Alrighty, back with another chapter! I'm actually cutting this one into two chapters, but it all goes together, it's all the same scene. The only reason I'm not posting it all together is because it would be wayyyy too long. So I guess you could say, back with TWO more chapters! Moohahaha. Anyway, I hope you all like it! :-D I think I got two or three more chapters before I'm done with the story, so I'd just like to thank everyone who reviewed and are enjoying the story yet again! You guys ROCK!

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Logan nodded and they walked off down the opposite street, the busy traffic rushing past, making puddles of icy water splash up like geysers and making Jean shiver against the cold.

After they were a block or two away from the hotel, Jean slowed down and sat softly on a dripping wet bench beside the street corner, in front of some towering city buildings. Logan stood for a moment before sitting beside her.

She stared straight ahead of her, into the blackness, while Logan fixed his gaze on her face, waiting for her to speak...if that was what she was going to do.

It was a minute or so later before she finally did, breaking the beat of the steady rain.

"Do you remember...last summer...when you and I took Bobby and Marie out to dinner and a movie? That thing the professor set up, where the chaperones would take the kids out every month or so? And at the movie, Marie screamed so loud that the whole audience started laughing?"

Logan grinned. He did remember.

"And she was so embarrassed that we let her pick whatever she wanted on the menu for dinner? She wanted to get that margarita...but you wouldn't let her. I tried to sneak her one, and you caught me." He grinned a bit more.

Jean managed a small genuine laugh as she nodded her head, still looking ahead of her. A moment later after the laugh had long faded, a ghost of a smile crossed her lips.

"We had so much fun that night. I still laugh about it all the time with the kids. Scott was away teaching, and so you took his brand new Eclipse..."

"--And you were so nervous that whole ride," Logan laughed.

"...During dinner Bobby kept freezing our drinks so the waiter had to constantly bring us refills. I don't know how much of the professor's money I spend on drinks alone that night..." Jean laughed a bit as well. "Marie was giggling the whole time..."

"Yeah," Logan replied. "It was so obvious that they were hot for each other."

Jean smirked and hit Logan's shoulder playfully.

"Now they're a couple, and we witnessed the first sparks."

"Yeah, guess so."

Now Jean finally turned to look Logan in the eye.

"What I'm really trying to say with all this is that tonight at dinner...I don't know what hit me...but suddenly it just felt wrong to be with Scott. Like before, when it would have felt wrong to be with you. Like that night last summer, we had so much fun and then suddenly it was time to go home after the movie was over. We didn't exactly want to, but we didn't really have a choice. Scott and I...somehow it was like the movie was over for us. Just like that...all the years of our relationship, the blood, the sweat, the tears...the love..all vanished. All in one night. And Logan," she looked to him desperately, "you wouldn't believe the sadness and the pain I'm feeling right now... But I also can't tell you how relieved I am."

Jean's words sunk into Logan slowly as he looked at her, and they filled him with a deep concern that rain through his veins and poured into his soul like a river to an ocean. He wasn't sure what to respond with because somehow he felt words were inadequate. He just wanted to hold her...and it showed in his eyes.

"Logan," she began again after a moment of silence, of desperate thinking, "I can't tell you how many times I've looked into my heart for the shame I must feel for what I've done. ..For loving you, for cheating on Scott.."

These last few words felt and tasted like cheap dirt in her mouth, but she endured and overcame it, knowing the greater reason. A pause came before she began again.

"..But it isn't there."

Jean looked to him again, her eyes held a distant light and also a contrasting groundedness that showed Logan everything she was feeling at the moment. There was pain and sadness, love and understanding. Too many raging and anxious emotions to count.

"I can't lie to you, or to Scott...or to myself any longer. I just can't pretend to believe what I do not believe, and I do not believe that my love for you...is wrong.

Thinking about my life without you with me now seems like suicide. Insufferable. You've opened the doors to places in my mind, body and soul that I never knew existed, and would have never known existed if you didn't believe that we could really be something, if you didn't push me. I had never really lived until you taught me how, had never taken the time to taste every single moment, to give into pleasure with no limits... You're the one in my life now, Logan. Scott isn't with me anymore, I can't feel him inside my head...you've more than filled that space."

The raindrops still fell from the sky now like soft autumn leaves, splashed the ground and drenched their bodies in a waterfall of flickering transparent of silver, but Logan took no notice as he reached up to touch Jean's cheek, slick with the downpour.

"Jean," His voice held enough emotion to fill even the emptiest of hearts. There were a very few number of times Logan had cried in his life, but this time it was almost unbearable the love and empathy he felt for this one woman. He could feel her mind opening up to him, being a telepath she couldn't really help it that he could experience every emotion she felt right now to almost the same intensity, even on top of what he himself was feeling.

"You've taught me everything I know that's worth knowing. You...make me want to change, to be better. My past and what happened to me all those years ago was my most burning, consuming ambition...I would have shed as much blood as it took, as many tears, I would have given what was left of my life just to find out who took everything away from me, who stripped me of my soul and replaced them with these," he now slowly slid a single adamantium claw from his left hand, and as soon as it was extended to full length, he looked back up to Jean, his facial features trying to mask the immense physical pain it caused, as it did every time.

"You make me forget about my past. You make me forget about my anger, my greed, my hate. I forget all about revenge every time I think how lucky I to have you, finally."

He now slid the blade back into his skin. A diamond of exposed flesh replaced it for a split second, a single drop of scarlet blood was left behind as the wound healed in front of Jean's eyes. She could only imagine what it must feel like to have those inside her body, how much it must hurt.

A tear burned a trail down Jean's cheek and she took that hand in hers, lacing their fingers together. No one knew Logan like she did. Most people, who didn't know any better, took him for some wandering outsider, filled with rage and bitterness, violence. People were afraid to get too close to him for fear he might leash out and attack, like some bloodthirsty wolf. She knew this because she used to be one of them.

The truth was, Logan was as gentle as the kiss Jean placed on his hand a moment later. No one understood, couldn't begin to believe, even, that he had gone through horrific things that no human being should ever go through, had seen things too gruesome and shocking to even put into words. And Jean knew this first hand.

All those months ago, he had challenged her to read his mind. She had been skeptical at first, but then that strange, new sensation -- the one that had frankly bewildered her at the time, but she fully understood now -- of feeling she had to prove herself to him took her over. She had seen awful pictures, images, so vague, but the vagueness of it all was one of the key factors that made it so frightening...she had tore out quickly, but not just because Scott had interrupted them.

But since then, on some hot nights her mind would pick up on his nightmares, experience them at the same time as he was, because they were so intense they invaded her mind without warning. She wouldn't be surprised if Professor Xavier had picked up on them too, let alone every telepath in the institute. Panic stricken and almost screaming, she would wake, wiping the sweat from her forehead and eventually turning over and trying to get back to sleep, always thinking it just couldn't be possible to live with all the tormenting memories Logan had to live with.