So I know it says this is a Baze/Cate fic, and for clarification, it really is. I know that there hasn't been any interaction between them yet, but there will be - not in this chapter, but the next one. Just thought I'd let everyone know, so we're on the same page.

Anyway, here's the next update. I'm so glad people are enjoying this.

Chapter 3

And so life went on.

It was exactly three weeks since Cate had told Lux about Nathaniel Bazile. Who, honestly, hadn't turned out to be anything like she had expected, or hoped. He wasn't a good guy.

So Lux decided to move on, forget about him. After all, she didn't need him - she had gotten on fantastically for 16 years without him, and that's how it would continue to be.

Or at least that's what she thought.

The day started off relatively normally. She got up, dressed for school, ate breakfast and then Cate drove her to school.

"I'll pick you up this afternoon, around 3:30?"

"Yeah, sounds good. Love you." Lux hopped out of her mum's silver volvo and walked quickly towards the school building. As she reached the main doors she heard the bell ring. She was late, again.

She got to her locker and quickly shoved her bag inside. She grabbed the books she needed for the next two classes and was just about to close her locker when someone tapped her on the shoulder.

"Umm, excuse me." She slightly jumped but quickly turned around and was met with a giant man. Well not literally a giant, but he was really tall. His dark hair was all messy and he looked completely lost and a little frazzled.

He quickly apologised for scaring her, then asked where the main office was. "You know, it's changed since I went here."

Lux gave him a polite smile. "If you just go down that way and take your first right, that should take you to where you want to go."

"Thanks." He smiled down at the teenage girl, before turning in the direction she had given and walked off.

Not thinking anymore of it, Lux all but ran to her first class. Damn't, I'm going to be so late.

"Lux, so happy you could grace us with your presence."

Lux gave her teacher an awkward smile before sidling quickly into the nearest desk and chair. "Sorry Miss Easton."

"Well don't worry, you haven't missed anything. You're just lucky our guest speaker today is late too. So anyway as I was saying…"

"Psst."

Lux turned around. It was Melanie.

"Did you hear about Jason and Karen?" Melanie was the biggest gossip in the world. "He tooottallly cheated on her with Naomi and now they're broken up."

"Wow Mel, it's amazing how much I don't care." Lux cringed up her nose.

Melanie poked her tongue out at Lux before both girls laughed it off.

"Would you care to tell the whole class what is so amusing? Lux? Melanie?" Both girls stayed silent, heads faced down to their notebooks, trying to stifle their giggles.

Before Miss Easton could get on their case anymore, there was a knock on the door.

"Ahh that will be our guest speaker for today." The teacher sounded a little too excited as she walked quickly over to the door.

Lux was taken by surprise when the guest speaker walked into the room. It was the man from before.

What was even more weird was the way her teacher was looking at him. Like he was some piece of candy or chocolate. He kind of stood there a little awkwardly waiting for the teacher to introduce him or something. Seeing that she wasn't he cleared his throat hoping that would give her the hint.

It did. "Ohh sorry, umm right. Everyone, this is Mr Bazile. He is here, as one of the many guest speakers you have had over the last few weeks, to talk about careers and your life after high school."

"Hi guys." He raised his arm in a wave, and gave them all a wide grin. "You can call me Baze."

"He's cute." Melanie whispered, leaning forward so only Lux could hear.

"So I'm here to talk to you about careers or something like that. Well, I remember being in your shoes. I actually attended Westmonte back in the day. Actually me and your teacher here were in the same year." He turned to look back at Miss Easton, who had gone a little pink in the cheeks. She was smiling though.

Lux wasn't really listening at this point. She didn't really care about these guest speakers - she didn't need some stranger telling her how she should live her life. Although she did notice her teacher become visibly all lovey dovey towards this guy. Weird.

Had he said they'd gone to school together or something?

"Anyway, I loved school and when it came time to leave, I still had no idea what I wanted to do. So what I did was take a gap year. I'm not sure if any of the previous guest speakers have discussed this with you, or partook in it as well, but basically a gap year is just that. A year where you don't go to school or university and you can basically just chill." The teacher cleared her throat a little too obviously. "Okay, well not just chill, get a part-time or full-time job, and try to figure out what it is you really want to do."

"Is it me or is he like really, in the sexiest possible way, ridiculously tall?" Melanie again gave her commentation into the ear of Lux, who was simply trying to ignore her.

"Eventually I decided that University would never be for me, and I also knew that I didn't want to work for someone. I wanted to be my own boss. So naturally I went into business. I leased a building, which you may now know as Open Bar."

"Your job is owning and running a bar?" One teenager asked.

"Yes it is."

"That's awesome!" A guy in the back shouted out.

"Yeah it is pretty awesome." Baze replied, feeling confident. "So is there anymore questions?"

"Did you and Miss Easton ever go out?" A girl in the front row asked before all her girlfriends around her started giggling.

Miss Easton turned a bright shade of red before Baze answered, pretty smoothly. "No, I never had the pleasure."

As the kids kept asking Baze stupid questions, Lux had thoroughly tuned out. She was looking around the classroom, trying to find something worth looking at, when her eyes met his. She didn't know what it was, but for some reason it triggered something inside of her. A thought rushed into her brain.

It was something that made her stomach drop and her mouth turn dry. It hadn't really registered before, but hadn't her mother gone to school with Miss Easton…and so had this guy. Wait what was his name?

"Can I have your number?" Melanie asked boldly, before everyone started wooing.

Baze let out an awkward laugh before ruffling his hair, trying to think of how to avoid the question.

Miss Easton quickly took back control of the classroom and was quieting the teenagers. "So I think that pretty much raps it up. Please put your hands together in thanks for Mr Bazile for coming in his own time to talk to you."

Bazile. Nathaniel Bazile. It couldn't be…

'…It was really awkward because he was so tall and I had never really comforted a boy before…'

'…I always liked his eyes, they were always so blue.'

Everyone clapped as the tall dark-haired man with startling blue eyes did a little bow, smiling widely before leaving the classroom.

Well, everyone except for the blond girl sitting in the front row who looked like she'd just seen a ghost.

She was waiting in the car park. Cate was late, but that wasn't unusual.

Finally she saw the silver volvo turn into the parking lot and she quickly got up. The car pulled in right next to her and Lux got in.

"How was school?"

There was really no going around it. Lux had to tell her.

"Mum… I don't think you're going to believe this..."

Cate chanced a quick glance sidewards at her daughter. "What?" She tried to hide the worry behind her voice.

"Well…umm, I think the guest speaker at my school today was Baze..like biological father Baze."

"What!?" Cate turned to her fully to see if she was joking. She clearly wasn't.

"Mum - watch out!" Lux screamed as Cate nearly ran a red light. She slammed down the break and they were both propelled forwards in their chairs.

Cate took a deep breath, her eyes were shut tightly closed. "Are you sure?"

Lux hesistated, "Well I'm not 100% sure, but it seemed to add up to it being him."

"What do you mean, add up?"

"Well he was really tall, he had dark hair, and really blue eyes…and his last name was Bazile, at least that's what I think I heard."

"Oh my god." Cate looked completely bewildered, "I can't believe this."

"Look mum, it might not have been him."

"No I think it was Lux. And I'm sorry, that was not that way you should've met your father..."

They both fell into silence, neither really knowing what to say. They were silent for the rest of the car trip but just as they parked in the garage, Cate turned to Lux.

"I think you need to meet him, properly."

"Are you sure? I mean, I don't know if I even want to?"

"Lux, after what has just happened, it'd seem somehow wrong if you didn't now."

"But he's not the type of person I want to meet mum. Seriously, he doesn't seem like a good person."

"Was he rude at school?"

"Well no, he seemed alright - he was pretty laid back. But I'm talking about when you guys were in high school. He seemed like a real jerk."

Cate sighed, "Lux, people change. And I shouldn't have painted such a bad picture of him. He was 16, like me, and I really didn't know him that well. Sure what he did to me wasn't right, but he was naive and scared."

"You were young too mum, and scared, but you didn't run away."

"To be honest, I didn't have the option. You were inside me, I couldn't run away."

"Would you have?"

"Honestly Lux? I'd like to think I wouldn't. I definitely know I wouldn't have acted like him. And I know without a doubt that I love you and wouldn't want my life any other way. But I can kind of see why he did what he did, even despite how messed up it was…"

"What makes you think he'll even want to meet me?" Lux said it quietly.

"He might not, but I know you're curious about this Lux, and you have absolutely every right to be. I also know that deep down you do want to meet him but you feel scared. And you know what? You don't need to be, because no matter what you will always have me, and Ryan."

"Yeah I know that… I'll think about it, okay?"

Cate nodded and kissed Lux on the forehead.

They both got out of the car and walked inside. Lux lagged behind a little, she felt so tired.

When she got inside, Cate had already turned all the lights on, but it was unusually quiet. "Where's Ryan?"

"He's doing some hosting thing at a Charity event - he won't be home till late." Cate called from somewhere in the house.

Lux followed the voice to the kitchen. "Oh I'm kind of glad, I didn't really feel like explaining it all over again."

Cate had started to get some ingredients out of the fridge for dinner. She could easily see the look of exhaustion across Lux's face, "Go and have a lie down. I'll call you down when dinner's ready."

"Alright, thanks." Lux said gratefully.

She slowly assembled the ladder up into her room and lay down on her bed. She loved her room, it was like an escape - a place where she could get away from it all. And right about now, that sounded perfect. She went back over her day and thought about how she had gotten to this point. How had all these things happened in the course of 8 or so hours? After a while she could feel her mind slowly winding down as she found it harder and harder to keep her eyes open and and keep her mind focused on a particular part of the day.

Before long she was fast asleep.

The next morning she trudged down stairs. It was a Saturday, and Cate and Ryan were already sitting at the table eating breakfast. As she walked into the room, they both stopped reading their newspapers and looked up at her.

The look in Ryan's eyes told Lux that Cate had already told him about what happened.

"Morning Lux," Ryan said gently.

"Morning." Lux said sitting down at the table and filling up an empty bowl with cereal.

"So, I heard about yesterday." Ryan said carefully.

Lux picked up the milk and poured it over her crispy flakes, "Yeah, pretty eventful huh?" She gave him an ironic grin.

"Well if you need anything."

"Yeah, I know. Thanks Ry."

"So I know it's only been a night, but have you got any idea what you want to do?" Cate spoke for the first time, she kept a close eye on Lux's physical reaction.

Cate could tell she was clearly uncomfortable, and not really in the right mindset yet to make a decision. Before Lux had to say anything Cate added assuringly, "If you don't, that's fine. You take as much time as you need."

Lux gave Cate a small smile, "Yeah I know mum. I thought about it a lot last night. If I'm being honest, I think I do want to meet him. Not to even have a relationship with him, but just to properly meet my biological father…"

"Well, whatever you want, I'm happy with." Cate said as reassuringly as possible. However, deep down, she was feeling anything but reassured.

Seeing Baze again? There was a reason she had never attended a reunion in her life, and why she avoided anything to do with high school all together. She felt a mix of guilt, confusion and frustration at herself for never telling him. But right or wrong, that was the decision she had made. And for the sake of Lux, she had kept with it. Consistency is vital in raising a child. You don't want them to have a life of moving here and there and never feeling secure.

She had no idea how she would approach this if Lux decided she definitely wanted to meet Baze. What was she going to do? Ring him up? 'Oh hey Baze, remember me? I'm the girl you knocked up in high school who, by the way, didn't have an abortion like she implied. So yeah, you have a daughter you've never met, but who wants to meet you now.'

Cate grimaced at the thought. She suddenly realised she'd gotten lost in her head and quickly focussed back onto her daughter.

"Are you alright mum?"

"Yeah, sorry honey what were you saying?"

"Nothing. Just that I'll think about it."

BEEP BEEP.

Lux motioned to get up. "That's Jones. He's giving me a lift this morning," she explained.

"Alright, well have a good day." Cate gave her daughter the best smile she could. Hopefully it didn't seemed too forced. "Wait, have you got your lunch?" Cate added quickly.

Lux was already halfway to the door. "Yeah. I'll see you this afternoon. You too Ryan."

"See ya Lux." Ryan shouted as Lux was already out the door.

He turned to Cate. "What's going on in there." He motioned to her head.

She let out a long breath, "Honestly babe, I don't know what to do. If she does want to meet him…I mean he doesn't even know she exists."

"We'll work it out, together." He took her hand in his.

"I know, it's just… he's going to hate me. And he has every right to but-"

"No Cate, this is not your fault. He was an idiot and you did the best that you could given the circumstances. But that's in the past now… this is about Lux."

"You're right. I'll just take whatever he gives me and hopefully that will be enough. I just don't want this to backfire onto Lux." Cate said exasperatedly.

"It's just the risk you're going to have to take. And Lux also." Ryan rubbed Cate's back. "Look, don't worry yourself about it. She might not even decide that she wants to meet him."

"I know Ryan, but now that she's got me thinking about it. Maybe he does deserve to know. I mean, he has a daughter…she is a part of him, if only genetically."

"Well whatever you decide, I'll be here for you and Lux."

Cate smiled gratefully at him. "You're so great, you know that?"

"Well, it is the reason you're marrying me."

"That's not the only reason." Cate gave him a sly smile, pushing Baze and secret illegitimate daughters to the back of her mind.

"I like where you're going with this." They're both slowly leaning in to each other.

As their lips touched, everything else seemed to fall away.

Cate didn't want this kiss to end. She didn't want to have to face the reality that lay after this kiss.

When they broke a part, he whispered softly, "I love you Cate Cassidy."

All she could do was smile.