Close to heaven, close to those celestial bodies hanging on the blue velvet backdrop of night. She closes her eyes, feeling his entire being taking her over. The wetness of his mouth, the moist warmth of his breath against bare skin, the gentle roughness of his hands. Too much. She goes blind for a second, sees nothing but blackness splashed with bursts of neon yellow and green. Feeling dizzy, she tries to breathe. Impossible. The friction overpowers her and she lets it happen. Lets go, biting at his lip and saying his name through those clenched teeth.

She relaxes her body, lying on top of him. His breathing is staggered. She feels this in the way his ribcage rises and falls at some sort of dotted rhythm. A dotted eighth note and then a quick sixteenth to follow. Neither says a word until it has settled. Until they have steadied themselves.

He is better than Logan. Better than Dean. She idly wonders if this is because she wants it more with him. Because he knows that she wants it more. Because this isn't supposed to happen.

Now, he is turning her hair into a curtain in front of her face, pulling it forward. It comes in sweaty clumps and he combs his fingers through it gently. Smiling.

He stops his fingers suddenly. Pushing her hair back away from her face. He says, "Tell me it's always going to be me." His voice makes her think of the moon and swaying trees caught in a summer wind.

The request surprises her and she hesitates. But, only for a second. "It's always going to be you." But he must already know this. She is certain she has said it to him over the phone countless times She has her own request, just as selfish, just as sincere, "Tell me I'm everything."

His mouth falls into a frown as he scans her face. They are darting around her features and she bites back the smile that comes with the lazy thought that he is trying to commit her to memory. He puts his hand on her cheek and in that broken gravel voice says, "You're everything."

This is what she's wanted, always.

However, there is something in his voice when he tells her this. Like they're doomed. Like saying it means the end. He is defeated, giving up, conceding to this feeling. She kisses him and tries whispering that she loves him, but he stops her with his mouth.

He's hiding in the physical aspect like he used to. He's hiding behind his touches and his kisses, as if they are enough.

She wakes up enveloped in the warm orange of early morning. For a moment, they are the only two people who exist. The world is just skin and sheets. The world is just his parted lips and her fingers in his hair.

She kisses his face: the crown of his head, his cheekbones, his chin, his mouth. Slowly, delicately. His eyes flutter open and she freezes, watching him cautiously until he leans in to press his forehead against hers. He breathes out a thick, heavy sigh with his eyes closed. And he says, "Morning."

She wants this forever.

"It's early."

"And yet, you're the one awake." His eyes are half closed as he puts his head in her shoulder, a mouthful of her hair.

She laughs at the feeling of his lips against her collar bone, the tickling of his breath. She stops when he lifts his head back up, his eyes filled with something besides morning after playfulness. They are filled with a steady concentration and she can see the possible outcomes rotating in his mind. Each one seeming painful to him. The entire relationship being branded with the word "fatal." He is imagining all of the ways this will end. All of the ways he will be hurt again and all of the ways he will hurt her. She presses her palm flat against his bare chest, spreading her fingers out and feeling his heart.

He takes the hand in his, looking down at the pair. "Rory…"

"No. Stop. Don't…just, don't." She's upset already. She's been awake for five minutes and she's already crying and regretting the entire night. "Don't say what you're going to say. That this was a mistake. That you can't be with me. Because I know, okay? I already know. So-"

He's pushing the hair behind her ear and she finds herself unable to speak with his fingertips brushing against her skin that way. He is still looking at her with that steady gaze and he says, "I wasn't going to say any of that." He's smiling so widely that she has to look away because she thinks this is his private smile that people aren't suppose to see ever. So she's looking down toward their fingers still locked together when he says, "I was going to say…That I lied."

Her head springs up. "When?"

And the smile turns into his smirk and she feels overwhelmingly comfortable. "You know when."

She kisses him, letting all of herself leak into the action, surrendering her being to showing him love with her mouth. Because she doesn't want to hear him say it out loud. That he's loved her for all of these years, that it never stopped, that he's been trying to deny it but he can't. And it isn't him to say these things out loud and all she wants right now is him.

He tries to count the hairs on her head. One by one, his fingers separate the strands and count each one off. But not without first examining its color and letting his fingertips slide against it for a few seconds. He is almost to ninety-three when she opens her eyes. She smiles that deadly half asleep, post coital smile at him and laughter swells up in his stomach. Lovesick laughter that makes him almost want to cry because this won't happen again. He won't be this happy again, or at least not happy in this exact way again. This feeling is something that is impossible to duplicate. And all he can do is smile against the soft skin of her cheek.

In his head, he's making promises about forever to her. He's saying, "Always, always, always." He's tracing his fingers along her skin, memorizing her in her youth, imagining wrinkles on this currently taut exterior. He's so content that he wants to die.

Soon the early morning hours will give way to reality and they will have to face it. The orange will turn to bright midday yellow and she'll go back to being attached to the blonde haired rich boy. He'll go back to being attached to miles and miles of space between him and her. Somehow he knows nothing will change.

"You knew this would happen!" He's yelling into a cell phone on the side of the interstate. He's pacing behind his car, the cold rain hitting his face. His fingers are numb and he's angry. "Don't make me feel guilty when you were doing the same thing while I was gone."

Annalise is crying hard. He hates her for that, for those heaving sobs she gives into the receiver. They almost convince him.

"Oh, come on. Don't pretend that you weren't fucking David's brains out this past week!" Almost.

She doesn't say anything. The entire conversation is just him screaming at her over the sound of rain and speeding cars. He doesn't mind. It's better this way. Easier.

She starts a phrase that sounds like it could be, "I'm sorry." But he hangs up and gets back into his car, easing himself back into traffic and forgetting. About her face when she cries (he's seen it so often). About her blonde hair and her fingers and the way she curled against him in the middle of the night. About the false sense of comfort she had provided, the love that wasn't real at all. About the past few months entirely.

She wants him badly right now. She can feel it in her fingertips, a tingling, an aching to touch him. To feel his skin, the soft hair on his forearms. It isn't that she misses him (though this is true after a mere two days since his departure). It is this insatiable lust that keeps turning inside of her. The persistent thirst for his mouth and his limbs. She aches throughout her entire body.

But she's sitting across from Logan at an ornate and expensive restaurant. Tonight is the night that it comes out. He kissed her when he picked her up and she felt sick to her stomach. And now he is looking at her with that smile in his eyes and she has to look away, turning her head back down to the menu. She is going to break up with him tonight, right now. If she could only find her voice and some courage.

As it stands, she is acting as though nothing is different. As though she hadn't slept with another man just two nights ago. As if it wasn't the only thing she could think about, dream about. She's a coward.

His fork is halfway to his mouth when he stops. He notices. She is sure it is written all over her face. She must be blushing furiously at the thoughts that are passing through her head: thoughts of her and Jess so beautifully tangled together. He stops and puts his fork down and says, "Okay, Ace. What's wrong? You haven't touched your food."

She runs her fingers nervously along the stainless steel of her fork and doesn't look up at him when she says faintly, "This is what's wrong."

He's reaching across the table to take her hand, but she pulls it back and lets it fall in her lap. "I-I'm not…I don't love you, Logan. I never did. I can't…" She looks up at him then because he needs to hear this, really hear this, "You aren't what I want."

He leans back in his chair and then leans forward again, bringing his face closer to hers than it was before. "Ace-"

"I really wish you wouldn't call me that."

And with that, he stands up, almost knocking his chair over as he does. He raises his hands as he backs away. "Alright, Rory." He says her name deliberately, drawing out each of the two syllables. "Fine. You win."

Her eyes follow him intently as he walks out of the restaurant, not leaving him until he's gone. Only then, when he's vanished, does she let them fall closed as relief washes over her.

This relief doesn't last long. Just as she pulls up in front of her house, his car is behind hers. The silver Porsche gliding into their driveway. She doesn't get out of the car. She watches him in her rearview mirror until he's knocking on the driver's side window. She rolls it down quickly. "What do you want, Logan?"

He leans down to be at her eye level and shifts on his feet a little. "Can we do this with you out of the car so I don't have to lean over awkwardly to talk to you?"

She folds her arms across her chest, her seatbelt still buckled. "No. We can do this just like this." And then with an angry sigh, she throws her hands up in the air. "Didn't I just break up with you? God, Logan."

He rests his hand on the car, leaning his weight against it as he looks down at her. "Rory, you're making a huge mistake. What we have? It's good. It could be potentially great. Don't be rash here, Ace."

"I'm not being rash. I'm being honest." She clenches her teeth tightly. "I don't want to be with you anymore."

He pushes himself off from the car and begins to pace in front of her. Suddenly, he stops and turns to her, a look of determination in his eyes. "Marry me."

"What? Are you-"

"Do it. Marry me. I love you. Come on."

She unbuckles her seatbelt and gets out of the car, pushing past him and making her way to the door. He grabs her arm fiercely and turns her around. "Ace-"

She rips herself from him and climbs the front stairs. At the top, she turns around. "No." And she lets the front door crash as it closes behind her.

Back in Philadelphia, his hands won't stop shaking and he can't stop pacing. Back and forth in front of the window, in front of the stove, the refrigerator, his bed. Just pacing. Because he's anxious.

Until the phone rings. He jumps at the sound, lunges for the receiver, answers entirely too eagerly. An abrupt, "Hello?" And a smile, a wave of relief, at the returning sound of her voice.

But, "He asked me to marry him." Here is where his stomach drops and he feels his entire chest constrict in some awful way. This is a panic attack, he realizes. This is utter fear, blinding fear. And it's all happening in the span of mere seconds. Then she adds, "After I break up with him, he has the nerve to show up and ask me to marry him."

But he's still uncertain. "You did say no, right?"

"Of course," she answers harshly, offended that he would even think she would accept the proposal.

"Okay." He breathes, raking his hand through his hair. "Good."

There is a pause, a long silence passes between the two of them. He looks out the window at the cars passing below, at the people on sidewalks. Music from another apartment seeps through the walls, the thudding of the bass pulsates through the floor. He hears laughter from somewhere down the hall and presses his hand against the cold glass of the window. He thinks about leaving. About going back to Connecticut. About being with her always, always, always.

But he can't. For so many reasons that he isn't sure he can name anymore, he can't leave.

She shatters the silence with a weak voice that whispers, "I miss you."

"Yeah." He walks away from the window and lets himself fall onto the couch. Thrown across the arm is a sweatshirt that belongs to Annalise. He picks it up, looking at it for a second before tossing it across the room and into the box with the rest of her things. "Same here."

A/N: Yeah, sorry this chapter took almost a month to get done. It isn't even that good. I'm not sure how I feel about the whole Logan proposing bit, but I felt like this chapter needed a little bit of drama at least. I don't now what's going to happen with this now. But, anyway, leave me a review and let me know what you're thinking. Hopefully, I'll get some brilliant idea for the next chapter and have it up quicker than I had this one up.