Max opened her eyes to see Logan's, he was stretched out alongside her watching her sleep, "Hey you weren't kidding about not going anywhere."

"Having some problems taking my eyes off of you."

"Don't worry, I'm really not going anywhere." She stretched and then groaned "At least or another few days." She frowned looking at him "Okay stop looking at me like that. I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere." She took his hand.

He kept her hand, but sat up slowly and looked down at her "I love you, Max"

"Are you sure? I mean it's been three months and I was dead." she teased

"Oh yea I'm pretty sure" a grin tugged at the corner's of his cheeks, "I had this whole summer free of fighting, not being told I was self righteous, my food was always exactly were I left it. It was horrible."

"Well in that case," Max smiled "I love you too. I'm pretty sure Original Cindy already told you that though."

"She loved you, boo. I want you to know that. That girl of mine" she wiped away her tears, "She loved you something fierce, poor girl fought it as hard as she could, but she loved you." she extended a hand and touched his cheek. "You hold on to that, never forget how much she loved you, never let her leave you."

He could almost smile at the memory, move past the pain, almost, but not quite, "It sounds a little bit better coming from you."

"So tell me if I'm wrong, isn't a girl normally supposed to get a kiss after not only being gone for 3 months, but being told that you love her?"

Logan smiled "I don't want to hurt you, your ribs remember."

"My ribs will be fine."

He eased as gently as he could towards her and softly kissed her lips. She tried to deepen the kiss but he pulled back. "You're injured."

"I'm tough, I can take it."

He shook his head as he lay back down, never losing eye contact with her, he stroked her hair. "This summer proved something, I'm not."

She sighed looking at him

"What was that for?"

"I really missed you. We wasted a lot of time."

"You're back now."

She thought for a moment about Lydecker's words, he was right and she knew it, so she said the words she didn't want to say, "You've got to give up on Manticore. We can't expose them."

The crusader inside of Logan frowned in confusion, "Zack and Tinga are dead because of them, you almost died because of them."

She thought for a moment and wondered if maybe they could stay one step ahead of Manticore, maybe they could stay safe and punish them, then she looked deep into his eyes and thought about all the days and nights she'd spent thinking she would never see him again, and she knew she had to let Manticore go, it wasn't worth it, "If you keep going after them, they're going to come after us."

Logan nodded and his hand stilled on her neck "This is your fight Max, if you want me to stop I will. I don't want to risk losing you again."

"I know the feeling."

They continued to stare

She laughed "You know you can carry me out onto a sofa so you can do work."

He pretended to think about it and then shook his head "Nope. Just want to stay here watching you."

"You're a goof" she extended her hand to rest on his cheek

"A goof?" he made a serious face

She nodded "A goof, but you're my goof"

"I think I'm okay with that then. I can't believe you called me a goof though, did you spend your summer watching 80's reruns?"

She just kept smiling.