The heavy main office door muffled the words inside, letting out only the most indignant notes of Karen Cook's voice. Marie sighed and smiled at Harry, who was curled into a ball in the small, uncomfortable couch that took up most of Storm's waiting room. The dark wood panels gleamed in the small light of a lamp, casting the warm glow of a dream on the whole scene. The boy blinked at her, sleep pushing around his green eyes.
"You doing alright there, sugar?"
Harry nodded but yawned indulgently. His sky-blue pajamas (complete with clouds) left no doubt as to what he had been doing at home before Karen Cook had chosen to wake him up to drive him here. Under his left arm he clung to Bailey, a pink brachiosaurus with a weakness for broccoli and a tendency to beg for it, which tragically meant Harry himself never got to eat any.
While Storm's decision to leave her babysitting while Karen told her story had carried the sting of dismissiveness, Marie had to admit that she had offered. It had been too tempting to respond when Harry reached for her and wrapped a spontaneous pint-sized hug around her leg. Karen wanted a place for him to wait while she discussed what had brought her here — she'd said little in front of Harry, but Marie had caught the word break-in among other fragments of conversation through the door — and he was too rattled to be left anywhere by himself. At first the plan had been to tuck him into bed in an empty dorm room, but as soon as they were out of the main office Harry spotted the small sofa and decided to make it into a bed.
"You sure you don't want to go to bed?"
Another yawn stretched his features. "I'm not sleepy."
Marie reined in a smile, turning it into a deliberate yawn of her own. "You sure? I am."
Harry smirked, his cheeks puffing adorably. "You're not."
"Am too!" she insisted, letting her smile melt into an even bigger yawn. "See?"
His laughter sounded like water, clear against the muffled rumble of Hank's voice through the walls.
"—anything we can do—"
Harry was listening, too. "When is mommy coming?"
"In a minute, okay? She just needs to talk to the other adults for a bit."
"And then we're going home?"
"I think not tonight, Harry. But you get to sleep in a really cool room." She petted the toy's soft body. "And Bailey can sleep there too. I bet he's pretty sleepy."
He propped himself up on his elbows, hands puffing up his cheeks. "And mommy?"
"Sure, sugar. We can put mommy there with you, too."
That seemed to settle him. Marie put a hand on his head to encourage him to rest it on her lap, and he lay down, tucking his knees into his chest. His hair was fine and silk-soft under her touch, coiling around her fingers as if he was the one stroking her. Hank's booming vowels streamed through, but all the consonants in between were lost; the vaguely regretful tone in his voice was the clearest thing she made out. It didn't matter anyway, she realized: the important discussion was about how to respond. That conversation would happen once Karen and Harry both went to sleep, and that was the room she needed to be in.
The voice that came from the entrance took her by surprise. "They done yet?"
She tried not to turn too suddenly, swallowing the sharp intake of breath that her body had betrayed her with. Logan was standing in the hallway, looking at her. It was impossible to hear him coming unless he was deliberately announcing himself.
Her throat went dry. "I don't think so."
There was a chair across the room, but he unceremoniously took the space next to her on the too-small couch, lifting Harry's ankles onto his lap as if he did it every night. Harry shifted, unconcerned, and turned on his side. Logan dropped into himself, long legs sticking out awkwardly in the cramped space.
"Ya gettin' sleepy, kid?"
Marie almost answered before she realized he was talking to Harry, who shook his head in her lap. "I don't want to sleep."
Logan's chest rumbled. "Fair enough." He squeezed the boy's foot. "You make sure you keep your eyes open, then. Don't close 'em."
"I won't," Harry said, but already his voice seemed dimmer.
"Good."
There were no more words except what filtered through the walls. Logan stared ahead blankly, his hands moving gently over Harry's feet. His feet were bare, his hair mussed. The fabric of his white shirt was thin enough to show ridges of muscle if Marie looked closely. She tried not to.
"Eyes open, yeah?"
Harry stirred and hummed his agreement.
When Logan was near her emotions tended to give ensemble performances, desire and anger locked in long pas de deux while longing and resentment twirled around them, their pirouettes all poorly timed. It was still muscle memory, even after three years, to slow her steps when he was near, to find the seat next to his. Fighting the pull of his orbit left her exhausted.
"You keep those eyes open, kid," he said softly, but Harry didn't respond.
All week, every interaction between them had been painfully awkward. Whatever roles they had had in each other's lives before didn't suit them anymore, and writing new ones seemed like an awful lot of trouble. She had spent the last three years convincing herself that their chance meeting in Alberta had been a freak coincidence, rather than the prophecy she had always taken it for. It was much harder to believe that in his presence, even if all he did was sit unreasonably close to her and say nothing.
"He's asleep," Logan said.
She looked down, surprised. Harry's chest rose and lowered evenly, and his eyes were closed.
"You're right," she whispered.
"Want me to take him to a room?"
"Do you think he'll wake up?"
Logan shook his head. "Doubt it." He moved from under Harry's feet and stood up in front of her, bending down. "Here. Let me take him."
Suddenly there was a warm, large hand on Marie's thigh. She looked down to see Logan wedging his hand under Harry's head. He scooped the boy into his arms without so much as a look at her, and the place where his hand had touched her burned over her clothes. Marie followed him with a glance towards the main office, where voices still pulsed.
The sounds of the mansion's deep-settled floorboards rippled from their feet as they waded through the dark. In the east wing Logan let her take the lead, and she showed him an empty room where a small lamp was still on, warming yellow walls and two empty bunk beds. Marie pulled the covers off one side and sat on the unused bunk as Harry was lowered to the bed and twitched awake.
"Mr. Logan?"
"It's bedtime, buddy. You go on back to sleep."
"Where's mommy?"
"She's comin' right behind us," Logan said. "And I'll stay here until she does."
"And Ms—"
"Ms. Rogue's gonna stay too. Don't you worry."
Marie huffed quietly while Logan pulled the covers around Harry, tucking them under him. The child turned his face towards the wall and gave a satisfied little hum when Logan's fingers tangled in his brown hair. They sat quietly for several minutes, waiting for him to fall asleep. Only when his breathing seemed to even did she whisper across the empty space.
"Is he asleep?"
"Yeah."
"Do you know what happened?"
He rose slowly, careful of not waking Harry, and crossed the short space to half-lie next to her, squeezing his height under the top bunk. The lamp on the nightstand cast an ampersand of yellow on the walls and a half light on the lower bunks that diluted into darkness under the upper beds. It felt strange to be so close to him in the dark, even if she remembered a time when it had been easy, almost natural.
"'Bout as well as you do. She told me and Hank that she was looking for a safe place to stay, but she didn't want to say why in front of the kid. Pretty clear something went down at home."
"What do you think happened at their house? A burglary?"
He gave a skeptical grunt. "Somehow I don't think so."
It was the same calculation that she had done herself. Karen Cook lived in a quiet suburb where any kind of violence would have been completely uncharacteristic — for humans, at least. "This is what she was afraid of," she muttered. "That he'd end up targeted for being a mutant." Marie turned towards Logan, not bothering with stoicism. "He's safe here, right?"
"'Course he is."
As she looked at him Marie felt herself shrink, youth springing again as she took in the strong line of his jaw and the wide span of his shoulders. The tide of memory swelled and she remembered being in that train with him; how small she'd felt tucked into his body, how perfectly safe. Logan had always been safety to her.
"I think she was worried about him," she said, thinking of Karen's expression when she came out of the meeting with Storm and told her enrollment had been denied. "She told me he was too young to hide that he's a mutant."
He leaned forward, all the dim light of the room seemed to fall on his hazel eyes at once. "Storm told me we couldn't take him. That's shitty."
"I know." She felt herself wither, discouraged again by the conversations of that afternoon. Her plan in returning to this place had been to help, but that idea seemed so much more difficult to implement than to imagine. "It didn't even occur to me that we didn't take kids that age." She clicked her tongue, annoyed at herself. "I should never have gotten their hopes up."
"That ain't your fault, kid. 'Course you wanted to help. Anybody who got one look at this kid would have done the same."
Across the room, the skin on Harry's face was perfectly smooth, a blank canvas for smiles. "He's so sweet."
"He got you good, didn't he?"
"It's weird," she said, not daring to look at him. Not at the same time as he touched her skin to skin, her hand nested in his. "It's like I took one look at him and I knew he was… mine."
"Yeah."
"I can't imagine anything happening to him, you know? It's like my heart gets all tight in my chest."
"Or so big you can't breathe."
Without warning his hand closed around hers in the dark, the fit as perfect as ever. Time always slowed when he touched her. Her pulse always quickened.
"He's safe. Alright? I promise."
She'd sworn to herself that she would never accept another promise from Logan, but all she felt now was relief. Marie let her head tilt back and closed her eyes, unsure how to look at him when for so long she had tried not to.
So much had happened and yet it was almost enough to sit here in silence, her hand in Logan's as they listened to Harry's breath fill the room, soothed and soothing. It was so much easier than stoking her anger as she did everyday, careful not to let it fizzle each time she looked into his eyes and saw that old love there, sure as the earth.
But then he stood up abruptly and told her he could hear something. The light in the room seemed brighter all of a sudden. Logan stayed with Harry so Marie could go check on the others, and on her way to the main office she found Karen tumbling out of the west wing with her eyes still red, asking about her son. Trailing her were Storm and Hank, who gently took the woman's elbow and guided her to the room Marie described.
Marie followed Storm back to the main office, where they both took seats while waiting for the men.
"She saw someone try to break in," Storm explained. "Through the window, when she got up at night for water. The boy doesn't know."
"What does try mean?"
"Two men walking across her lawn to the back entrance. She turned a light on and they ran back out."
Marie bit her lip, rocking her weight between her feet. "Did she see what they looked like? Did she see anything?"
"She did, actually. She says she got a license plate."
"You don't think it could be—"
"I already checked." Storm nodded. "The same one from the break-ins."
Marie looked at her, wide-eyed. "But that means—"
"We've discussed this, Rogue. We can't take risks with the cure."
"But Storm, we have to do something. We have to investigate, we can't just…" She trailed off, her voice too slow for her thoughts. They had pursued an investigation that was mostly based on digital transactions, but for something this serious, there had to be more. They needed to track down an address for the license plate. They needed to go there, whatever it took. They needed to keep Harry safe.
"Logan will do it," Marie said confidently, the light she'd seen in his eyes in Harry's room still casting a warm glow over her hopes. "He'll go after them." The choice was only logical: Logan was more than likely immune to the cure. The predator's stealth was his natural modus operandi. And he cared; he'd shown her that.
Her certainty suddenly folded over itself and became doubt — why had something so obvious not been suggested yet?
Storm's furrowed features suggested an answer. "Rogue… Honey, there's something Logan should have told you already."
The kitchen was quiet. Everybody else was still downstairs, talking through what had happened. It worked for Logan; inside his head the night swirled like a cloud of cheap whiskey, and he didn't need any new thoughts to make sense of.
He still wasn't sure what to make of the whole mess with the Cooks, but whatever had happened, it wasn't good. The little boy's face came to him, the pink dinosaur a buoy in his hand. Logan told himself it was that sweet face of his that made him want to go find him downstairs, not the fact that he knew Marie would be there with him. But he didn't believe it. Like any other brainless creature he was drawn to the brightest light in the room, and that was always Marie.
Logan sighed and eyed the bar cart, figuring a nice aged bourbon might help settle him. He touched the bottles like they were fruit, reading the labels like they mattered. Going into that bedroom with her hadn't been a good idea, but then most of his ideas weren't. He'd held her hand, for fuck's sake. And she'd let him. For the first time since she'd been back, she'd actually let him get close.
He twisted the cap off a bottle and poured himself a glass. The sound of liquid trickling soothed him: the bottom of a bottle was Logan's happy place. Sitting down at the island, he spun the drunk between his hands.
Something had felt off about those last three years. The role he'd found for himself in the mansion fit about as well as a drugstore costume. He was always getting ready to leave, but every time he tried the current just brought him back. He'd felt as if he was waiting for something, drinking the intermission away before the next act of his life finally started.
When Marie came back it was like someone lit a match in the dark: the light was small and wavering, but it touched everything. Logan had been restless since then, and he figured out why until just now, in Harry's bedroom. That's when it clicked, why everything had felt so unreal for so long.
It'd been her, before. It'd been her to tell him who he was. It'd been her on that train, seventeen and craving love so bad that even his would do. The team and the school might have given him a rudder, but Marie had been north itself, the reference by which he decided what to strive for. All the way back in Alberta she'd seen something good in him, and then for the next few years she'd believed that something into existence.
Maybe it was a second chance, this Harry thing. Maybe when she looked at him with those big brown eyes in that bedroom, he'd realized that she might be the one to bring him back again.
His glass was either half full or half empty when she came to the door, in the half-shadow cast into the hallway, and stopped like she wasn't sure whether to come in or not. She was dressed for bed already, brown hair up in a bun and a white satin nightgown held up by flimsy straps. Logan gave a nod, glad that she wasn't avoiding him anymore.
"How's the kid doin'?"
"He's asleep."
"They gonna stay the night?"
"Yup."
"Listen, if you need anything with him tomorrow—"
"Nope."
He should have noticed it sooner, that was true. Should have noticed the tension around her lips and the minuscule twitch under her eyelid. Most of all, he should have noticed the scent. He sure knew it for what he was.
"You're mad at me," he said.
She finally walked into the room, shoulders spread wide and chin up. There were women who looked cute when they were angry. Marie just looked fucking fierce. Took in the scene with a glance, lingering on the open bottle and the discarded seal next to it. Her lip twitched.
"I'm just trying to pay more attention to the things you do than the things you say." Consciously or not, her feet spread in a fighting stance. "For once in my life," she added, voice sagging a little from all the subtext.
So they were back to this dynamic. Had he imagined the conversation earlier? Logan kicked himself for being a fool and leaned forward a little, closing himself off. "I'm just trying to help, kid."
"I'm not a fucking kid. Okay? And he's fine. We're fine."
"Sure sounds like the kinda thing a person says when they're fine," he scoffed.
"What do you care, anyway?"
He clicked his tongue. "Can you tell me what the fuck is going on here? Cause I was just with you downstairs, and I—"
"You quit the team, Logan," she snapped. "You quit the team and now you're trying to quit the school, and you're going around promising people everything's gonna be okay?"
The whole room rattled, or maybe just his head. That match that had been burning since she'd come back finally burned itself out. Who was he kidding, anyway? There wasn't gonna be another chance. God knew he'd wasted enough of those.
Logan reached for the bottle and poured another one, draining it before stating the obvious. "Storm told you."
"Finally someone respected me enough to let me know." She shook her head, glossy hair sweeping her proud shoulders. "You know, I actually thought that maybe you were all out of ways to disappoint me."
"I meant what I said to you," he mumbled. "I'm not gonna let anything happen to him."
"Something's already happened to him, Logan. Something we could have stopped, if we had gone after these break-ins in the first place."
"Gone after what? Warren's ain't even got an address yet."
"Oh right, so you're a big believer in sig int now?" she mocked, hands on her hips. "The famous Wolverine MO: sit tight and wait for intelligence, right? God forbid you just march out the goddamn door and brute-force your way out of a problem."
That sure hit the bull's eye. Logan looked down at his drink. "He's safe now," he mumbled, more to his whiskey than to her.
"And what are they supposed to do? Just leave him here?"
"That's what the mom wanted in the first place, ain't it?" he barked.
"But this is different. Now he's in exile," she said, an eyebrow arched. "And what about Karen? Is she supposed to live here too? Wear a wig when she needs to go out?"
She stared at him like she expected an answer, although they both knew he had none. His whiskey burned its way down, soothing the itch of inadequacy. The hero suit had always been too small, too stiff. It had always chafed.
"What do you want from me, Marie?"
"You know what? Nothing," she hissed, her anger big enough to fill the room even when her voice didn't. "Nothing. I want you to stop promising things. I want you to stop looking me in the eye and telling me it's gonna be okay. I want you to stop making me feel like there's ever gonna be anything other than nothing."
From this distance, with her still standing on the other side of the room, Marie's eyes looked almost black, dark as a forest and just as easy to get lost in. But Logan knew that up close you could see the light-brown freckles on the iris, the places where it was dappled with subtle contrast. Everything changed when you looked close enough. Everything turned out to be more complicated than it seemed.
Logan poured another drink. He could walk away. He could go into his room. He could go to sleep, dream about her skin under his hands, and then wake up in a fucking sweat. Sure wouldn't be the first time.
Instead he took a lazy sip of whiskey and raised his head, letting the tension rise with the smell of alcohol and regret. "You saw the light on in here, Marie. You knew it was me. You came in anyway."
She frowned. "So?"
"So you wanted to talk. Right?" he said dangerously, tossing back the rest of his drink while she watched. "Well, let's talk then. But let's talk for real. Let's talk about shit that matters."
"Right, so Harry doesn't matter."
"This ain't got nothing to do with Harry," he yelled, banging his glass down, "and you know that." He let the echo of his voice die down, and added, "This is about you and me, Marie."
They looked at each other, the dare smoldering between them. Fuck it, then. Let her bring it on.
To his surprise, instead of screaming she half-collapsed on the seat across from him. "If you wanted to have this conversation," she said, reaching for his glass without asking, "I'll let you know you're three years too late."
The intimacy of her gesture pierced his guard, a stubborn desert flower. Logan sighed and ran a hand through his head, finding it hard to get himself angry.
"I've given you more than nothing, Marie," he said quietly, looking at the granite under their hands. "I'm the first to admit that what I've done to be proud of in this life ain't a long list, but up top of that list is you."
She sipped his whiskey, the shadow of the girl overlaying the woman's features, and shook her head. "I know that. That's not what I meant."
"Then what?"
"It doesn't matter."
"If it doesn't matter, three years is a damn long time to be mad about it."
Marie reached for the bottle and looked at the label for a moment before setting it back and looking away. Out in the hallway, Hank's heavy steps went up to his room. Then the door opened and closed. Logan figured they must be avoiding the kitchen and the darkened living room adjacent to it, where the light overflowed into long shadows.
"I can't believe you didn't tell me you quit," she said finally.
"And when was I supposed to say that? One of those times you are your dinner in five minutes so you had time to smoke outside before I got there?" He stared, watching for a reaction.
"What did you think? That I was gonna come back and pick up where we left off?"
He swallowed dry. "We were friends first, kid."
But Marie just laughed. "No, we weren't friends. We were weird, is what we were, and that's always been the problem." Her gaze was lost somewhere near the empty fireplace in the next room. "I never know with you. I never know where I stand. Let alone where you do. The minute I think I figured it out…" She chuckled, but kept the punchline to herself.
He took the glass from her, their fingers brushing in the process. "Look, it's been— Shit's been complicated, alright?"
"I'm sure."
"All of this, the team, and… me not coming back that summer…" Between his palms, the whiskey swirled. "There's reasons, kid."
"I'm sure there are," she whispered, reaching again to take the glass back. She drank more this time, grimacing a little as she swallowed. "Probably good ones, even." The glass got set in front of him. "There was a time when I really wanted to know what they were."
"Right, so—"
Only then did she look at him. "It's too bad I don't care anymore."
Embarrassment clinged to him, damp and mucky, and Logan realized he was tired. Tired of walking on eggshells ever since she'd come back. Tired of blending into the walls so she didn't have to look at him. Tired of letting her treat him like everything they'd gone through together since they'd met had been a lie. No, worse. Like it'd all been a joke.
Anger was easier than this. He knew anger. He was damn good at it.
"If you wanted to know so bad, you wanna tell me why you left?"
"I left?" Her eyebrows went up by her hairline. "Is that how you teach history? You just rewrite the parts you don't like?"
"Oh, so you didn't leave, then?"
"My grandmother died!"
"I'm not talking about that," he spat. Marie's grandmother had been the love of her life, and the minute she'd gotten off the phone, he'd canceled their dinner reservations and sent her off to pack a bag. Everything else could wait; cancer wouldn't. "No, after. When I wasn't here."
A strand of white hair slid off her bun and hung over her face. "Oh, right," she said, her face stretching into recognition. "Of course."
"Of course what?"
"You wanted me to sit around waiting, right?"
He stood up, impatient. "Fuck this."
"Like I did for years! Right? You wanted me to stick around," she accused, her nose wrinkling like she tasted something bitter. She stood up to match him. "You wanted me close on the backburner, keeping warm for when you finally felt like fucking me."
Logan was pacing, but he stopped. "Girl," he started, his voice smoldering from something that wasn't just anger anymore, "you're crazier than I figured if you really think the problem was ever me not wanting to fuck you."
Her face soured, but her smell sweetened. All he had to do was move across the room and yank the straps of her nightgown over her shoulders, latch his mouth to tease her nipples while his hands mapped every curve on her. He'd put her up on the counter, work her neck and her tits till she was writhing for him, till her panties were left a trail of wet when he dragged them down to her ankles. That's when he'd kneel between her spread legs and taste something that'd been making his mouth water ever since the first time he'd seen her.
Fuck.
Marie flicked her hair. "Am I supposed to take that as some kind of compliment? You're not exactly known for your discernment when it comes to sleeping with women."
"Then what do you think it says that I didn't? Cause you sure made it clear I was welcome to."
"That's fucking presumptuous."
"It's fucking true, is what it is." He stepped as close as he could with the island between them and lowered his voice. "You think I couldn't smell you on those shirts you borrowed? You think I don't know what you did in them?" She blushed, and he moved in for the kill. "You think it didn't get me hard to smell it?"
He tucked his thumb behind his belt buckle, wanting her to look. The one fucking thing he had going for him was that he knew his goddamn way around a woman, and he wanted her to know that. Wanted her to know he'd make her feel good. God knew he'd never make her happy, but he was pretty sure he could make her come.
Marie caught herself, still fuming, in her little nightgown with the cleavage and the straps and the tiny panties he couldn't stop imagining. She shook her hair. "So now I'm good enough again, right?"
"The fuck's that supposed to mean?"
Marie held up two pale hands. "Harmless."
He frowned. "What?"
"Come on, Logan. I mean, the cure stopped working, right? Right around that time you fell off the map. Am I supposed to think that was a coincidence?"
Out of all the reasons to hate him, she'd fucking picked the wrong one? "That's what you think?" he thundered, walking around the island. "That's what you been thinkin' all these years, that I didn't come back because the cure stopped working?"
"I don't even blame you for that. I mean, I get that part. It wasn't gonna work."
It made him angry to hear that, a righteous anger that felt a hell of a lot like arousal. It felt like a door opening, one he hadn't realized he'd been barricading for years. It hadn't been enough, predictably. Logan was pissed.
"So first you think I don't want you, then you tell yourself your skin was gonna keep me from havin' ya?" His voice was scraping the bottom of his range, which was saying something. "I don't know what you got used to with Bobby, but I'm a fucking man, girl."
Marie said nothing, but fuck if she was gonna get away with that. He got even closer, till she was backed into the island. Logan set one arm on each side of her, boxing her in. Her brown hair was streaked with white all over from the way it had fallen around her face, her eyes were shiny from those sips of whiskey she'd been swiping, and her nose flared rhythmically as she stared at him. The smell of her was driving him insane.
"You really fucking think that was about your skin?"
"I told you, I don't care why you didn't come back!" She stuck her chin up at him. "You didn't even need a reason, did you? You always had a foot out the door, Logan, just like you still do now. If I'm asking anything, I'd ask why you're here."
"Because nobody else is!" he roared, making her flinch. That sobered him a little. He pulled back, not trusting himself to be so close to her. "All of you," he said, straining to keep his voice down, "Bobby, Kitty, Peter, everybody fucking bailed. It was me and Ro left here, putting this school back together. You think I got a foot out the door? Well, the rest of my body's been right here as far as I can tell," he hissed. "That's more than I can say for you."
She held his eyes. "Well, I'm here now."
It wasn't enough. "And where the hell were you a month ago? A year ago? Three years ago? Wasn't here, I'll tell you that much, and how I know it is because I was." He ran a hand through his hair, turning away from her. Was this fair? Did he care? "You went to Los Angeles on a fucking temper tantrum, and I never heard from you again. Probably hated it, too, like I knew you would. And you tellin' me you didn't bail?"
"I moved on. There's a difference."
"And what was it you moved on from? Cause I thought we had something. I thought we were something to each other. Even if it wasn't what you wanted it to be." He reached for the bottle, not bothering with a glass, and tried not to think about her pinned under him on the mat. "That what you moved on from?"
"It's not that simple, Logan."
"Damn right, it ain't." He set the bottle down. The flash flood of his rage continued swelling, washing down all the things he'd managed not to say for years. "You've been going around this place all butt-hurt cause you got back from Pass Christian and didn't find me, but let me tell you something, I got back and I didn't find you either." He looked at her. "And yeah, I shoulda been here. I shoulda answered the fucking phone. But when Storm called and I didn't answer, she tracked me down to fucking Yukon to ask why."
Logan still remembered the shitty motel she'd found him in. He'd been lying on a dirty mattress, coming off his last high. Hearing the knock on the door felt better than the drugs, better than the dreams. He still wondered, sometimes, if Storm had noticed his disappointment when he found her standing there instead of Marie.
She was watching him, silent now, small in front of the past.
"You, though?" he continued, pointing at her. "You assumed everything I did for you all those years was me lookin' to get my dick wet."
He picked the bottle and headed to the door, exhausted all of a sudden. The flood was dying down inside him, leaving behind debris and sadness. He'd regret this in the morning. He regretted it already.
Another swig of the bottle. "So let me tell you something, girl, maybe I ain't the person you thought I was." Logan threw one last look at her. "But you ain't who I thought, either."
A.N.: Argh, this chapter has been up for a bit on AO3 and I had forgotten to post it here! Chapter 4 is coming in about 2 weeks. Enjoy! :)
