Chapter 2

Logan

I must have dozed off with my cheek resting against Veronica's head, because I jerk awake when I hear her crying. It takes me a second before I realize she's still sleeping. Should I let her get her rest, or— No, I can't stand the idea of leaving her with whatever's making her sob like that, so I shake her gently, ignoring the tingles where my arm's gone to sleep under her weight.

"Hey, up and at 'em, Killer. You're dreaming."

"Logan?" She jerks to sitting, running her hands over my throat, my face, my hair. Her hands are more coordinated than they were, so maybe some of the drugs are leaving her system. "You're okay!"

"Uh, yeah?" I try to shake off the grogginess. "I mean, I usually shoot for adjectives like amazing or unforgettable, but okay will do in a pinch."

Her eyes brim with fresh tears. "Aaron came back, and he hurt you, and shaved your head."

"No," I murmur, realizing she's more out of it than I thought. "Hey, no. No one hurt me. See?" I catch her hand and raise it to run it over my mussed hair. "I'm still in my original, pristine condition."

She flings her arms around my neck and hugs me tight, shaking a little bit.

"But this isn't terrible," I admit, patting her back. "I feel very comforted."

She snorts, the laugh getting all caught up in her clogged nose so she chokes and has to pull away, coughing.

"Clearly, my flirtatious efforts need some work." I grab her the box of tissues. "Usually, the effects aren't quite so mucus-adjacent."

She laughs into her tissue, blowing her nose with a loud honk. Then stops abruptly.

"Mac, where's Mac? He knows how to get into Parker's room, he knows I'm friends with Mac, what if he went after her?"

"I thought the same thing. She and Parker are staying in my suite at the Grand tonight. Dick's with them and he's got a gun."

She lets out a breath, sags, then stiffens again. "Dick? How is Dick any kind of backup?"

"I get he's not the most serious guy, but he's a dead-on shot, and I made Mac promise to keep him sober tonight." I suspect that Dick would do just about anything for his dead brother's adorable ex-girlfriend, but I don't say it out loud, because I don't think Mac would appreciate me noticing.

Veronica nods, and then her eyes cross slightly and she sags back against my arm.

"Veronica?"

She hiccups. "Tired. Don't feel good." She forces her lids back up but her eyes roam, unfocused. She reaches for my face and the end of her fingers pokes me in the chin. I catch her hand and hold it against my skin. She takes a small breath and relaxes. "Don't hurt," she mumbles, but I can't tell what she meant.

I lower her hand and tuck it in against her belly, shifting her so her neck isn't lying at such a sharp angle. In the soft light filtering through the door curtain, her skin looks flawless. Like she's never been bruised or scratched or so much as taken outside.

Somewhere out there, the rapist is still running around free. Maybe—though I would never say this to Veronica—finding another girl to take out his frustration on. My knuckles prickle and I clench my hand closed to soothe its restlessness. When Veronica finds that guy—and she will—I will beat every last tooth out of his head. And his hands. I'll break his hands that touched her hair tonight, that lifted those clippers to her skull. That dropped the drugs in her drink that have her writhing in my lap with nightmares.

If I thought there was any PI who could find the rapist faster than Veronica, I would have hired him weeks ago. As soon as she wakes up, she'll be after him again. Out there alone with no backup, a thousand moments a day when he could snatch her and do whatever he likes to her for hours or days until her dad and I could track her down again. She works in a library, for Christ's sake. They practically invented dark corners. How many horror movies have been filmed in a library?

I squeeze my eyes shut and stroke Veronica's shoulder, trying to soothe both of us. I don't know whose nightmares are darker.

#

The next time she wakes up, I'm already awake, sitting with a dry tongue and a throat that aches for a drink.

"Logan? What are you doing here?"

I don't think she remembers the last few times she woke up. Or maybe they're all just jumbled together in her hazy mind right now.

"You asked me to stay. You've been drugged," I say, the simplest explanation of everything that's happened. "But nothing happened to you. I've been here the whole time, I promise. Are you thirsty? Hungry?"

Her eyes are sunken into her head with dark circles and she presses her lips together, her lids flicking down. She looks frightened.

"What is it? What's wrong?" My pulse speeds.

"Nothing. Just a dream." She swallows. "I dreamed the Hearst rapist got ahold of you and I could see him kicking you and you kept trying to get up. He kept kicking you and kicking you, and alarms were going off all over the place, but no one would come. You kept calling and calling me and I tried to pick up my phone but none of the buttons worked." A tear slides down her face. "I knew if I could just answer the phone, he'd have to stop and he couldn't hurt you anymore. But I didn't."

"Ah, Veronica…" I exhale, not sure what to say. I tuck her face into her favorite spot in the crook of my neck and hold her. "Just a dream. Nobody hurt me. I would pay cash money for the chance to go toe to toe with the Hearst rapist, and if I did, I promise it wouldn't be me on the ground."

She hugs me so tight it hurts a little, and my heart gives a big, hopeful thump.

"Logan, I'm sorry," she whispers to my neck. "I love you so much."

I can't breathe. I can't see. How the fuck cruel is the world that the first time she says those words out loud she's drugged out of her mind?

I rub her back with a shaking hand. "I love you, too. Don't be sorry, sweetheart. You've got nothing to be sorry for."

"I'm going to call you back. I just have to catch this guy before he hurts anyone and you won't let me. You won't let me catch him."

I can't tell if she's in her dream world or the real world, but her words kind of apply either way. I wonder if she'll remember this.

"I can help you," I press. "I don't want him to hurt anybody, either."

"Yes, but if you're there when I catch him, you'll beat him up, you'll end up in prison," she mumbled, her words all running together. "I have to do it myself. But I want to call you back. I miss you."

"It's okay, I understand. Everything's okay." I don't want her worrying about me, of all things, tonight when she's such a mess. Why does she keep dreaming about me being hurt, when she's the one who got attacked?

"You're not mad at me?" She pulls back to peer up at me with long, tear-wet lashes. She looks like a Disney princess, albeit one with smeared eyeliner running down her cheeks. I brush away the black marks with my thumb.

"No, I'm not mad at you."

"Don't tell my dad. He's going to be so mad."

"He's not mad at you. No one's mad at you. Just get some rest, sweetheart. You've had a long night."

My legs are asleep, and I need to piss something fierce, but I wouldn't kick her off my lap right now unless my kidneys exploded.

"I don't feel good." She hiccups, muffles a small burp into her hand.

"You feeling sick? There's a trash can right behind you."

"No. Maybe? Ugh. Can you rub my back, the way you did when I had the flu and we watched the Fast and the Furious like fourteen times?" She flips over on my lap with a little groan, stretching out her legs and pulling over a pillow to rest her head on.

"Don't forget Hit and Run." I smirk. It's so fucking cute the way that Veronica's comfort food is car chases, even though she could care less about action movies the rest of the time.

I flip her hair away from her neck and start massaging the base of her neck, one hand holding her steady at the small of her back, the way she likes. She gives a little huff and groan.

"How do you always know how to do that exactly right?"

"Rich Boy School. We all know the sick girlfriend backrub."

She snorts. "Right."

Her stomach clenches against my leg and then she jolts forward, clawing her way toward the trash can. The movement carries her over the edge of the couch and I catch her just before she hits the floor, then slide down next to her so she can clutch the trash can and retch, horribly.

When she curls back into my lap, shuddering, I lift her and carry her to the bathroom. Just in time, as it turns out. After the second round of puking, I rinse out her hair and finger-comb the wet strands back into a slightly crooked ponytail. She pats at it with a hand and almost laughs at how lumpy it probably feels, then clutches her stomach.

"Don't quit your day job, Echolls."

"Yeah, well, they don't teach everything at Rich Boy School. Gonna have to just deal, Mars."

She eyes me, quiet with both of us on the floor in the shadowy bathroom, then nods. It's a strange look, but her stomach revolts again before I can sort out what all it might mean.

Her arms start to go weak sometime in the middle of this third round—probably dehydration or some kind of let down off the drugs. They're shaking too hard to hold up her weight, so instead of risking her face-planting into porcelain, I wrap myself around her and hold her up while she gets sick, over and over again. The sound wrenches at me and I hate not being able to do anything for her. Keith comes in and out, cleaning up the trash can from the living room and bringing a wet cloth for her face, then ice water with a straw.

When he brings a measuring cup with a bit of hot gravy in the bottom and a spoon, I think I might have to fight Veronica for barfing privileges next.

"It's the only thing she can keep down, once she's been sick," he says to me. "Don't look at me like that."

He was right, disgustingly enough. She eats all the gravy and then curls like a very small cat on the floor, her clammy forehead on the knee of my jeans, and the rest of her pressed against the cool tiles.

"You ready to go back to the couch?" I asked her, smoothing her wonky ponytail.

"Not yet. Feels better in here."

I stroke her arm and let my ass go numb on the hard tile for an hour more before I figure it's safe to take her back to the living room. Keith's dosing in my old chair by the time I get there, but he doesn't seem to mind when she sprawls back on the couch with me, her head on one arm and her feet in my lap.

She goes back to sleep almost immediately, and Keith just watches her. My eyelids are starting to droop by the time he speaks.

"You made her laugh. I heard her, from my bedroom."

I don't know what to say to that. "Yeah, well, laughter's the best medicine?"

"I know we've had our ups and downs, me and you. But I hope you know I appreciate how hard you've always tried to keep her safe. And—" Keith clears his throat. "I'm glad she has someone who knows her so well. Veronica doesn't always let people know her, since her mom, well, left."

I tug down the cuff of her jeans, toying with the edge of her sock. "I know the feeling."

We don't speak again, but he doesn't go back to his room, and somehow I get the idea he's sitting with me as much as he is with her.

#

When I wake again, it's in the watery gray light of dawn, and Veronica's toes are wiggling in my lap. A quick check reveals Keith in the armchair, his mouth open and emitting the occasional snore.

She rubs a fist over her eyes and exhales.

"I feel like crap. Might go back to sleep for a bit. Will you stay? I don't feel like being alone."

"Eh. I'll have my secretary clear my morning."

She flips around on the couch, crawling under the tunnel of the blanket and settling back into my lap. I wonder if she'll remember telling me she loved me.

I slide my hand into her hair, my fingers covering the fresh fuzz of hair already growing in the bald spot, and pray she finds that son of a bitch soon. So I can beat every hour of last night into his face.

She lifts her head and smiles at me, a little lopsided. "Thanks. For coming to get me. And…last night."

I tuck her closer into my side. "Always." And I wonder if she knows how very much I mean that.

Author's Note: If y'all haven't checked out Outer Banks on Netflix yet, you need to. It's the kind of close knit band of teens solving a mystery that Veronica Mars fans would love. Also, one of the characters is a dead-on bullseye to my heart for fans of Logan. If that's not enough for you, I'm writing tons of fic for that fandom right now and I want all my favorite lovelies from here to come on over and read it! *throws flowers and chocolate and hugs to all of you bc you're my favorites *