Marie rolled to a stop in a Dairy Queen parking lot on the outskirts of a dusty town. Curbs were more a suggestion than a demarcation between the street and the unevenly cracked sidewalks.
Parked half in and half out of the shade of the building, she squinted against the glare of hot sunshine laddered across the windshield from overhanging tree limbs. At least the layer of bugs had acted as a filter of sorts. The glass, however, was now squeaky clean. Logan had taken care of that for her. He'd taken rather a lot else, too.
She didn't regret it. Not really. What was squeezing all the air from her lungs and churning her stomach into a sick-making knot was the fact that Logan was forever out of reach. It was lunacy to get attached to a human; they tended to freak once the truth was discovered.
She could have told him. She could have told him at the outset and avoided the heartache now churning its way through her with a miserable ache. He seemed like a decent guy and he might have agreed to help her anyway. Sometimes people did that sort of thing for those unlike them. But he certainly wouldn't have touched her.
And the way he'd touched her… it was hard to think of anything else. Images from last night ran in a constant slideshow in the back of her mind.
She'd expected it to hurt, but it hadn't. Not in the slightest. His hands sliding over her body, his mouth on her breasts, he'd skillfully tipped her over the edge of her inexperience in a delirium of sensation. Wonderfully attentive and keenly attuned to her every response, he had let her explore him and satisfy her curiosity; had shown her things that made her blush just to think about. With her hands tangled in his thick dark hair, she'd flown away on a starburst of the most exquisite pleasure imaginable.
Lacking any sort of framework in which to make judgments, she still knew without a doubt that she had pleased him. Watching the beautiful agony on his face and feeling his heart explode in his chest as he finally lost it, she'd been awed at how intense it was for him. Lying exhausted in his arms afterwards, the moist aroma of the earthy moss combined with that of their spent lovemaking, he'd trailed his fingers through her hair and whispered to her - told her how beautiful she was, how precious; how privileged he felt for letting him be the one to show her this.
She didn't disbelieve him. She only knew it could never go anywhere. He was quite a bit older than she was and probably had a string of women readily available in every city he stopped in. Even if he could ever see past the fact of her mutancy, Marie held no illusions about her ability to compete. She was simply too inexperienced to keep a world-wise man like Logan content for long.
She knew virtually nothing about him. Overly involved with her own troubles, she'd made few inquiries, something she now regretted. Then again, maybe it was better this way. A brief encounter with a stranger, her first foray into the world of sensuality - a beautiful memory and nothing more. But what she'd told him was the God's honest truth. She would never forget him.
The heat inside the cab was starting to be uncomfortable, enough so that she shook herself back to the here and now. Running her hands through her hair, she grabbed her pack and hopped out. At the walk-up window of the old-style Dairy Queen, she ordered a lime Slushee, something she had liked as a kid, though the fluorescent color was far more alarming than she remembered. She sniffed at it suspiciously, momentarily wondering if it was toxic.
Finding a plastic picnic table in the shade, avoiding the worst of the smeared stickiness, she plunked down and pulled out her cell phone.
“Jubilee? Yeah, it's me.”
Marie rolled her eyes and pulled the phone away from her ear, as the squeal coming out of the phone was several decibels past tolerable.
“Yes, I'm fine. I'll be back in a couple days.”
She listened as Jubilee breathlessly jabbered on and on. Everyone was wondering what had become of her. There was no mention of Bobby. Had the asshole destroyed the note she'd left and told no one? Seems he must have. It made her blood boil.
“Listen, Jubes - you got a few minutes?” She was dying to tell Jubilee about last night, about the incredible man she'd met. She chickened out. What could she possibly say that would convey what she felt? No, Logan was going to stay her own closely guarded and treasured secret. It was all she had.
Jubilee, standing on the back verandah of Xavier's school in Westchester, was watching the younger kids splashing in the lawn sprinklers like spastic wind-up toys and generally making a hellacious racket. She quickly stepped inside and made her way to the hush of the library.
“Marie, you gonna tell me why you ran out of here?”
Taking a deep breath, Marie gritted her teeth and started to talk.
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Yellow highway stripes ran in hypnotic procession under the bike, but Logan didn't really see them. What he was seeing was last night, replayed in his mind over and over and over again.
He didn't regret it. Not really. He knew it was a damned big decision for her, the biggest, but having asked several times if she was sure, he didn't feel he'd pressured her for anything she didn't want to give. He even understood that payback or getting even had in no way been a motivating factor, and he wasn't quite so egotistical as to believe his charming self had merely swept her off her feet. It was something else. Just what, though, he wasn't entirely sure.
No stranger to one-night stands, Logan had had his fair share of morning-afters and perfunctory good-byes. Sometimes with spiked heels flung at his head and indignant screeching; sometimes with fond smiles and a sweet kiss in farewell. But Marie wasn't anything at all like those others; there wasn't a shred of artifice about her. Every breath, every moan and shiver, every sensuous expression of delight, was entirely genuine. She'd succumbed to the experience as if she'd never been touched before, and not just sexually, but as if she'd never been touched at all. The wonder in her eyes, the trembling smile on her lips, were like nothing he'd ever encountered before. The only regret he was struggling with now was not having pressed her for more information. Like how to find her again.
Whatever is was about her that mesmerized him so wasn't something he could afford to dwell on. Normalcy, whatever that was, he'd long ago given up on trying to find. In any case, no woman would stand the idea of pairing up with the likes of him for long. Eventually, she'd find out; 'normal' wasn't something he would ever be.
The bike stuttered, bringing his attention back to his surroundings. Glancing down, he was astonished at what the gas gauge was telling him. Oh, for crying out fucking loud! He was maybe a sixteenth of a mile from running out of gas. How the hell had that happened? The level of the light finally registered, too. It was near dusk.
Unsettled that he'd drifted off in introspection so badly, he took the next exit and prayed for a gas station to appear. None did.
An hour later, he was walking back to his bike, in the dark, with a gas can in hand.
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Marie stared around the room in dismay. After her conversation with Jubilee, she was so exhausted that more driving was something she just couldn't face.
A string of tiny bungalows lay scattered from the main road back into the edge of a swamp. A motel that had seen better days more than half a century ago, the place offered what she thought would be a nice touch of privacy. It was a hellhole.
Only one lamp worked. The air conditioner was merely a prop. The plumbing clanked and spurted in a scary way and the bed was a sagging lump of knobby bedsprings. The kitchenette appliances, she didn't dare touch. The only decent surprises were crisp snowy sheets that looked almost brand new and a ceiling fan that, miraculously, spun in a wobbling circle enough to move the air around.
There was a porch, too. A stretch of weathered boards that ended in the two mostly collapsed stairs that she'd nearly tripped on, dragging her bags in with her. High weeds reached almost to the railing in places. Now, sitting on the porch steps, she watched the sun sinking into the swamp and wondered just what to do.
How could she be so blind? How could she be so dumb? According to Jubilee, Bobby's ongoing affair with his best friend had been ongoing for a long damn time, and everyone knew about it but her.
Jubilee had sputtered and stammered. “But we all thought you knew!”
Marie felt so ridiculously naive she wanted to hide. She wanted Logan's strong arms around her, to keep her safe from her own stupidity. She wanted to rewind the last twenty-four hours and make it come out different, wanted to turn her back on her life and just ride off with him, for however long it lasted, though it probably wouldn't be for long.
She wanted a lot of things, but what she wanted most was to be somebody else.
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Logan kept the throttle open and his mouth shut. Fucking bugs!
After refueling his empty bike, he'd intended to just drive off into a field and give it up for the night, but found he was far too restless. He wasn't even hungry, which for him was pretty much the definition of unheard of. Getting where he was going seemed the only sensible option. Charles had been in steadily increasing contact with him over the last year. It was time to run to ground. Politically, things were heating up.
An hour past dawn, the gates of Professor Xavier's School for the Gifted rose into view. Downshifting, Logan rolled up to the gates and stopped. Wonder of wonders, his security code still worked. Snapping closed the cover on the panel after jabbing at the appropriate buttons, he waited for the gates crank open.
As he rode up the long curving drive to the Mansion, the first thing his eyes went to were the far corner windows on the third floor. Jean. Jean and Dudley Do-Right - the latter more commonly known as Scott Summers.
Charles had informed Logan more than two years ago that the school's darling couple had finally married. He figured Jean must be outta her fucking mind, but if the pipsqueak made her happy, then Logan was happy for her. He also figured needling Scott by openly flirting with his woman oughta drive the guy right up the wall.
Logan could hardly wait.
Chuckling to himself, he switched off the bike. Five years of aimless wandering and futile searching, interspersed with cloak-and-dagger assignments from Charles from time to time, was over. Though he almost hated to admit it, he was glad to be back.
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Marie gave up on trying to sleep a little after midnight. Screw this. The incessant croaking of the frogs in the nearby swamp did not make what one could call a restful backdrop. The South could just go fuck itself. She didn't even want to drive all the way to Meridian to look at her former home. No doubt it would only be more depressing.
Hastily shoving her belongings into a pack, she got dressed and practically ran for her truck. There was no Logan to see her through this dreadful night, and there never would be again. Going back to New York might mean facing things she'd only wanted to run from, but it was somehow easier than being here, longing for the man she'd shared herself with only last night.
She would drive straight through, if need be. Anything to get out of the South.
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“Logan!”
He was barely inside the great hallway and dropping his duffel bag to the floor when Jean's voice floated from the top of the stairs.
“Hey, Jeannie.” To Logan's undying delight, Summers was standing right behind her on the staircase. He looked crestfallen.
Jean came running up to him and gave him a huge welcoming hug. “Logan, I'm so glad you've finally decided to come home.” She squeaked as a large hand squeezed her ass and she immediately let go of him.
Logan smirked at the blush creeping up her cheeks and laughed outright at the look on Scott's face. Being a troublemaker was a very rewarding side job.
Logan threw the keys to the bike at Scott as he made his way down the stairs, and Scott caught them deftly.
“Your bike needs gas.”
Scott glanced at the keys in his hand. “It still in one piece?”
“Mostly.”
The keys came zinging right back at him. “So fill it up.” Scott prissily turned on his heel and left.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Anything to get out of the South.