"You KNEW how I feel about her…" the sound of the pain in her voice had sliced through any of his excuses leaving him mute.
Logan watched as Veronica stormed off and slammed the door behind her. Burying his hands into his hair he sank onto the edge of his bed. He knew from experience that running after her was like sending an invitation for that tazer she kept in her purse to visit his abdomen with a few hundred volts along for the trip.
He'd just stood there like an idiot while the love of his life fled from him.
Logan felt paralyzed, his entire world had tumbled down around him and he was helpless to watch. he didn't want to make the mistake of trying to chase after her. Keith already looked at him as if he though Logan would a risk to his daughter.
"This is something I am never getting past" Veronica's words echoed as he downed another shot of whiskey from the liquor cabinet.
Ever since that night during winter break when he'd woken up with a splitting headache, miserable and Madison Sinclair curled around him babbling her vapid nonsense, he had lived in fear of news of it reaching Veronica.
The memory of it made him feel sick.
He was out of the beer Dick had stocked up for the party he planned that weekend and into the Liquor cabinet. It was an unspoken rule of their roommate agreement that the official hotel Liquor cabinet was off-limits on the off chance hotel management called the Sheriff's department about underage drinking. He didn't care about consequences right now, he was out of beer, and the thought of not getting blinding drunk was not tolerable right now. He stared at the empty bottle and ran his fingers through his hair.
She still hadn't called him back and he was a wreck… it had been two days. Dick wasn't talking to him because Veronica had told him about his indiscretions with Madison and the only calls he had received so far had been from the front desk and one from Trina, his horrid step-sister, asking for another "favor" because of a mix-up with her plane tickets and she had to go see her new boyfriend for some wonderful opportunity. Everyone in his life was so fake… everyone except Veronica. She was the most genuine thing he had ever seen. She made him real, he was more himself when he was with her than he was anyplace else.
Made him worthy of inhabiting space on the planet.
She was the champion of lost causes, the defender of the downtrodden, murderer catching, rapist snaring, and petite camera-wielding badass. And if she was done with him…. Then what did that mean?
He had poured his heart out in that voicemail. Surely she must know that? The thought of her giving up on them, on giving up on him... he just wanted to disappear... he snorted pitifully.
"If I was DUNCAN…." He shouted at the empty bottle on the table. He could still see her comparing them sometimes. Her gaze would get just that little far away when she looked around the apartment two boys had shared in the Neptune Grand.
There was still a drawer in his bedroom with her Java Hut uniform and a clean t-shirt long after Duncan had taken off mid-senior year with his daughter Faith.
Logan had moved into the larger bedroom after it became evident that he wouldn't be coming back. In the months before he had saved her on the roof from Beaver, he had lingered over the small items in that drawer, debating whether he should return them but never quite able to let them go. They were a small piece of perfection in his otherwise empty life, he had hidden them in a drawer by his bed, taking a small pink t-shirt out every so often to smell the scent of her, imagining her in the other room, arriving back any moment to rip it from his hands and fill the Veronica shaped emptiness in the fabric.
He had tormented himself with thoughts of her showing up to demand them back before she would fall into his arms…
God, that summer after Felix had died; Veronica had been the only thing that had gotten him through those days. They hadn't even done much more than kiss back then, and those months had been torture for him. When he watched Duncan and Veronica get back together, he almost lost his damn mind, started an affair with his best friend's stepmom just to forget her. Losing Lilly and his mother... the truth coming out about his abusive homicidal father.
Logan had no one else, everyone in town had looked at him like he was a murderer; everything in his life had been going wrong except Veronica. She was his salvation; the only peace he had found had been in her arms, kissing her felt like the next 60 years of his life. Still, he couldn't help the feeling that someday she would just disappear like a dream. Couldn't shake the insecurity that if Duncan ever came back, he would lose her in an instant. He loved her with a part of himself that was vital, primal. He had dated girls before. Hannah, Lilly... fooled around with meaningless sex with women like Kendall... but none of it compared to how the rest of the world fell away when Veronica had given him even a sliver of her time, usually with her bizarre questions and requests during her investigations.
God, he missed the feel of her... Logan hadn't been able to bare being near his bed in two days; he kept staring at the door hanging for her to return. He realized in some ways he was always waiting for her to return; he didn't feel like he existed away from her. She was his Home, and the realization that she was someone he could never walk away from had terrified him.
He had decided to break it off with her weeks ago; he had known that he loved her too much. He had reasoned that they should save themselves the pain before he lost himself too deeply. Each time he woke up to her, every time they had sex was earth-shattering, reality-altering celestial event, he was getting lost in her and the doubt she didn't share those feelings scared him, so he tried to break it off before he gave in and she decided he had broken some rule she had and she was done with him, and he would have nothing left. He would never have gotten over her, but he might have learned to live without her.
She had come back and fought for them; he had spent days trying not to cave in and go track her down and beg her to give him another chance. Then she had knocked on his door and the two of them had fallen back into bed; she had chosen him. She had come for him, and he was done, he lost whatever reservation he had not to give himself to her completely, she always avoided intimacy, and he was determined to ease her out, to give her the time she needed, he had been committed this time; he would be his best self, to earn her trust, do well at college, try to win over her father.
Logan fought every day not to spook her by getting the ring in the jewelry store he had seen during one of their little stake-out trips she had lingered at a little too wantonly while she tried to track down a missing diamond from a necklace which her client was certain had been switched out with a fake.
He had never been more certain of anything in his life, now as the hours ticked by he couldn't help but obsess over every time she had passed up dinner with him to chase up some clue, that day of the bus crash when he thought she had been hurt, his world had stopped. He had called everyone he could think of to make sure she was okay and then she had ignored him... It crushed him when he had found her wrapped up in Duncan's arms, but he had never been so relieved, he didn't know where this need he had to protect her was born, maybe it was because he hadn't been effective protecting Lilly or his mother.
He fought that instinct every day so he could be with her, knowing he would lose her if he gave in. Now he had screwed up anyway. He had always been irrevocably hers, ever since the day he had thought she needed saving at the Camelot Motel with the ATF agent.
"Cos you never were and you never will be mine…." He sang to himself as he played some songs from her iPod. Seeing if there was anything in the playlist that could make him feel closer to her.
"If I was a mystery or a case… If I had something she wanted…" he mused as he spoke to the empty room, pouring himself another glass of some clear liquid.
If I had something she wanted… but evidently, he didn't, or she would be here.
"Obviously," he said toasting the bluebottle, downing it he realized it was Gin. Veronica tasted like Gin and Tonic when they had their parties.
God, was there no escaping this?
He thought back to his chance to tell her, they had been having their usual witty banter, discussing the hooker co-ed case, and she had asked him point-blank if he had been with someone else, and it was that Friends cliché.
Did it matter they had been on a break?
Lying wasn't his proudest moment.
Curled naked with her beside him, he hadn't wanted to ruin the moment.
"Do you still love me?" he had asked after delivering a highly edited version of his one-night stand with some horrid nameless girl.
"Yea" she had replied sweetly and nuzzled into him but would she still have said that if he had told her that girl had been Madison?
If he had confessed, could he have talked her around then?
She hated Madison, he had known that.
He should have just confessed. Who knew what cruelty Madison had spewed to make this mistake so much worse than it was?
Veronica had never said she loved him…
It was strongly implied but now he wished she had said it, just once. Perhaps then he wouldn't be trapped on this carousel of misery.
Logan glanced into the bottom of his empty glass, sniffing the small t-shirt in his hand.
Marshmallows and Promises… the only thing he wanted on his lips was Veronica. She was like a drug, and nothing in the hotel suite would get him high enough. The hours rolling by felt like something inside him was slowly hollowing out.
Veronica would listen to that voicemail soon. She had left her favorite t-shirt in his closet and her iPod, he reasoned. He would wait. Logan had been too embarrassed to give her the contents of the things she had left behind while dating Duncan before he moved into the room; he didn't want to explain why he kept it in a secure box with the last of the most important stuff he owned salvaged after the house fire.
She would come back…
She had to.