So, because of my beta (Thanks again!) who read through this pretty fast and corrected my stupid mistakes I can post this chapter earlier than I planed.

Thank you so much for the amount of reviews I got for the last one, I hope you´ll keep it up, it´s really motivating.

There were questions if this story would have a happy ending, that it must have one, but I won't tell you. You have to keep reading.

One last thing: This is kind of a songfic also, I wonder if you can figure out which song it is...

Disclaimer: You know it, no need for me to tell you this again!


Chapter 2

Wake me up inside,wake me up inside

It was 2 am and he lay awake in bed. He couldn´t remember the last time he had slept a whole night through. At least not without alcohol. He didn´t drink that often, just sometimes. It helped him to forget. At least for a few hours.

Forget how beautiful she had been walking down the aisle in her perfect dress. Forget the tears in her eyes when he had waited for her answer. Forget that she had said no. Forget that she had run away and left him.

It had been eight months and it didn´t hurt any less. He wondered if he would be able to move on. Sometime in the future. The point was that he didn´t want to move on. He wanted her. Only her. He had for the last eleven years.

"Is it really happening?"
"It is really happening!"

He hadn´t seen her since then, not a glimpse, nothing.

They had found her car a week later at the airport. Empty. Only her wedding dress had been in it. Her credit card bill had showed them that she had booked a flight to LA. Rory and Richard had gone there a month after the wedding and searched for her, but without a result. But he thought it had been stupid to think that they would find her there, in a city with so many people. And he knew Lorelai. If she didn´t want them to find her, they wouldn´t find her.

What worried him the most was the fact that she not only had said no to him, but hadn't had any contact with anyone since then. Not her parents, not Sookie or Rory.

Michel was doing her job at the Inn, while they had hired someone new for the counter.

Rory wasn´t the same anymore. She didn´t understand the world anymore. Her mother left her without an explanation.

Emily and Richard were just as desperate. They had lost their daughter for the second time in their life and it was hard for them to act like it meant nothing. To keep the illusion for their friends.

It was still nothing compared to the state Rory was in. She was just as numb as he himself was.

She came to Luke´s several times a week and they talked. About everything, but not about her. They would only talk about her when one of them couldn´t bear it anymore or something happened.

Like when Rory had got her letter only saying how much she loved her and she shouldn´t worry.

Like when she had sent Luke a letter, telling him how much she loved him and always will and that she needed to keep the ring. She did not say why.

That had been weeks after her disappearance and they had been relieved that she was at least alive.

But when she did not come back and there wasn´t anymore news from her they both knew that something was terribly wrong.

A week ago had been the last time he had heard something from her. At least he thought so.

In the middle of the night the telephone had rung and when he answered it, it had been silent. At first he had thought it was a joke and wanted to hang up, but then he had the feeling that it wasn´t.

"Lorelai?" he asked and thought that he heard a gasp.
"Lorelai is that you?" Silence
"Lorelai, please. If it is you please say something!" Nothing
"I just want to know that you are okay. That you are safe and healthy. I´m worried sick about you and so is Rory" he heard a sniffling sound and he knew it was her. He knew that he would get to her with Rory.
"I love you so much and I just want you to come back!" The line went dead, she had hung up.

He stood up and walked downstairs. He was still living in her house. In their house. Now his house. It was killing him, but he couldn´t help himself. He couldn´t go back to his apartment, because it would make it final that she wasn´t coming back.

He still hoped that one day he would come home and she would sit in the living room and tell him how sorry she was. Or he would find her asleep in the bedroom, so he could run his hands through her hair again.

That he couldn´t do it anymore was hard for him. That he couldn´t see and talk to her was torture and the fact that she wasn´t in his life anymore was killing him slowly and painfully.

Until her first letter had arrived he had convinced himself that they were over, that he could never forgive her and what she had done. But when the letter came and she wrote that she loved him, it sounded honest, even if they were just words on a white paper.

And the fact that Rory knew nothing either had helped also. Helped him to forgive her.

Now after more than half a year, he sometimes wished he wouldn´t have done it, because then he wouldn´t miss her this painfully.He really wanted to hate her. Needed to even, but wasn´t succeeding.

He hadn´t cried. He had soothed Rory and Sookie several times, one time even Emily, but he hadn´t cried. He couldn´t. It had been the same situation when his father had died. But he didn´t want to compare the situations, because she wasn´t dead and she would be back in his life at one point or the other. Someday he would see her again. He needed to. Because without her he couldn´t live.

But he couldn´t die either. He was just numb.

"Lorelai, where are you?" he asked the dark living-room and all he got was a sigh from Paul Anka, who lay on the couch on one of Lorelai´s shirts. He refused to give away the shirt. But Luke understood him. He sometimes opened her shampoo or her perfume just so that he would have her scent for some seconds. Or play the message on the answering machine just to hear her voice.

"Ah, Luke, come on! Now that you are living here we need a new text on Frida or she will get angry!"
"Who the hell is Frida?"
"The answering-machine, duh!"
"An answering-machine can´t get angry!"
"You don´t know Frida, so it's better not to risk anything! Come on tell me what to say!"
"Why can´t you just say: This is Lorelai Gilmore and Luke Danes' house. We are not at home so please leave a message after the beep?"
"See, was that so hard? People you heard what the master said!" she laughed
"You recorded that?"
"I still am!" she giggled
"Give me that! Lorelai! Give me that damn tape!" Luke shouted

Beep

When he looked on the clock he saw that it was half past three. He had spent one and a half hours staring into the dark. But he wasn´t wondering or thinking about it anymore. Since she was gone this was normal. But he had to open the diner, so he walked back upstairs to at least lay down for one more hour.

When he opened the bedroom door, he closed his eyes and he could see her lying in bed, asleep, waiting for him so she could snuggle up next to him. But when he opened them he found the bed empty. She was still gone.

TBC