and meaner than the rest of them put together. On the surface, she felt no pain about the fact that she was fighting Logan-the one person in the entire world who could possibly feel the loss as deep as she did. On the surface he didn't matter. Just another jerk to push away, another ripped from her heart, another who had left her alone.
She came alive again at 17, as Logan's lips touched hers for the first time. For once, in the entire 6 months since the year marking Lilly's death, she forgot. Forgot that she was seeing a very nice cop named Leo, who was more than likely on the other end of the cell phone she could feel reverberating in her pocket. She forgot that there was an ATF agent standing less than 10 feet away in his rented hotel suite; that she had a job to do and a school to protect. All she knew, all she could feel, were Logan's lips on hers, the grooves his fingers left on her arms and that just for a second, he wasn't her tormentor and the boy who had broken her heart, but the only one who could fill the void.
She'd fallen in love again on a Sunday. It was mid July, and she sat on the beach doing her last ever bit of summer reading, a boring book about a boring man whom she didn't care for, and never would. Logan sat next to her, doing everything in his power to distract her, his fingers slippery against the cotton of her bathing suit, his lips hot on her neck. She'd let him kiss her, sand slipping into the grooves of the pages as she kicked the book away, and thought, God, I don't want this to end.
She'd never fallen out of love with him, she realized, so many months later, tears scorching her eyes as she stared at him, dumbfounded, in the crack between the swiftly closing elevator doors.
"Veronica, I-" He'd started, but the doors cut off the rest of his pleading, and she sunk back against the cool metal of the elevator, grateful that he couldn't see as the pain exploded through her. She should have never come to the suite. That much she knew. Last night had been perfect. Had she let him kiss her, let him take her to bed, it would have been even more so, the unfinished dream completed. She could have left with the promise of letters, no goodbyes, no pretense. This urge she had for him, the maddening memories…they would have finally left her. But she'd run, as fast and as hard as she could. Trying to outrun him-her feelings for him, which had never gone away. Not really. If she hadn't come to the suite this morning, she wouldn't have had to see the aftermath. And her perfect night, filled with the right boy and the right words wouldn't have been completely shattered. He couldn't even remember the things that had kept her awake half the night. And in the end, she wasn't anything but another girl. Another set of numbers to remember.