A/N: Hey, guys so sorry for the long gap between updates, hope you enjoy!


Chapter Nine

Rory rolled over and tried to snuggle deeper into her blanket as she tried to ignore banging sounds from downstairs. She'd been staying above the Diner now for a few days and had had a shock of her life the other day when she was woken in the early hours and thought she was being burgled. She'd gone downstairs armed with a spatula before realising it was Luke getting a delivery.

He was mortified that he had forgotten to warn her; he was so used to his early deliveries he'd not realised that loud noises at quarter to five were unusual for most. She'd laughed it off and demanded a small coffee for the inconvenience (after assuring Luke a small amount of caffeine is perfectly fine for the baby and there was no way she was getting back to sleep) and helped him bring things in. They'd enjoyed breakfast together and although much earlier than she would have liked it was a pleasant start to her day. He'd written a list of dates for her so she would know when to expect a delivery and he promised he would try to be quieter. The thought of that list made her frown and open her eyes. It wasn't a delivery day.

She yawned and grabbed her phone from the nightstand – it was half-past one. She groaned and cursed to murder Kirk if he was the one to blame. Kirk had accused Luke of favouritism by letting Rory stay here when he had never made the offer to him. Luke had pointed out the obvious that Rory was family which of course made Kirk cry.

She got out of bed and shoved her feet into a pair of purple fluffy slippers, she also grabbed a chunky cream knit cardigan she'd left on her couch and wrapped it around her small frame, covering up her yellow cotton pyjamas. It was cold so she didn't appreciate being woken up, she flipped all the lights on knowing she wouldn't be able to sleep when she came back upstairs – a book and hot cocoa were already on her mind. She flipped the Diner lights on as she got to the bottom of the stairs.

"I'm coming," she shouted as the banging continued. Luke left the blinds down when it was shut so she couldn't make out who it was as she twisted the lock open. She opened the door with one arm wrapped around herself bracing herself against the incoming cold, but it wasn't the bracing arctic air that made her gasp.

"If he'd not told me I don't think I would have even thought you were pregnant. I would have expected you to be bigger at this stage."

Rory was barely comprehending the situation so replied mainly on autopilot. "It's a small bump, people who know me can tell but I can get away with it with people who don't." She opened her cardigan and placed a hand on her lower belly, the clinging cotton showing the outline of her small barely-there bump.

"Like the fiancée of the baby's father?"

"Why don't you come in, Odette?" offered Rory, her comment acting like a jug of water being poured over her head and bringing her to the reality that she was about to have her most difficult conversation yet. "It's cold, and I'm guessing we have things to discuss."

Rory gestured the way up to Odette and followed the taller blonde woman into her small apartment. She stood awkwardly for a moment as Odette took a seat on the couch. "Do you want anything to drink or eat? Despite appearances as I live above a diner, it won't be diner quality food but I could probably rustle some-"

"No," said Odette firmly, interrupting Rory's nervous ramble. "Thank you. I don't intend to be here long. I have a driver outside waiting to take me back to the airport as soon as we're done."

Rory sat down on a chair opposite, sitting cross-legged in hopes it would stop her nervously jigging her limbs. Odette was wearing a long black cardigan belted shut over black leggings and knee-high boots. Her blonde hair was pulled into a perfect messy bun on top of her head (Rory subconsciously pulled her fingers through her bed head waves) and although bare of makeup and clearly tired with dark circles around her eyes, her face was striking. Rory realised she must have literally flown straight here from England, hence the late hour.

"I'm sorry," blurted out Rory, cringing. "That's so inadequate, I'm sorry for my sorry. I can't put into-"

"Stop, apologies aren't what I'm here for," said Odette. "I want explanations and facts."

"Did Logan not explain?"

"He did," replied Odette. "But I want to hear it from you as well. I want to hear both sides of the story that has ruined my life." She paused for a moment, to wipe her wet eyes with a handkerchief. "I wanted to be cried out before I got here, I didn't want to give you the satisfaction of my tears."

"I can assure you, it gives me no satisfaction," said Rory gravely.

Odette sucked in a deep breath and pulled herself together. "I want to know everything; I need to make sense of what's happened."

Rory nodded numbly. She didn't want to do this but understood that her uncomfortableness at the situation was nothing compared to what she had done to the woman in front of her. "What did you know about me originally? My history with Logan."

Odette shook her head. "Nothing, the first time I learnt your name was when I met you at the Gala. Everyone was so tense! I know why now of course."

"Did you know anything about his dating life during college and just after it?"

"I knew he had originally been a bit of a playboy and then had a serious girlfriend the last few years," explained Odette. "He didn't date for years afterwards, then only casually and then he met me. We were casual for a long time before things got serious. It was obvious he kept his heart very guarded; he never gave much detail to his past, but it didn't take a genius to work out he'd been hurt. I used to think I was so special for being the woman to break down those walls and gain his love."

"I was the serious girlfriend," admitted Rory. "It's ironic because we started casually as well, I had to persuade him to see me because he was convinced that I was only a boyfriend kind of girl, when I realised that he was right I tried to break things off and he said he could be a boyfriend. We were together for a few years, a break and long-distance included and then we broke up at my graduation."

"Because he proposed?" Due to Rory's surprise, she added, "He only told me about it last night, I never knew he'd proposed to you. I presumed you had split up with him due to clearly affecting him for many years, but I never knew you turned down his proposal. I waited so long for him to propose to me, I never knew I wasn't the first. Why did you say no? You two clearly can't keep away from each other, you'd have saved a lot of other people's pain if you'd have married him then."

"I said no because I was young and wanted to conquer the world by myself, not because I was a Huntzberger, and not because I didn't love him," said Rory sadly. "Technically he broke up with me, I just declined the proposal, not him."

"How did it start the second time? Again, Logan has explained his side of how he has hurt me, but I want you to explain your side. I know you met in Hamburg about 18 months ago and started an affair. It would have hurt at the time if he had left me for you, I would have been devastated but it would have been nothing compared to the betrayal and pain I feel now."

"That's my fault," said Rory, her hands resting on her thighs, gripping so tightly she felt her fingernails were digging in. "It's not what I wanted so he went along with it. I wanted what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, when we were together, we were together but apart we had our own lives."

"How could you be together knowing he was with someone else?" asked Odette, staring at Rory intensely. "When he sat me down and told me about having an affair and the baby, I assumed that you were a victim too. He'd led you as he had me and that you'd probably found out he had a fiancée. There was a moment I felt sorry for you, your world upside down too but you had a baby to consider. Then he dealt the blow that you knew about me from the start and didn't care."

"I cared," said Rory quietly. "I tried not to think about you at all though to make it easier. I made it even easier by arrogantly convincing myself it was okay because he was my love first. As though I had proprietary rights over him, that I had copyright. He kept you very separate as well. In my head, you were a business transaction. A suitable wife to continue the Huntzberger dynasty, and I know love isn't always a factor in those marriages."

"It was going to be in mine," sobbed Odette. She put her head in her hands for a moment before rubbing her eyes and steadying herself with a breath again. "I wasn't with Logan for his family name or because his family could do business with mine. I met him at an art gallery in London, and I fell in love with his easy charm and smile. We exchanged first names only, it wasn't until after our couple of dates that I learnt who his family was and that his parents had met mine in the past. We were two people who genuinely enjoyed each other's company and fell in love. Or at least I thought we were. Whilst I was planning our wedding and imagining our future family, he was literally making one with you."

Rory glanced away and stared towards the window for a moment. She too wanted to cry but she knew she was not the victim in this room and her tears were pointless. She waited for the moment to pass before looking back at Odette, whose own eyes were red-rimmed. "I was selfish, and I will never forgive myself for what I put you through. It was so separate in my mind, in a different country and then you were even in a different country to that most of the time, so I never had to confront my conscious with the fact you were a real human being with real feelings. That does not excuse my actions though, I still knew about you. I know it won't be of any comfort to you, but I had broken things off with him, I expected him to marry you and then I found out about the baby."

"It really isn't of any comfort that my wedding might have gone ahead only at the permission of his former mistress," said Odette acidly. "It still would have destroyed my world even if I found out in twenty years that the foundation of our relationship was a lie."

"It would have meant he chose you."

"No," said Odette sadly, shaking her head. "It would have meant you had not let him choose you. You said it was your choice to have an affair and he went along with it. When he was telling me his version of what had happened and talking about you, he made it clear he loves you. He didn't say the words, probably thought it would be one nail in the coffin too many, but his face softened, and his eyes lit up in a way they never had around me. I think he did love me, otherwise, we wouldn't have been in a relationship so long, I'd have been one of many casual flings, but it's not the same. If he hadn't bumped into you, I think we would have got married and had our family and been incredibly happy together. I honestly believe that. I also believe even if you hadn't started an affair, and you had never seen him again, that bumping into you would still have triggered something in him to break it off with me. It would have been a clean and honest break. It still could have been, but you dragged him along and forced him to share himself with the two of us."

"I took the bits that I wanted," nodded Rory. "He doesn't love me; I think he loved you which is why he stayed with you, but he was weak and it's easy to fall into old lives. If I weren't pregnant, he'd be living the life he genuinely wanted with you, but I can understand what he's done wouldn't be forgivable for you to carry on. He could have chosen to break up with you at any point he was seeing me."

Odette laughed. "You're both stupid. You're right that he was weak. He was too scared to leave me in case he could never have you. This way he could still have the life we planned but have you in the way you offered. I think from what I know that if he had split up with me and declared himself fully free you would have run a mile and he was protecting himself from that."

Rory shook her head. "We're stupid. What we did was stupid, but Logan doesn't scare easily. He's jumped off scaffolding, dived off cliffs – he could have had a conversation with me at any point. We were in love when we were in college, but we don't work as adults, we're worlds apart in how we want our lives to be. Maybe if we were two different people, then maybe. We're not though, so instead, we took stolen moments with each other at the expense of you. You deserve better, you deserved the Logan you had before I reconnected with him and I'm sorry I changed that and de-railed your future."

"You have derailed it, you know," said Odette bitterly. "I moved to a different country to be with Logan, I don't know whether I'll stay in London or move back to Paris. I have to tell my friends and family that the wedding they're expecting in a couple of months is cancelled. I'll probably never see Honor's children again. They call me Auntie O, you know, I really loved them, and I think they loved me too. It's not just Logan that all of a sudden stops being in my life. Do you want to know what scares me the most?"

"What?" asked Rory, numbly.

"That this is going to destroy my life for years to come like you destroyed his when you rejected his proposal," said Odette. "I still want love, marriage and kids and now at thirty-three, I have to start over again after wasting so much of my life with someone I thought I would be spending the rest of it with. How am I supposed to trust any person who comes into my life? It physically hurts to think that you two may have robbed me of my future as well as those years. Even more so knowing that you get your baby, a baby that should have been mine, a baby that I and him had talked about having. I think I've heard enough, I'll see myself out."


A/N: Very dialogue-y but I hope that you enjoyed it - please leave a review either way, I'd love to hear your thoughts :) I've read a lot of stories where Odette had also been cheating on Logan, or that they were more like friends anyway or that she knew all along - I wanted an Odette that was blindsided, that was genuinely in love with Logan and upset by what had happened! Who knows whether or not she will appear again, I've not quite decided.