AN: Okay so…. This chapter was a lot. I could give you a laundry list of reasons why this took so long to post, of which they are many practical and time related reasons. But, the ultimate truth is this was just a lot… and hopefully you will see why (if I succeeded in translating what was going on in my mind). Anyway please enjoy!


2014

"Rory!" The leggy blonde launched herself at her as if they were long lost best friends, insisting once again on the overly friendly and somewhat invasive double cheeked kiss that had thrown Rory off just as much now as it had the first time they'd met.

"Oh," she squeaked, leaning forward in acquiescence to the greeting. "Bobbie. Hi."

"Oh my God, you look fabulous!" she cheered as they broke apart.

Rory's eyes wandered over her in turn. In truth, she looked exactly the same as Rory remembered her. Tall. Skinny. A pair of legs that could rival a giraffe. A chin that could cut glass and long thick blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. Though, now there was a slight curl to the locks hanging down from the back of her head rather than the perfectly straight strands she'd been donning the one other time they'd met. She was dressed in a short and sleeveless square necked dress. It was black with layers of ribbon like tiers falling down the entire garment in a stripe like fashion. It clung to her so tightly that Rory couldn't help but wonder how she could breath in it.

"Oh, well, thank you," she said. "Same to you."

"Let's get you a drink. Come on."

Bobbie slipped her hand through Rory's arm, holding on to her tightly as they made their way through the crowd and to the bar. She turned around to shoot a glance at Logan, but all he could do was shrug his shoulders and stuff his hands in his pockets as he followed them to their destination.

While they walked, Rory glanced around her environment, taking in the faces of all the people that she didn't know as they mingled in their cocktail dresses and suits amidst the candle light and the impressive backdrop of St. Paul's hovering over them. She looked around, and she couldn't help but feel a twinge in her heart as she passed over each and every beautiful face of the women standing around her. Wondering. Wondering if she was here. Wondering who it was.

"I can't tell you how excited I was when Logan told me he was bringing you," she went on. Rory suppressed an eye roll. She'd met the woman once… "God. The way he used to talk my ear off about you. It was adorable."

Rory shivered at the word.

"I've never seen him so infatuated again."

"Bobbie…" Logan warned from behind her, finally feeling it was time to butt in.

"Well it's true…" she said with a shrug. Rory heard Logan sigh in defeat. "He's practically a loner these days."

"Bobbie…" he warned again.

"Which is a shame. Because… well… look at him."

Rory turned around and did exactly that. She smiled at him, the nerves that had suddenly built up over the last twenty-four hours were actually starting to fade at the implication that Bobbie was making. She'd always assumed that Logan would have gone back to his old ways once he was free of her. She thought that Bobbie would have seen him with girls left and right, that he never went anywhere without someone on his arm. Hearing the opposite was surprising… but oddly comforting. And when Logan playfully rolled his eyes at his friend's comments, Rory only felt even lighter.

"Like fine wine that man."

"Alright, that's enough," said Logan. Though, the smirk on his face betrayed him.

Rory actually found herself smiling at the comment as well. As much as it annoyed her to hear it from Bobbie of all people, the woman was right. Logan had always been cute. In college, there was nothing at all unattractive about him, but he'd always been exactly that. Cute. He had a sort of boyish charm to his looks, one that made him attractive but not too intimidating.

That wasn't the case any more. The man standing next to her now wasn't cute. The man standing next to her now was a smoke show. She'd noticed it the moment that she laid eyes on him in Hamburg. The boyish charm Logan had carried with him was gone. It was hardened over time. He was trimmer. More chiseled. His hair was neater and his clothes more tailored. He was a man. And devilishly attractive one at that.

"He's aged like Paul Rudd, and I've aged like… Lindsay Lohan…"

"Oh please," Logan scoffed in response to the still effortlessly stunning woman's insane claim that she wasn't absolutely gorgeous. "How 'bout those drinks?"

"Champagne, darling. Thank you for offering..." Bobbie replied, prompting Logan to sigh before looking over at Rory.

"Do you want anything?" he asked, the annoyance at Bobbie falling off his face the moment he looked down at her. Rory smiled softly at him.

"Martini," she said.

"Champagne and a martini coming up," said Logan.

Before he turned to leave, his hand landed on her bicep and his head bent down to press a kiss on her jaw right under her ear. Goosebumps broke across her skin at the contact, and when she looked back up at Bobbie, the woman was watching her with a somewhat indecipherable but scrutinizing expression. One she wasn't too sure was entirely friendly.

"So, tell me…" said the blonde, the look vanishing as quickly as it came. "What have you been up to in the last few years?"

"Um…" she began. "I've been writing… I worked as a political correspondent for the 2008 primary election for a while, and it's been mostly freelancing work since then. I'm actually here because I'm working on a piece for Slate."

"Slate?" Bobbie said, enthusiastically. "Impressive."

"Thanks…"

The two women suddenly found themselves in a conversational lull, and as the silence hovered over them for a few moments, Rory watched Bobbie eyes roam over her from head to toe yet again, and he couldn't help but feel like she was being weighed and measured, like she was standing in front of a a new gatekeeper. A new gatekeeper to Logan. Another one that happened to be blonde and had a taste for champagne. She wondered if hiccups were her warning sign too.

"Oh!" Bobbie suddenly said, fixing her face back into the overly friendly expression. "I need to introduce you to my husband. Come come."

Rory allowed herself to be pulled once again across the room. They walked past the bar, Rory making eye contact with Logan as he offered her an apologetic shrug. Bobbie weaved her through groups of mingling guests, past a black baby grand piano to a group of people standing just feet away from the man playing - rather poorly as far as Rory was concerned.

She recognized two of the men in the group right away, Philip and Nick, the other colleagues of Logan's that she'd met at the dinner with Bobbie all those years ago. The other man, however, was unfamiliar. Though, the process of elimination led her to believe it was the husband in question. That left only one person a complete and total mystery to her.

"Darling," said Bobbie as she sidled up to the tall unfamiliar man with a thick head of black hair and a crisp blue suit. "I want you to meet someone. This is Rory Gilmore. She's a journalist. She's an old friend of Logan's."

Rory bristled at the statement, her defenses revving up yet again. Though, to be fair, she wasn't sure what she would have preferred Bobbie to say. Just last night she and Logan had discussed the fact that they weren't in a relationship. She couldn't very well be upset at the woman for not introducing them as if they were.

"Rory, this is my husband, Jason Nichols."

She pushed down her discomfort and held her hand out to the man, offering a friendly smile as she did.

"It's nice to meet you," she said. "Happy Birthday."

"Thank you," the man answered, kindly. "It's nice to meet you as well."

"And you remember Nick and Phillip."

"Of course," she said, her smile still plastered on her face. "It's good to see you both again."

Rory's platitudes were returned in kind by both of them. Though, while she went through the familiar motions of small talk with Logan's colleagues, she couldn't help but notice that her eyes kept drifting over to the striking woman standing to Bobbie's left.

There was something somewhat captivating about her. She was stunning, but in an understated way. She wasn't overly coiffed or meticulously made up. The dress she was wearing was nice but not flashy. It was a plain black bustier dress, knee length with a bandeau neck and thin black straps. Her frustratingly gorgeous dark hair was falling down her shoulders in a manner that was neither straight nor wavy - as if she hadn't applied an ounce of heat to her locks and simply woke up with it looking that way. Long bangs covered her forehead, splitting apart at the center, and curving off to the sides, and messy fly aways were escaping from all sides. She had the smallest amount of make-up on. A thin and subtle layer of eye liner on her upper lid surrounding her dark brown eyes, a brush of mascara, perhaps some concealer, and a bright red lip. Other than that, however, her face seemed practically bare.

"And this is my old friend Odette Poirot. She's visiting from Paris."

Paris. She was French. Of course she was French. It explained the… well the everything about her.

"We've been trying to convince her to take over from the ghastly excuse for a pianist this bar has chosen to employ," Philip chimed.

Rory shot another look over at the man currently bent over the piano. Apparently, she hadn't been alone in her assessment that he wasn't the best. He was practically pounding away at the keys without an ounce of subtlety or nuance, which wasn't the best technique for slow jazz standards that he's chosen.

"You play the piano?" she asked the woman with a smile, receiving a modest one in return.

"Un petit peu," she replied, nonchalantly.

"She's being modest," Bobbie cut in, rolling her eyes. "She was waitlisted for Julliard."

"Still waiting..." the woman repeated, pointedly and with a deprecating smile. Her accent shining through even though she'd only uttered two words.

"And she was called back for the Paris Philharmonic twice."

"Not hired."

"Alright, I have a glass of champagne and a martini…"

Logan's deep voice cut over the crowd as he slid next to her. Once his hand was free, Rory felt him press it against the small of her back, and she found herself relaxing into his touch, comforted by his presence in front of this woman that she didn't exactly trust. It wasn't that she thought Bobbie was after Logan anymore, but she couldn't deny that there was something shifty about her. Something that still wasn't thrilled with the idea of Rory being with him.

"Logan. Bonsoir."

The accented voice of Bobbie's friend was the first to greet him, and Rory watched while a tight lipped smile spread across his face at the sight of her. Her back suddenly went stiff under his hand, dread filling up inside of her as she considered the possibility…

"Odette. Hi," he said in return. "It's good to see you."

Logan took a sip of his scotch, his eyes purposefully drifting away from the beautiful woman as his friends continued their conversation. Rory, however, couldn't help but notice that while Logan's eyes were focused anywhere but on the face of the woman standing across from him, her eyes kept drifting back to him. The looks weren't helping with her suspicions, and she found that the only thing calming them was the smooth feeling of gin and vermouth coating her esophagus as it dripped down her throat.

She spent the rest of her evening drowning in martinis, letting herself get loopier than she usually did in any other context. But then, she had a tendency to do that when she was feeling particularly anxious. Especially when she wasn't alone.

The drinks kept coming unbidden, being placed into her hand without prompting by Logan, by Nick, even by Bobbie at one point. A couple hours in, the entire lot of them were feeling pretty sloshed. Rory was actually starting to feel like she had over reacted to the attention that Odette had been given Logan. Nothing particularly flirtatious or provocative had happened between them, and at this point Logan was starting to get that unfocused far away look on his face, the one that always indicated they were on the precipice of dangerous territory. If the cat hadn't come out of the bag by now, she was starting to think that there wasn't a cat to begin with.

All in all, she was having fun. Meeting his friends without a mental countdown clock to Logan's departure had allowed her to loosen up a bit more and enjoy the evening more than she'd been able to the first time. They were all enjoying the evening. Perhaps a little too much. Everyone around them seemed to have grown about ten decibels louder in their speech, reaching a climax when Jason cheered as he looked over to their left to spot a now empty piano bench.

"Hey!" he exclaimed. "He's gone! He stopped. Odette! Go quick. Now. Before he comes back!"

"I am too drunk to play ze piano," she replied, shaking her head.

Her refusal was met with a resounding response of dismissive and unconvinced noises from the people around her, and Rory couldn't help but be reminded of that SNL sketch with Kristin Wigg kept begging people not to make her sing.

"Stop being modest," said Jason. "I want you to play."

"It's not my piano. I would feel wrong," she argued again.

"We rented this bar. We paid for the piano," Jason argued. "Go play. It's my birthday. I'm forty. I'm an old man, and I want you to play."

Odette sighed. She stood up from the chair that she had settled in a while ago and took a moment to clumsily smooth out her dress before stepping around them.

"Fine," she said, looking at the birthday boy pointedly, much to the delight of everyone around her.

"Somebody turn her upside down!" Nick hollered over the crowd as Odette somewhat stumbled over to the piano, prompting laughter from everyone within listening distance.

Rory watched as she moved, unsteady on her feet with an uninhibited smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye that suggested of just a little too much to drink. She had a hard time believing that the woman was in any state to sit down and play chopsticks let alone anything else. Yet, with the way everyone around her was so enthused, she was more than a little interested to find out.

The French girl threw her head over her shoulder and flashed him a teasing smirk in response to his statement, almost challenging and playfully annoyed. Nick smirked back and shrugged his shoulders.

"Beethoven could do it," he said.

"Zat was Mozart," she replied with a shake of her head.

She practically tripped down onto the black leather bench, and she had to take a moment to clumsily adjust her legs as she swung them around the side. But, as her foot touched the pedal hovering just above the ground and her fingers brushed along the black and white keys, something about her changed. It was as if every ounce of alcohol she'd consumed drained from her body. Her posture straightened. Her eyes became clear. And she looked more in control than Rory had ever seen someone be in her life.

Her right fingers danced quickly along the keys in front of her, plucking out the familiar tune of Mozart's Turkish March without her left hand joining in. But after just a handful of notes she stopped, throwing a cheeky smile over at Nick before slumping ever so slightly and letting out a sigh.

"What should I play?" she asked, inquisitively. "Zis is ze worst part of being a musician. People always want you to play, but you can never choose…"

"Play that," Jason replied, referring to the melody she had so simplistically plucked out seconds ago.

"Non," said the woman with an insistent shake of her head. "C'est cliché."

She looked around the room for a moment, as if her surroundings would somehow provide her the inspiration that she needed. Her eyes scanned over the bar tenders as they poured drinks and cleaned glasses with their white linens. They passed over the beautiful view of St. Pauls, over the people still milling about and mingling, all the time pensive and contemplative.

Suddenly, her searching gaze stopped. And much to Rory's surprise, it seemed to stop right on her. Or rather near her. She couldn't quite tell. Another smile broke out across the woman's face, though it was different from the ones that she'd given Nick and Jason. Something about her changed. She no longer looked playful or teasing. Her smile was almost… mischievous.

Rory didn't read too much into the look. She found it odd, but it was gone as quickly as it came and she was soon turning around again and placing her long curved fingers back over the keys. Her left hand started moving in a fast and impressive trill and into a fluid scale up to a long high note stretched out over a couple beats, an intro that - thanks to her grandfather's intimate knowledge of all things Gershwin - she recognized instantly as the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue.

Rory smiled. It was one of her favorite orchestral pieces of music, and she was growing excited to hear it played for her live by a musician with such an admittedly impressive pedigree. Yet, in the seconds that followed, Rory's excitement quickly turned to something else. The melody that followed was familiar, but it was not at all what she was expecting.

It wasn't Rhapsody in Blue.

It was An American in Paris.

It was the romantic, sensual, pas de deux inspiring blues section of An American in Paris.

She realized then that Odette hadn't been looking at her after all. She'd been looking near her, just as she'd thought. She'd been looking at the man standing just to her right. The American man. The man whose arm was wrapped around her waist. The man she'd come here with. The man whose eyes were glued to the Parisienne sitting at the piano as her shoulders and her head moved in rhythm with the music she was playing almost as romantically and elegantly as Leslie Caron in Gene Kelly's arms.

Logan's expression remained neutral as he watched her play. It was a poker face that she'd seen him put on a million times. But Rory knew better. Where her grandfather had an intimate knowledge of all things Gershwin, Rory had an intimate knowledge of Logan Huntzberger's eyes.

It was her. She was the one. The girl he'd seen casually just a few weeks ago. The girl Bobbie'd 'set him up with.' And that wasn't the worst of it…

He was transfixed by her. He was charmed by her, and if the ever so subtle upward curve of his lip and the way she poured herself so emotively into the music was any indication he'd done far more than simply go out with her. And as she stood there nearly shaking with the revelation, she couldn't calm the fear that they would almost certainly go out again…

She tried to comfort herself with the increasing pressure of Logan's hand on her hip. She tried to tell herself that in the end, he was hers. He always had been. But as she stood there, thinking back on the words that she'd so stupidly spoken the night before, remembering the vast expanse of ocean between them - literally and metaphorically - thinking about the way that Bobbie had been acting earlier in the night - like a gatekeeper, Logan's gatekeeper. It seemed like it might not be true at all.

It seemed like her vision of the future was more precarious than ever… and not even Logan pulling her even closer against him made her feel any better about it.


2036

Logan stood breathless in his backyard, the phone that had once been pressed against his ear now hanging down in his limp right hand. He was staring off into the distance at nothing in particular. In fact, the images in his mind were miles away from the trees in his backyard. They were at home in Connecticut. At the Yale campus. In his apartment in Chelsea. In New York. They were images that he'd thought he'd purged his mind of ages ago.

Apparently he hadn't.

There were a pair of bright blue eyes gazing down at him from underneath a white sheet. A brilliant smile over pearly white teeth. A gold necklace hanging down from an otherwise bare neck. An array of freckles across bare shoulders. A head thrown back. A mouth open wide in pleasure. The words 'I love you' whispered on a pair of soft lips.

His eyes squeezed shut on reflex, pushing the images out of his mind. He squeezed the phone in his hand at the same time, only letting go when he remembered that the device wasn't actually his, and the last thing he needed to do was shatter Riley's phone with his bare hand in a momentary descent into some kind of Hulk state.

He wasn't sure what made him more angry at this point, the fact that Rory had done this to him, the fact that she'd tried to beg for his forgiveness, or the fact that even after everything she still had this effect on him. Even when the sound of her voice should remind him how much he hated her for doing this to him, it still could only remind him of what it felt like to love her. How much he missed loving her.

The older he got, the more it seemed like he never quite knew what he was feeling. His emotions grew more complex with every passing day, and some part of him longed for a time when things were far more simple. When he was quicker to anger, but at least he knew he was angry. When a drunken swing of his fist was all he needed to release any trace of it, and being in love was as simple as buying a bouquet of flowers or a dinner at an Italian restaurant or an idealistic vision of an imaginary future where emotions like the ones he was feeling now didn't exist.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself back in his backyard. The trees were swaying in the wind, and he could hear the trickling sound of water moving in the fountain in the landscaping. He took a deep breath, knowing that he needed to come back to reality. He had to go back inside and deal with all the worms that had been let out of the can the moment he took the rose gold iPhone out of his daughter's hand.

He turned around, his hand finding the door handle that hadn't been entirely latched in his haste to get out of earshot. He hadn't wanted Riley to hear him yelling and screaming at her mother. In the end he hadn't, but until he actually started speaking he had no idea what to expect from their conversation.

Though he supposed he still didn't really know what to expect. It hadn't exactly been much of a conversation.

"Is she mad?"

Logan looked down at the doe eyed vision of his daughter as she stood in the great room biting her lips and wringing her hands in concern. There were so many things he wanted to say at the moment. There was a part of him that wanted to scream that it didn't matter if she was mad. That she could be mad all she wanted. Riley shouldn't worry about her mother's feelings regarding this situation at all. That her mother hadn't worried about his. About Riley' maybe she should call her up right now and tell her to go fuck herself and that she was moving here permanently and then Logan could lord it over her and hurt her just as badly as she'd hurt him. He could turn their daughter against her. Make her never want to see her again.

But he didn't.

"She's not mad," he replied soothingly with a subtle shake of his head.

"Really?" Riley asked. Logan could detect a sparkle in her eye. Though, it wasn't the kind that he would like to see. It was the kind that was a sure sign of moisture beginning to pool around her tear ducts. "Cause she sounded really upset when she was talking to me…"

"She was upset," Logan confirmed with a nod. "But not with you."

Riley looked down at her shoes for a moment, and when she looked back up at him the moisture that had been glistening in her irises had started trailing a path down her cheeks. Without even a thought, Logan's hand was traveling toward her cheek, his thumb wiping away the tears leaving tracks across her skin.

"You didn't do anything wrong, sweetheart."

He wasn't properly prepared for what happened next.

Riley looked up at him for a moment with an expression that seemed to be stunned surprise. Yet, Logan couldn't be entirely sure. As quickly as it appeared, the girl launched herself at him, wrapping her arms tightly around his torso and burying her face into his chest. She was holding onto him for dear life, but he was too taken off guard to respond in kind immediately.

He froze at the contact, not knowing exactly how to react to the unexpected and emotionally raw response from the girl who had up to this point seemed almost skittish around him. His back went stiff. His muscles clenched in her embrace. And by the time that he was able to wrap his mind around what was happening and lift a hand to cradle the back of her head, she broke away.

"I'm sorry," she said, wiping her eyes. "I don't know why I did that. I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry…" he said, furrowing his brow.

"I think I'm gonna go upstairs and finish unpacking."

"Riley…" said Logan, beseechingly, recognizing her descent into yet another flight response.

"I'm not that hungry. Maybe we can go to The Heath later?" She was backing away from him, inching closer and closer to the doorway leading to the foyer.

"Riley…" he repeated, about to beg her to stay and talk to him some more. But one look at her overwhelmed expression made it clear that what she really needed was some time. Instead, he lifted his right hand, holding it out in front of him. "Your phone."

She quickly made her way back over to him, muttering a small 'thanks' before swiping the device out of his hand and turning on her heel. She walked quickly through the doorway, Logan watching her as she moved and eventually turned to start climbing up one of the curved staircases toward her room.

Logan took a moment to compose himself. He rubbed the tension out of his brow and let out a massive sigh. With a pivot on his heel, he turned toward the kitchen and started moving in the direction of the kitchen island where Miriam was standing and putting together a sandwich with the fixings that he'd left there a few moments ago.

"You handled that well," she said, her eyes flitting in the direction of the doorway that Riley had just walked through.

Logan took a deep breath, and a screeching sound filled the air as he pulled a stool out from underneath the kitchen island. His entire posture collapsed the moment he sat down, his shoulders slumping and his heavy head falling into his hands.

"Really?" he asked. "I don't feel like I'm handling anything well these days."

He rubbed at his eyes, trying in vain to massage away the fatigue that seemed to have settled permanently within his eye sockets. He knew it was no use. No matter what he did, how much sleep he got, how well he ate, how much he worked out, it seemed like he could never get it to go away. The only thing he was accomplishing was putting a halt to the moisture that was threatening to build up in the same place.

He felt a gentle touch on his forearm, and he looked up. His eyes met those of the woman who had tended his house, helped raise his son, and who had practically been a member of his family for the last fifteen years. She was looking at him with as much love and compassion as she could muster, and he began wondering for the millionth time what he would ever do without her.

"You're a good father, Logan," she said, squeezing his forearm gently. Logan only scoffed and shook his head. He turned to the left, looking out the windows as he was no longer able to meet the supportive and unwavering gaze.

"No, I'm not…" he said. "For starters, my son hates me..."

"He doesn't hate you."

Logan only scoffed again.

"He doesn't hate you," Miriam repeated, firmly. "He's grieving. He's angry."

"Yeah," said Logan. "At me."

"No. At the world," she said. "He's lashing out. He's lashing out at you because he knows it's safe."

Part of him knew that she was right. Alex's anger, while directed at him, came from a place far more abstract and layered than a simple paternal resentment. Still, he couldn't help but to feel like a failure every time his son looked at him with those incredible discerning and judgemental eyes of his. He had a talent unlike anyone he'd ever seen for thoroughly dressing a person down with the power of a single gaze and a twitched brow - anyone other than his father that is. The boy had to get something from his side of the family after all, and it was just his luck that that something would come from Mitchum.

Even with all of that in mind, even with knowing that his anger was a product of grief, it still hurt. It hurt because Logan knew exactly what he was feeling. He'd had a similar experience when his grandmother had died. He remembered what it was like to be an angry teenager who lost the parental figure he was closest to in his family. He remembered what it felt like to look at his grandfather - or even his parents - and wish that it had been one of them instead.

Miriam's platitudes, while appreciated, weren't really all that helpful in making him feel any better. He could see the writing on the wall. He had experience with this relationship, albeit on the other side. He remembered how people used to tell him that he would outgrow the animosity he had toward his father. That when he got older he would understand. That they would be closer. He even remembered hoping that they were right. But they weren't.

They were wrong.

"You're a good father, Logan," Miriam said for the third time. "You've known your daughter for a single day, and - "

"And she's terrified to be alone in a room with me for longer than five minutes."

"And you already love her," Miriam continued, paying his interruption no mind other than to throw a scolding gaze at him for being so hard on himself. "Any fool can see that."

This time, when the moisture started building up in Logan's eyes, he had a much harder time keeping it at bay. It used to be that he would never let himself break down like this in front of Miriam. He would never let himself breakdown like this in front of most people, if he was being honest. He could count on one hand the number of women who had seen him cry, and the number of men was even smaller. And, despite how important she was in his life, he was still her boss. Yet, over the past year Miriam had seen him at his absolute lowest and most desperate more than anyone else. There was no hiding anything from her any more.

"I just…" he started without enough complete thought to finish. "I don't know when everything went so wrong…"

He looked around his surroundings. Taking note of the bright white kitchen he was sitting in, with its traditional cabinets, it's paned windows, it's tufted barstools, and it's lantern tile backsplash. It was so far from the house he'd always imagined for himself, so far from the sleek and classy contemporary penthouse in the city he'd always pictured himself growing old in. Sometimes it felt like it wasn't his home at all. And it wasn't really. It was Odette's. He just lived in it. Paid for it.

"I don't know how I got here…" he continued.

The look on Miriam's face morphed from one of empathetic compassion to something bordering on concern. He'd seen that look on her face a few times over the last few months, usually out of the corner of his eye and usually only for a fraction of a second before she covered it behind a polite smile or by burying herself in her work. This time, however, it was staying. And he understood why. He was on the edge of revealing a secret that he'd been keeping close to his chest for almost two decades.

"I look around and I just… I don't know how any of this happened. When any of this happened…" he said.
This isn't what I wanted my life to be. This isn't…"

He closed his eyes, pushing the tears out of his ducts and down his cheeks. He thought that it would help him to compose himself, to gather his thoughts and emotions with a few deep breaths. But, it only served to do the opposite. Closing his eyes only sent him back to the world he'd briefly traveled to just moments ago while he was standing outside. Back to Hartford. Back to Richard and Emily Gilmore's perfectly decorated mansion. Back down on one knee.

Other images started flowing through his mind. Images that were imaginary, but that felt more like memories to him. Images that he'd fantasized so regularly about at that time in his life that he had almost perceived them as being real. Lifting a veil to see a pair of bright blue eyes looking up at him. Pressing a kiss to freckled shoulders early every morning. A house in California. Picking fruit from an avocado tree. A swollen belly underneath an oversized Yale sweatshirt. A little girl with blonde pigtails running to him, throwing her arms around his neck as he lifted her up in the air, calling him 'Daddy.'

"I hate her…" he growled.

"Logan…"

"I want to hurt her," he continued, paying Miriam's objections to his choice of words no mind. "I want to hurt her for doing this to me. I want…"

He didn't know what he wanted. All he knew was that he didn't want to feel this way. He was tired of feeling this way. He was tired of feeling hurt, of feeling helpless. He was tired of grieving. Of suffering. Of pain.

"Why is she the one who always gets to do this?" he asked. "Why is she the one who always gets to hurt me? All she ever does… All she ever did was hurt me."

Miriam dropped the knife she'd been using to spread mayonnaise across the bread slices in front of her. She walked around the island and pulled up to the stool next to him, taking a seat. Reaching out, she placed her hand on top of his, offering what small amount of physical comfort that she could and imploring him to look at her.

"You can't know why she made the choices she made, Logan. Not without talking to her. Really talking to her…"

"I don't want to talk to her!" he exclaimed. "I don't want to hear what she has to say! I don't want to hear her bullshit excuses. She lied to me for twenty years. She kept my daughter from me. She..."

She robbed him.

He felt robbed. Like he'd been held up at gunpoint and mugged in the street. Except instead of losing a handful of cash and a couple of credit cards, he'd lost his entire life.

For so long, he'd viewed the alternate reality he could have lived with Rory as nothing more than a fantasy. It was a nice fantasy. One that was particularly nice to think about at the moments when things with Odette were at their worst. When one or both of them were seeking companionship elsewhere. Even during the moments when things were good between them, the passion had never quite been there the way it had been with Rory. He loved his wife. But he was never sure he'd actually been in love with her. Or her with him for that matter.

He used to like to think about what life might have been like if he had married the woman he'd been in love with. If it would have been easier or harder. If the passion would have made them happier or if it would have made them unstable. For all the faults in his marriage to Odette, they had always been pretty stable. They worked well together. They were partners. But, he'd never been quite sure if the stability was worth the trade for happiness.

What hurt the most now was knowing that the reality he could have had wasn't as fantastical as he'd always thought it was. It was happening across the ocean. It was just happening… without him. Everything he'd dreamed about since the moment he'd gotten down on one knee, everything he'd imagined since he saw her again in Hamburg… it was real.

He just hadn't been there to see it.

His life could have been so much different had he just been there to see it.

And he wished so much that things could have been different. That his life had been different.

He closed his eyes again, the tears falling down his cheeks once again. And, strangely, as he took a deep breath it almost seemed like there was an imaginary melancholy soundtrack playing within his mind as he thought about everything he'd missed out on having. A long soft bass note followed by a chord, alternating each other in a rhythmic pattern and colored by a delicate string of high treble notes hanging above them. Only… when he opened his eyes, he realized that it wasn't imaginary. It was real.

The tears in his eyes stopped. His heart started beating wildly as he all but threw himself off his stool and made his way hastily to the formal living room at the front of the house. He moved to the doorway quietly, as quietly as he possibly could. His hand landed on the white wooden frame, and his breath caught in his throat when his eyes landed on the black haired figure of his son bent over the piano.

An image he hadn't seen in a year.

One he almost thought he'd never see again.

"Don't stop," he said as he watched Alex freeze.

Apparently, he hadn't been as stealthy as he needed to be. The boy turned around and looked at him with a sad and almost regretful expression. Like he was guilty. Or embarrassed at being caught.

"I thought you went to lunch," he said.

Logan's heart broke a little bit at the thought that if his son had known he was home, he never would have sat down to play. But at least he was playing.

"Something came up…" he said.

Alex nodded. He sat for a moment looking at him before standing up and clearing his throat.

"I just…" the boy said, struggling for an explanation that he didn't need to give. "I thought I noticed that the A was flat earlier, and I wanted to make sure… It is."

"I can call a tuner," said Logan.

Alex nodded. He rubbed at the back of his neck, a tick Odette had always said came from him, though he wasn't sure. He'd never noticed that was something he did, but he supposed he'd take her word for it. They stood there in silence for a moment before Alex cleared his throat and started making his way toward the doorway, no doubt planning on heading back up to his room.

But just as Alex was about to pass, Logan reached out to him. He wrapped his hand gently around the boy's forearm and pulled him close, enveloping him in a bone crushing hug. Alex was almost as caught off guard as Logan had been with Riley just moments before. But he didn't care. He held his son to him as tightly as he could.

After a few seconds, Alex finally relaxed into his embrace, returning the gesture in a manner that he hadn't since he was a little boy, and his heart soared.

For the second time that day, Logan longed for things to be simple. He longed for a world where emotions were uncomplicated. Where love was easy. Where life wasn't a zero sum game. Where wishing for the things you lost didn't mean losing the things you had, and it didn't feel like you had to hold on to them for dear life or else they would slip away from you.

"I love you…" he whispered into his son's hair. "I love you so much."


TBC…

AN: Don't forget to review! Thanks! Also, the song Alex was playing is Gymnopedie No. 1 by Satie if anyone cares. You know… if you want to read it while listening and cry or anything…