Chapter 61

June 15th, 2021

Logan was staring at the intricately carved bar cabinet across the room, a cabinet he hadn't even opened, slipping in and out of some type of a sleepy haze, when his phone rang. It had rang time and time again the past few days, but he'd chosen to ignore it for weeks now. He'd almost considered switching it off altogether, but hadn't even bothered. But as this time the phone just kept on ringing non stop, he finally picked up, becoming a little worried why Colin was calling.

The man could be surprisingly persistent when he wanted to. And just like this time it often got him what he wanted.

Logan had closed himself inside the miniature Kasbah with a private terrace and a pool at a luxury mountain resort in Tamadot, to hide from the scorching mid-day weather. Southern Morocco in June really hadn't been his brightest idea, but he'd craved a break from the seashore and decided to give it a try. The food was great, people were nice, views also pretty incredible, but it only really made him 'meah'.

"Yeah?" Logan picked up, sounding unenthusiastic.

"Finally, Logan," Colin replied scoldingly, and let out a deep exhale.

"What?" he asked.

"Did you look at the links I sent you?" Colin asked.

"I haven't...," Logan replied honestly. He had zero intention to read his e-mails more than he really needed to. Mostly that included checking his flight information or hotel reservation numbers. His driver mostly went by phone number so there was little need for e-mail around here to begin with.

"You should," Colin warned.

But that was not what Logan wanted to really feel. He was sick of worrying, he'd stopped caring about consequences. "Just tell me..," he pleaded, feeling too low on his energy to actually do it.

"The press has been having a field day with you. And I mean I can understand you not wanting to know, but what Odette seems to be doing is coming off as the poor and unfortunate pregnant housewife who's been left to fend for herself. Some of the stuff is pretty mean…," Colin explained, putting it nicely, seeing not point using the terms she'd used.

"I don't really care...," Logan sighed, weakly, and ran his palm over his face.

"Oh come on, Logan. You've already given her most of your money, the apartment - and she's writing it off as a guilty conscience," Colin continued, making it clear he thought it was unfair.

"So what do you suggest - that I start making statement after statement back and forth whatever she says though the Sun?" Logan huffed, pronouncing the newspaper with disgust in his tone.

"Why are you pissed at me, Logan? I am only trying to help? Who else is doing that for you right now?" Colin shot back. He had every right to be frustrated, truthfully.

"I know, I'm sorry…," he apologized. He really wasn't at his greatest mentally. Even the holiday in the midst of all of this luxury wasn't something he really knew how to enjoy right now. Not like this - all alone, when most of the other hotel guests came in pairs and seemed to be after the romance and the ambiance. He was pretty sure even seeing him sulking was killing the mood for many of them. Hence he'd mostly kept to himself, and had hardly left his room in days. There was only so much he could eat, be massaged and enjoy the pleasures of the pool. Sure, he spent his time reading, but reading for him had become something to get through, something to do as a job, not something he knew how to really sucked into anymore. Therefore, this venue really wasn't doing much for his mood, but he hadn't quite figured out his next move yet.

"You really don't want to make any statement?" Colin asked him again. "I could just let them have a picture of the paternity report, it'd probably be the end of that," he suggested a fairly simple solution.

They'd officially requested the NIPP test from odette, just to make everything crystal clear, but Odette had never really hid the fact from Logan that the baby wasn't his. He hadn't touched her in months, more like at least 5 months, the last time having been even a little embarrassing as he'd been unable to finish. Naturally at all of this Odette had been ashamed - she'd panicked, but the way she'd gone about this really had not been the right way. She'd suggested they could just continue what they'd been doing while she went ahead and had her baby. While she made their parents happy, met the society's expectations and would finally have something to talk to her girlfriends, who'd all had babies by now, about. She'd even suggested how it could be a fresh start for them too. It was that hopefulness that had really pushed Logan over his edge. He couldn't believe she still saw any hope, as he finally realized he saw none. Why the hell was he sticking around if he saw none? Surely the indefinite torture was worse than death itself?

From there on it had been just a final week of pulling things together for him, thankfully a week with Odette off abroad for work and later to visit her parents to share the good news. A week when for the first time he'd felt that glimmer of hope for things to be better. Even Marjorie, his assistant, had noticed and commented to him that he looked a lot better. But she too had been oblivious to his plan until the final e-mails had been sent out. He'd left her with a personal severance package as a thank you, enabling the woman to retire early if she wanted to.

"You there?" Colin asked, hearing only silence on the other end of the line.

"I really don't care, Colin. I like to believe that the less I say anything the sooner she'll stop. She's delusional. And I refuse to get sucked up in it again," Logan explained, calmly.

"Are you doing better at least?" Colin then asked, his tone having changed. It seemed he was finally beginning to accept what Logan was saying. Colin always kind of liked the fight, hence his profession. But this was not really his fight.

"I'm okay," Logan replied, unsure what else to say. Honestly, he wasn't all that aware how Colin saw him. He had never outright told him he was having issues, how depressed or anxious he'd been over the past year and half. But supposedly, just like Marjorie, he'd noticed things too.

The 'okay' was all they could really say. Yes, he was better. He'd cut himself out of his life, but he was still alone, still aimless.

"You're sure? Because I could fly over to… wherever you are, if you want," Colin offered.

"Nah, I'm probably not going to stick around for very long. I need to be somewhere where it isn't this hot," Logan said, not even planning on explaining where he was exactly. "But thank you," he added, and he meant it. At least there was one person who had his back no matter what. Honor was probably the second, but he knew she'd not be as forgiving.

Logan continued to talk to Colin a little. Even if it was about something insignificant such as weather or food. He did ask him for recommendations where to go next, and he took his suggestion to try out the Réunion island, in hopes for something different, less mainstream. Maybe being on or near the ocean, much like he'd once loved sailing with the guys, was what he needed, the mountainous redness of Morocco having exhausted itself for him. He was just at the beginning of his journey, searching for things that made him feel alive. And if it was just one thing he'd learned by now it was that staying in luxury, being pampered and waited on, did nothing for him. It was almost too close to the normal that he'd escaped. Maybe he needed to try something different?


November 20th, 2021

Seeing Logan shed a tear had really moved Rory. Naturally she didn't want to see him suffer, be unhappy and so forth - but that hadn't been it. It had been more than that, an almost purifying experience - again brushing a lot of dust off the unspoken, leaving them both feeling lighter.

They were now in bed, wrapped into the blanked, and had no intention of getting out or dressed for the rest of the night unless they had to, a healthy post-sex blush on their cheeks, emotional candidness having also left them with a burning desire for the physical.

"I do think we should alternate the treats with the hard stuff," Logan suggested, almost sounding teacher-like.

"Isn't that really the same thing?" Rory teased, with a flirty smile, brushing her hand over his stomach, including his lower abdomen, Logan's once said phrase 'Cause if you think climbing in that window was hard...' coming back to her.

Logan chuckled. He certainly didn't mind her appetite, not her boldness. But it had not been what he'd meant this time.

"I could easily spend several more hours like this," Logan said and kissed Rory's shoulder, and then her clavicle. "But we do have homework," he reminded her, letting his hands wander, teasingly, at the same time. Frankly, being a man approaching forty, he too needed some time before a repeat. But he also was cautioning himself not to make the same mistakes as they had in the past, as in getting too wrapped up in each other, the physical mostly, and forgetting to be careful. Talking was good, but there were deeper fears that needed other methods, and that he truly believed taking their therapy seriously was the way forward.

"And just remember, I used to be the one to tell you I had to study," Rory said, playfully. "And all you kept doing was undressing me anyways," she added, recalling a particular moment before her finals one time in college.

"But you so wanted to...," Logan murmured, and kissed her neck again.

"That's besides the point," Rory argued, teasingly.

"Half an hour," Logan suggested. "And besides, I could probably eat," he added, realizing they'd skipped dinner.

"Okay," Rory exhaled demonstratively. Of course she didn't really mind a break, she knew this particular homework needed to get done before their session on Wednesday. But she was also in hyperdrive in a way - all of those years of gathered up sexual frustration, even with the few releases in between, sex with Logan was definitely what she'd missed. It wasn't that others hadn't been able to do it for her, but it was the emotional connectedness that made this so much better.

This however meant that Rory had to get out of the bed, and get her phone, while Logan could just watch her do it, having his own phone right there on the bedside table.

Rory was past being humble, however, and despite still feeling a little self conscious about the scars of motherhood, she got up and slipped into the adjacent living room to retrieve her phone. She could sense Logan's appreciative gaze on her back already.

"God, do you remember that one time when we went skinny dipping at Martha's," Logan recalled, from the other room, placing an order for food at the same time.

"Yeah, in the neighbor's pool," Rory shot back at him, and slipped between the sheets quickly.

"He was a good friend, his pool had heating," Logan argued. "He would've never pressed charges," he added.

"Thankfully," Rory exclaimed. "You totally had a bad influence on my record," she added.

"I know, and I'm sorry," Logan replied, seriously.

"But it was fun, much more fun than I would ever have had with Paris," Rory reminisced in a sweet tone, and laughed.

"Hah! Yeah, definitely," Logan chuckled, shaking his head.

"Okay, so how do we do this?" Rory asked and held up her phone by its corner.

Logan replied to her with simply indicating they switch, offering his phone to her.

"1375," Logan added.

"Really?" Rory replied. Sure, she'd had his phone pin and computer password before, during 'Vegas'. But not only was he now giving her the pin again but the pin was also her house number.

"I'd just gotten a new phone, I wanted to remember your house number - two in one and done," Logan explained, and smiled, despite mostly using his fingerprint on his phone.

Rory didn't have a pin but a pattern lock in the shape of an E, which was pretty self-explanatory.

"Anything I should stay clear of?" Logan asked out of respect.

"Umm.. I don't think so. I mean, you can probably assume what's 'proceed at your own risk'," Rory replied. "Anything here?" she asked.

Logan shook his head.

The two turned to their stomachs, almost simultaneously, and got comfortable. The home assignment was to hand over one's phone to the other as a trust exercise.

Logan browsed through her inbox, which was mostly work-related. He skimmed through the letter to Jess and actually felt rather proud for the way she was standing up for herself, while being very generous and well-put. There was no reply yet, and he made a mental note to ask later whether Jess had said anything about said letter last night when Rory had left Em at Jess'. He wasn't really sure how much he should ask about these things from her - how much of it was to his ears and how much of it was just between Jess and Rory. There were a few messages from Paris too. But other than that what her inbox spoke to him of was that she was very work oriented. Her messenger contained a few more names - Finn, Lane, Lorelai, of course, Jess, Doula, Gigi, Christopher and so forth. But not a lot of other guys.

"Okay if I delete Seth?" Logan asked, half seriously, but didn't open the conversation, not wanting to inflict intentional pain.

"Okay if I delete Sara?" Rory asked in return, seeing the beautiful blue-eyed blond posing in her bikini at a beach somewhere on the messenger profile picture, having already made the mistake at opening one of their conversations from beginning of July.

The two nodded. Deleted - done.

Instagram was next. Most of Rory's pictures were of her meals - cannoli, lobster roll, home-made stew - probably made by Luke, right? There were pictures of books, her love for clever book cover design being something new for him to learn about her. Naturally there were pictures of Em and of the smaller day trips she'd been on. There were a few from Yale, those bringing back some memories for him too, from a few months ago, some older ones from Manhattan, Boston - some even from their recent group gathering, Disneyworld, The Dragonfly, Baltimore, Philadelphia, the latter ones hinting strongly at the Jess-connections. They were observations mostly - and very few pictures of herself. But as Rory's phone wasn't that new, he could go back years in fact, seeing pictures of baby Em and also a few of her and Jess, and Rory with a pregnant belly. Definitely a gorgeous sight.

In the meanwhile Rory was going along the same lines through his phone, but had started from his Facebook, and as there wasn't much on Instagram, she'd gone straight to his photos. After a number of recent photos of her, half of them done so that she hadn't realized he'd made them, there were some from his sister's party, from seeing his buddies, Colin and Finn, and a few work-related screenshots. Going back, there were a lot more selfies for one, but she found it peculiar, or perhaps she shouldn't have, that he hadn't posted any of them.

"Where is this taken?" Rory asked, looking at one photo with some dry rock desert type hilly background, where he was holding a small bottle of water. It seemed so simple, almost photographing nothing unusual at all. But he looked strangely relieved, almost victorious, in that.

"It's near Peikucuo, China… I ran out of water on the last stretch of my hike. I'd never felt thirst like that. But I made it," Logan explained.

His lips looked indeed chapped in that picture, his cheeks reddened by the wind, his skin tone otherwise dul, and he did look exhausted. But at the same time it was one of the first pictures, if she were to go back in time, that actually showed some life in his eyes like something had invigorated him.

"I guess it was a bit of a breakthrough moment," Logan explained. "I found a reason to fight, not just do it for the pain," he added, hesitantly. It had been a pretty personal battle out there. And while the romantic thing would've been to say he'd pictured Rory out there as the reason to fight. But that would've been a lie. He'd done it for himself, finally convincing himself that he wanted to see more of the world, that he wanted to see his friends again, his sister and nephews. That he wanted to prove to himself that he could be happy again.

"I can't even imagine..," Rory sighed, and kissed him gently.

"It's nothing to look up to, really. I know some people make these wilderness pilgrimages into something very romantic or spiritual, but most of it really wasn't. Most of them I still did very much for the wrong reasons. To fill my mind with something physical - you know, one step in front of the other, and I felt that pain again, which wasn't really what I was after. And this was a simple miscalculation. I took a wrong path which ended up being several hours longer than it should've been. I put my life in danger because I wasn't paying enough attention, I didn't care enough and made a mistake," Logan explained, gesturing at the picture.

Rory thought about how almost getting himself killed because of stupid things was kind of his thing, it certainly wouldn't have been his first time. And she did wonder how seriously he'd thought about these things. How much the flirt with death had been a part of his stunts even before she met him. She felt anger towards Mitchum and Shira mostly, needing someone to blame, but didn't really respond, not knowing what to say. She felt compassion, but she was sure that that wasn't really what he needed from her.

Rory continued to go through his e-mails, most of which she didn't open. But despite it being a gentle topic, the time from May to June was of interest to her. She hadn't really dared to ask many details about Odette or the way things had ended - but it was even more about not wanting him to retell the things that hurt him, than her. She'd accepted that Odette had been his wife for all those years. And already knowing that he hadn't really loved her, had been enough to limit how much that hurt.

But then she came upon a series of e-mails from Colin, all unopened, which seemed to have attachments. She truly did wonder what those were, as besides those e-mails there were also several from Honor, Mitchum, Odette and others, mostly with rather demanding subject fields around the same time, unopened just the same. But she would've expected him to check those from Colin at least.

"Okay, if I open these?" Rory asked, and showed Logan what she was seeing. She knew she didn't really need to ask, the whole point of this exercise was to give the other full privileges to everything that they had in their phones.

"If you want..," Logan shrugged.

Rory tapped one of the emails, subject field saying "Oh, come on… you can't just let THIS slide".

Inside was an attachment from the Ok! Magazine - not exactly quality literature, or common reading for either of the guys.

"Honor warned me about this," Rory shared. "But I never googled you," she added, as she looked over the less than polite statements.

"Odette Huntzberger: Logan abandoned us," one title said. "He's a selfish prick," another one quoted her. "Odette Huntzberger blames ex-husband for infidelity," said the third. It went on several weeks - even down to shedding light on his mental health issues publicly. At that Rory closed those messages, realizing that Logan really didn't need to read them or see her read them. She took the excecutive decision to delete them. If he needed them, Colin surely had them in his Sent folder. She assumed he had some idea, but it was certainly not something he needed to relive. Not anymore.

"Did she ever calm down? Accept it?" Rory asked.

"She did," Logan exhaled. While he hadn't spoken to her since May, Colin had made sure that things had calmed down. A lot of the articles had been taken down, after Colin had taken matters into his own hands and threatened to sue her for the fortune she'd gotten along with the divorce, even without Logan's consent - after all Logan had given Colin the authorization on his name for a lot of things. Thankfully that had worked, even despite Odette not being poor to begin with. She had her family's money too, but she had been reluctant to give up the lifestyle with the baby on the way.

"She had the baby, a little prematurely, but I think in the end it helped her focus on something else," Logan shared, having gotten a text from her mother the other day telling her about the fact. Apparently they were still in contact. That message he'd deleted, not wanting any reminder of it. He wasn't sure why his mother had sent it, but the woman had been pretty delusional for the past few years anyways. Her opinion didn't matter to him either way. If he needed to he'd show the paternity test to her again the next time he saw her, likely over Christmas.

"That's good I guess," Rory said.

"She was just so shaken up, humiliated when I told her we were through - she thought doing the same to me would help her, make her feel better," Logan explained the way he saw it. Odette hadn't listened to a lot of reason when they'd last talked. Even him reminding her how it was never supposed to be a marriage that lasted this long, hadn't helped. She'd blamed him for all the stuff she'd had to go through for him, rather selfishly. His tattoos, his crazy schedule, how he never had time for her, how he never wanted her, letting the rest of it go to deaf ears.

"I bet she hates me," Rory sighed, beginning to wonder for the first time what would happen if Odette found out they were together now. Or worse yet, see them in person somewhere.

"She's not a psychopath, she's not the type to start threatening or anything like that," Logan assured. This he was sure of. "She might not like this, but that's not our problem. She got what she wanted. Most of my money and a baby," he added. Besides, Logan had had Colin check on her to make sure, and there even seemed to be someone on her radar throughout the second half of her pregnancy. Logan wondered whether that was the baby's actual father or not, not that he really cared. But he was surprisingly forgiving - he'd made his peace. He was just glad to be out of that equation.

"Still, it's not a nice feeling to be hated," Rory added.

"You're loved by many more," Logan tried to focus on the important part, and kissed her, pulling her closer.

"Just please never leave me the way you left her… with this... crazy disappearance act. Even if I turn into an emotional wreck, even if we fight," Rory said, as the kiss broke, hesitantly. She hadn't even realized it had been a worry of hers, and neither had he. But for her - it wouldn't have been the first time - Jess had done that to her first, though a long time ago. But she could only imagine how badly something like that would've hurt when it had been someone one was married to for five years or someone one really loved. She almost felt sorry for Odette. Even if she hadn't been able to have him, she was sure Odette too had just simply worried about him.

"Never," Logan assured, and kissed her again.