The Right People
Max and Logan were taking a break from having wrung the gong for a number of hours.
Neither of them were really sleepy yet—instead, Logan had been reading beside Max, while she'd been going over the best ways to supe up her baby in her head—so they were just sitting in bed, like the kind of normal couple Max used to dread the idea of becoming… at least if she had to do it with any of the boys she'd slept with while she was in heat.
But how glad Max was, that she now understood the draws of being domestic with someone you loved, as she wouldn't have traded this life with Logan for the world.
At some point, the two of them ended up back in each other's arms—they did this sometimes: the being drawn to each other like magnets thing, as the Virus had certainly left them touch starved for each other—not in a sexual way, or even in a kissing way, but in a gently and reverently touching one.
Logan was just running his hands through Max's long hair—that he must have liked—as she looked at him lovingly: partly wondering what had happened to the old Max, to leave her this way, but mostly not caring because this was pure bliss: the kind of bliss she was used to other people having, like Bennett and Marianne but not herself… which got her thinking.
"…Logan, why didn't you tell me that Bennett wanted you dead? I thought he was one of your few relatives who actually liked you, but nah. That was only your uncle… who I'm still so sorry is dead, by the way."
And that drastic change in mood in conversation had Logan pulling away from Max—but not in a way to shut her out; she could tell these things in him now—as he sat up on the bed again, and tried to collect his thoughts.
"And ruin one of the best memories we had together, that way? No. I wasn't going to do that, Max… Even if he was a moron for wanting me dead not because I ruined the family business, but because he didn't want to share any inheritance with me."
Yeah, that—to be honest—made Max want to beat the crap out of him. Bennett didn't even care that his father had died when the truth about their hover-drones had come out, and rather had just been afraid of Logan making him lose any other payout he might get in the future (from their rich uncle). And Max was reminded of how… betrayed she'd felt when she'd bought Allina's story about wanting to reunited with her believed-to-be-dead estranged father, only to purposefully get him out of hiding. so she could finish the job and collect the money for the hit.
People who didn't appreciate their family were beyond Max, and she didn't want to understand them.
"Honestly, Logan… if you knew he was like that, why'd you ever even bother with writing the toast for his wedding and all that? I would've just let the whole ceremony burn."
And here, Logan rolled over so he could hold Max again… and she had to resist the urge to sigh in contentment, because she still had some pride to her, damnit. "Because I wanted people in my life, Max. And I was looking in all the wrong places. But I'm glad to say I finally found the good ones."
Max definitely knew what Logan was talking about here. Before she'd met him, her girl Original Cindy, Sketchy, Joshua, and even Alec, she'd dated that asshole Darren—and trusted Justine to not try and steal her boyfriend—and even before that… while Max had maybe made some decent friends elsewhere, she hadn't been able to let them in and had left them when she needed to without a care in the world.
And surely Logan had met similarly wrong people in Daphne, Valerie, and his entire family. But he'd finally found some people there for him, in Detective Sung, Bling, Sebastian, Asha, some of Max's own friends… and Max herself, of course.
And to know that you felt perfectly in someone else's life—to even make it better than what it was—was something Max had never believed in or cherished before, but was certainly beginning to. It made her feel like she had some higher purpose, besides Sanderman's faulty one, and made her believe that maybe she was more than some kid's lab experiment that had wandered away from their school.
"Yes, Logan. Aren't you glad you met me, so I can bring to you all the friends you would have been too lame to find yourself? Like OC, Joshua, Sketchy, and even fucking Alec? I'm also glad you and Jondy are finally starting to hit it o-"
"I love you, Max," Logan interrupted her, as he leaned down and placed a chaste kiss to her lips—not being deterred by her having tried to play off the moment at all, since he knew that was just her.
And Max giggled—honest to Blue Lady giggled—as she threw a sheet up over them, like they were children in their perfectly created fort. And maybe that's exactly what they were.
"I love you, too."