Author's Notes: Thanks to the super-fast and insightful work of my betas as well as the need for some distraction, I've got one more chapter before I disappear for a while. Thanks so much to iheartbridges, KinoFille, and Lula Bo for all their help and encouragement.

Luke strides back to the truck, trying to get as far as possible from the images his mind has conjured up. Thoughts of Lorelai sharing her house, her life, and her bed with Christopher cause the contents of his stomach to roil. He drives recklessly the short distance to the diner and even so, he very nearly has to pull over to keep from retching inside the truck.

Pulling in behind the diner, he throws himself out of the truck, shutting the door and backing up against it as he takes in several deep breaths. When it feels as though the imminent danger has passed, he turns and plods up the stairs, dropping himself into the nearest chair and bending forward to hold his head in his hands.

His forehead feels cool, but clammy, and he can feel a cold sticky sweat gathering across the small of his back.

He'd let himself get pulled in again, let himself think that the hurt had diminished, and right now he's not sure whether he's more angry at her for what she did so many months ago or at himself for wanting her.

It's not at all clear to him what he was thinking when he leaned in to kiss her, but he's fairly certain that he's just ruined whatever fragile friendship they've managed to resurrect. It's just that he's gotten so comfortable being with her again. He's let himself care about her, look forward to seeing her, and admitted to himself that he misses her.

So when they had this dinner that wasn't really a date, and she'd started talking about him in swim trunks, he let himself be that guy. He let himself get cocky that she was flustered. He'd let himself think that they could do this again.

But when he'd felt the weight of her palm on his chest, he couldn't help thinking who else she'd been with, who else she'd touched. And he'd looked around him and all he could see was the house that was supposed to be Luke and Lorelai's, until it ended up being Lorelai and Christopher's. Standing there, on her porch, the specter of Christopher had loomed large over the house, over her, and he doesn't know how to ignore it.

What he remembers more than any of that, though, is the devastated look on her face, the shock and revulsion that she'd turned inward, so that the last thing he'd seen before she'd turned to go inside was a look of complete and utter self-disgust.

He'd wanted, in that moment, to apologize, but there's nothing he could have said that would make this better and hundreds of things that could make it worse. In fact, he thinks, it's entirely possible that he's ruined any chance of rebuilding their friendship, which over the course of the last few months, he's come to depend on.

It's that thought that stays with him as he hauls himself over to the bed and flips on the television in the hopes of distracting himself from his idiocy. As he tries to fall asleep he lets himself admit that he needs her. That he needs her in a way that might have saved them if he'd been able to let it happen a year ago.

The shrill clamor of the phone startles him awake and his first reaction is surprise that he'd finally managed to drift off after all. He's slumped back against the headboard, his clothes rumpled and damp. In front of him the television flickers almost soundlessly with images from some unknown program. His brain still fuzzy, the second ring shocks him all over again and he stumbles out of bed and across the apartment to answer it. His voice croaky with sleep, he says, "Hello?"

He's barely got the word out when he hears an agitated female voice. "You can't do that."

The fog has not quite lifted from his brain and it's been so long since he's talked on the phone to her that he just lets out a baffled, "Lorelai?"

"Yes," she says impatiently. "You can't do that."

He closes his eyes against his confusion, and asks, "Can't do what?"

"You just can't do that," she repeats as if she hadn't heard him. "Not now." There's a slightly hysterical edge to her voice.

"Lorelai, it's," he runs a hand through his hair as he glances at his clock, "2:17 in the morning. What are you talking about?"

"My clock says 2:21," she responds quickly.

"Your clock says what?" He pauses and lets out a frustrated huff. "You didn't call me to compare times on our clocks. What the hell is going on?"

"You can't take me out on a not-date and flirt with me and walk me to the door and…" she pauses and he can hear her suck in a breath and when she speaks again her voice is soft, strained, "go to kiss me. You can't do all that and then tell me that you can't." The hysteria is back and as she goes on her voice grows louder, angrier. "Can't, Luke? Can't what? I mean, I didn't ask for this. God Luke, what were you thinking? Were you trying to get back at me for hurting you? Were you trying to mess with me? Or do you just not even care about me at all?"

She's hitting on just what he'd been thinking but her accusations, her anger, set him off. "Not care about you? You're the one who couldn't wait to get married, to come back and live here with him, in the house that we renovated for us to live in. How much could you have possibly cared about us, about me, if you did that?"

"Luke, you know I cared about you. How could you think-"

"Dammit Lorelai, you married him. You married him," he bites out, the words sharp and pointed.

He's not sure what he's expecting her to say, but the icy silence on her end of the line unnerves him and he begins to pace slowly around the room. When she finally speaks, her voice is low and even. "I know that I made a mess of my life, that getting married was a mistake, but we were over, Luke. You weren't a choice anymore so you don't get to yell at me about it. Rory she gets to be angry, and Gigi, and probably Christopher, but you don't get to lecture me about getting married too soon. You don't get to be upset that I moved on.

There's a kernel of truth in what she's saying; even he can see that. But somehow they've skipped over the bigger betrayal, the one that really tore them apart, the one thing that he doesn't know how to get past. "Moved on?" he says bitterly. His body tightens and stills in reaction to the words and the memories, his free hand clenching into a tight fist. "Is that what we're calling it these days? Your fiancé doesn't jump high enough and you just go fuck your ex? Or were you just celebrating being rid of the 'for now' guy?"

He hears a sharp intake of breath and he steels himself for an angry response to the venom in his words. What follows, though, is a strained protest, "You weren't ever the 'for now' guy. You were everything to me." Even through the fury and the pain he can hear the loss in her voice and it takes him back to her frantic words on the street in front of the diner when she pleaded for him to elope with her.

"You have a funny way of showing it," he responds, intending sarcasm, though the image he has of her desperately declaring her love for him takes the sting out of his words.

"I know," she says softly, and he thinks he hears her voice break, "God, Luke, I know I ruined it. You were one of the best things that ever happened to me and I killed any chance for us." She takes a breath and he knows her well enough that he can tell she's fighting back tears. "I hurt you probably more than I've ever hurt anyone, and I…I never expected you to get over it. I don't deserve that." Her voice is faint as she goes on, "I don't deserve you."

"Lorelai…" he starts, not knowing how to respond to her regret. In an attempt to calm his thoughts, he restarts pacing.

"No, Luke," she says, her voice stronger now. "It's okay. I get it. But, if…if you don't want to be with me, can't be with me, you can't dangle it out there like that."

"That's not what I was…I thought…" As he struggles to put together the words he realizes that the mental conflict he's having comes from the fact that he wishes he could let go of his anger and make it work with her again. It's a startling recognition, a confession he's not fully ready for, so he's only able to mumble his way through the rest of the sentence. "I thought we could work it out. I wanted…"

She picks up on the indecision as his voice trails off. "Luke, I can't go back and change what happened. All I can do is tell you how sorry I am, but if you're not sure…" She's quiet for a long moment. "I spent so long last year wondering if you really wanted…wondering if it was over. I can't go through that again."

"I never stopped wanting you."

He can barely hear her reply. "You let me walk away."

"Well, if I'd known you would…" he says helplessly, shaking his head. The cold night air in the apartment has penetrated his damp clothing and the chill makes him shiver involuntarily. He holds his arms close to his body for warmth as he drops onto the bed in defeat. Letting out a sigh, he says with frustration, "I don't know how to let go of that."

"I never asked you to, Luke. I never expected…I just thought…I thought at some point you could stand to look at me and eventually we could be friends. But now…"

He can hear the sadness in her voice and it strikes a chord in him, awakens the same fears. It makes it hard to ignore his own role in the destruction of their relationship. It would be so much easier if her friendship these last weeks hadn't reminded him what they'd meant to each other, hadn't made him want to regain that closeness. "When did you start thinking that it was over?"

She doesn't say anything for a long time, but he can hear her breathing on the other end of the phone. "When I talked to Anna," she says quietly. "She said we had to be married, and I tried to tell her we were good, we were real, but even as I was saying it I knew it wasn't true. I knew…" He hears her let out a sigh and can picture her shoulders dropping in defeat. "She said we had to be married and marriage wasn't even on your radar screen."

"We were going to get married," he insists.

"Really?" she asks, and her calm disbelief unnerves him. "It didn't seem like it was ever going to happen."

"Just because I wouldn't drop what I was doing and run off to Maryland with you?" he asks, irritated.

"I asked if you loved me and you were more worried about the fact that I talked to Anna." Her voice grows smaller. "You let me walk away. How could you do that if you cared at all? How could you do that if you loved me?"

"Of course I lo-" He catches himself, "loved you." The grammatical stumble stills him and his fingers, which had been scratching idly against his pants, freeze. He hasn't let his mind go in that direction in so long that he isn't even sure what he truly feels anymore.

"I didn't know that," he hears her say, her voice faint and vulnerable. "I didn't think that you wanted me anymore."

A harsh chill falls over him hearing her words, hearing the pain and the uncertainty. He can picture her in the bed they used to share, sitting up against the headboard, her pajama covered legs curled up protectively against her body. There's a big part of him that wishes he were next to her so he could pull her into his arms and hold her.

"Lorelai," he breathes, "I told you I loved you. You asked and I told you. What made you think…?"

"You didn't want me to meet your daughter Luke. You didn't want me to know her."

There's a note of desperation in the way that she says 'daughter' that reminds him of the fight he and Lorelai had after Rory and Jess' car accident several years ago. Reminds him of the tone in her voice when she screamed at him that nothing was important because Rory was in the hospital. That he had an obligation to Rory.

He'd yelled right back because he knew he wasn't responsible for what had happened to Rory, that it was possible not even Jess was responsible. And he'd decided to hold a grudge for reasons that he's not sure even he understood. He'd let her apologize over and over, let her stay frustrated when he didn't treat her with his typical warmth.

If he admits it to himself, he'd been angry at Lorelai's single-minded focus. That nothing else mattered to her besides her daughter. As much as he loved Rory, he wanted Lorelai to have one moment of concern for his nephew, perhaps a thought to Luke himself. One moment in which she could remember their friendship and be able to support each other.

But just then, it was all about Rory, and knowing Lorelai he shouldn't have expected anything less. This is the woman who cleaned toilets and lived in a shed, who gave up everything, her family even, to make a better life for her daughter. And then gave up her pride many years later in order to secure the best future for her.

So when she says 'daughter' like that, and he hears the strain in her voice, the hopelessness, he wonders why it's taken until now for him to get it.

She can't imagine a world in which a child is not the center of one's life.

It's only one step beyond that, to the point where she think that the existence of a conflict means that there must be a choice. And because she's Lorelai, she can't imagine any other choice than your child.

Something clicks in him then, because it is after all one of the things that made him fall in love with her, the all-consuming nature of her love for Rory.

"It didn't have to be a choice," he says without thinking, realizing too late that he's responding to his thoughts rather than to her words.

"What?"

"It didn't have to be a choice between you and April."

It's really something he's just realizing for himself, that he'd created a conflict where none was necessary, but Lorelai asks anxiously, "Did you think that I was making you choose? Did you seriously think that I would make you do that?"

"No," he reassures her quickly, "I never thought that. You, of all people, would never make me do that."

He thinks he hears a sigh of relief and it touches him that it's so important to her that he knows that she'd never want to come between him and his daughter. It's not until now, he thinks, that he's really understood just how much it had hurt Lorelai to exclude her – what it had meant to her that he didn't want her to know his daughter.

And then suddenly he's apologizing and telling her how much he wishes he'd been less a jerk, how much it had meant to him for her to help with April's birthday party. And then she's apologizing too, for letting Patty cover up her pathetic behavior at Lane's wedding, for hiding from him, and for sleeping with Christopher.

When she says the last, he hears a little hiccupping sob.

"What?" he asks softly.

"It's just crazy that I thought we could actually be friends again." Her voice sounds hopeless, broken.

"We still can," he reassures her.

"I don't know." He hears a faint rustle and somehow knows that she's shaking her head.

Panic creeps up his spine. "This can't be it."

"I don't know if I can do this."

"Do you really want to walk away?"

"No. God, Luke. I want…I just can't pretend anymore…" Exhaustion has made her voice gravelly and low and he can hear the sadness in every word.

"I'm not asking you to-" He stops himself, and then says, his voice gentle, "Look, you must be so tired. Why don't we talk later, after we've slept?"

"What does it matter?" she asks bitterly. "You can't, remember? You can't get over it."

He hears the words, knows he's the one who said them, but they don't ring quite true just now. Mostly because somehow, in the time they've been talking, after everything they've said, what they feel for each other has become bigger than the ways they've hurt each other.

And just thinking that, he can feel the specter of Christopher, can see the man himself diminished. He's not sure he's ready to say all of that, or that she's ready to hear it, so he says simply, "Things may look different in the light of day, after we've gotten some sleep."

He can practically hear her narrowing her eyes. "Don't say things you don't mean."

He nods, but then remembers that she can't see him. "You're important to me."

She protests, "Okay, but-"

"You're important enough that I don't want to decide it's over at 3:57 in the morning."

He half expects her to remind him that it's really 4:01, and when she doesn't it just shows how much this has all taken out of her, that her weariness goes deeper than the fact that it's the middle of the night. "I just…Luke, I don't know if I can do all this again."

"Can we just talk?" he pleads. "When it's not the middle of the night? Let me make us some dinner."

When she finally answers, her assent is not hopeful, but rather a gesture of defeat, acquiescing to his pleading, but he takes what he can get. They say goodbye sleepily and he walks across the apartment to hang up the phone, feeling in every muscle the stiffness from sitting still too long. When he returns to his bed, though his fatigue is not only physical, but also emotional, it's quite a while before he's able to sleep.

To be continued