Disclaimer: I have never nor will ever own any of the characters. They belong to Rob Thomas. If I did own them, I would never have done what he did.

Chapter Ten

Logan's POV

As we are pulling away from our home, I am overcome with many plaguing thoughts. I reach across the console and lace my fingers with hers, gently rubbing my thumb across her knuckles. I'm not sure if I am trying to comfort her or myself, but either way the motion and the simple act of touching her calms me.

Earlier when I told Veronica that I got a little worried when I woke and her and Pony were gone, I wasn't exactly telling the truth. The truth was that when I woke up and couldn't find them, I panicked. I instantly started thinking that after I had fallen asleep, she had time to think about everything and she decided to leave me. That she thought to herself that she just couldn't do this and that she blamed me for everything that had happened. Her decision to marry me didn't come easy and we had no time to adjust to being married before I was ripped away from her. I had no time to get comfortable with the idea that this is what she wanted. What if while I was away, she decided that marriage to me wasn't something that she wanted? What if she changed her mind?

The anger that I have about the whole situation comes back to the surface again for the thousandth time since I was yanked away from her only an hour after our wedding. The honeymoon phase of our marriage was stolen away from us and I worry that we will never actually get to experience that. As if our lives had not dealt us enough already, this just adds one more thing to the already complicated past that Veronica and I had.

During our very brief wedding, I had finally felt like maybe my life would finally be "normal" and have happiness that I never thought that I deserved. I had meant what I said when I told her that if I wasn't what she wanted that I would leave before we were married, but the idea of not being with her now, feels like it would kill me. Walking away now would be the hardest thing I would ever have to do, and I'm not sure if I would actually be able to do it.

I can't even describe the relief that I felt when I walked down to the beach and saw her standing there watching Pony play. I could tell that she had been deep in thought, but I was honestly glad that her stomach had created a distraction from whatever had her so quiet.

I pull my eyes away from the road to sneak a quick glance at her. 'God, she is so beautiful,' I think to myself, but I can't help but think again for the second time today how thin she looks. She has always been a tiny little thing, but when I was searching for food earlier and she had none, I realized how thin she looked now. Her quiet admission that she didn't feel like eating when she was home alone and that our friends and family had been what had ensured that she ate, breaks my heart.

Veronica always had a very healthy appetite, so the fact that she didn't want to eat just shows the extent of her heartbreak. I know that she tried to comfort me and tell me that this wasn't my fault, but I don't know how she sees it that way.

My guilt was further amplified when she brought up telling our friends. As soon as Veronica had said Wallace and Dick, my heart sank. While our circle of friends is very limited, we did have a few that had become my family and I never thought about how this had affected them. I was so focused on Veronica and how she was handling this while I was gone and on just surviving that I selfishly never let it occur to me that other people might be suffering because of this too.

I think about Dick and how he always tries to be the life of the party, but his life has not been easy. He has suffered many tragedies and this would have just been one more to add to his life. Over the last two decades that Dick and I were friends, he had become a brother to me. He was there for me during many of the worst times of my life, and I had not been there for him during this, in fact, I had caused this pain. Veronica shifts next to me and I am pulled from my deep thoughts and I wonder how long we have been driving for. I look over at her and she too must be lost in thought because she doesn't seem to notice that we are just driving around aimlessly.

"What should we get to eat?" I ask, trying to pull us both out of our melancholy thoughts.

"I don't care, whatever you want," she answers.

"You have to eat," I sigh at her, getting more than just a little annoyed with what I think is still her reluctance to eat anything.

"I will, I just don't feel up to making any decisions right now. I will be content to eat whatever we grab."

I sigh and make a decision to run by a local spot that I know has pancakes that she loves. I hope that getting that will ensure that she eats more than what she clearly has been.

We make quick work of getting our food. I'm glad that they serve pancakes all day, since this is technically our "breakfast." I make sure to order more pancakes, sausage, and bacon than I think we will need and we take our order and head towards Keith's.

When we get to Keith's, I grab our food and walk around to Veronica's side of the car and open her door, extending my hand so I can grab hers and help her out of the car.

She takes my hand, but before we start to walk inside, I pull her back to me and press her up against the car. She is looking down and not meeting my eyes, so I put the food on the hood of the car and place her face between both of my hands, forcing her to look at me.

She looks up at me and I kiss her, putting more passion into the kiss than I intended. I just couldn't help myself once our lips touched. I had a lot of missed time to make up for and I was going to take advantage of the fact that she was in front of me where I could kiss her.

"Are you okay?" I ask once I end the kiss, only pulling back enough to lean my forehead against hers.

She brings her hands up to wrap around my wrists, as my hands are still cradling her face and places one more soft kiss on my lips before answering with a simple "Yes."

I quirk an eyebrow at her, but she just pushes off of the car, takes my hand and walks us towards the house. I grab the bag of food and we walk up the steps, her in the lead, with me following only a few steps behind.

When we get to the front door, she must sense my hesitation, because she turns to me and asks, "Are you ready?"

I take a deep breath and I nod my head. She gently squeezes my hand that she is holding and knocks on the door.

We don't have to wait long for Keith to come and open the door. When he opens the door, he has that same shocked look on his face that he did when he saw me in our apartment yesterday.

"I feel like I'm looking at a ghost he says."

I chuckle but don't have time to say anything before Veronica says "Ghost, hallucination, Naval Intelligence Officer who has been on a top secret mission instead of dead like we all actually thought," she shrugs her shoulders and gives him a weak smile.

I know that she is trying to make light of the situation, trying to hide how much the last 24 hours have been emotionally gut wrenching.

Keith softly smiles and steps out of the way so that we can enter the house.

I hold up the bag I'm carrying and tell him, "We brought food." I notice that he no longer walks with his cane and wonder if he finally got the hip replacement that he had been waiting on. I hope so because that would mean that some good things happened while I was gone.

We make our way into the house and quickly get ourselves settled with our meal. Once we are seated Keith says, "Okay, explain."

I look over at Veronica and notice that she is just pushing her food around her plate, not really eating much of it at all. Keith notices too and gives me a look that clearly says that it is my turn to deal with this. I know that he must be thinking that he has dealt with this for a year now and probably grateful that he doesn't have to be the one to have this argument again.

"Keith, didn't you teach Veronica not to play with her food." I snatch her fork and grab a few pieces of pancake and put it to her lips. "This is what this is used for. It's called eating," I remark, the sass clearly evident in my statement.

I make an exaggerated airplane movement with the fork and she finally opens her mouth and eats the bite, but not without an eye roll that would put the biggest drama queens to shame.

I try to hide my laughter, but it comes out in a snort and when I look over at Keith, he is having a hard time containing his own laughter too.

I go to grab another forkful of pancake to feed her, but she snatches it out of my hands and glares at me. "I can feed myself, thank you very much."

After she eats a couple more bites of pancakes and several strips of bacon I feel satisfied that my plan has worked and she is eating and so I am comfortable telling Keith my story of the last year.

He listens intently, only stopping me to ask a few questions here and there. Nothing that is really all that important in the grand scheme of things. I answer whatever questions I can, the whole time fearing that the last year is going to destroy the bond that Keith and I had finally formed over the last several years. How could he not hate me for what I put her through.

I look over at Keith, trying to gauge how he feels about the whole situation, but he is looking at Veronica, an anxious look on his face, clearly trying to decide what to say. "Sweetie, are you ok?"

She's not making eye contact with either of us, but she simply shrugs her shoulders, "Yeah dad, I'm fine."

She is pulling away, trying to hide her feelings and keep it all locked up inside, where she thinks that she can't be hurt. She has done it to me so many times and I can't let her do it again. We have to grow and part of that growth has to include facing things head on, even when they feel impossible to handle.

Keith looks back and forth between the two of us finally resting his gaze on her. "It's ok not to be," he says on a sigh.

She is still not looking at either of us, instead she is choosing to look at her hands as she plays with her fingers.

Determined to not let her pull away, I slide her onto my lap. She doesn't fight it, instead she cuddles close and finds the spot between my arms that I swear was made just for her. She takes a deep breath and sighs as she clasps the front of my shirt in her hands.

She still hasn't responded to what Keith says, but he continues, "It's ok to need time to process and it's ok to be overwhelmed, and it's ok to be angry, sad, happy, or any combination of those. It's going to take time for life to feel normal again and that is ok too, but what is not ok is pushing away the people who are here to support you. Logan and I are here and we both love you, you just need to tell us what you need."

After what feels like an eternity, but in reality is probably only a few seconds, I feel her muscles that had been so tense start to relax.

"Remember last year when you asked me what I would do without you and I told you that I would be sticking my head in the oven because the two most important people in my life would be gone?"

I nod, but don't say anything, instead I place my fingers under her chin and lift her head, forcing her to look in my eyes and silently pleading for her to continue.

"This is the first time in so long that I don't feel like doing that, and I just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. The other shoe always drops. I get to spend an hour feeling blissfully happy, only for it to be ripped away from me again. Don't I deserve to be happy?" she lets out on a sob.

"Of course you deserve to be happy. You are my beautiful, intelligent, sometimes pain in the ass daughter, who is always looking out for everyone. I know that life has often times dealt you a rough hand, but I refuse to believe that you won't have good things in your life that are permanent. I refuse to believe that after everything the two of you have been through to be together, that the universe would take him away from you again. Even with my own jaded experiences, I believe that bad things do come to an end and good, no great things are in yours and Logan's futures together."

He lets that sink in before he continues, "But you have to talk to us Veronica. You can't shut us out and tell us that you are ok, when you aren't. Hell I'm not sure that I am ok and I only tolerate the boy. Well ok, I might like him, a little bit." He holds up his thumb and finger, indicating a small space between the two. I can tell by the grin on his face that he is messing with me so I smile and give him a small nod.

I am holding her close, gently rubbing my hands up and down her back trying to convey how much everything that he just said is true.

She looks up and places tender kisses along my jawline. "Right now I'm exhausted, emotionally drained, and my eyes feel like sandpaper from all of the tears that I have cried, so I guess I'm not ok, but I want to be. I want to be better and I want to not fear happiness like I always have in the past, and for the first time, I am willing to admit that I will probably need some help doing that."

"Keith, you didn't happen to be recording that, did you? I know you have to have a recording device hidden in here somewhere. Did the great Veronica Mars just admit that she can't do something on her own?" I joke, trying to lighten the mood.

She swats my shoulder and I pull her closer, placing a kiss on her forehead. I linger for a minute, breathing her in.

"We both need to learn to trust that we can be happy, that we deserve to be happy. I know that I need you by my side in order for that to happen. So as cliché as it sounds, how about we take it one day at a time? What do you say, are you still in this with me Mars, for the long haul?"

"I'm with you under one condition," she says, and I know that she is up to something because she has a devilish smirk on her face.

"What's that?"

"You have to figure out how we are going to tell Dick. I've dealt with him for the last year and am so glad that he can be your problem again. He is exhausting."

I don't even try to contain my laughter when I respond with, "You've got a deal."