This letter is dedicated to Kasia, who inspired me with a picture and loves the future little Danes boy.

Warning: this chapter may contain material that is sensitive for some people, it's nothing to do with the rating of the fic. You'll understand when you get there.

August 19th, 2006

My love,

So you're reserving your thoughts on Anna until you receive a final reply to your question? I suppose that's only fair. After all, I never actually answered your real question in my last letter. I meant to. I swear it. You know that happens sometimes, the tangents and everything. I thought you liked that about me. Made me unpredictable. Kept you from getting bored by me. I thought that would be enough. I thought if you were always fascinated by me, I'd never lose you. Did I become too predictable? Is that what happened?

I mean, you say you miss me, but what exactly do you miss about me? What exactly made you get on that plane, think back about our weekend together and make you realize your heart was aching for me? We never kissed. Apart from that eternal hug we shared when you arrived, we barely connected, barely touched until that hug at the airport. Okay, that's not fair... or true...

Remember the ride on the Ferris Wheel? I wanted to take you around Paris, show you all the big sites that every tourist should see but you kept saying no. To the Louvre. To Notre Dame. Even the Eiffel Tower (a second time for me). So we ended up in that park, Toulierie's Gardens, outside the Louvre standing in front of that Ferris Wheel, Caroussel, and all I could think was that it was hot and we had been walking forever and ever, at least that's what it felt like to poor, little, six months pregnant, me. I mean, it was great. Just spending time together. Just hours and hours of Luke and Lorelai time. It was all ours. Nohting else mattered but that I could hear your voice without the static over the phone. I could look into your eyes without the glossiness of the light reflecting off the picture I keep next to my bed. I can't even begin to explain that feeling, maybe like Ilsa felt seeing Rick after all that time.

But we didn't need them to pay our song to remember. Do we even have a song? I mean, when I was little and I would see all these fabulous romances in the movies, all the couples had a song. As Time Goes By. The Way We Were. Evergreen. Unchained Melody. You see I could go on and on, right? So all those couples had a song. What song was it that I could hear and instantly be reminded of you? What song would we have danced to at our wedding?

Do you think about that ride on the Ferris Wheel? I begged you to ride with me, knowing you were afraid of heights. Maybe I was testing you. I could always get you to do anything you didn't want to do . I got you to pay $52.50 for two Pop Tarts and a Slim Jim long before we were even together. I got you to be in the dance marathon we me. Remember? Last year? When Rory was off finding herself, being Miss Pearl Necklace or whatever. It was wonderful. It was some of the greatest twenty-four hours of my life because I had reason to be in your arms for twenty-four hours straight. Not that I wouldn't have wanted to anyways, but normally you came up with excuses like work and food to leave me. Sure, I guess those are okay excuses, but just once I'd like to lie in bed with your strong, safe arms around me for hours on end. Just listening to your voice and hearing you breathe, hearing the life flowing through you, the life I can't live without.

I can't imagine it. I can't imagine what it would have been like if that moment when I walked away from you that night was the last time I ever saw you. I can still remember those first weeks here, I'm sure you remember those letters, every moment I feared what you were thinking, I feared your response to my letters, I was so scared that I would discover that I had lost you forever. I mean, I thought I deserved that. I remember when I got your first letter I could scarcely breathe, I was so relieved and yet, I was frightened of the few lines on the paper that was contained within those envelopes. Don't you think I had a right to be? I mean, if I had lost you, if you had said you just couldn't do it, you didn't want to try, you just couldn't love me anymore, I would have understood. It would have been over. I would have been empty, lost, broken, unfixable, somehow not that far from how I was feeling before our fight that night in the street.

You know, sometimes I think about all those women, those widows, and I just wonder. I met this woman last year at the Dragonfly, Dana Wassey, she was having one of those beautiful Saturday afternoon weddings that I loved planning so much. I probably mentioned her to you, I can't remember. No, maybe not, I think it was in March… we didn't really talk much in March. Anyways, Dana was from New York City (your favorite place to visit) but she wanted a nice quiet, country inn, kind of wedding. Her mother had stayed at the Dragonfly a year before and suggested us, which was nice. This was actually going to be Dana's second wedding. You see, she had married for the first time back in April of 2000. Her husband's name was Bob and they had a beautiful life up in NYC, I mean it wasn't anything you or I would ever want, fast paced and all that, but they loved it. And a year after they married, they had a little girl, Samantha, Sami. I met her, she was just the most adorable little 6 year old. But in September of the year that Sami was born, Bob went to work as he always did and never came home. You see, Bob worked in the first tower of the World Trade Center. Dana said the moment she heard what happened, she just knew it, she knew he was gone, she didn't have to call him on his cell phone, she didn't have to watch the TV, she didn't have to wait for a sign from someone who worked with him, she just knew it. Because every part of herself that she had once shared with him, her mind, her heart, her soul, felt empty and void of life.

I can only imagine what that must have been like, to really lose the love of your life through no fault of your own. I guess that was the difference between Dana and I, if I had lost you, it would have been my fault. She was able to move on, it took time, it took the love of her friends and family and Sami. It took the love and understanding of Jason, her new husband, a man so completely different from Bob that it was like starting her life all over again. She was able to finally accept what happened, accept that it wasn't her fault, and believe that Bob would have wanted her to move on, that he would have wanted her to be happy. And from everything she ever told me about Bob, I'm sure that's exactly what he would have wanted for Dana.

Now, just thinking about her, I feel so incredibly lucky. I feel so fortunate that you love me enough to forgive me, that you're so kind and compassionate that you can understand what I was going through at the time. I just can't imagine ever doing what Dana did, starting my whole life over without out you. The world is crazy Luke, it really is. If anyone deserved not to lose someone, it was Dana. Between me and her, it was Dana. Do you think it's possible that all of this is just a way for The Powers That Be to tell us that we're idiots to think that love can be eternal? That we're foolish to believe that two people can fall in love and live that little fairy tale 'happily ever after'?

Speaking of fate… it wasn't surprising to me that the first time I won the Dance Marathon was when you were my partner. It's like fate was waiting for us to finally get together before letting my dream come true.

Anyways, I wasn't testing you when I wanted you to ride that Ferris Wheel. I don't think I was. I mean, I'm not the only one of us that can get the other to do things we don't want to do. You made me drive to Litchfield to go to that lobster place last February just so you could try lobster again. But it ended up being a nice evening out after all, you couldn't get that grin off your face or the delight out of your voice the whole time you were there. Besides we both know that we have to repay our debts when we get each other to do things we don't want to do. And that can be just as fun. (Maybe more.) There's nothing like knowing that after I get you to do something you don't want to do, I'll get to hear you moan my name in pleasure that night. The magical way you say my name… Luke, it's so sexy, the melody of it, tender and passionate. Goosebumps. I swear, my mouth is dry. Luke…

I'd better get off this subject…

Remember when they stopped us at the top of the Ferris Wheel? I saw your face go white, your hand grabbed mine and, even in the heat of these summer months, it was freezing. I did all I could do, Luke. I leaned against you, laid my head on your shoulder, pulled your arm around me. I laid your other hand on my belly, laying mine over yours so that we were connected. You. Me. And our son. I think I wondered who you were getting more strength from: him or me. I think it was him. He's not even born. He doesn't even have a name, but he's your son and you love him.

He's a part of you.

That's how I know you'll be a good father. Because I know how you love. Fiercely. Passionately. Eternally. You'll do anything to protect the ones you love and blame yourself whenever something goes wrong in their lives, even if there's nothing you could have done about it.

Yes, it's true, you're more an actions man than words man. You said that the night we first kissed, remember? You said that you let your actions speak for you. And it's true in more than romance. You don't say it, we've all just got to trust in your love. And that's easy to do if you've always been loved, as our son will be. He'll never have a reason to doubt love at all, not for a second, because there won't be a moment in his life that he'll be unloved. Not by me. Not by you. We'll make sure of that. You and I, together, we'll make sure of that.

You know, maybe that's what our song should say. When and if we finally get married, maybe that's what we want to remind each other. That should be the purveying theme of our union.

Then again, maybe it's enough to know it and feel it and understand that love surrounds us and brings us together as a couple, that it will bring us together as a family, you and me and…well whatever we call him. Maybe it's enough that we know we live more for each other, we'll live more for our son, than for ourselves. Maybe that's how Dana got through, she lived for Sami, and when the time came and she found Jason, a man who loved her and would do anything for her, she allowed herself to let him live for her too. Do you think that's something we feared? I mean, do you think that we allowed our relationship to slip away from us because we feared that we would never again be the independent people, the bachelor or bachelorette for life, that we once were?

Maybe before we decide to officially get back together, we should figure out why. We should understand that we're not doing it just for the baby Danes that lives inside me, that we would want to be together even if we would never be parents of a child together. That we're just so damn happy to be together and we're so so so lucky that we get to be parents of our own child as well.

Luke, I want you to know this, I want to you to understand this: there is no one I'd rather have a child with than you. There's no one I know that will love my child more than you and no one I know that my child will love more than you. If you believe that, I mean really believe it, then I don't have to ask anymore if you'll be here when your son is born.

With never-ending love,

Lorelai