So again very fast update, but I just can´t wait any longer.

This is the HARDEST and MOST DIFFICULT Chapter I EVER wrote! Anf because of this I want your opinion on it, so please review! All of you this time!

Seriously it took me forever to write this because I had to check, watch, re-read, re-write and so on. So please if you find any faults in the content, then tell me!

The "game" is still going on, so...

Chapter 17: Drunk

Luke turned around and walked towards the dining room door. When he realized that she was still standing in the same place, he called her and without asking him anything she followed him into the kitchen. He opened the freezer and took out an ice-pack, wrapped it in a towel and handed it to her. She looked down at it, then at him with questioning eyes.

"For your arms" he just said. She nodded and leaned against the counter. She didn't feel the bruises on her arms, but her head was killing her. She lay the ice-pack down on the counter and rubbed her sleeves.

"Headache?" Luke, who had watched her carefully, asked.

"Mmmh" she made and closed her eyes.

"You better lay down and rest for some time." he told her, took the ice-pack and walked upstairs and again she followed him.

In their bedroom she lay down on the bed and he handed her the ice, which she placed on a pillow beside her, so that she didn't had to hold it the whole time.

Luke stood awkwardly beside the bed, not sure what to do or to say.

"Luke?" she asked after some seconds and looked at him.

"Yeah?"

"I don't want him. I want..."

"Not now, Lorelai. Sleep!" he said softly and left the room.

She knew that he needed time to process it all. That always scared her. But she knew better than to push him, she had learned that no good came out of it.

But maybe it was good this time. She also needed to think about everything. He had said horrible things and even though she knew that he had just said them because he had been jealous and hurt, she felt hurt. She still heard him yelling "Take her! Do whatever you want with her!". This hurt more than the bruises on her arm or her head.

They had had some bad fights in the last years. There had been yelling and slamming the doors. One time she had even thrown the coffee-can after him. Then he would leave for the diner and she for the Inn, they would meet in the evening or the next day and the stupid fight would be forgotten, because they were just too happy to see each other again.

Or sometimes when one of them couldn't stand it anymore, they would visit each other at work and make up. Sometimes make out in her office or the storage-room. Once they had been caught by Sookie, who couldn't believe that they were still so crazy about each other after 3 years of marriage and three children. Luke had been more than embarrassed and couldn't look Sookie in the eyes for several weeks. Lorelai had to smile at that memory.

But this fight was different. It was a big one. A huge one, because it came straight from Luke's deepest fears and some mistrust which must have been there the whole time. Even after 4 years of marriage and three children.

She had done everything she could to convince him that he was the one. God, he was her husband and she had his kids. She had wanted it. But now it seemed that this wasn't enough.

Like the time after Williams birthwhen she had been scared without knowing why. It must be something like that, she thought. She had done nothing wrong. She hadn't screwed this up. She had gone straight to him and told him that Chris would stay and then he had freaked out.

If she would have told him that Kirk would stay at their house, he would have argued with her and in the end one of them would have given in, most likely him, because she would start to pout (which she would not do for Kirk) and it would have been okay.

But just the words "Chris" and "stay" were enough to freak him out completely.

Her head was killing her, she needed to sleep.

Luke walked into William's room and found his kids playing on the floor. They did not notice him and so he just stood there watching them.

Sara was like Lorelai. Not only her looks, but her whole personality. She was always hyper in everything she did and so stubborn that it made him crazy sometimes. But she was a daddy's girl. She loved it if he carried her around and explained things to her, no matter what. She would snuggle up against him and preferably fall asleep with her head on his shoulder. Just like Lorelai.

He still heard himself yell at her. He had said horrible things, things he did not mean, never had meant. The thought alone of Chris touching his wife made him feel nauseous, leave alone this guy in one bed with her.

But this exactly had been her dream for so many years. Waking up next to Chris every morning, raising their child together, being a family. She had this now. But with him, not with Chris and he couldn't help but feeling like a substitute when Chris came back. He had suppressed his jealousy and his fears at first, but when she had told him that he would stay with them he had exploded. He had wanted to hurt her, hurt them before they could hurt him. And he was successful, except, she never meant to hurt him.

He repeated her speech about love over and over in his head and every time he felt worse. She loved him, she really did. It was sad that Chris needed to come here before he understood it completely. He knew that she loved him, otherwise they wouldn't have been this happy over the last few years, but he had always wondered what would happen if Chris came back. It had been his worst fear.

Not even the time when Lorelai found out that she was pregnant with the twins and the period following had scared him that much, because he had known that she would still be there and they could work it out. But Chris coming back had been a different thing. He wasn't sure if she would forgive him that he had hurt her so much. For the first time in maybe twenty years he felt like crying.

He had been such a jerk without any reason, all she had done was caring for Rory's sister.

He closed the door silently and walked into the bedroom again.

Lorelai was still awake, staring at the ceiling. She heard the door open and looked at him. He closed the door behind him and then leaned against it. He stared at her and she stared back. He looked different. She needed a moment to find out what it was that she saw in his eyes, but then she realized that it was fear. She had never seen him afraid of anything. Never.

And he looked like he was about to cry. This was also first.

This was were all of this had been coming from. She stood up slowly, as if not to scare him. She carefully took his hand and lead him over to the bed. She pushed him down gently and lay down beside him. She caressed his face with her fingertips, then placed a kiss on his forehead. Then she lay her head on his chest, like she does every night, and hugged him.

For a few seconds he just lay there, then his arms wrapped around her and he needed to take a few deep breaths to keep himself from crying.

"How could you say that?" she asked him after some minutes.

"I don't know. I wanted to hurt you. I wanted you to think I wouldn't care. So that you did not know how much you hurt me"

"I did nothing wrong Luke. How did I hurt you?"

"It's not about what you did or said. It's more like the whole situation. Every time it's the same: He comes, you get back together or he looks at you and gets whatever he wants, then he creates a mess and leaves."

"There was no way we would have gotten back together this time. That ship has sailed from the moment he told me that Sherry was pregnant."

"Yes, because Sherry was pregnant. And he still gets everything he wants when he uses this look. There is some connection which makes you give in every time."

"Luke, when Sherry was pregnant I understood for the first time that he and I weren't meant to be, like I thought for all these years. I had this stupid dream in my head. You remember? The one with the matching jogging-suits?"

"I remember"

"I thought that, since he is Rory's father and no-one could take this role, there would be no real family ever. And I knew that you were more like a father to her than he ever was, but although I had a terrible crush on you I didn't want to lose our friendship, because I needed it so badly back then. You know that all the other men I dated were never an opportunity for a real relationship. I mean I broke up with Jason, because he sued my father! What kind of reason is that? If you wanna do it, please do it, I'll even get you lawyer! But that's not the point here... what I wanna say is that when we finally found the courage to date..."

"I found the courage to ask you on a date!"

"Yes, with the help of that ridiculous book, which is also not the point here. When we finally dated everything was falling into place, like it should have been all these years. I've had the man I love and Rory's father was finally with us. We are a family."

"But you can't deny this special bond between you and Chris"

Lorelai couldn't deny this, but she also needed Luke to understand, to make him understand. Because if he wouldn't, the situation would never change. She was quiet for some time, thought about what to say to him and how to say it. She had told him some stories about her childhood, had made jokes about it and at some moments had showed him that she was not as at ease with it like she seemed to be. But she knew that she needed to completely open up to him and although she trusted him, it was hard and when she started her voice was barely over a whisper.

"You know, my first memory is from when I was about three or four years old, and my mother yelled at me for crushing a very expensive vase. She was furious and said that I was stupid and never behaved and that I was not allowed to run through the house. My father stood beside her and then sent me up to my room. I cried myself to sleep that night in the room I already hated because it was full of toys, but I wasn't allowed to play with them. I wasn't that sad because my mother yelled at me or because of what she said, but my father had come back from a two months business trip and I was just so happy to see him, that I ran through the house to welcome him when I heard his voice. And then I ran into that stupid vase.

I saw my parents during the weekends and sometimes during dinner. My father was working all the time and my mother was doing the same things she did all these years: Arranging parties, going to tea-parties, that kind of stuff. Sometimes she would dress me up and drag me along to one of those. I loved to spent some time with my mother, but I hated that I had to sit still all the time and be quiet. So I sat there and stared at the wall, sometimes ate my hair or my fingernails. One day I discovered that I would get more attention if I wasn't behaving. I ruined my dresses, ran around, sang aloud, twirled round... whatever I could think of.
When I went to school I thought that they would be proud if I would get good grades. But this wasn't enough. Did you know that till the day I left school I always had an A average? I had to take ballet lessons and piano lessons and everywhere I had to be the best. They were showing around my reports at these parties but they never said anything to me. So I started to skip school sometimes to do something more funny: Going shopping in the mall, going to the playground. But then my mother caught me and hell broke lose. I wasn't allowed to do anything by myself anymore. I had to go with her all the time and at one of these parties I met Chris who was just as bored as I was. We met more often and became friends and invented our own language so that they couldn't understand us. We made contests at whom they would yell more often, how many gasps we would get. It started to be fun, but then they left us at home because we would ruin their image. When we changed school we found out we were in the same class. I helped Chris with his school stuff and we visited each other when we were grounded. I think I was nine the first time I climbed out of the window and it was my birthday. My parents weren't in town and the nanny was watching TV the whole day, so I climbed out and we met at a park and celebrated my birthday. This went on for years. We mocked our parents and provoked them whenever and wherever we could, just to hide how sad we were. I would have done everything to get my mother to hug me once or get her to tell me that she loved me or that she was proud of me." Lorelai sniffled when these feelings came back to her after all these years.

"The best times were when they would send us to one of these camps. Not because I would show the boys what I got, you know what I mean, but because we could have fun. When we got older we got together. I think I was 12 when I first kissed him. On the cheek. There were other boys I "dated" in between, but when I was 15 Chris and I became a couple. One day, a few weeks before, I had kissed him at school just to know how it would be. It was at a dinner-party of his parents. It was incredibly boring and we went outside and hid in the garden. There was an area covered with a net and we hid under it with vodka and rum. Soon we were pretty drunk and he kissed me again. For real this time. I know you don't really wanna know about it in all details, but I want you to understand. Then we decided that we would be a couple. The next three weeks or so we spend making plans how to elope or run away. Just the thought of escaping all this gave me hope. And Chris, too.

God, I was so unhappy. I can still feel it: this emptiness, the tears at night, the hope and then the disappointment. With Chris it got easier. We got together and were drunk nearly all the time and I can't count the times we vomited into my mothers roses in the backyard, just to go on drinking. One time they had to bring him to the hospital because he drank too much. And another time I got depressed while I was drunk and wanted to jump off the roof on which I climbed, while I was crying that no-one loved me. Chris held me back and although he was just as drunk, he got me back down from the roof in one piece." Luke was shocked and hugged her tighter. The thought of Lorelai jumping or falling of that roof scared him, although he knew that it was over already.

"We were having fun whenever we could and as extreme as possible just to feel alive for some moments and to forget what would wait for us when we would get home. Well and one night it happened: Chris and I were so drunk we couldn't stand anymore. We lay outside on my balcony to hide from my parents because I was grounded once again. We argued a bit over the last drop of the whisky and as far as I can remember he tickled me and then he kissed me and one thing led to another. I remember it hurt and then it was over before it really started. Ten seconds and I was pregnant. I found out some time later when a dress wasn't fitting anymore. I was shocked. Actually I was more scared than ever before. But I wanted this baby, no matter what. I threw the pregnancy into my parents face one evening during dinner. We were arguing because I said the food smelled funny, that's how it started. My mother called Chris' mother and they planned our life. And the baby's life. Chris' parents cornered him and he asked me to marry him during a break at school. I said no, the bell rang and he left. At first it was the end of the world, but then I felt Rory kick for the first time. I understood that I didn't need to be drunk to feel alive.

But even though Chris isn't there anymore, I will be thankful forever that I had him and that he gave me Rory. Without him I might have resigned at some point and would have become an all-time-drunk-unhappy-woman, married to some rich guy or I would have killed myself at some point or another: Maybe with alcohol or drugs. We were just on the swell to start with some harder stuff than just cigarettes and a joint sometimes when I got pregnant. This is our connection Luke. This is why I can't stand his look. It's the same begging look we both had every time before we would climb out of the window, drinking until we couldn't think anymore or just get some other distraction from how alone and unhappy we were. I am so happy now and I want him to be happy, too. I don't want to be with him, but I want him to know that I still care." Lorelai finished and wiped her eyes.

Luke was silent and let everything sink in. He had known that she had been unhappy and alone. But she had never told or shown him how much. When he was still silent after ten minutes and just kept kissing her hair from time to time she broke the silence.

"Tell me about your childhood. You know mine now, not just the stupid jokes I make sometimes about it. Now I wanna know about yours." she looked up and looked him straight in the eyes. This was the last step of opening up. She had done it to make him understand. But from the look he gave her she wasn't sure if he would open up to make her understand.

TBC Please review!