You guys are way too good at this review game! Honestly! Give a girl a chance to write before posting! I'm just kidding, I love it.

New goal: 445

And the sequel is almost a definite (it was easier to split everything into three, assuming I go as far as to include kids in the series) but I have no idea what a title could be. So I leave the option up to you guys to give suggestions - just for fun. Reminder: sequel will focus on the planning of the wedding, the wedding itself and maybe even the honeymoon. Maybe I'll make the honeymoon an M-rated little interlude, I have no idea. But, I'm open to suggestions!

26 is in the writing process and there's the possibility of a 27 but that'll be it for this story. Thanks to everyone who followed from the beginning: huntz0rory, Dazzled1 and those that have followed almost religiously since. It's an honour to write for such fantastic reviewers!

Logan was not going to sit through a silent car ride. He understood that Rory needed to stew and needed to process, but it had been intense for him too. He really wanted her to realize she wasn't alone in this. "You want to let me in on the mumbling about Thumper and Churchill?" he asked softly as he drove. To his surprise, he saw her face soften out of the corner of his eye.

Rory removed her gaze from the passing scenery to lock on his profile. "Mom and I were talking and she called me Roosevelt. Thus, she was Churchill," she explained, trying to put her finger on her exact words. "Where's Churchill when you need her."

"Huh?"

"That's what I said. My mom would have been perfect right then and she was no where to be found."

"And the political references…"

"Go hand in hand with the reference to my grandmother as Adolf and Marcy Warner as Mussolini," Rory explained.

Logan pondered this for a moment. "I'm a little impressed."

Rory turned her whole body as best she could in the car. "Impressed?"

"World War Two, pop culture.. what other random knowledge do you hide in that pretty little head of yours?"

"My mom started the history references," Rory revealed, a smile playing about her lips. "My grandmother is a little bit like a freight train sometimes and you've got to admit, she's a little like a dictator."

He'd do anything to keep her talking. They'd get to the big elephant in the room once they were home. "Care to elaborate?"

"It always has to be her way," Rory began. "You can fight with her, you can bring her around to see your way or your point of view. I've only ever seen Grandpa do it. Mom says its one of the big reasons she left. There was this one time…"

Logan let her talk happy for the distraction she provided. It had been a rough and long couple of hours and he hated that she had to go through it. Actually, it was kind of funny, when the thought about it and about how well he knew Rory. The first thing she'd do upon their arrival in New York, their home, and the round table in which they were going to have to discuss her grandparents, Robert and for the first time, their future, would be to apologize. That was just who Rory was.

She had nothing to apologize for. He hadn't been prepared to see Robert Warner, a man he'd competed with throughout Yale and the Life and Death Brigade they were all a part of. Robert tried everything in his power to outdo Logan and he actually could remember a deep corner of his brain feeling sorry for the girl he was supposedly 'dating' when he watched Robert make out with a girl on LDB weekends. Anger boiled in him at the new knowledge that the girl Robert had been dating was the sweet, caring, considerate, white hat Rory Hayden.

Robert had bragged about her all the time, about how she was parent-approved and his life was set, what with her money and his. His parents were even planning the wedding, all he had to do was convince her to agree. They'd all kept in touch for a few years after Yale, planning a couple of weekends away just because they could and Logan could remember Robert being much stiffer and much more prone to the girls in less than scraps of fabric.

He looked over at Rory's animated face as she continued to talk through another story – the look in her eyes told him she didn't care if he was actually listening because she just needed to talk – and felt his mouth curving in a huge smile. He loved her, really loved her, and just like he hoped she didn't care about what Shira thought, he actually found that he didn't so much care what the Gilmores thought. He loved her, damnit, and he wasn't going to let her go because Adolf and Mussolini were fixated on a different reality. He shook his head, he really was a goner, following along with her train of thought and everything.

"I love you," he interrupted, taking a hand to rest it on her thigh and squeezing slightly. "You need to know that."

Rory was stunned for a few moments, looking at him and completely forgetting what she'd been talking about a moment before. "I do," she said softly, laying her hand over his. "I hate that you had to see that stuff, hear that stuff, deal with those people." She really couldn't decide which part she felt the guiltiest about.

"Hey, it's Hartford. I've dealt with worse."

She raised a skeptical eyebrow. "I find that hard to believe, even for you."

He chuckled slightly. "You keep forgetting my parents, Ace."

She blushed. "But your parents would never call you a cheating, lying, womanizing jerk to your face."

Logan had to give her that. "True. This still isn't the first time I've had my reputation thrown in my face."

Rory scowled. "They had no right to do that."

She was cute when she was defending him, Logan decided. "Hey, it's not like you could have stopped it."

"I could have not asked you to go," she retorted. "I didn't even get to say hi to your grandfather and Marcy pounced on you."

Logan sighed. "It was bound to come up sooner or later, Ror."

"She still had no right. And the way she got indignant when I said Robert cheated on me? And then she has the guts to go and accuse you of that?"

"I've never cheated," he told her seriously.

"I don't care about your reputation, Logan, you know that," Rory said with a roll of her eyes.

"No, Rory, listen to me. I've never cheated. Every other woman I've ever dated has gone into that situation with eyes wide open. There was never a question about marriage or long term. I've never cheated because I've never truly exclusively dated. I need you to understand that."

Rory paused for a moment. Friends with benefits. Stringless relationships. She was vaguely aware of both situations and really hadn't ever considered them. It made sense that they would be the norm in Logan's life and it made sense. "Okay."

He wanted to wait. He didn't want to have their first conversation about the future in the cramped space of the car while he was driving, but really, it was eating at him. "Rory, where are we going?"

"Home?" Rory questioned in confusion. "I don't understand the question."

"With our relationship," Logan said softly. "Where do you see our relationship going?"

Rory closed her eyes, turning away from him slightly. "I don't know," she finally admitted. "I mean, I know that I love you, and I know that you're the greatest thing in my life and I know I hate it when you're away and I hate it when I'm away and I know that coming home to you is one of the greatest things in the world, but… I don't know."

Logan nodded slowly. "Do you see us getting married?" He'd said it calmly, the logical next question, but the implications of it held so many more consequences.

Rory took a deep breath. "I can see myself being married to you," she said, her voice just loud enough to be heard.

It was an excellent evasion of the question, but it was all he was sure she could give him. However, as much as he loved her, he needed her to put herself out on the line, just this once. "Your grandparents seem pretty adamant about a marriage to Robert."

"Logan no! Never!" Rory exclaimed. "There's so many things wrong with that scenario!"

"You know Robert and I competed for everything in college?" Logan asked, deciding to digress a bit before getting back to the original topic.

"No," she said honestly. "He didn't talk about his friends."

Logan nodded, absently changing lanes. "Everything. We were both in the same club at school and he'd always try to outdo me or be better than me."

"The Life and Death Brigade?" Rory asked sheepishly.

"You know about it?"

Rory shrugged. "You'd be surprised at the things Robert says when he's drunk."

Logan nodded. "It was always stupid little things, but the one thing I could remember was that he had this girl and I could tell she didn't mean shit to him and I hated that. I mean, I was always watching him at the weekends going off with different girls and I hated that he had someone at home enduring that."

"Are we seriously going to talk about this?" Rory asked in painful surprise. She hadn't talked about it, really. It had come up in passing a few times now, but they'd never delved into the depths of her fear, her hurt, her pain.

"Just listen," Logan implored. "I was so jealous of him because his parents weren't nagging him to start thinking about settling down, to start thinking about taking over the company and producing an heir. It wasn't because they weren't like that, it was because he had it all. He actually enjoyed what he did and where his parents worked and he accepted the pressure to fall into that without question. Then he had this girl, you, and he just seemed to have everything laid out for him. I hated it."

"What does this have to do with anything?"

"Remember the first time we fought? Over the article and Amber and everything?" he asked, his fingers absently drumming on the steering wheel.

"It's kind of hard to forget," Rory whispered in return.

"Remember what I told you?"

"You're going to have to narrow it down for me," Rory said with a small smile. "You said a lot of things that day."

"I told the God honest, no hiding truth that day, Rory. I told you I loved you and I hadn't told anyone and meant it except Honour. But I also told you that you scared me."

Rory remembered that and she remembered the raw honesty and vulnerability when he'd made that admission.

"I put myself on the line that day because you matter to me, because I love you and I know you're scared and I know you don't know what's coming and I know you have no idea what my reaction would be to the truth of whether or not you'd thought about marrying me, but sometimes, you just have to take that chance." He pulled to a stop on the outskirts of New York, waiting for the light in front of him to change. He turned in his chair as best he could to face her. "I have no plans for going anywhere, Rory, I really don't, but I need to know that all of this, that the hurt I felt – for the first time I'll add – when Mrs Warner threw my reputation in my face, is really worth it."

With that he turned his eyes back to the road and the green light, trying to ignore the churning of his gut.

Rory had made a beeline for the bedroom as soon as they got home and Logan assumed she wanted to change out of her dress. He'd always tried to keep to the LDB motto. In Omnia Paratus. Ready for anything. For the first time in his life, he wasn't sure if he was ready for anything. If Rory decided that she didn't want a future, that she couldn't understand the future, that she didn't want to talk about a future with him, he'd probably be crushed. He'd never taken rejection well.

He was in the office, swirling scotch around in a glass when he heard her enter. She headed for her desk, right across from his, pulling out keys to unlock the bottom drawer. He'd always figured she kept personnel files in there and had it locked for confidentiality purposes. The next thing he knew, something folded was between him and the scotch.

"What's this?" he asked, setting down the high ball and starting to unfold the pages.

"My pro-con list," Rory replied seriously, her entire body wanting to just wrap around him. She valiantly held back.

"Pro-con list? For what?" Then he caught sight of the title and his breath caught in his throat. Marrying Logan.

"I have thought about it. A lot. Especially since that girls' night. I didn't know what to say when you asked because I didn't know where you stood. I was freaking out because you kept saying that 'we' would keep Sophie out of the limelight, as if you had every say in the matter." She held up a hand when he went to protest. "I'm not saying you don't, just look at it from my perspective for a minute. Sophie was my world before you came in and crashed my perfectly good lifestyle."

The smile on her face told him she was teasing.

"I didn't want to get my hopes up of a solid future and have it all be pulled out from underneath Sophie. Or me," she said. "You matter to me and you matter to her and that girls' night Lane told me to go and picture that wedding we'd planned at the end of high school and to think about who I'd be standing at the alter with." She took a deep breath.

"It was you."

"You were marrying me?" Logan asked, voice soft in surprise.

"In my mind's eye, yeah. And it scared me because I'm your first girlfriend, Logan, and I'm not a trophy wife, I'm not going to spend my days planning parities and luncheons and all that. That's not who I am and I don't want to make it who I am."

"Ah."

"I'm not even going to try to pretend to you that I can do it, and I know you don't want me to do it. You want me to dream to work to have goals and ambitions and I love that, I really do, and I really appreciate that. So, do I see us getting married? Yeah, I do. Do I necessarily see it happening within the next couple of months or the next year?" She shrugged. "That I can't answer, but I knew that to put up with your mom and my own insecurities from my last botched attempt at a relationship, I had to know that I was ready to be in this for the long haul."

"And this?" he asked, holding up the sheets of paper. He had to admit, he was feeling a little overwhelmed.

Rory shrugged again. "Something I have to do. It doesn't have to mean anything."

Logan nodded, his fingers absently folding and unfolding the paper for a few minutes, sharpening the creases and folds. "What if I want it to mean something?"

"Huh?"

He faced her head on, placing his hands on her hips and rubbing absently with his thumbs but he avoided her eyes. "You know how we've talking about 'what if we get married'?"

Rory nodded. "Yeah."

"What about 'when we get married' instead?"

"Are you sure?" Rory asked after a few moments. "I didn't want this to be pressure on you."

"You said you had that moment where you realized you had to be in this for the long haul to deal with some of the stuff that my family throws, right?" he asked, bringing her closer.

"Uh huh…"

"This was one of those afternoons for me. And you know what? I can see myself marrying you, I can see us building a family with Sophie and maybe another kid. But I don't see the huge house in Hartford and I don't see the party-planning trophy wife. I can see a happy family and I love that. I want that. And I want it with you."

Unable to stop herself, Rory pushed up on her toes to kiss him soundly. "I want that too."

"So no more 'what if'?"

Rory nodded grinning giddily. "When."

Logan allowed himself to calm down and breathe. "When," he agreed.

When.