AN: I wanna talk about Rory for a second. I'm nervous about this chapter, because so many of your reviews are focused on how angry you are at Rory and how inexcusable her actions are, and I understand why. I also don't think that they are excusable. And so many of you are wondering how I am going to "fix" it. But, here's the thing… if you aren't able to empathize with Rory's situation just the tiniest bit…. I'm not sure I'm going to be able to "fix" anything for you.

Having compassion for her isn't the same as excusing what she did. I hope you can keep that in mind while you're reading this chapter, otherwise I'm not sure you will like the direction that this story takes. I have no plan to make Rory a villain. I've also thought long and hard about the option of creating some kind of outside situation that made it impossible for her to tell him, but I've decided to stick with my original intention because I find it more realistic.

The truth is, I have always interpreted Rory's conversation with Christopher at the end of AYITL to be her actively deciding not to tell Logan about the baby. It's heavily implied in the subtext, and it's a choice she came to on her own for her own reasons. This is why I didn't have any huge dramatic explanation in BLP, and this fic was born out of taking that assumption to its inevitable conclusion. It's an experiment in… 'okay well what if he never found out about the baby?' And here we are.

I know a lot of you don't like that, and I understand. But I am asking you to keep an open mind and try to remember just how messy and painful the situation was between the two of them at that point in their lives. Remember who his family is and how much pain they've already put Rory through in her life. And remember Rory's own trauma that might have informed some of the bad decisions that were made. Again, they're not excusable. They're not right. But, I do think they are understandable. I understand why she did it.

I hope this chapter can help you understand as well and come to terms with it as they try to clean up this mess that they are in. Thanks again for all of your reviews and your interest. I really do hope you like this chapter.

2014

It was a shitty day for a picnic.

First of all it was cloudy. Really cloudy. The clouds above them were low and dark. And in some strange sort of phenomenon, they seemed to be absolutely filled with lightning - lightning that wouldn't stop, that kept going forever like one of those orbs they used to sell at The Discovery Store that you could use as a lamp while you pretended to control the elements with your fingertips as if you were Zeus himself.

The wind was blowing heavily through the long blades of grass in the ever expansive meadow that surrounded them, and Rory could feel her white skirt blowing up against her legs and her hair flapping in the wind. People all around her were talking and eating, dressed in evening cocktail attire - another odd choice for the middle of the day, but who was she to judge? She couldn't hear them, though. She knew that they were talking, but she couldn't hear them at all.

The only sound she could hear was the sound of a woman playing piano from the middle of the meadow. Though… now that she looked around it wasn't a meadow at all. It was the New Haven Green. She could see Phelps Gate off in the distance and City Hall behind her. But… someone had taken down the flagpole. It was gone. Replaced by the piano. A white piano.

It was Mozart. Lacrimosa. The song she was playing was Lacrimosa.

Rory was hypnotized by her. And as she focused in on the vision of the woman sitting at the instrument, she noticed that she wasn't alone. There was someone standing next to her. Someone familiar. A man. A blond man in a white linen suit.

She went to take a step forward toward them, but when she moved her thigh she found that her feet were somehow stuck to the ground. Her heel had dug into the grass beneath her and she couldn't pull it out, as if she had buried it in cement and plastered herself in place.

"There's a line to get to him."

Startled, she looked up at the sound of the new voice. It was Bobbie. Her long blonde hair was pulled back in a sleek straight ponytail and she held a flute of champagne in her hand.

"W - what?" Rory asked, looking back and forth between the somewhat dead eyed woman in front of her and the people off in the distance.

"Blood's the secret." Bobbie hiccuped. "I shouldn't be talking to you."

"I - "

That instant, she suddenly found herself able to pull her foot free of it's confines. Yet, when she took a step forward, she almost fell careening off the edge of the rooftop. The rooftop she was standing on. The one she'd been standing on the entire time.

"Jump!"

She gazed down at the people below her, all of them lined up in the London streets and some on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral, all of them holding glasses of champagne as they gazed up at her and cheered for her to leap from the height of the building beneath her. But she had no harness. She had no parachute. She had no hand to hold. She was alone. She had nothing.

"Jump!" they yelled again.

Far off on the steps of the church, Rory could see another familiar face, one she hadn't seen in ages but would remember in an instant. It was Colin. But… Colin hadn't been there. He hadn't been invited to the picnic. She would have said hello if Colin had been invited to the picnic. She wanted to say hello now, but she was trapped on the roof with no way down. No way down but to jump.

She watched as her old friend swung his arms dramatically and brought a mallet down against the large brass gong he'd erected in front of the cathedral doors. He rung it loudly, so loudly that the sound buzzed in her ears, drowning out the chants from all the people below imploring her to leap to the ground.

She had to cover her ears as he continued to pound away at the gong. She closed her eyes against the assault, but nothing helped. The buzzing continued, coming and going like a beating heart. The screams and cheers from down below became louder and louder in order to compete with it, and the next thing she knew she was losing her balance. Her feet were slipping off the edge and she was falling. She hadn't jumped. But she was falling. And she was just about to hit the ground.

"NO!"

Rory's eyes burst open. A gasp of air filled her lungs and her heart was pounding wildly in her chest. The world was coming into focus around her, but it was taking a while. The images that had been changing so rapidly in front of her eyes were now convalescing into something far more solid. Far more permanent. And she could feel the weight of an arm draped over her and the heat of a body pressed against her back.

All the people were gone. She was alone, save the person behind her. Logan. She was with Logan, She was in his room in London, in his bed. It had been a nightmare. A strange nightmare. One of the strangest she'd had in a while. Yet, even though all the people had disappeared and the world around her had become more solid, she could still hear the buzzing in her ear. It wouldn't stop.

Looking around, her eyes eventually landed on the nightstand next to the bed. On top of it was her phone. It's screen was lit up and a picture of her oldest and best friend was flashing across it with the words Lane Van Gerbig appearing in block letters. Deciding she didn't want to ignore the call, she reached forward and picked it up, sliding her finger across the screen and bringing it to her ear before greeting her in a soft voice.

"Hey," she whispered. Rory sat up on the bed and gently pulled herself out of Logan's embrace. He moaned softly in his sleep at the loss of contact, and Rory watched nervously as he rolled over onto his stomach, worried that she might have woken him up. However, when his breathing soon returned to a deep and steady rhythm she knew that he was still firmly grounded in dreamland.

"Please tell me you're free tomorrow."

The plea came without even a basic greeting, and the desperation in her friend's voice was as clear as day. Rory looked down at Logan once more and then out the window next to the bed, the window overlooking The Thames.

"Um…" she said, sliding out of the bed and reaching for the button down shirt that Logan had discarded on the floor when they had stumbled into the room after the party. She slipped it on, trying her best to hold her phone between her cheek and her shoulder as she started fastening the buttons. "I'm...well…"

A loud crash on the other line interrupted her thoughts, and she found herself slightly jumping at the surprising sound.

"STEVE VAN GERBIG, IF YOU DON'T TAKE THAT NERF GUN OUT OF MY HOUSE, I SWEAR TO GOD..."

Rory flinched and held the phone away from her to provide some relief against the explosive sound of her best friend's voice. When she returned the device to her ear, she heard Lane let out an anguished sigh.

"I need to get out of this house…" Lane continued as Rory tiptoed across Logan's bedroom as quietly as she could and made her way to the door. "I'm going absolutely insane. I just need one night. One night with an actual adult. And adult beverages. Too many adult beverages…"

"Well…" Rory said quietly, already hating to break her friend's heart. She slipped out the door and closed it softly behind her, padding into the dimly lit living room and heading toward the patio doors to admire the view of the city.

"I can meet you halfway," Lane pleaded. It wouldn't be the first time they'd decided to drive to Greenwich or Bridgeport to have some drinks and blow off steam. But, unfortunately, Rory didn't think it was very realistic to make the commute this time around.

"Well… unless you mean you like… Reykjavik, I'm not sure that's going to be such a good plan…" Rory countered. She was still keeping her voice down, but the whispered had gone from her tone.

"Reykjavik? What do you mean - " Lane asked, interrupting herself. "You're in Europe."

"Guilty," Rory said. The guilt was genuine, as it always was every time she found herself unable to come through for her best friend. "Or well… The UK. I guess it's not really Europe. That tends to be a sticking point over here…"

"I had no idea you were going to The UK."

"It was kind of last minute," said Rory. "I only found out a few weekends ago. I'm sorry I didn't think to tell you."

"Don't apologize," Lane said with a chuckle. "You don't need my permission."

"No, I know…" said Rory. "I just wish I could be there for you to vent."

"Well, you've heard it all before," said Lane. "I married an overgrown child and apparently I'm raising three sons. Now they're taking turns shooting the antique vases my mother gave me the last time she cleared out some inventory with the brand new Nerf Blasters their supposed father bought with the money he was supposed to use to get them new tennis shoes…"

"Classic Zack."

"Classic Zack indeed," Lane replied, somewhat bitterly. Rory winced a bit. It always worried her when Lane got this way. It was happening more and more often as the years went on, and she was sounding more and more unhappy. "Remind me why I got married again?"

Rory bit her tongue. She knew it was a hypothetical question. Lane didn't really want an answer. But, that didn't stop the answer from popping into her head. Not that she would ever say it out loud.

When Lane had announced her engagement to Zack, Rory had been so happy for her. At the time, she thought that they were perfect for each other. They had the band, they had so many similar interests, and they had already been friends for so long. It had made sense to her. It seemed natural. It seemed so natural that she remembered getting absolutely pissed at Logan for his commentary when she'd told him the news.

"So…. What? They're getting married because he wants to get laid?" he'd asked with a scoff and a shake of his head. "That sounds like a terrible idea."

She thought it was cynical. She thought it was reductive. She thought it was snide. She thought that he didn't know either one of them enough to understand what was really happening between them. She told him she didn't appreciate his unwanted analysis of a situation he knew nothing about.

The older she got, the more she realized how right he probably was.

"Because you love him," Rory said with a shrug, hoping that it might make her feel better. Though, these days she couldn't be sure.

"I guess," said Lane before her entire demeanor changed and she suddenly grew enthused and became filled with a kind of fantastical enthusiasm. "Anyway, tell me about The UK. I assume you're in London. What are you doing? Where are you staying? Are you at some palatial suite at The Ritz with champagne and chocolate? I hope you are, because I need to live vicariously through you."

Rory laughed softly.

"Not quite," she said. "I'm just staying with a friend in Chelsea."

At that moment, the 'friend' in question suddenly appeared bare chested and bleary eyed in the doorway. He had a slightly confused and disoriented look in his eye, clearly already affected by the hangover that was no doubt settling in after the party.

"What's going on?" he asked. "I woke up and you were gone. Is everything okay?"

With no one left asleep at the apartment, Logan didn't even bother to keep his voice down. It also probably didn't help that he was probably still a little bit drunk. But, whatever the reason, he had spoken loud enough for Lane to hear him over the phone. And for her to hear that he didn't exactly sound like a 'friend.'

"Wait," she said. "Who is that?"

"It's just a friend," Rory replied, looking into Logan's eyes but hoping that Lane would also assume the response was meant for her.

Logan shrugged and walked off in the direction of the kitchen, probably in search of a glass of water. She could use some water herself if she was being honest. She watched him disappear down the hall and her eyes fell on the handle to the patio door. Placing her hand on it, she pushed it open and slipped outside, now all the more worried that he would overhear her. Especially as Lane was no doubt going to continue to prod.

"A friend?" Lane asked with a teasing lilt. "Sounds like a very sexy friend who woke up all alone and got very worried…"

"Lane…" Rory sighed.

"What? Tell me. Please?! I live vicariously through you, remember?" her friend asked. "Do I know this friend? Have you mentioned him to me before?"

Rory looked back into the apartment. Through the living room and down the hall, she could see Logan pulling a glass down from the cabinet in the kitchen and stopping to rub some of the sleep out of his eyes.

She had indeed mentioned him before. Hundreds of times. Thousands maybe. That wasn't the question that she was getting tripped up on. Lane absolutely knew this friend. The real question was whether or not Rory was ready to share the new development in her life with her. But then, she needed to confide in someone. Didn't she?

"You could say that," Rory admitted, trepidatiously.

"Really?!" Lane asked. "Is it that guy from The Post? The one you hooked up with in DC? George? Jim?"

"Jon. And, no. That…" Rory trailed off with a sigh. "That ended badly."

"Well who is it?" Lane asked. "I can't remember you mentioning anyone else to me recently."

"It's…" Rory trailed off and took a deep breath. Inside, Logan was walking back toward the bedroom with a glass of water pressed against his lips. "...Logan."

"Logan?" Lane asked, her tone confounded. "Huntzberger?!"

"Yes, Logan Huntzberger!" Rory replied. Now that the name was out, her trepidation was gone. Her hesitancy has dissipated, and she was feeling a bit more loose with her words and tone of voice."What other Logans do we know?!"

"I dunno," said Lane. "Logan Becker? Remember? Stars Hollow Junior High? He had to go to the nurse that one time after he got Smarties stuck in his nose when he was crushing them up and trying to snort them like a line of cocaine?"

Rory sighed. She remembered that incident well. But, she was not, in fact, talking about Logan Becker. As far as she knew the Logan she was talking about hadn't ever crushed up smarties and tried to snort them as if they were fake cocaine. She was pretty certain the only kind of cocaine Logan Huntzberger had ever snorted in his life was the real thing. … But that wasn't something she wanted to spend that much time reflecting on.

"I can assure you I am not talking about Logan Becker," said Rory.

"So…. Okay. Wow… Logan," said Lane, wrapping her mind around the news. "That's… big. That's…. I didn't expect that at all. How did you guys meet up again? Are you back together?"

Rory's heart suddenly started pounding. Her hands went slightly shaky, she grew slightly panicked. She didn't want to answer this question. She was still coming to grips with what had happened herself, and acting like she was cool as a cucumber to her best friend seemed like an impossible task.

"We're…" she said, leaning over the bannister ever so slightly so that she could focus on the city lights out in the distance rather than the twinge in her heart. "We're just… you know… casual. It's no big deal."

Silence fell over the line, and Rory started tapping her fingers against the railing of the balcony in an effort to expel some of her nervous energy. Yet, the longer Lane waited to respond, the more she began to succumb to the feelings racing in her. She felt a flash of moisture start to accumulate in her eyes and she started to bite her lip.

"Casual," Lane finally said.

"Yeah," Rory squeaked. Though, in trying to force a calm and even tone, she was sounding all the more upset. "Just a sort of… 'What happens in Vegas' kind of thing. You know? We get together when I'm here. But we're not like… serious or anything. We see other people."

He saw other people. Rory hadn't seen anyone since Jon. And that was months ago.

"Rory…"

"It's kind of a perfect situation," she continued, steamrolling over the clear concern in her friend's voice. "I mean we live on different continents, so something more serious is just too hard. But Logan is… fun. He's always been so much fun. Seriously exciting. That's what I used to say about him. Remember? He still is. Just… fun."

"Rory… that was when you were first dating…" said Lane. "When you said that about him…"

"Right," she confirmed. "But you know… it's still the same. I mean he's not as fast paced as he used to be, but we're also not in our twenties anymore…"

"Rory, he proposed to you," Lane said, calmly. "You almost married him."

Rory closed her eyes to bare down against the pain in her chest. She didn't want to be reminded of that at the moment. It was harder for her to stay in a state of denial with her friend reminding her that there really wasn't any such thing as 'casual' between her and Logan. And there had to be. Because if they couldn't really be together and if there was no such thing as 'casual,' then there was no Logan at all. And she wasn't strong enough to accept not having Logan at all.

Not again.

"Ancient history," she said with a shrug. Ancient history indeed. Just like the river of blood she was currently paddling down surrounded by all the croaking frogs and swarms of locusts.

"Ancient history? Rory…" Lane pleaded. "This is a bad idea."

"It's not," Rory insisted. "It's fine. I'm fine. I'm having fun."

"You might be having fun now. But you…" Lane took a deep breath. "Rory, I was the one who had to scrape you off the floor all those times after you broke up. Don't you remember? You would call me sobbing from motels in Ohama and San Francisco. I had to drive to Buffalo that one time because you were so upset. Don't you remember that?"

She did remember that. And remembering it wasn't helping to calm her in the current moment. Still, ending things now wouldn't help to protect her from the heartbreak. If she ended things now, she would already be heartbroken. At least this way, there was a chance. There was a chance that she could remind him how much they cared about each other. There was a chance Odette could fade into the background and he would remember that he wanted to be with her and only her.

It had happened before. It's what happened the first time. Against all odds… it had happened before.

"I…" Rory's chin was starting to quiver. "I need this to work, Lane…"

"Rory…" Lane's voice pleaded over the phone. "You need to talk to him."

2036

"He won't talk to me."

Rory was staring down into the light green liquid sitting in her glass, mostly undrinken. As much as she needed to drink, she kept finding that more often than not she was lacking the presence of mind to lift the glass up to her lips. Instead, it just sat there in her hands, the sweat from the ice inside the cup running over her fingers, providing a small but welcome comfort from the heat of the summer night.

It had been a pretty quiet night. The sound of crickets chirping and frogs croaking from the creek in the woods behind her house were taking up most of the conversation. Lane had come over to talk, but Rory wasn't finding herself in a very loquacious mood. They were mostly sitting there in silence, Lane asking a few softly worded questions while Rory tried her hardest not to completely break down. Yet, despite the fact that Rory couldn't seem to muster the ability to actually talk about what was going on, just having her friend sitting in the patio chair next to her was a comfort.

She heard Lane sigh, and another long pause fell over them. That had been the pattern of the evening. Lane would ask, Rory would pause before answering, and then Lane would pause before responding to the answer. It was as if there was a ticking time bomb between them. Lane was doing her very best not to prod too much and not to upset her any further than she was already upset. But, Rory knew what was going on in her mind. She knew that her friend was having to really focus on being supportive rather than diving right into a long list of 'I told you sos.'

"He said he doesn't want to hear why I did what I did. He doesn't want to hear my excuses."

"He's going to have to talk to you at some point, Rory," said Lane, prompting Rory to shake her head in disbelief. "You can't avoid each other forever."

"Maybe we can," Rory replied with a shrug. "Riley is nineteen. She's an adult. It's not like we need to co-parent. It's not like we need to get along. We never have to speak to each other again if he doesn't want to…"

"That's not true, Rory…." said Lane, gently. "The boys are twenty-nine. Steve is married with a baby of his own. It doesn't matter how old they are. Zack and I still need to speak to each other all the time. Just because we don't have to co-parent anymore doesn't mean we don't need to get along."

Rory didn't think the comparison was all that apt. Lane and Zack had spent thirteen years raising the twins together. They'd spent fourteen years as partners before they'd both amicably decided that their marriage was over. They'd outgrown each other. Or… Lane had outgrown Zack in Rory's opinion - but that was a topic best left in the past. Whatever the reason, they weren't happy anymore, and they both agreed that the best thing to do for the boys was to end it before they started to hate each other.

She couldn't say the same.

"He hates me, Lane…" Rory replied, her voice quivering and moisture starting to build up in the corner of his eyes.

"Rory…" her friend soothed. Lane leaned forward in her seat and pressed a comforting hand on her knee, but Rory couldn't help but feel dirty at the contact. Like she didn't deserve it. "I never knew Logan that well… but I knew him well enough to know that he could never hate you."

Rory shook her head as the tears started flowing freely down her cheeks. There had been a time when she had thought the same, but thinking about those days was only twisting the knife already planted firmly in her heart.

"No…" she said, shaking her head and looking back into the depths of her now watered down margarita. "You didn't hear him. You didn't…"

She trailed off, once again letting the quiet take over the moment as her thoughts tumbled around in her mind so quickly that her vocal chords couldn't keep up with them. Lane hadn't been there. She hadn't heard the sneer in his voice. She hadn't heard how… cold he was. How strangely detached and calm. Over all the years Rory had known Logan, she was used to hearing him angry. She was used to the way that he would raise his voice and start to pace wildly around a room. She was accustomed to the way he would become defensive and snappy and sarcastic, and the way his hands would flail around in an energetic display of frustration. But, the way he had sounded on the phone… the stoic indifference toward anything she had to say… that was something new entirely.

"I've never heard him that way before, Lane. He hates me," she continued, pausing to pluck a Kleenex out of the box lane had set on the table next to her.

She dabbed at her eyes as her mind started traveling backward in time. Since the moment she'd heard Logan's voice on the phone, she couldn't get the image of his face out of her mind. She kept seeing him standing in front of her dressed in a white shirt and red vest, the light of the crisp morning sun bringing out the golden highlights in his neatly trimmed hair, the fingers and thumbs of his hands coming together in the air to form a rectangular frame, the sound of his voice as he said the last words he'd ever spoken to her.

But, what she really couldn't stop seeing was the expression on his face. The way that he had looked at her with such love and affection. The way that he was struggling to hold himself together - whether for his own benefit or for her's she was never really sure. The only thing that she was sure of was that he was heartbroken. Perhaps almost as heartbroken as she was. She'd never forgotten that look on his face. She'd held on to it for so long. She'd always gone back to that look to convince herself that he really did love her. That it had all been worth it.

Saying goodbye to Logan that morning had been one of the hardest thing she'd ever done. But way that the goodbye had happened had always been a comfort to her. It had been perfect. Like something out of a movie or a book or a poem. She'd decided that she could move on with her life if that was the way she would always remember him. But now… now the last thing she remembered was the bitterness in his voice.

He thought she'd betrayed him.

"You just need to talk to him, Rory," Lane repeated. "You need to explain why you - "

"Explain what?!" Rory asked, suddenly finding herself defensive. She'd been sitting here in self loathing for so long, beating herself up over the decisions she made. And she did feel guilty for them. She felt guilty, but she also hadn't hadn't made them in a vacuum. "What do I have to explain to him that he doesn't already know?!"

Lane went quiet again. Rory watched as her friend sat back in her chair and gave her some space to lash out. Of course, now Rory had the added guilt of snapping at her best friend on top of everything else she was feeling. But, thankfully, Lane didn't seem upset by it.

"He knows why I did it…" she whispered, looking off into the trees lining her backyard.

"Clearly he doesn't," said Lane, softly. She was obviously trying to keep Rory calm while making her see reason. But, it didn't seem to be working very well.

"Well then he's an idiot!"

A fresh batch of tears started flowing down her cheeks after her outburst. This time, however, they weren't just a result of guilt and self-hatred. This time they were also angry tears, tears of frustration and pain. Pain that she had been burying for twenty years.

"What was I supposed to do, Lane?" she asked. "Destroy his life? Ruin in his marriage?"

"I don't know…." said Lane.

"He was married. By the time I knew that I was pregnant, he was already married. He…"

He had a life. An entire life. A life that she wasn't a part of - not really. She flittted in and out of it here and there, but their time together was never real life. It was a fantasy. It was a fantasy of what life could have been… in a different world. When they were together they could pretend for a few days that they were the people they used to be in college. The people who were so bright eyed and optimistic and in love. The people who existed before the real world split them apart. Before the economy crashed. Before Occupy Wall Street. Before Ferguson. Before the 2016 election.

For a few days at a time they could pretend that life was simple again. They could pretend that the future was full of possibilities. They could pretend that the chasms that existed between them - the money, the class, the lifestyle, the responsibilities, the expectations, their families, the time, the literal chasm filled with salt water spread out between the two continents they lived on - didn't matter. All that mattered was that they were together.

But just like the dreams she had every night when she went to sleep, the fantasy eventually had to come to an end. Real life, like the bleating of an alarm in the morning, always had a way of catching up.

"He didn't choose me," she continued. "I'm not even angry about it. I'm not. He chose the life he was meant for… I was just… We weren't… We were never meant to be together. I couldn't force him to choose me, Lane. That's what would have happened. I would have been forcing him to choose me. I couldn't do that to him. I couldn't do that to Riley. "

Riley. Her perfect little girl. The one bright spot in the mess that she'd made of her life. The one piece of Logan that she could truly and completely claim as hers. The idea of putting her baby through even a second of the pain that she had been through was unfathomable to her. She couldn't do it. She wouldn't be able to watch her daughter's heart break into pieces every time her father chose a different life over her. And every time Rory tried to convince herself that Logan wouldn't do that - that he was different than her own father - she was reminded of the fact that he already had. The conversation they'd had in New Hampshire would come rushing back into her mind, as fresh and painful as it had been the night it had happened.

The plan.

He would always pick the plan.

He was born to pick the plan.

The best way to spare her daughter from the debilitating pain of that choice was to not even give him the option in the first place. She'd already asked him what he wanted. He wanted Odette. He wanted London. He wanted his half a billion dollar fortune and the approval of a father he'd spent his entire life vying for and was finally starting to wrap his fingers around. Of course, Rory knew that he might as well have been reaching for grains of sand. And shc would be damned if she let her daughter spend her life reaching for the same only to have them slip through her knuckles every time she got close enough to try to close her fist around them.

"I just wanted to protect her…" said Rory.

There were so many things to protect her from when it came to her father. There was the possible rejection. There was the distance. There was the threat of what his family would do to her if they ever found out. If they would try to pay her off. To get her to disappear. If they would treat her with judgement and derision. Look at her as if she was the unwanted kink in the meticulously crafted plan they had laid out over so many decades.

"...all because you seduced him into ruining his life! She had that baby, and she ended his future!"

She closed her eyes tightly to defend herself against the onslaught of the memory. But, closing her eyes only succeeded in altered images filling her mind instead of the reality around her. She saw a young girl sitting in a kitchen, her arms resting against the white tiled countertops as she flinched at the sound of her grandfather's voice echoing through the halls of an ornate Hartford mansion. Yet, instead of brown the girl's hair was blonde. And instead of the voice she'd only heard once in her life and long ago forgotten, it was a voice far more familiar to her. One she'd heard several times. One that was particularly gifted in inflicting pain and crushing dreams…

The expression on her face must have been reflecting the torrent of emotions coursing through her. Because before she could open them, she heard her best friend rise from her chair and felt her slip into the open seat on the loveseat next to her. Lane pulled Rory to her, and in a moment of surrender, she allowed herself to melt into the warm embrace of the one person who had never judged her for any of this, who knew everything - every sordid detail and still loved her. Despite all the terrible choices she had made, and all the people that she hurt, Lane still stuck by her side.

She let her head fall onto Lane's shoulder and both of them sat there for a few moments letting the quiet wash over them again as Rory continued to cry. She'd lost track of how many times Lane had done this for her as of late.

"So… what do we do now?" Lane asked after a few moments. Rory sniffed and shook her head.

"I don't know… There's nothing we can do,"she said. "She wanted to meet her father. She found him on her own. I can't stop her. She has a right to know him if she wants to know him… I just… I just wish she would have told me. I had no idea she felt so strongly about it. I wish she would have just asked me about him. I would have told her about him if she'd just asked - "

"Rory…"

Something about the tone of Lane's interjection prompted her to pull away and sit back up. When she looked at Lane's face, she found an incredulous expression looking back at her. All she was feeling, however, was confusion.

"What?" she asked.

Lane sighed. She shifted in her seat, tucking one leg under herself and turning so that they were now facing each other. Her back went straight, and the expression on her face started shifting from incredulity to something more akin to pained caution. As if she had something to say, but she was almost afraid to say it.

"She did ask you about him," her friend said.

The words felt like a slap in her face. Not one that hurt or was dolled out in anger. Just one that took her completely and utterly by surprise. One that left her sitting there absolutely flabbergasted.

"What?" she asked, blinking. "No she didn't. I think I would have remembered that conversation…"

"She did, Rory," Lane insisted. "She hasn't in a long time. But when she was younger…"

"Well… yeah…" Rory said furrowing her brow as she thought about Riley's youth and the questions that would often pop up around Father's Day and come the time for Daddy-Daughter dances and the like. But those were just the musings of a little girl who didn't understand why all the other kids had daddies and she didn't. Those questions had stopped once she grew up and started to understand the concept of single parenthood, and they'd really come to an end once Jess had become a more permanent fixture in their lives. "But that wasn't… it wasn't like that…"

"It was like that," said Lane. "She would ask about him and you would shut her down."

"No! I…"

Rory was shaking her head against the accusation, but as she sat there and thought back on all the times that Riley brought up the subject, a new pattern would emerge. It was like she could suddenly hear herself from her daughter's point of view. The clipped responses. The quick changes of subject. She thought about the way her heart used to race every time the subject would come up, as if she was in a panic. As if telling her daughter even the slightest bit of information would put her in danger.

In her innocence Riley would speak his name at a supermarket or in the halls of Chilton and it would be overheard by a member of the DAR or The Junior League or a student whose grandfather would golf with Mitchum every Wednesday morning and it would all blow up from there. They'd be served with papers - NDAs or worse. They'd be hounded by the press. They'd be threatened. Dragged through mud.

They could take her away from her. They were powerful enough. They knew the right people, and they had enough money and influence to buy the ones they didn't. They could take her baby away from her and make it so she only saw her on summer holidays and every other Christmas.

She was afraid. She was so afraid that she let her daughter suffer and she didn't even realize it. In trying to protect her from those people - from that pain, she had been the one to cause it.

The self-loathing came rushing back to her in full force, and she felt an all encompassing need to hear her daughter's voice. The urge to pick up her phone from the patio table and call her was overwhelming. But, as much as she wanted to, there was no point. It was nearly two-thirty in the morning in London. She was probably fast asleep. Asleep inside a bed in her father's house halfway across the world.

"I didn't…"

She wasn't sure how to finish that thought. She didn't mean to shut her down? She didn't mean to keep Logan a secret from her for so long? She didn't mean to hurt her? To hurt him.

"I didn't mean for any of this to happen…"

She'd never meant for her life to turn out the way that it had. In so many ways she still felt like the twenty-two year-old girl breaking down on her mother's bathroom floor with pink streaks in her hair so frightened of all the unknowns that laid before her. She hadn't known what to expect from her future. But when she thought about it, there was at least one constant, one source of comfort and stability.

During all the time, she'd always assumed that whatever the future looked like, she would walk into it with Logan. She'd been thinking about it for a year at that point. They'd made promises to each other. They'd survived the long distance. They said they would factor each other in. Looking back, it was still so hard to comprehend what had happened. The unexpected proposal, the ultimatum, the break up, Hamburg, London, Odette…

Sometimes she closed her eyes and tried to pinpoint the exact moment that everything had gone wrong. Was it really just the proposal, or was it before that? Was it the phone call about his patent suit? Was it the fight before she left for Mia's wedding? His job offer in California? Or did it all precede even that? Did it really all come down to that very first weekend they had officially become boyfriend and girlfriend?

"You come from two entirely different worlds."

"It would never work. Not for you, and certainly not for us."

She closed her eyes against the onslaught of the memory. It was a memory that had always brought her a significant amount of pain, but what hurt now more than anything else was the fact that they were right. In the end, their love for each other hadn't been enough to overcome the distance between them - literally and metaphorically. Despite their plans, hopes and dreams for a future together somehow they just hadn't been able to make it work.

"I didn't want any of this."

TBC...

AN: Okay... so the good news is we have gotten past the first big dose of angst for this story. There will be less for a while as Logan/Riley/Alex start to bond. So, look forward to that.

Secondly...divorces for everyone! Lol. Tbh, I've never liked Zack. Usually, I keep them together because I don't care enough about the ship to rock the boat for people who do like him, but Lane deserved so much better imo. As I was writing this chapter, he and Lane splitting up just flowed out of my fingertips and it happened. So, I now imagine that she was in Hartford one day and she ran into Henry Cho at the grocery store and they are now happily remarried while he fixes baby hearts for a living and is raising his own teenage daughters. So, they merged families like the Brady Bunch and Mrs. Kim was so overjoyed at Lane marrying a Korean doctor that she passed peacefully in her sleep with a smile on her face because her life was complete. And Zack is… I dunno sitting around stoned and playing video games all day in his fifties like he always wanted to be? #theshadeofitall

Please review. I really hope that this chapter has made you at least sympathize with Rory. I understand that the choice she made was inexcusable, but that doesn't mean we can't have empathy for why she made it.