Chapter 5: A last bit of back story –

Logan looked at Veronica, the enormity of actually finding her after all these years overwhelming him again. He reached for Veronica and pulled her into his lap. He never wanted to let her go again, never wanted to lose contact with her skin. He buried his head in her hair and rocked back and forth, tears squeezing out of his eyes.

"Veronica…oh god, Veronica," it almost sounded like a plea, muffled into Veronica's blonde tresses. "I can't believe, after all of these years I just accidentally found you. I looked for you for so long."

Veronica relaxed into Logan's embrace, giving into the familiarity of his arms and her own longing. She had missed him so much. She was normally ruthless with herself when fond thoughts of Logan crept into her mind, reminding herself that, no matter what he had been to her in the past, he had betrayed her in the worst ways, abandoned her when she needed him most, and she could not go back to him. She couldn't lose her hard won anonymity and her brand new life, separate from the heartache of her past.

That is how Jane, Stacy, Alyssa, and the writer, Morgan, found them when they came through the door a moment later.

"Oh…oh, sorry," Jane spluttered, red faced. "Maybe we should have knocked, or come back later…or something." She was at a complete loss as to what to do, faced with seeing her usually in control boss wrapped in the arms of one of the most famous actors on earth.

Veronica pulled away from Logan and stood up, roughly wiping the tears from her face. "No, Jane, its fine. We need to get started with the shoot." She walked towards her camera equipment without sparing a second glance at Logan.

"No, Veronica, we're not done here," Logan stated, getting to his feet and walking to Veronica.

"Logan, I go by Stuart, now. And we have a lot of work to do if we want to get the perfect shots for this article by tomorrow afternoon," she didn't look directly at Logan while she spoke in a business-like manner.

Logan grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. "Veronica," he grated out in a hushed voice, aware now, as he hadn't been before, of their audience. "I'm not going to lose you again. We have a lot more to talk about, like where you live, what your phone number is, how I can get in touch with you. I…I want you to meet Ethan." He swallowed, losing steam as Veronica stared at him with impassive eyes. "We should have dinner tonight," he shifted his eyes towards Alyssa, his current girlfriend, then looked back down at Veronica. "There's too much I want to tell you, there's just…I can't let this go without some assurance that you're not going to disappear again."

Veronica felt herself softening. It was so tempting to tell Logan not to worry, that she'd never leave him again. She couldn't, though. And she definitely couldn't agree to go to dinner with him alone. Unbidden, her mind brought up the still crisp memory of the last time she had been alone with Logan. She had thought of it often over the years so it had not dulled like so many other memories.

Flashback:

Veronica felt herself roughly being shaken awake. She hadn't slept this deeply in a long time and her mind fought against consciousness.

"Veronica…Veronica! What the fuck are you doing here?" Logan's voice pried its way into her dreams. Finally she was able to flutter her eyes open and focus on Logan's face. She was shocked at what she saw. Logan was sloppy, his clothes in disarray and his hair sticking out in wild tufts. His eyes were blood shot and his skin was pale, as if he hadn't seen the sun in weeks.

"Logan, are you alright?" she asked, concern overtaking any of the more negative feelings she had been harboring for Logan recently.

"Where have you been, Veronica?" Logan completely ignored her questions. Veronica, feeling more awake now, realized that, again, Logan was completely trashed. His words were so slurred it was hard to understand him and he was swaying slightly from foot to foot.

"Where have you been?" he asked again, sounding on the verge of tears.

"Oh, Logan…" Logan's tears always softened Veronica, even if they were sloppy, drunk tears.

Logan cut her off, "I've needed you! Don't you think I deserve some type of explanation? Or do you think I deserve to be left without any idea about what's going on?"

Veronica's eyebrows drew together. It was common for Logan to make absolutely no sense when he was this drunk, but she usually had a few more clues as to what he was talking about.

"That's why I'm here, Logan. We have to talk," Veronica tried to use a calm, reasonable tone.

"No!" Logan shook his head violently, almost falling down as he threw himself off balance. "No! I'm not going to sit here and listen to what an asshole I am when you're the one who hasn't been here for days!"

Veronica was dismayed at Logan's words. Not by his refusal to talk to her but his calculation of the last time they had seen each other. It had been at least three weeks since they had seen each other. Veronica was growing increasingly concerned that Logan's most recent bender was even more severe that she had feared.

"Logan, I think I'm just going to go…" she had been going to say that she was going to go sleep on the couch and wait until he had sobered up some to talk to him. She had been edging towards to the door as she said it. Her words were cut off by a frantic Logan.

"No! You're not just going to leave!" He caught her arm and yanked her back roughly. Veronica looked at him in shock. Logan was always careful not to hurt her, but now, his hand was wrapping painfully tight around her upper arm.

Before she could say anything, Logan had dragged her to him and wrapped her in a tight embrace. Veronica could barely breath as Logan buried his face in her hair and let out a full body sob. She could feel his entire body convulsing with his grief. Wedging her elbows in between their bodies and pulling back slightly, Veronica took Logan's face in her hands.

"Logan, baby, what's happened to you? You're a mess," Veronica sighed, stroking his hair back, trying to tame it and give comfort at the same time.

"I need you, Veronica. I can't…I don't know how to function without you," Logan hiccupped at the end, tears leaking steadily from his eyes.

"You're going to be ok, Logan. We need to clean you up and dry you out, but you're going to be ok," Veronica promised as she smiled tenderly.

"But are we going to be ok?" he choked. "I don't think I can be ok unless we're ok."

"We're going to be ok, Logan. Of course we're going to be ok," Veronica promised. "We have a lot to deal with. You're completely off the rails and I'm avoiding and we're both being the worst versions of ourselves right now. But we're going to be ok."

Logan nodded along with Veronica's words, cupping her face with his hands. Without warning he leaned in and began kissing Veronica. Where his kisses were usually soft and finessed, these kisses were sloppy. He thrust his tongue into Veronica's mouth, sloppily trying to claim her.

"You're not going any where. You're not going to leave me," Logan stated before kissing her again. He moved one hand to the small of her back, pressing her tightly against him. He used his other hand to knead her breast, applying more pressure than was strictly pleasurable.

"Logan…" Veronica tried to protest, but he cut her off with another kiss. Although Veronica was starting to feel uneasy with his obvious level of intoxication, her body began to respond to Logan's closeness, to being in his arms after feeling so alone without him for these past weeks.

Suddenly, Logan laid Veronica across the bed, covering her body with his own. He roughly tugged her shirt over her head and once again attached his lips to hers. Veronica struggled to keep up with Logan's frantic pace, wishing he was being a little more attentive, a little slower, but needing the connection non-the-less. He pulled away to remove his own shirt and pull his jeans and boxers down his hips. He tugged her yoga pants and underwear off of her, cursing when the pants caught on her feet, before eagerly wrapping his lips around one of her nipples.

"Logan," Veronica half moaned, half admonished.

Logan responded by once again plunging his tongue into Veronica's mouth and suddenly thrusting into her. Veronica gasped at the sudden sting brought on by inadequate foreplay and the weeks she had gone without sex. Then she moaned at the familiar feel of Logan stretching her and eliciting pleasure that she had been denied for so long. Logan moved to suck and lick Veronica's neck and Veronica turned her face, stretching her neck to give him better access.

As Veronica turned her head she cam into contact with a bunched up section of comforter. She almost gagged at the sour smell of the sheets that had obviously been the host to several weeks worth of sex and hang over sweats. When she tried to pull her face away, she found that Logan's weight made it impossible to move. She was only able to turn her head so that her nose wasn't directly in the sheets. A dull ache bloomed in Veronicas chest as she realized Logan had been in this bed, their bed, with Hannah and possibly others.

"Logan," Veronica's voice was starting to edge towards panic. She could feel her heart hammering in her chest. It was so unlike Logan to completely disregard her feelings. She knew that he would rather cut out his own tongue rather than cheat on her. He had confided to Veronica the devastation his father's infidelity had caused. She tried to catch Logan's eye, to at least feel more connected to him in the moment. Logan responded by holding her tighter and burying his face further into her hair. As Logan clung to her and she tried desperately to find the comfort and familiarity she needed from the encounter, she heard Logan begin to mumble.

"You think that its ok to do this to me? You think that you can get away with hurting me?" Logan almost sounded like he was crying again. Veronica couldn't imagine what mysterious wrong he was talking about and her mind couldn't seem to rationally sort through the possibilities as Logan began to thrust faster.

"Logan, please," she stuttered out as she felt him drifting further from her.

"Hannah's right about you," Logan lamented, slurring his words. "You never cared about me!" Veronica started to cry at the mention of Hannah. She couldn't deal with him using that little bitch's name while he was inside of her. She couldn't understand how he had gone from begging for assurance that they could survive to bemoaning her treatment of him.

Veronica felt tears trickle fro the corner of her eyes as Logan began thrusting harder, taking up a punishing pace, as he continued to mumble incoherently about Veronica's lack of devotion and Hannah's opinion on the matter. She felt her body responding to Logan even as her heart began to crumble, losing faith in everything she thought she knew. Even with her emotional turmoil, Veronica felt her body twisting tighter and tighter, rushing her towards pleasure.

Her vision whited out as the waves of her orgasm overtook her. She bit her lip to keep from crying out, not wanting Logan to think that she was in any way OK with this situation. Logan didn't pause in his efforts, as he usually did, so Veronica could enjoy the afterglow of her orgasm. Instead he continued pumping furiously into her, his drunken state exponentially increasing his longevity. By the time she felt him pulsing strongly inside of her, his hot sperm spurting as he forced himself even deeper into her body, she was starting to feel raw.

Logan dropped onto her, letting her support his entire weight. Veronica's breath rushed out of her and she had a moment of panic as she struggled to breath. Finally cluing in to her frenzied movements, Logan rolled off of her but drug her into his arms. Veronica was still quietly sobbing and she could feel deep sobs ripping out of Logan's chest as he spooned behind her.

She couldn't wrap her mind around what had just happened, that Logan had accused her of never loving him, had invoked Hannah's name, while desperately loving her body. She didn't know whether to be panicked at Logan's confused state of mind and his inability to follow through with a train of thought or to completely wash her hands of Logan and his erratic behavior. She was worried that she wasn't strong enough to pull Logan out of this abyss and keep herself afloat while taking care of her father.

Currently Logan was sobbing in a way she hadn't seen since his mother died. As angry as she was, she was starting to be really scared that Logan had gone over some kind of edge while she wasn't looking. He seemed to have completely lost control and she couldn't piece together the things he was saying to her in any way that made sense. It sounded almost as if he thought she had left him, which might make sense in his alcohol haze since she hadn't been back to the apartment in such a long time.

She turned in Logan's embrace and cupped his cheek, forcing him to open his eyes and look at her. "Logan," she started gently, but her breath caught at the anger burning in Logan's gaze.

"You don't get to do this, Veronica," he whispered urgently, trying to convey some important message to her. "You don't get to come back here and treat me like this. You have to stay gone."

Veronica felt white hot rage fill her as she took in his words. After what Logan had just done to her, after all of the things he had said, he was accusing her of treating him badly. She huffed in a breath, preparing to lay into him, when she realized that he had passed out, mouth slack and drool starting to pool at the corner of his lip. She scrambled out of his arms and quickly pulled on her pants. She looked at Logan lying sideways across the bed, body completely slack and his legs crossed awkwardly with his jeans and boxers still around ankles. She moved closer and shook his shoulder. His only response was to bonelessly roll over onto his back. She shook him harder, sill not getting a response.

Veronica finally broke down, the hurt, confusion, anger, and a thousand other emotions that she had been attempting to deal with since her world had begun to implode welling up and overtaking her. She sobbed and screamed with impotent rage. She slapped Logan repeatedly on the chest, her slaps eventually turning into blows with her tiny fists. She hit Logan until she collapsed on top of him in exhaustion. His only response to her assault was a few groans and one attempt to bat her hands away.

After Veronica was able to regain control of her breathing, she pushed herself away from Logan and went to the closet were she had last seen her belongings. If Logan didn't want her there, she wasn't going to force him to put up with her. She would be gone before he woke up and he would never have to see her again. She opened the closet and began hauling boxes towards the door. She packed everything she could into her SUV, heaving open-mouthed sobs the entire time. She left anything that she didn't absolutely need behind. That included several of the framed photographs that she had taken over the years for her classes and most of the framed pictures of she and Logan.

She only took two of favorite shots. One showed Veronica and Logan wrapped in each other's arms, asleep on a beach blanket on the sand, snapped by one of their friends shortly after they had reunited senior year of high school. Logan had felt that the shot was creepy and voyeuristic, but Veronica had loved the way their bodies turned into each other, even in sleep. The other picture was of her looking at the camera and smiling brightly while Logan looked down at her. Logan's face was so full of tender love that Veronica felt her heart constrict with some unnamable emotion each time she looked at the photograph. She rubbed her thumb over Logan's face in the picture before she shoved it into one of her bags. She never wanted to forget that someone could love her so much. She looked over her shoulder at the flesh and blood Logan lying on the bed and couldn't believe that he was the same person.

She left and didn't ever go back to the apartment. It wasn't until much later that she realized that Logan hadn't bothered with a condom. She had felt hot shame at the thought that she would have to get tested for STD's since she knew that Logan had been sleeping around. Seconds after that realization, she was hit by a wave of nausea as she realized her both control pills were lying at the bottom of one of the drawers in Logan's bathroom, unused for weeks.

"I wouldn't worry about Stuart disappearing," Veronica's head snapped around at the sound of Jane's jovial voice, obviously trying to make light of the situation and assure their clients that everything was ok. "She would never do anything that would disrupt…"

"She's right, Logan," Veronica cut Jane off quickly and shot her a death glare. "I'm not going anywhere. I promise, if you come back tomorrow, I'll finish up the photo shoot and then we can figure out where to go from here, OK?" Her voice came out gentle and soothing and she was proud that she was able to disguise the hint of panic she had felt as Jane unintentionally tried to divulge one of the secrets that she was determined to keep from Logan.

As painful as her recent memories were, it was still difficult to look at Logan without feeling the pull of her connection to him. She wanted nothing more than to give into him and promise that she'd never leave, but she had more important things to consider now. Logan could not be her priority.

"Veronica, I'm not leaving, today. I'm going to stick around until you're done and we can talk," Logan protested. It was starting to irritate Veronica that he insisted on not only calling her Veronica but repeating it every time he opened his mouth.

"Logan, sweetie," Alyssa said, approaching Logan and cupping his cheek with her hand. The gesture was slightly awkward because Logan was still reaching out to skim the hem of Veronica's shirt with his fingers, unwilling to break contact. "I think it's probably a good idea for you to go back to the hotel and rest. You really don't look so great. You can get some more sleep and then spend the afternoon with Ethan." It was true that Logan was not at peak condition in the moment. It was obvious that he'd been crying, his skin was sickly pale, and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

Logan drew his hand away from Veronica and looked at his girlfriend guiltily. At his shock and joy at seeing Veronica again, he had basically forgotten that Alyssa existed. "Yeah, maybe that's a good idea." His eyes darted back to Veronica again, "But you swear that you're not going to disappear, right?"

Veronica nodded, reaching out to squeeze Logan's hand in a gesture of assurance. Logan nodded once and turned toward the door, too drained to say anything to the other women in the room.

He was stopped by Alyssa's strong grasp on his wrist. He looked back as Alyssa spoke only loud enough for he and Veronica to hear, "We're going to talk about this tonight." Her voice was steely and she didn't glance at Veronica as she spoke.

Logan nodded again and walked towards the door in a daze. It hadn't crossed his mind that he was still going to have to deal with Alyssa. They had only been dating for three months or so and they hadn't delved into each other's complete history yet. Logan had a lot of baggage and he didn't bother to unload on women until he felt that things had progressed to a more serious level. He realized that he hadn't actually reached that level with anyone since he had left Hannah.

Logan paused at the door for one more, long look at Veronica, just to make sure she was real and he hadn't finally gone off the deep end. She looked up at him and gave him a tiny smile before looking back down. Bending over her camera, with her blonde hair falling into her face, she looked so much like she had in college that he almost couldn't breath. With a deep breath and shaking hands, he closed the door and headed towards his hotel and his son. He would take comfort in Ethan today, but he was determined that tomorrow he would nail down Veronica and make sure that he would never be without her in his life again.