PICKING UP HER PIECES: DON'T WANNA BE ALONE
90909
5 years later
90909
You've had the ring for seven weeks. The only real reason you haven't asked her yet is that you still haven't gotten the courage to ask Lamb for her hand.
In the past five years, the man has become the older brother she never had (or wanted), and he's more over-protective of her than you and her father were combined. The irony is that it's really always been like this, you just didn't know it.
Over the past five years, so much has changed.
The Manning's dropped the charges against Duncan in favor of meeting their granddaughter, Lizzie and Grace healed in therapy, and have both become close to your "family". Duncan came back with little Lilly, and she is beautiful. Lizzie started dating Duncan, and Grace started dating Darryl. Gia and Dick never worked out, but they are friends again. He and Mac, however? Yeah.
But the first thing that changed was that Lamb walked in on you and Veronica one night, and since then, he's tried to keep you two from ever being alone together, despite the fact that he was the one to teach you that adage about closing the barn door after the horses escaped. Apparently it doesn't apply to Veronica's sex life (which she isn't allowed to have, according to Lamb… and Alicia… Wallace and Mac just doesn't want to hear about it).
So you've been holding off for the better part of two months, but you've decided that today is the day. You asked Lamb this morning, and his response was something along the lines of him not being able to stop you.
You take her out to the best Italian place you can find within an hour's drive, knowing that she won't suspect a thing. This is the first time you've gone on a date since she started her new job, and she won't be thrown by something extravagant.
And you're right. She doesn't think anything of it, and she has a great time.
She's still confused when the waiter arrives with a little velvet box instead of her food.
You sigh teasingly as you take the box and kneel before her.
That's when it clicks, and you see the tears in her eyes. She is wearing a strapless blue dress that shimmers in the lamplight, and her hair is done in something strange and beautiful that Alicia concocted, and it's just slightly windblown from the drive. Her eyes sparkle with unshed tears and something you can't quite place, but it makes you a little nervous, and you can't tell whether they are bad nerves or good nerves.
"Logan…"
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(Veronica's aside)
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As a little girl, Veronica often dreamed of her wedding day. She would wear white, her mother would cry, and her father would walk her down the aisle. Those were the constants. Who she married changed – from Donald Duck when she was five, to her favorite baseball star as she grew older.
By the time she turned 14, it was Duncan, and she and Lilly had a double wedding. Even after Duncan broke up with her, there was still that hope.
But after Lilly died, and the town turned on her, she stopped thinking about marriage as something beautiful. Her mother disappeared from her future, and she didn't expect there to be an aisle for her father to walk her down.
But she never, not in a million years, expected to have an aisle, but no daddy to give her away.
Even after Logan saved her at the Camelot, and her tentative dreams of marriage were restored, even after her father almost died at the hands of Aaron Echolls, her dreams held two new constants: Logan, and her father.
Secretly, after she took Duncan back the summer before her senior year, she still couldn't see herself marrying him anymore. She tried not to dwell on it too much.
Then her father did die, and this time, no amount of fluids or skin grafts could bring him back, and she refused to think about marriage. It simply hurt way too much.
Which is why, when Logan proposed, she wasn't sure what to say at first.
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The wedding is beautiful. You refuse to let her dwell on the rules of a traditional wedding, who pays for what. You only let Lamb pay for the rehearsal dinner because you knew he needed to feel like he did something for her.
Besides walking her down the aisle while Alicia cried her eyes out in the front row.
You don't let her dwell on what's missing, because, while she's healed from her father's murder, it still hurts you both that he isn't here for this.
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And you marvel at how everything comes together, in the end. Duncan is your best man. Wallace and Dick are the groomsmen, and Mac, her roommate, Parker, and Trina, of all people are the bridesmaids.
You'll never cease to be amazed when you remember how Trina ended up coming through for you, after finding out what happened.
It was on towards the end of the second summer, and she came back, and tracked you down, and when you told her to leave because you didn't need her crap right now, she only stuck her foot in the door and told you that she knew how to cook 35 famous dishes from all over the world, and it would make Veronica more comfortable to have her than a cook she'd never met, and she knew for a fact that neither of you knew the first thing about boiling water.
She'd quit acting and gone to culinary school, and now owned a rather famous bakery in Neptune. She'd even taught Veronica how to cook several dishes, and you'd re-forged your bonds with her over that.
Right now, though, she stands across the aisle from you, dressed in a blue sundress (and not once did she complain that it wasn't her best color) and grinning at you reassuringly.
You? Have the absolute best family in the world.
And then the sound of a soft guitar (Piz, that's the guy's name… Wallace's roommate at Hearst, and he agreed to play at your wedding) turns your attention to the end of the make-shift aisle you've created by lining the chairs up on the sands. On the chairs sit your entire family… the Manning's (even the older ones… you wouldn't call them friends, but they've become something like family to you), Wallace's girlfriend, Lisa, Gia and her fiancé, Mac's parents, Weevil and his family, Alicia and Darryl, several of Veronica's old clients from her PI days(including a sweet woman named Harmony, who's little girl is going to get her head ripped off by Grace if she doesn't stop ogling Darryl like that), and almost every single deputy from the Neptune county sheriff's department.
Lilly is walking down the aisle, throwing blue-dyed flower petals on the ground, and after her – Lamb, escorting the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.
She is dressed in the simplest white sundress, and you, knowing the soft scraps of blue underneath, smile to yourself. She's really going to do this…
She catches your disbelieving look and gives you one of her own that clearly says "Why would you think I was kidding about this?" as she strides gracefully down the aisle to the sound of a soft Spanish guitar.
You say your vows, and kiss the bride, and then, laughing, she pulls the string on her sundress as you shuck your khakis and shirt. The pastor moves out of the way, laughing with you both as you race towards the chilly pacific ocean in your swimsuits.
Behind you, Mac shouts something about the reception being at a nearby Italian place, in order to get the gawking audience to leave and give you some privacy. As the last person leaves, and you hold your new wife in the ocean, Leo comes to the water's edge and clears his throat.
You and Veronica turn.
"Ummm... I didn't figure you guys were gonna make it to the reception, so I figured I'd offer my congratulations now, Sheriff Mars," he says, nodding towards you.
"Echolls... Sheriff Echolls... and thanks, Leo. I'll see you back at the station when I get back?"
He nods.
"Good. Hold down the fort while I'm gone."
She was probably about to say something else, but you pick her up and then dunk her, making even Leo grin awkwardly. You pick her back up, and she spits the water out in your face as you grin at her.
"Hey, you said you wanted to go all in..." you tease her, and her only response is to attack your mouth with enough force to knock you both over.
And you thought she wasn't really going to go through with it. Turns out, the only part you shouldn't have believed was the part about getting back to the reception.
The End