Author's Note: Sincere trigger warning for discussion of rape, roofies, and the vaguarities of dubious consent, in reference to Veronica's past at Shelly Pomroy's party, with a couple of my own head canon additions. Nothing is discussed in more visceral detail than what was shown on screen, but this still might be tough on survivors. If you need to skip this chapter, I'll provide a summary at the start of the next chapter so you will be caught up.

I know I say this on every chapter of this fic, but trust me. Let me go there. And in return, I'll do my best to be worthy of your trust.

Chapter 15: Absolution - Part II

Veronica

As soon as I get home, I know something's not right. It's in the air in our house, in how Logan's car and surfboard were in the garage but it's dead silent in here. It's late, because I was out on a case through dinner and all the way to dark, but it's too early for him to be in bed yet even if he wasn't waiting up for me, which he usually does.

I lay my keys on the hall table next to his, quieting the jangle with my palm like it's too abrupt to just let them clash down.

It's been a week since I told him I knew about his company—his multi-million dollar, totally self-funded nonprofit. Because that's just the kind of tiny little thing most husbands hide from their wives. It still wrecks me that he couldn't stand to tell me he was doing something so beautiful. Protecting all those women he's never met and not taking even a "thank you" in return. It's so fucking Logan, and he doesn't even see it.

It's been a week of him being untouchably flippant, and a little sarcastic, and working out like he has to burn every calorie on earth by Sunday. Pretty sure he's been at Dr. Lev's office every day, but I haven't checked. I've been doing my best to give him space because it's clear from the Safe Drinks cover up that this is an issue that will only be made more complicated by my presence. It would be easier to stop the blood in my veins than it is to step back and leave him alone in this, but I'm trying because I really think it's what he needs.

If he could accept forgiveness from me, this would have been over in high school.

Logan comes out of our bedroom, and I jump, like being caught thinking about him is something to be guilty about.

"Hey!" I smile, trying to cover it up. "You scared me. Didn't think you were home."

"You didn't see my car?" He grabs the top of the doorframe and lets his weight lean into his arms, his head falling against the crook of his elbow. His eyes are like two holes ripped in a sheet, nothing beyond but night. Goosebumps chill the back of my neck.

"Logan, are you o—"

"I need you."

I blink and it actually makes me dizzy for a second, how out of the ordinary it is to hear him say that, so flat out, no pretense.

"Yeah, of course. What do you need?" I cross the room to him, part of me still hoping it's about a case. That's the only thing, really, that Logan's always been comfortable asking me for.

He meets me halfway and takes my hand. Holds it for a second, his thumb rubbing over the back of my hand like he wants to soak in the feeling.

"Come out on the deck with me."

"Um…" Alarm bells are shrieking one after another inside my head. "Is Dad okay? Did something—"

"Nothing happened."

His voice is very quiet, very flat. No trace of the almost-too-quick humor he's been hiding behind all week. "I need to talk to you," he says, "and it's going to be really hard for me and I'm going to try to do it anyway." He tries to smile and it's worse than if he hadn't tried at all. "So if I turn into a complete dick, or try to take off halfway through, or start breaking shit, just…I don't know. Sit on me or something."

Oh, Logan. My heart aches like a bruise. "What if I just hold onto you so you can't run away?" I squeeze his hand reassuringly.

He nods toward the deck. I dump my messenger bag just inside the door, though part of me thinks if the lead in is this bad, I might need to hit him with the taser to keep him here to see this through.

I know what this is about, and I would rather do really anything on earth rather than sit on the deck and talk to my husband about it. Especially when his eyes have gone as dark as the back closets of hell, flickering with secrets even I don't want to know.

I've always said I wanted to know the truth, no matter what. Since the beginning with him, though, the more amazing he was and the more I loved him, the more I braced for the fatal flaw that would ruin everything. It figures that when I finally stop waiting for the catch, it shows up. But I asked him for this, the other night in bed, and if it'll help Logan, I will force myself through conversations I'd avoid forever otherwise.

I take a breath. Be cool, soda pop. I have to be the steady one tonight. If I slip, he'll see it and I have a feeling it'll leave a wound on him I might not ever be able to take back.

He takes the chair next to mine and doesn't turn on the patio light. Beyond the sand, the ocean is black, its surface churning.

"You've been disappearing a lot," I venture. "Doc Lev?

"Yeah."

That's good, at least. I think.

"We've been talking about why I think it's a mistake for you to love me," he says, so steady and measured that it takes me a minute to realize what a wildly fucked up statement that is.

He's saying they've been talking about why he feels unlovable. What the hell kind of therapist would let him think that? Wait, does he think that?

I open my mouth, knowing I need to say something really big to set him straight, but he's already talking again.

"I thought it was because of my dad, my messed up family. Turns out a big part of it is that fucking party neither of us should have ever gone to."

"Shelly Pomroy's?"

"Yeah."

"Logan, I told you—"

"I know what you said. You said you trusted me, that you understood. But you need to know all of it. Not just what I did, but what I was thinking, because it's really messed up, Veronica…"

His words are racing faster now, losing that steady numbness. He drops his elbows to his knees and digs his hands back through his hair.

"I've always felt like if you really knew, you wouldn't have forgiven me. I should have pushed you that night in the guest house, but I was already so scared of losing you. It already felt like a miracle that you didn't leave me when I told you I drugged Duncan."

I take tiny breaths, sitting very, very still. I'm so unqualified for this. I'm the worst person on earth for this, actually. Right now, Logan needs the exact opposite of me. I'm too curious, quick to judge, slow to forgive, and horrible at understanding my own feelings, much less talking about them. This is like an Olympics diving platform and I still have to work up to the wading pool.

But my husband needs me to jump, and if I don't land it flawlessly, it's him I'll crush.

"I mean, fuck Veronica, I built a ten million dollar nonprofit to save other girls from what happened to you, and I hid it from you. You have no idea the lengths I've gone to in order to keep you from finding out about that corporation. Do those sound like the actions of an innocent man to you?"

This, at least, I know how to answer. "No. It sounds like something you'd do if you were carrying around guilt that you didn't need to be."

"I hid it from you because I needed to impress you so badly I couldn't even stand the idea of you seeing it." He slumps against the back of the chair. "I hate myself for trying to impress you, because I used to try to impress my father. It's fucking humiliating, the way I can't stop trying. And even more than that, I hid it because I was scared that it wouldn't work, that it wouldn't be enough."

That hurts. The bruise over the top of my heart deepens into an open wound. It did impress me, even though he didn't need to try to do that. I already love him better than any other man on earth and I don't understand how he doesn't know that. I hate how much it hurts him to say these things out loud, and I don't need to hear them. Not if they make him feel like this.

"Logan, you don't have to…" I reach for him and slide my fingers over the back of his wrist.

"Let me," he says hoarsely. "Let me do this."

I squeeze his wrist for a long moment before I force myself to do as he asked. I let go and sit back, almost sideways in my chair, I'm so focused on him.

"And yeah, I also did it because of the guilt. What I did to you was so bad, it's been sitting under my skin all this time."

"If you feel like you need to tell me then okay, but I want you to know that when you're done? This ring is staying on my finger." I reach across with my left hand and grip his so he'll feel his wedding band, too. "That stuff, I'm better about all of it than I was." I don't know how to explain it to him, but I need him to know I'm okay. Not exactly the same as I was before I went to that party, but worlds healthier than I have been. "It's crazy how long it shook me for, really, just that one thing. I think maybe I could have processed better if I remembered it, but your imagination is always worse, right? Like with the Jaws music where they never show the shark."

"That's why I want to tell you. All of it. I can't believe you love me, because every time you look at me, a little part of me thinks, 'but what if she knew?'"

That I understand. I take another long breath. "Okay. I'm here, Logan. I'm right here. You want a drink?"

"No. Fuck no." He shoves his hands along the legs of his jeans, looking younger somehow, like I can see the way his face looked back in high school. "That night, I was turned on." He says it like it's the most disgusting sentence that's ever touched his tongue. "Watching you at that party."

I shrug, refusing to change expression. That fucking party is old news. "Well, I was quite the spectacle from what I hear, so…"

"Yeah, but everybody else was surprised." He cuts a look sideways at me. "I wasn't."

"What?" That doesn't make sense. I was sweet little Goody Two Shoes Veronica back then. I'd hardly been drunk at a party before, much less made out with anybody but Duncan in public.

"You were dancing like you were born for it, letting your hands slide over everybody that came close, just drinking it in." His chest expands under a breath. "Then you were kissing everybody, playing with Dick's hair, taking shots with him on the couch. Even making out with Shelly."

I blush nuclear hot. I hadn't realized he'd been watching me through all that. I mean, fair enough, everyone apparently saw some of the humiliating stuff I did that night, but somehow it's worse that Logan, did, too. Both because he's my husband now, and because he was my enemy then. Two totally different reasons, and yet equally awful.

I focus on the ocean beyond our balcony for a second while the embarrassment flares, and then slowly ebbs away. It's been a long time, and I don't care so much if people thought I was a slut. I have too many days of knowing exactly who I am and what I'm capable of. It's stronger than the shame.

"It was that undercurrent of sexuality in you that you'd always kept under lock and key," he says. "Even with Duncan, you locked it down with your little close-mouthed kisses and modest dresses. Lilly could see it, too, and we'd talked about it a few times. I thought you'd grow into it in your own time and she thought you needed to be shocked out of your shell. That was what she was trying to do at the homecoming dance, I think. She was being extra ballsy just to show you that it was okay, the world wouldn't end if a girl liked sex."

I blink, trying to process the idea that he and my old best friend both saw something in me I didn't even know was there. It's a little weird that they were talking about me that intimately when I wasn't even around, and that they knew me so well without me realizing it.

"That night at the party," he says, "I thought with everything that happened, you just finally stopped giving a fuck. That, plus a few drinks, and what had always been in you was finally coming out to play. I mean, I know you don't remember what brought it on, but yeah. I was…riveted. By seeing that sensuality totally come out. Even though I was mad at you at the time for turning against the Kane's."

He goes quiet, like he can see it all in his head. And I can kinda imagine how he would have thought that. He didn't know about the drugs until much later, and Logan, more than anyone at that party, knows how hot my libido can rev. To him, what I look like on liquid X and tequila probably does look about the same as I am on any given Tuesday night at home.

The difference being, that night wasn't my choice. That was the drugs talking, not me, or it wouldn't have been Dick and Shelly I was kissing.

"Then when you did the body shot on me—"

I snap up taut. "Wait, I did what?"

He looks alarmed. "You said you knew about the salt lick."

"Yeah, with that guy, the one Duncan pulled off me."

"You don't remember the ones we did off each other?"

"Uh, no."

"Okay, so there is more you don't know."

I do not like the sound of that.

"When you were making out with Shelly, I was way hot and bothered, more than a little pissed at myself for it because of how I felt about you at the time, and kinda drunk. So then I was doing body shots with this senior girl and you marched right over and yanked her away from me." He stops. "You really don't remember this? It was exactly the same look on your face as when you pulled Jackie off me at that other dance."

"Not a thing. Why did I pull her off you?"

Emotions flee across his face, too fast for me to decipher. "You took her salt lick," he says neutrally. "Off my neck. But you didn't even bother to drink her shot. And you said 'You think you can ignore me, Logan Echolls? You think I'm invisible?'"

I snort out a breath of air. "Wow. Teenaged Veronica would have been pretty pissed off to hear she did that, but it sure sounds like me, doesn't it?"

I hated it when he would taunt me, after Lilly died, but I hated it even more when he ignored me. And I remember a little bit from early on in the night. How good everything felt, like my skin was awake for the first time in my life. So I don't have much trouble believing the stories people have told me about how I was petting everyone and dancing with them and kissing people—though some of that was more coerced than others.

I can remember missing Duncan, enough that when Carrie Bishop told me she saw us naked and there was no doubt in her mind I was enthusiastically on board, I believed her. I could imagine how missing him along with the drugs and alcohol in my system lowering my inhibitions… As an adult, I wouldn't call it consent. I wasn't in my right mind. But it wasn't completely against my will, not with Duncan in the same way it was when I apparently kissed Dick Casablancas. Yanking a girl away from Logan and licking his neck myself, taunting him—that all sounds more like me than anything else I did that night.

"Then you snatched the salt shaker out of my hand and started shaking it onto your own neck," he says. "No one had licked it first and your skin was dry, so most of it just bounced off and went down the front of your dress, but you didn't care. You were yelling at me, saying, 'You think I'm so invisible, you shouldn't even be able to find my neck.' Something like that. It only half made sense but it was clear you were daring me."

"And you've never been great at turning down a dare." I curl my legs up onto my chair, watching him because I'm not quite sure why he thinks this admission makes anything worse. It's not really bothering me. It would have, back when I thought I hated him, but that ship had pretty much left the port by, you know, our wedding. "I'm almost sorry I don't remember this part. It sounds kind of hot."

He throws me a dark glance, like he's angry at me for saying that, then his expression softens and he exhales through his nose. "Yeah. It was. I put a lime in your mouth like I was trying to shut you up and you flipped it around and held it there, raising your eyebrow like you were daring me again, and I was harder than I'd ever been in my life. Really, I wanted an excuse to kiss you." He takes a breath. "I licked your neck. Maybe more than once. The salt was pretty much gone, and the girl you'd pulled off me took off, and I…got pretty carried away. You were grabbing at my shirt, getting really close to me, and it didn't feel like a dare anymore."

"It probably felt amazing," I said softly. "I remember early in the night, my skin was so sensitive. And we've never been short on sparks, you and me." I touch his hand, but he doesn't take mine.

"So this guy from the football team comes up," Logan says to the ocean. "I was going in for the lime in your mouth, and I've never wanted anything that bad, you know? That kiss. And this asshole says to me, 'What the fuck are you doing, that's Veronica Mars!' And I remembered, you know? That you and your dad sold the Kanes down the river. They were always so nice to me, so much more than my own parents. I was way more upset when you thought Jake Kane had killed Lilly than I ever was about my own dad actually doing it."

"I know," I murmur. "I remember. I get why you were so angry with me."

"Yeah, so I pretended we were all doing salt licks on you. I called you a 'party favor'." He spits the words out and I twitch. "You got kind of hazy and out of it after I licked your neck. Probably all those shots you did with Dick kicked in right about then, and you sat down on the lawn chair. I pretended we were all doing it, so he wouldn't see how much I wanted you. Because in my asshole teenager head, that was the worst thing that could happen to me." He barks a laugh. "For them to see how much I wanted you."

"You were kind of a dick," I agree, and that finally gets him to look at me. I shrug. "So? You were a dick a lot of times when we were younger, especially to me. And I wasn't Mary freaking Sunshine in return, if you recall."

"I put the salt on your neck for him," Logan says. "And I told him traitors taste good. That you were horny right now, but you'd be pissed in the morning when you realized you'd made out with 09er scum. I wasn't wrong, and he thought it was funny. Up until then, you'd been so open, and hot, making out with everyone, most of all when you were licking that salt off of me. But something changed when I stepped back and you saw a different guy was leaning down over you. You curled up your arms, scrunched up your face. Kind of whimpered a little. I knew you didn't want to do it."

He twitches forward like his stomach hurts, and he's almost doubled over now. I can't see his downturned face in the shadows.

"And I did what I always did back then. Instead of backing off when I felt bad, I doubled down, pretended it was fine. Whooped it up. I don't know what the fuck I would have done if Duncan hadn't swooped in. I had set the whole thing up and I wanted to rip the guy's arms off when he touched you. I hated myself for having feelings for you, and for letting another guy get all over you. And at the same time, I couldn't let everyone see how into you I was. How fucked up is that? A kid worried about his 'reputation.' I don't even remember those people's names, Veronica."

I get it now.

I can see it through Logan's eyes, the kid he was then coming up against the man who's my husband now. My stomach curdles. I don't know how to fix it for him, because this is bad. It's shrinking me inside even thinking about it—my younger self in that flimsy white dress, curling into myself, and so sedated I wasn't even capable of shoving that guy away. And however bad it is for me, it's got to be a thousand times worse for Logan, with that drive he has to protect me.

"Duncan had been pretending he didn't care about you, but I knew he did." Logan doesn't stop his confession, even though I need him to. I can't take much more. "I knew you wanted Duncan, too, not me. I saw the way you looked at him. So I played cupid in the most fucked up, wrongheaded way. You had been all wild and horny and drunk and I knew you guys wanted each other. So I gave my dose of liquid X to Duncan, knowing you'd fall right into each other's arms." He shoots a glance at me, then looks away. "I thought he'd be your cavalry, that you'd be happy."

This is a lot more than he explained it to me that night in the guest house, and it makes way more sense.

"Yeah, I understand why you'd do that," I tell him. "And you weren't wrong about Duncan and me. Even without remembering that exact moment, I know that back then, I was attracted to you, and I still had feelings for Duncan and I was holding all that inside. That night, I was messed up enough to act on things I never would have done sober." I shake my head. "It's screwed up, Logan, what you did. What you thought. I'm not saying it's not, but I also see exactly why that would make sense to a teenage kid who was drunk and dealing with a lot of emotions he didn't know what to do with."

"I was being a martyr." He won't look at me. "And I hated myself and I was hard as all hell. I went straight for the easiest girl at the party, this freshman named Cyndi or Cynthia, I don't even know. She was stoked to have an older, popular guy pay attention to her. Like ten minutes later, I had her in the downstairs bedroom, my eyes closed, and all I could taste was that salt on your skin, your tongue on my neck. It was the first time all night I'd taken my eyes off you, which is why you were alone long enough for Madison to drug you." His words are tumbling out faster and faster now, like he's shoving himself toward the part he's most afraid of. "I could have stopped it. I could have protected you. I just gave X to Duncan like that was some great noble gesture, like I was taking care of you. I didn't even see who carried you upstairs. I asked later, when I saw Duncan, and he said you were sleeping it off."

"Wait, what? Logan, that's not when they drugged me. The drugs were in my first drink, when I very first got to the party." I stare at him. "Why do you think I was making out with everybody?"

"Because you were drunk. Veronica, I saw you take like…I don't know, like a ton of shots."

"Yeah, but have you ever seen me kiss Dick Casablancas when I was drunk? Or like…pet random people?"

"But…" He looks so confused. "You said Madison drugged you, because you made out with Dick. That's why she was writing all over your car. So why would she drug you before you made out with Dick?"

"She didn't know she drugged me. It was in her cup that Dick gave her, because he was trying to get laid. She spit in the cup and gave it to me. She didn't even know I was drugged that night."

He shakes his head. "But in college, when you found out about Aspen, you said Madison drugged you. Like, it was her fault and that's the whole start of the reason you guys hated each other. That doesn't make any sense if she didn't know she was passing you a cup with drugs in it."

I scowl. "I know, I know, but she's done so many awful things to me other than that, and it's not like she would have cared if she knew the drugs were in there. She probably would have asked them to add more."

He's still staring at me, then his eyes jump wider, like he just took a punch. "Wait. So you were drugged the whole time? For the whole party."

"Yeah." I don't get why he's having such a hard time grasping this. "Liquid X, right? That's why I was so hot and touching everyone. I don't know if I ended up passing out and not remembering anything because Dick gave me two doses, or if he only gave me one but it hit me harder because I'm small, or if it was that plus the alcohol…but yeah. It wasn't exactly the experience people are shooting for at raves, the way it went down for me."

He hasn't blinked. "You were drugged when you licked my neck," he whispers. "You were drugged when I was all over you. It wasn't that you wanted me, and you were drunk and finally letting yourself. You were drugged. And the whole time I was in that downstairs room, fucking that girl and picturing you, you were right upstairs. Alone, with two different guys up on you. They—"

He jolts out of the chair and he's throwing up before he even makes it into the house. Then he staggers to the railing and he's leaning out, puking onto the street between our house and the beach.

I cover my mouth. Oh. Oh, no. He didn't know he touched me when I was already drugged, or that I wasn't in my right mind when he set that guy to do a salt lick on me. To Logan, who had all kinds of crazy hookups when he was drunk and a teenager, there's probably a world of difference between drunk Veronica and Veronica on roofies, and one of those is a lot more forgivable than the other.

But it's also clear what's really been eating him is what happened after the salt lick, how he was revved up from what we did together that I didn't even know about—which okay, might have been part of why I went after Duncan the way I did, let's be honest. Back then, Duncan was the safer target for my racier thoughts.

I cross the balcony and lay my hand on his back. "Logan…" I don't know what to say. It messes my head up, too, knowing he was right downstairs. It's unthinkable, now, that he could be in any building where I was being hurt and he wouldn't do something.

Then again, even back then, if he would have known, he would have stopped Cassidy. A salt lick is one thing, but he never would have let them go as far as they did. If he'd known how deeply I was drugged, he would have stopped Duncan, too. I lay my head against his back, wishing…like through sheer force of will I can reach back through all those years and change just one thing. Have him be the one to carry me up to that room and stay there with me so I'd be safe.

But it's too late to change what happened, or what it made us into.

He makes a sound, this sharp keening that pierces up through the last dry heave like the purest sound of grief I've ever heard. When he whirls around, he's already crying harder than he has since the day he found out his mother was dead.

"How can you touch me when I—when they—when I let them—" He paces across the length of the balcony so fast it's like he's going to blast through the other side, then he surges back so he's looming over me. "Hit me."

"What?" I draw back, the railing behind me biting into my back.

"You should slap me, or leave me, or cube my car." His face is so twisted with anguish I can hardly recognize it. "Tell your dad what I did. Go out to a bar and fuck someone else. Christ, you should bring them back here, when I'm only a few rooms away, just like I was then. Doing nothing."

He shouts the last word so loud I know the neighbors heard but I'm so horrified by what he just said, I can't even think about that. He just—he didn't possibly mean—

I'm frozen so hard I can't even take a breath and then he's gone, ripping open the patio door and flying back into our house. I haven't been so afraid of what he might do since college.

"Logan!" I bolt after him.

"You can't. You can't stay married to me, you can't, not to a guy who—" He's on his knees in the middle of the floor, yanking at his wedding ring. But he never takes it off and his finger's kind of grown around it and he's pulling so hard it looks like he's going to rip the flesh right off his bones.

I throw the door closed and run to him, but he jerks back so hard he falls over and knocks his head on the tile, his eyes so wild they're black. I wince at the sound his skull made against the floor, but he flinches away when I try to check to see if he's hurt.

"What the fuck, Veronica?" he spits at me. His voice is climbing until it ricochets like a bullet off the naked tiles and hard walls. "You never let anything slide. It's not justice, you can't stand it. So do something. Throw a vase at me. Punch me. Light this whole fucking house on fire so I have to watch it burn to the ground." He nearly screams it and his eyes are like twin torches, unhinged and wild, and for the first time since I met him, I see the resemblance to Aaron.

"Pickle!" I shriek. I don't even realize I'm crying until I hear it in my own voice.

He's still shaking his head and it's like he doesn't even remember.

"Pickle!" I half scream. "You said, you promised if you were scaring me you'd stop if I said the safe word and I can't oh my god Logan you're scaring me and I can't and I don't know what to do and you have to stop, you have to, you promised—"

He goes still, sprawled out where he fell, staring at me and I'm crying harder than he is now.

"Please," I manage to get out, and I reach for him but I'm sobbing too hard to move.

"Fuck," he says under his breath. He flips over and crawls across the tiles to me. "Sweetheart. No, shh, it's okay. I'm sorry."

He wraps himself around me and we're a mess on the floor, but his leg is over my hips and I'm tucked into his neck again and something about this—the safe word or me needing him—he's himself again, not that wild creature he was a second ago.

"It's okay." He's rocking me, his shaking hand stroking my hair. "I'm not going to hurt you, so don't be scared, okay? You don't ever have to be scared of me. I heard you. I stopped."

It's not what we made the safe word for, but it was the only thing I could think of to reach him. And I didn't think he was going to hurt me, I was terrified of what he was going to do to himself.

But I stay quiet because he knows how to do this. He's good at comforting me, being there for me. If that holds him together long enough for me to figure out how to fix this, I'm Machiavellian enough to let the lie of omission stand. I huddle closer, letting him comfort both of us.

He wants me to hurt him, to punish him. That's why he was saying those awful things, about how I should be with another man or hit him. That's what he understands, because of his dad. It's what he does, when he's upset. He puts his fist through a wall or starts fights so someone else will hurt him. It's like how some people take razor blades to their thighs because they need to feel the pain. I don't even think he knows why he's doing it.

I'm not going to hurt my husband, but if I don't, he's going to hurt himself. I squeeze him tighter and I'm afraid again, but there's no safe word I can call to get us out of this. He can't hear me when I forgive him because he can't forgive himself. I tried to be kind to him the other night, to hold him, and love him enough to get him past this and it didn't work. I have to find a different way and I don't like any of my options.

Get your shit together, Veronica. Make a plan and fix this. That's what you do.

I pull back, and his face is wrecked with dried tears shining on his cheeks, and his eyes so tormented I can hardly look at him. He's beautiful, and all I want is for him to be laughing and cuddling me, feeding me ice cream on the floor and getting that mischievous spark in his eye when something I say gets him hard. I don't want him to ever feel like this, but we're in it now. We opened those memories and I asked for this, because I told him he had to find a way to get through it and let this go. He's trying. By telling me all that, he was trying.

"That was one of the worst nights of my life," I tell him, my voice quavering. "And I hate that you were a part of it. Any part of it."

His eyelashes flinch, but he takes it, nodding.

"I need to think about this," I lie.

"You need to do whatever," he whispers, and I remember, what I told him in high school. About how I take off.

"I need to do whatever." I nod. "But I…I need to be home right now, okay?"

He nods, eager to give me anything that'll make me feel safe. I feel like the world's biggest bastard, because I don't need time to think this over. And I don't need to feel safe. I need him to feel punished enough so that he'll let me forgive him. I need him to feel exiled so he'll want to come back. So I let betrayal creep into my eyes along with a fresh sheen of tears.

"I want you to go," I choke out, and there's no faking at all involved in how hard I'm crying. "I can't—I need you to go to a motel or something, while I think about this and decide what to do."

He nods, drawing back from me. His whole body is a slump of misery. "I understand."

"I don't know…" I take a shuddering breath, because this is the biggest lie of all. "I don't know if I can forgive this."

Tears stand out hard in his eyes, and he nods again. He doesn't blink, like he's afraid to stop looking at me for even that long. It's carving me into pieces, the idea of him leaving right now. Fuck, fuck, I don't know if I can do this. But I need to to get him out of the picture and feeling penitent while I call someone who might know how to fix this, once and for all. And I really don't want to make that call, either.

He drags himself to his feet, and reaches to help me up, then takes his hand back like he realizes he's asking me to touch him and figures I won't want to. I shove to standing, gritting my teeth as I keep up the charade.

"I'll call you…I don't know, in a couple days. Maybe a week. I've got to clear my head." I pause. "But Logan?"

"Yeah?"

I reach for his left hand. His finger's red and swollen from him jerking at it, but there's no blood and the ring's still there. "Don't you dare fuck another woman," I tell him fiercely. "And don't you fucking dare take this off. If anybody gets to take this off you, it's going to be me."

Something flickers in his eyes, and he nods. I pray to every God I can think of that I was mean enough, with just enough of a spark of hope, to keep him from entirely self-destructing while I'm off figuring out how to fix this.

I take a step back, and I watch my husband leave our house, kicked out for the first time in our entire marriage. And while I can still feel my heart fracturing in my chest, I reach for my phone.

#

Author's Note: UGH. That was a gut punch to write. I hope it was easier on you than it was on me.

Hang in there, it'll get better. I'll post the next chapter faster so we can get through the sad stuff together. The next chapter is a little badass, hope you enjoy it.