Chapter Four

2014

With a deep and satisfying breath of air, Logan suddenly found himself returning to the land of consciousness. He could feel the sun from his windows shining on his face as he lay in bed. He could hear the sound of birds outside his window and the busy sounds of the city streets as people made their commutes to work.

He rolled over on his side as he greeted the morning, reveling in the feeling of the plush mattress and crisp cool sheets underneath him. Smiling, he reached his arm out next to him, expecting his hand to land upon the figure that he'd become so used to being there in the last few days. Yet, his smile quickly fell as hand came in contact with nothing but a cold empty space.

The moment he opened his eyes to the world, he remembered. The space next to him on the bed was still clearly slept in, but it had been empty for probably hours at this point, Rory having left for the airport at an ungodly hour of the morning. She'd told him she wasn't going to wake him. He'd protested of course, but they both knew it was for naught. She was going to go on her own no matter what he had to say on the matter. He'd done it himself once upon a time.

The smile that had graced his face upon waking quickly fell as his heart was filled with a pang of sadness. Fourteen days. Fifteen if he added in the night they'd spent together in Germany. They had spent a total of fifteen days together after seven years of being a part, and yet the idea of her being gone from his life once again still filled him with sadness so deep that he felt as if it could tear his heart to pieces.

In that moment, he was grateful for the fact that he had to work that day, that he didn't have time to lie in bed and think about all of the ways in which he would miss her in the hours and days to come. He would miss her being there when he woke up. He would miss her crazy stories about her mother and Stars Hollow. He would miss the teasing little barbs she threw at him, the ones that other women were often either too intimidated or too humorless to throw. He would miss kissing her. He would miss the feeling of holding her. Of being inside of her. Of falling asleep next to her.

Logan wiped a hand over his face and pulled himself out of the bed. Throwing on a pair of pajama bottoms, he slipped his phone into his pocket and padded over to the kitchen to start up the coffee maker. Then, upon arriving, a smile once again appeared on his face at the teal Post-it note tacked up on the display.

I already prepped the grounds for you. Whatever are you going to do without me here to make you coffee the right way?

It was a great question. Though, in Logan's mind the question as to what he was going to do without her far exceeded coffee prep alone. Having a taste of her in his life again had started to make him wonder how he'd ever made it through the last seven years without her.

It would be easier if he knew what was happening. If he knew when she would be back. If she would be back. It would be easier if he knew whether this was the start of something or just… something - something that happened one spring in London.

They'd avoided the conversation while she was here, neither one of them wanting to ruin what was happening in the moment. But, now, Logan was beginning to regret it. He was beginning to regret not gathering enough courage to talk about the elephant between them while it was visible.

He grabbed an oversized mug out of the cabinet above his coffee maker and placed it underneath. Then, with a tap of his finger against a single button, the machine started percolating. While it brewed, he made his way over to the desktop computer in his living room to start checking his emails, but he stopped in his tracks at the sight of something draped over the back of his grey sectional.

He recognized the item immediately, having a vivid memory of slipping his hands underneath it and tossing it in this direction just the night before. And when he walked over and picked it up, his thoughts were confirmed.

It was a basic cotton t-shirt. Oversized. It was a heathered pink in color, and written across the front in block letters was the phrase 'On Wednesdays, we smash the patriarchy.' It brought a smile to his face instantly, and he placed it down over the back of the couch once again, taking care to spread it out so that all the words could be seen. Grabbing his phone out of his pocket, he took a quick photo, and with a few swipes of his fingers and the opening of some apps, he sent it off to the contact still sitting at the top of his messenger list.

Ace

Today: 8:13 AM

Looks like you left something behind.

He didn't get a response right away. Though, he didn't expect to. He knew that she was halfway over the Atlantic Ocean at this point.

He went about his day in the routine fashion: finishing his coffee, popping into the shower, heading into the office to attend a never ending string of meetings And about halfway through his one o'clock with Marketing, her name flashed across his screen yet again.

Ace

Today: 1:26 PM

Well… I guess I'll just have to come back soon and get it then.


2036

On Logan's twenty-fifth birthday, he'd gotten a phone call from one of his friends - one of his best friends these days - telling him that a tech company in Silicon Valley was filing a patent infringement suit against the company they had just invested millions in. Millions of his own money to be precise.

The feeling that had come over him at the end of that phone call was unlike any feeling Logan had ever felt in his life. There was shock of course. Anxiety. Anger. Fear. All of those emotions, he was very well versed in. But, what made that moment so unlike any other was the strange sense of numbness that had overcome him at the same time. The gravity of it all, it was so profound that it was simply too much for his twenty-five year old mind to process. And, as a result, it had mostly shut down.

There was no panic. There was no screaming. No yelling. No tears. There was just a strangely detached yet ominous peace. He'd spent the rest of the night skating in Central Park, circling around on the ice in a dizzying motion that seemed appropriate for the somewhat dazed and hypnotized state his mind was in. It was the only time Logan had ever felt that way in his life.

Until today.

The glass of scotch that he'd poured himself was sweating beads of condensation into a small puddle on the carrera marble countertop of his kitchen island as it sat there mostly undrinken. Not that he didn't want to drink it. He'd poured it with the express purpose of drinking it. Quickly. Hence the ice and the open bottle sitting just inches away from it for easy access. It was just that he kept forgetting to pick it up.

Later in life he had come to learn that what he was experiencing was called a dissociative episode. Back in 2007 when it had happened to him the first time, psychology wasn't nearly the hot topic it had become in the last ten to twenty years, and he hadn't had the vocabulary. But, now he did.

The little blue booklet resting open on the countertop in front of him had been what triggered it all, and for what must have been the hundredth time, he was once again lost in the words on the laminated page. At this point he had probably burned them into his retinas, but still he couldn't seem to look away.

Surname / Nom / Apellidos

GILMORE

Given Names / Prènoms / Nombres

LORELAI AMELIA

Nationality / Nationalité / Nacionalidad

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Date of birth / Date de naissance / Fecha de caducidad

28 June 2017

Place of birth / Lieu de naissance / Lugar de nacimiento

CONNECTICUT, USA

After what seemed like just a few seconds, he looked up from the page. Yet, when his eyes landed on the digital clock displayed on one of the built in double ovens on the other side of the room, he realized that about ten minutes had passed. The entire evening had passed this way. Hours. Hours in which he could do nothing but stare at the image of the golden haired cerulean eyed girl printed on the page in front of him.

At this point, it was dark. He wasn't entirely sure when the sun had set. It had happened at some point in the evening, no doubt during another one of the many trances he'd slipped into. The kitchen was dim, the pendant lights hanging above the island the only light in the room. Though he didn't really mind. The darkness fit his mood.

In a rare moment of clarity for the evening, Logan reached to his left and picked up the wet rocks glass sitting next to him. He took a sip, grimacing at the watered down taste of the now almost room temperature beverage. At this point it almost wasn't even worth it. No amount of alcohol would squash the tidal wave of emotions crashing into his soul and utterly drowning him in the process.

His mind once again started a mental countdown, the months ticking backward from June one by one, landing every time in October 2016. He must have counted them a thousand times at this point, the result remaining consistent. He wasn't sure why he kept doing it, why he kept hoping that suddenly the laws of math and the universe would suddenly become less reliable as the evening progressed. But it was the only way he could process the information. If numbers lost their meaning, there was a chance that maybe this wouldn't be happening to him, that maybe a wormhole would open right above the barstool he was sitting on a swallow him up, pulling him through time and space six hours in the past, back to a time when his biggest problem was dealing with the grief of his recently deceased wife.

He couldn't believe the amount of hubris he'd had at the time, thinking that things couldn't possibly get worse. He'd lived long enough at this point to know that things could always get worse. There was no such thing as rock bottom. Beneath the rock was the magma. And beneath the magma was the flaming hot iron. And once you crashed through that, it spit you all the way out the other side of the Earth into the vast emptiness of space only to be hit by an asteroid, spaghettified by a black hole, or - with his luck - kidnapped by The Empire. Or Klingons. Or Reavers.

A year ago, he'd thought that the worst thing that would happen to him would be hearing the news of his wife's cancer diagnosis. But she was young, and this was 2036. And then they'd found out the surgery didn't work. And then the chemo. And then the radiation. And then the words stage four got thrown around. And palliative care. And hospice. And after all of that, he'd thought that the worst thing to happen to him this year would be getting through her funeral. But now he was dealing with a grieving son who wouldn't eat.

His son.

How on Earth would he ever explain this to his son?

Suddenly, a low and sharp vibration broke him out of his thoughts. He jumped a little in his seat, his mind sensitive to any and all stimulus at this point, and his eyes were drawn to the blue light illuminating the kitchen on the other side of him. A familiar name flashed across the screen, and he gathered himself together enough to at least answer the call. Though, he couldn't make any guarantees about the quality of conversation.

"Hey…" he answered, his voice sounding breathy and soft.

"Hey," came the cheerful yet gentle voice of his sister on the other line.

She'd been doing this a lot lately. Calling him. Checking in. They'd talked so often in the last few months that neither one of them really had anything to say. Still, Logan appreciated the gesture. The sound of her voice was comforting.

"I'm not catching you too late, am I?" she asked.

"No…" Logan answered with a clearing of his throat. "No. I'm up."

"How are you doing?" she asked. "How's Alex? Has he eaten anything today?"

"Uh…." Logan responded. He slumped in his seat and rubbed a hand over his face as he attempted to get his mind together enough to form an intelligible response. "He uh… He ate some breakfast this morning. But…"

Logan trailed off, his limited cognitive function not allowing him to form any more coherent thoughts. Honor, however, didn't seem to have any problem taking over the conversation. She never did. And, mistaking his bewilderment for grief, she cut in quickly with some thoughts that she had apparently been mulling over for a while.

"Listen…I was thinking..." she started. "If you need some extra help, I'd be more than happy to come out there for a few weeks. I know Miriam takes good care of you, but… if you need some moral support. Or if Alex needs some. Whatever the reason…"

"No. Honor…" Logan replied with a sigh. "I'm fine. Really. We're getting along okay. I don't want you to uproot your life for me."

Logan's response to that question would have been the same regardless of the events of the evening. But, as much as he loved his sister, her continued presence would be just one more disrupting factor at a period of time that was already exploding into an unmanageable storm of chaos.

His mind began to wander once again as Honor continued to go on, expounding on all the reasons why she'd begun to think that temporarily moving to London was a good idea. As she spoke, his eyes flitted once again to the passport that he couldn't seem to tear his mind away from. He barely heard a word she was saying.

"...because Savannah is doing a summer semester, so she isn't home anyway. And Josh is so busy working, he would hardly miss me. I could fly in next weekend. Get a one way ticket. Leave whenever you're ready. I just can't stand the thought of you alone in that big hou - "

"Have you heard anything lately about Rory Gilmore?"

The words had flown out of his mouth so quickly that they were almost involuntary. They'd come before he even had time to think about all the ways in which it was a stupid thing to say, and judging by the silence on the other end of the phone Honor had been just as surprised to hear them as he was to hear them come out of his mouth

"Um…" she said as she gathered her thoughts. "I… uh….not really. No."

"I thought maybe…" Logan paused for a moment. He sighed and leaned forward on the counter, resting on his elbows as if he was in physical pain. "I thought maybe since… you're in Hartford… you might have heard... something…"

"I heard something about her getting some books published and taking a teaching job at Chilton years ago," said Honor. "But that's pretty much it."

"Oh…" said Logan. He was slightly disappointed. She was his best hope at more details - other than his parents. But, he definitely wasn't going there. "I just… I got uh… I got a card from Emily this afternoon. And I … I dunno it just made me think about her. I didn't know if you'd heard anything about her getting married or… having kids."

Honor was quiet for a moment as his statement hung on the line between them.

"Logan…" she said, eventually. "I'm worried about you. You're grieving. You're lonely. And now you're asking me questions about the college girlfriend you never really got over out of the blue…"

If only she knew how far from out of the blue the question really was. But Logan wasn't going to tell her that. Not when he'd barely had time to process the news himself. Honor kept speaking, outlining all the different ways she spent her nights worrying over him and rehashing all of the reasons why she wanted to come there to stay with him for a while. Logan let her continue uninterrupted, stopping only when the phone he was already holding vibrated in his hand.

He lowered the device from his ear, quickly glancing at the screen to see what notification had interrupted his call. He'd expected an email from work or a text from a friend. The last thing he expected was an emergency alert from his security system. He taped the speaker icon on his phone, sending his sister's voice echoing throughout his kitchen as he opened up the app.

As soon as it loaded, a black and white image of the front gate at the right side of the house appeared before his eyes. The image was a tad blurry, some dust and dried rain droplets having mucked up the lens of the camera over time. However, it was still perfectly clear enough to make out the precise trigger of the alarm.

His heart started racing as he took in the image of a young woman hanging off the rod iron gate. Her sneaker clad foot was lodged into one of the ornate iron curls at the center and she used it to push herself upward, her hands quickly finding the top of the gate for additional leverage. Her long blonde hair cascaded down the side of the gate as she awkwardly pulled herself over the top of it, and in a matter of moments her feet had landed firmly on his driveway.

"Honor...I have to go…" he said as he slowly lifted himself from his stool.

His sister protested, but ultimately it fell on deaf ears. Logan had already struggled to think about anything else all night, and at this point focusing on Honor's words seemed like a near impossibility. He hung up the phone, grabbed the passport from the counter in front of him, and made his way to the front door as if an unknown magnetic like force was pulling him through the house.

As he approached, he could see a shadow passing over the windows at the side of the door. But, it wasn't until he opened it that he was actually able to see the intruder in the flesh. She was bent over, examining the ground beneath the rose bushes on the walk with intense scrutiny and scanning the area thoroughly, her face falling in dismay when the hand she reached out landed on nothing but mulch.

Logan took a deep breath. He lifted the booklet she was no doubt searching for into the air, making sure that it would be clearly visible in the light.

"Looking for this?"

The girl's entire body went stiff as a rod at the sound of his voice. She straightened up slowly, as if she'd found herself suddenly featuring in an action sequence of a Zack Snyder film. Her mouth dropped open in utter horror as she took in the sight of him standing there, and her eyes became as wide as saucers.

She was clearly terrified. And with good reason. The quick glance he'd made at the time before leaving the kitchen informed him that it was fifteen minutes to midnight, and the best he could assume was that she had waited until a time when everyone in the house was likely to be sleeping to return here and try to collect what she had left behind. Unfortunately for her, however, Logan was wide awake. And despite her best efforts not to be caught, she had been discovered almost immediately.

"Come on," he said, simply.

For a moment she grew even more surprised, but Logan didn't wait long enough to examine her expression much further. He turned on his heel almost immediately and stepped back inside the house, leaving the front door open and the dim light of his foyer splashing out into the front yard.

He didn't turn around to look, but about halfway to the doorway under the curved double staircase, he heard the sound of footsteps following him and the click of the front door gently closing behind his guest. He continued to walk, making his way through the doorway, down the small hall, and turning right into the kitchen once again. The footsteps followed him the entire way, and as soon as they stopped, he threw his hand in the direction of the kitchen island barstools.

"Sit," he commanded. She obeyed quickly, and Logan watched from the corner of his eye as she pulled out a stool and sat down, resting her hands in her lap and looking timidly around the room.

Logan continued to pace around the kitchen, in between the island and the black floor to ceiling cabinets. He shook his head the entire time and brought his hand up to rub pensively at his jaw line. He had no idea what to say at this moment, no idea how to approach the landmine that now existed in the middle of the room between them. He knew that he had to tread lightly. But, at the moment, he was feeling anything but light.

"Are you going to call the police?"

He paused his pacing for a moment at the unexpected question, noting the fear and hesitancy in her voice.

"No," he answered, much to the girl's visible relief. "I'm not going to call the police."

Her shoulders slumped and she let out a long exhale at hearing the assurance that she was not about to be arrested. Logan, however, wasn't quite able to share in her respite. His internal journey was quite the opposite, and the longer he stood there pacing back and forth, the more a very familiar - though perhaps unearned -mix of anger, frustration, worry, and desperation started to overwhelm him.

"Surely I don't need to tell you how incredibly stupid it is to climb over someone's fence and break into their property in the middle of the night! Or carry your passport around loose in your purse like that. Or… go out walking alone at midnight in a city you don't know!" said Logan.

The words were pouring out of his mouth almost unbidden, born from a natural instinct deep with him. It wasn't lost on him that they were among the very first words he was speaking to the girl, and he realized it was less than ideal to say the least. But, he simply couldn't help himself. Seeing her climbing over that fence had awoken something primal in him.

"I…" the girl squeaked. But, Logan didn't let her finish her thought.

"Did you even think about what could've happened?" he asked. "Did you think about what would have happened if you hadn't dropped it here? If you'd gotten caught breaking and entering in a foreign country without your passport?!"

"I...I didn't…"

"You're lucky you dropped it here and not on The Tube somewhere. You're lucky I didn't call the police! That I'm not going to have you arrested!"

"I…"

"What exactly was your plan if you did end up getting arrested!?" Logan asked. "Is anyone with you? Do you even have anyone to call?! Did you think about any of this before you decided to crawl over that gate?!"

"No…"

"The Tube shuts down at midnight on weekdays. Did you know that? " he asked. "If you had made it in here, gotten your passport, and left, how exactly were you planning on getting back? Where are you staying anyway?!"

"A hostel in Whitechapel…"

Logan stopped in his tracks. His eyes must have gone as wide as hers had just minutes before in the front yard. The sinking feeling in his gut multiplied in severity, and he could feel his heart start to pound wildy in his chest.

"A hostel…" he said, trying to wrap his mind around the idea. "In Whitechapel. At midnight. Forget being arrested! You're lucky you weren't stabbed... Or - "

His voice caught in his throat. That was a thought he couldn't bring himself to finish.

The hand that had been alternating between rubbing his chin and gesticulating wildly in the air as he ranted about her complete and utter carelessness dropped to his side. He looked at her in that moment, really looked at her, sitting there in the stool that he himself had been occupying just moments before, her chin quivering as she wrung her hands together, looking so much like her mother that he felt a little part of his soul die at the sight.

She was about to cry.

Nineteen years. He'd missed nineteen years of her life, and the very first thing he did upon seeing her - upon discovering her existence - was make her cry.

He'd never hated himself more in his life.

"I didn't…" she continued, pausing for a moment as she took a gasping breath of air. It was clear that she was trying to hold herself together. Her entire body was tense, and her face was contorting ever so slightly as she desperately fought the frown that was trying to spread out across her lips.

"I don't know what I was thinking…" she admitted. She looked away from him, turning her head all the way to the opposite side of the room toward the floor to ceiling windows looking out into the backyard. " I don't know why I came here... I'm sorry."

When she turned back toward him, her gorgeous blue eyes went red as tears started to flow down her cheeks. Clearly embarrassed, she hid her face in her hands, but ultimately it did nothing to stop her emotional outburst. Her shoulders were shaking, and he could hear her sharp and shaky breaths. Each and every sound from her sent a dagger through his heart, yet he was frozen in his spot, unable to do anything. Unable to provide her - a stranger to him - the comfort that his entire heart and soul so ached to give her.

"Hey…Don't… " he said, taking care to remove any trace of anger or frustration from his voice. He took a step toward her, but stopped quickly, realizing that invading her space at this moment would probably only be counterproductive to his mission to calm her. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you. Please, don't cry."

He walked over to the kitchen sink instead, reaching for the paper towel roll and plucking a single sheet off. Making his way back over to the island, he slid the towel down in front of her, comforted by the fact that even though she hadn't seen the gesture, it would at least be sitting there for her when she did look up at him again.

"I didn't mean to yell at you," he said.

She clearly didn't believe him. Not that she had any reason to. She didn't know him at all.

"You should hear about half the stupid crap I did when I was your age…Much worse than climbing over a gate to look for a lost passport. I can promise you that."

She still wasn't looking at him. Her face was still buried in her hands, and she looked as if she was about to sink into the counter entirely. He heard a couple sniffs followed by another gasping and shaky inhalation of air. At this point he was getting desperate.

"When I was twenty-one, I ran my Dad's yacht into a reef off the coast of Fiji and sunk it. When it comes to doing stupid things in foriegn countries, there's no beating me. I'm the king."

For whatever reason, that little piece of information seemed to lower her defenses. Her hands dropped back down to the counter, exposing her face to him for the first time since she'd dissolved into tears.

It was then that Logan really looked at her, looked deeply into her blotchy red rimmed eyes for the very first time. Suddenly, it was his turn to take a quivering breath. What he saw was almost more than he could handle. There were the eyes of course, the eyes that had already bowled him over hours ago. But there was so much more now. More he could see that he hadn't noticed the first time he looked at her face.

Those bright blue eyes were settled in between a brow and cheek bones that could have been cut out from the wedding portrait of his mother that hung on the wall of the upstairs hallway in his home growing up. There was a small dimple in her chin, one that he'd seen grow more and more prominent on Rory's face as the years went by, going from a feature that he barely noticed, to one that he used to run his thumb across while caressing her cheek. And then there was her jaw. The square jaw that he'd seen in the mirror every day of his fifty-four years on the planet. The one that he shared with this father and his grandfather and his niece and nephew.

Since opening up the passport, he hadn't had much reason to believe that this girl was anything but his daughter. Yet, there had still been that small possibility - the small possibility that it wasn't true. But looking at her now - sitting in front of him in flesh and blood - there was absolutely no denying it. There was so much of him written on her face. So much of him written in her very being, apparently if her behavior thus far was any indication.

"What's your name?" he asked, softly, suddenly no longer able to go another second without knowing.

Logan was momentarily confused by the shock and puzzlement that spread across her face at the question. But, when she glanced down quickly at the passport he'd tossed on the counter, he realized why. She thought he already knew. She thought that he'd read it on her passport and assumed that it was the only answer he needed. He knew better, of course. But, then, she had absolutely no reason to believe that he did.

"I know you don't just go by Lorelai," he said. "Your mother never did."

With yet another quivering breath, the girl surrendered to a couple more tears. They fell down her face, but she reached up quickly to wipe them away. The break in eye contact that occurred with the movement apparently provided her the courage that she needed to speak, and she answered in a nervous voice.

"Riley," she said.

"Riley," Logan echoed, trying the syllables on in his mouth for the first time.

There was a vague connection there, though it didn't make the most sense. But, then again, Logan had never really thought Rory made the most sense either. He'd never understood what combination of syllables her mother had put together to come up with Rory as a nickname for Lorelai. But, understanding the mind of the elder Gilmore was something that Logan had never been very well practiced in.

"I'm Logan," he said. He felt slightly stupid saying it, as if this was some kind of standard introduction at a cocktail party. The only thing that would have made it worse would be if he had reached across the island for a handshake while he said it. But… he didn't know what else to say.

"I know…" Riley responded, her voice almost a whisper.

Of course she knew. She'd come here for a reason after all. He highly doubted that Emily Gilmore's bank account had dried up to the point where she couldn't afford to send a greeting card through the mail. They both knew exactly why she was here, but saying the words out loud seemed like something neither one of them was quite ready for at the moment.

A silence fell between them instead, during which Logan stood there, leaning forward with his hands braced against the island counter. Riley kept wringing her hands, pulling at her fingers as she bit her lip. Watching her, Logan started to notice that her gaze kept drifting over to her right, and when he followed it, he realized that she was being drawn to the lasagna that he'd completely forgotten to put in the fridge.

"Did you have any dinner tonight?" he asked.

She shook her head in response, still not quite ready to open her mouth and speak. He wasn't surprised at the information. He hadn't had any dinner himself, his appetite never returning after the events at the front door.

He walked over to the other side of the island and started unwrapping the plastic from around the glass dish. Then, turning around, he turned on one of the ovens in the wall behind him, not bothering to wait for it to preheat as he slipped the casserole inside and set the timer.

"I'm not sending you back to Whitechapel at this time of night," he said, firmly yet gently. "After you eat, you can sleep here."

He knew that letting here stay her was opening up a can of worms that he wasn't sure how to clean up. There were a million things that could go wrong in the morning with the possibility of Alex or Miriam or - hell - even Beau finding out about their unexpected guest. But, at this point he had no other choice. Her safety was more important.

And at least the lasagna would be eaten by the time Miriam came back.


TBC...

AN: There it is! I really hope you guys liked this chapter. I'm a bit anxious about it, because I know you were all waiting in anticipation for it. I hope it lived up to your expectations.

Also, just a disclaimer… I know Whitechapel isn't as bad as it used to be, and by 2036 it'll probably be the Brooklyn of London or whatever. Lol. But this is Logan. He's a Huntzberger. The dodgiest place he'd ever consider staying is probably like… a Double Tree Hilton. Lol. So take that with a grain of salt.