AN: How fast was this?! I don't want to jinx myself and say that I am finally over a hump with this fic because the second I say that officially I'm screwing myself. Lol. But I WILL say that this point in the story is the point that I have been waiting and waiting to finally get to since the very beginning. So things are moving. Things are going. Things are looking good. I'm getting excited.

I'm also getting a lot of questions about Rory/Logan. First off - yes this IS a Rogan. I know some of you might not believe that now… but it is going to be a Rogan. We just have a ways to go to get there. Whether or not I pull that off believably is up to you I guess, but that is the ultimate goal. So the answer to the second round of questions is YES they will be interacting more in the near future and they will see each other in person. But we do have a bit more chapters to go to get there. I haven't seen a single question in my reviews that I don't have a plan for. So trust you will get answers eventually. I just don't want to spoil everything and I want everything to play out at the appropriate time.

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoy.

Chapter Seventeen

2014

"These scones are ghastly."

Logan glanced up from the stack of papers that had been placed in front of his seat at the conference table to see Bobbie standing in front of a meticulously crafted table full of pastries, fruit, juices, and coffee. She picked up a napkin and discreetly spit the bite of food out of her mouth before throwing it into the trash with a grimace.

"You're a Vice President of Operations at a multi-billion pound media conglomerate and you can't afford to provide a halfway decent breakfast spread for your employees?"

"Believe it or not, catering morning conferences isn't included in my list of duties as a VP," Logan answered with a tilt of his head and a shrug.

"Well you should talk to whoever is in charge and tell them never to order from this bakery again," said Bobbie as she poured herself a cup of coffee and avoided the rest of the food all together. "These scones must be about three days old. There's also no clotted cream. Or tea! There's no tea on this table. Logan. What American did this?!"

"Not this one," he answered with a shrug.

He looked back down at the papers provided for him, skimming the collection of graphs and charts to get himself somewhat familiar with the information before they spent the next two hours discussing all of it. It was a rare occasion when he was actually early for a meeting. Though, he was beginning to think that his assistant was picking up on the fact that if she scheduled them first thing in the morning then there was a lesser chance of him running late. The rational grown up in him told him that was a good thing… but the ADHD raddled, morning hating, caffeine addicted goblin instead of him would much rather roll out of bed at 9:30 AM and get to the office just in time to leave for lunch.

"So…" Bobbie said as she walked over to the table, nursing the warm cup of coffee in her hand. There was something in her tone that put Logan on guard. Something musical. Something curious…

"Yes…?" he asked, glazing over at her again.

"I just wanted to let you know that Odette had a lovely time at the match the other day."

Logan nodded and bit his lip in an effort to keep a laugh from falling out of his mouth. He knew this was coming eventually. Apparently she couldn't even wait until the morning dew had completely evaporated from the conference room windows.

"Good. I'm glad," he replied with a nonchalant shrug.

"She's gone back to France…" Bobbie continued. Logan just hummed in acknowledgement. "Her parents have a home in Cannes. They usually head there for the summer…"

"That's nice," said Logan as thoughts of his parents and The Vineyard suddenly popped into his head.

"It is. It's lovely," Bobbie said. "Jason and I have plans to head down there for a holiday in a few weeks actually."

"Oh. That'll be good," said Logan. "You deserve a vacation."

"Indeed. Indeed," Bobbie replied with a nod.

Logan could tell from the tone in her voice that she had more to say, but he wasn't going to give her a prompt to say more. Not that that would stop her.

"You know…" she continued. Logan smirked at just how right he was. "She asked me to tell you that you'd be more than welcome to join us if you'd like."

Logan sighed. He abandoned all hope of skimming through the papers in front of him, realizing that it was a futile endeavor. When Bobbie wanted to talk about something, it was going to be talked about.

"Bobbie…" he said, patiently.

"What?" she asked in return, innocently.

"I appreciate what you're trying to do here…"

"I'm not trying to do anything."

"...But my personal life is a little complicated at the moment, and I'd like to just take my time and see - "

"Is it complicated?" she asked. "Because it seems rather simple to me."

He sighed again.

When he was at his best self, he knew that Bobbie's meddling was a sign of affection. She cared about him and she wanted him to be happy. Much in the same way that she cared about Odette and wanted her to be happy. They were two of her closest friends. She worked every day with Logan, and she'd known Odette since they were children - their mothers having been roommates at the La Sorbonne in the seventies.

In Bobbie's mind it was simple math. A happy Logan + a happy Odette = a very happy Bobbie. The only problem with the equation was that she seemed to be absolutely positive that the two of them would make each other happy. Logan had no reason to think that wasn't the case. But he also had no reason at all to think that it was.

Furthermore, Logan was about two hours of sleep and a cup of coffee away from being his best self. So, at that moment her meddling was coming off as less affectionate and more annoying.

"I just want to see where this thing with Rory is going before I - "

"Logan… I love Rory…"

"No you dont…" he quickly interjected with an absolutely flabbergasted expression.

"I think she's an absolute doll . I do…"

"You've met her twice …" he interjected again. But Bobbie continued to barrel forward, paying no mind to the fact that he saw completely through her bullshit. In the end it was irrelevant to her goal.

"I just want to sort of… reframe what is going on between the two of you in a way that might put this in perspective…"

Logan cleared his throat and walked over to the catering table. He grabbed a thermal cup and poured himself a steaming cup of coffee from the samovar, knowing full well that he wouldn't get through the rest of this conversation without a hefty amount of caffeine in his system.

"Let's… switch things around here," she continued. "If it was Odette in this situation rather than you, and she was reluctant to move things forward because of some on again/off again ex-boyfriend from ages past who would sometimes text her for sex when he was going to be around but then disappear for months and weeks at a time and refuse to offer any sort of context or definition on what exactly was going on between them… Do you know what I would tell her?"

"I have a feeling you're going to tell me whether I know or not…" said Logan.

"I would tell her - and every woman in the world would tell her by the way, not just me - that he's a skeezy fuck boy and she needs to cut him out of her life completely and find someone who doesn't treat her like absolute rubbish. "

"That's not what's happening here…" Logan said.

He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. The annoyance he'd been feeling was turning quickly to anger.

"It's not?" Bobbie asked.

"No!" said Logan. "She's not just texting me for sex whenever she feels like it. She lives in the US. She's texting me because she wants to spend time with me when she's actually here. And yeah sex is a part of it, but it's not the whole thing. We've been talking. We've been getting to know each other again. It's not some superficial booty call."

"Alright…" said Bobbie. Though Logan could tell she didn't entirely buy it.

Not that he needed her to.

"And we're not on again/off again," he said. "This isn't some toxic pattern between the two of us. Before this I hadn't seen her once since we broke up. This is entirely new territory. And we're not defining anything right now because we're taking this very seriously. We're going slow. We're not jumping into anything. We live in different countries. It's complicated!"

"So you've talked since she went home?"

Logan froze.

"I…" he trailed off. His heart rate was picking up and his mouth was going dry. "It's not that simple. There's time zones. We both work!" Logan said.

Bobbie didn't say anything. She just stood there staring at him. And for someone who relied so heavily on her uncanny ability to talk herself into and out of everything in life, she really did know how to use her moments of silence well.

In the end, she knew that she didn't really have to say anything. Because she knew that all of the words she'd said up until now were thoughts that were already swirling around in Logan's head. The doubts were already there. After all, they were the reason why he'd allowed himself to have a good time with Odette at the tennis match in the first place. They were the reason why he didn't completely shut her down whenever the subject of Odette was brought up.

Logan had no problem shutting her down entirely when the situation called for it. The fact that he was willing to entertain the subject of Odette at all told her that he hadn't completely rejected the idea.

She knew that. So she was playing her cards carefully.

"I don't want to string Odette along when I'm in love with someone else either," he said. "She doesn't deserve that."

"No…" said Bobbie. "She doesn't deserve to be misled . That's certainly true."

"Right. So… just…" Logan didn't really have a thought to finish. He just made some undefinable gesture with his hands. Ultimately, though, it didn't really matter. Because Bobbie had enough thoughts for both of them.

"But you know…" she said. "In the end… despite what the books and movies tell us… Love… it's not really enough."

Logan just stood there unable to say anything else. Not even the sudden rush of caffeine was enough to kick start his brain into thinking up a rebuttal to that.

Love might not be everything, but it was certainly something. Something very important.

Wasn't it?

"Good morning!"

The booming voice of his Uncle David - the current COO and the person whose job he was unofficially being groomed to take over - shocked him out of his reverie as he entered the conference room and slapped him on the back. He almost spilled his coffee at the contact, but he gathered himself just in time to avoid ruining his freshly pressed white shirt. A handful of people had followed him in and started seating themselves at the table, talking and chatting as they all got situated for the day.

"Morning," Logan replied, forcing a smile on his face.

"I see you've already dug into the spread I had laid out," the older man continued, gesturing to the tealess table full of stale pastries.

He and Bobbie made amused eye contact with each other across the room as he did so. Apparently that answered her earlier question.

"Yes," Bobbie replied enthusiastically. "It was lovely. Thank you, Mr. Huntzberger."

"Please call me David. Or else this meeting is going to get confusing quickly," his uncle replied. "Shall we begin?"

"We shall."

Logan unbuttoned his suit jacket and took a seat as the administrative assistant started pulling up a powerpoint presentation on the screen. The next two and half hours were spent going over and talking about a never ending slew of data, but in truth the entire morning was a complete waste of his time. Try as he might, his mind could only focus on one thing.

And it had nothing to do with net profit margins…

2036

"Don't."

He didn't leave much room for debate in the demand. It was simple. It was easily understandable. It was straight to the point. He wasn't mincing his words or leaving anything up for interpretation. He was incredibly clear. And he wasn't interested in an argument.

But he was also under no delusion that he wasn't going to get one.

"What?" Bobbie asked, lacing her tone with a confused innocence that Logan knew was entirely disingenuous. She knew what she was doing. And she knew that he knew what she was doing.

They'd been friends for a long time - over twenty-five years at this point. She was probably one of the most important people in his life anymore - a prominent member of the makeshift family he'd had to create for himself after he'd moved across the ocean from his own. Over the years he'd begun to think of her as something of a sister. Which was funny when he thought about how similar she was to his actual sister.

Both Bobbie and Honor knew him better than most people in his life. They each had a keen sense of perception. They gathered trust with their overly friendly and outgoing natures. And for the most part they were trustworthy… as long as you didn't hurt the people they cared about. Because when they cared they cared deeply - and you could always rely on them to be there for you in a time of need.

But they weren't entirely benevolent either. They could also be controlling. They could steamroll people to get what they wanted - talking and talking until they got you to agree to something that you hadn't even realized you were agreeing to. They could use the people they'd taken under their wings like pieces on a chessboard, moving them and manipulating them to suit their own means.

Most of the time the means were well-intentioned… but it didn't change the fact that they were theirs .

They were used to getting what they wanted. Because what they wanted - of course - was always best.

" Don't pressure her," he clarified, nodding his head in the direction of Riley as she made her way over to the bar with his empty glass in hand.

"I did nothing of the sort!"

"She's just now getting used to being around me and Alex. You don't need to scare her off by telling her about the finer points of the Huntzberger Family Crest just yet."

"Oh bullocks!" Bobbie replied with a scoff. "That's not what I was doing. I just asked what she was studying in school."

"And then you practically whipped out a fresh employment contract from your purse."

"Well why shouldn't I?" Bobbie asked.

Logan took a deep breath. They'd now reached the point in the argument where she stopped pretending that she hadn't been doing exactly what he'd accused her of and she was now switching gears to explaining why what she was doing was perfectly sensible and justified.

"She's studying economics. She wants to go into business. She just said so herself," she continued. "And you have a business. A family business. And a very prominent and successful one at that."

"I'd like to get to know her as my daughter before I start thinking about her as an employee," said Logan. "Besides, I don't even know if she has any interest in - "

"But you do know that Alex doesn't."

Logan didn't say anything.

He felt his shields go up instantly. He felt his defenses rising - his shoulders tightening and his jaw clenching.

"Alex is an artist. He doesn't have a head for business. He'd be miserable. You've got to let him follow his passion. Find his own way…"

She said all of this as if it was the first time he'd ever considered it. As if the idea that Alex wasn't meant for a life in a business suit had never occurred to him.

It had.

Logan had spent more hours than he could count agonizing over his son's future in the recent months. Trying to figure out how to keep him from being dragged under by a tsunami of grief.

"I know you love Alex, and I know you want to set him up for a successful future…" Bobbie continued. "But you can't shove him into a box that he doesn't fit in. You can't expect him to - "

"Well what exactly should I do then, Bobbie?" he asked, interrupting her diatribe of thoughts in a tone that was perhaps far more snappish than was deserved. He knew that in the end she was only looking out for Alex.

For her dead best friend's son…

But he couldn't help it.

He was so tired.

He was so tired of being made to look like a villain in a situation that seemed beyond impossible to navigate.

"Do you really think that throwing Riley at this problem solves anything?!" he asked. "So what…? I train her to take over the business and Alex is off the hook and then… what? What happens? What does he do?"

"He performs! He studies music. That's what he was born to do, Logan. He's too much like his Mum. He - "

"He's barely played in months!" Logan exclaimed. "He doesn't want to. You say 'let him follow his passion?' He doesn't have any passion anymore! He locks himself up in his room and does nothing. He doesn't talk to me. He doesn't talk to his friends. He used to be a grade 7 student, and now he's failing almost all his classes. I spent all of April on the phone with the administration begging them to give him academic probation instead of kicking him out of school!"

"He's mourning…" said Bobbie. "He just needs time."

"He's seventeen!" said Logan. "Time is a luxury he doesn't have! He's got to start applying for schools in six months! I'm his father. I can't just sit back and let him do nothing because he's mourning. I can't let this take him under. I can't let him throw his life away before it's even started! He has to go to college. He has to do something! "

"I'm just trying to - "

"Do you think I want this?" Logan asked, a hint of betrayal in his voice at the thought. "Do you think I want to force my son through a door he doesn't want to go through? You know me! You know I don't want to do that. But I don't know what else to do! I don't know how else to help him. The house is on fire and this is the only door I know how to open! So what else am I supposed to do, Bobbie?! Tell me! Please! If you have the answer, I'm dying to hear it."

Logan could see the tears starting to pool in Bobbie's eyes as she listened to his words. At some point he'd stopped arguing with her and it had actually turned into a desperate plea for an answer.

But he knew she didn't have it either.

He knew that she wasn't actively trying to make him feel like he was failing his son. He knew that she wasn't trying to imply that he was turning into his own father. It was a difficult topic to tread. And she was mourning the loss of Odette just as much as they were. Odette was Bobbie's best friend. Her oldest friend. He knew that she felt a sororal need to take care of her best friend's only baby.

It's just that he was Logan's baby too.

People tended to forget that.

They tended to act like Logan knew nothing about Alex at all.

They tended to think that because Logan and Alex were so different that Logan didn't understand anything about him. They tended to think that because Logan was a man of business that he couldn't possibly understand that his son wasn't.

They thought that because Logan was a mathematical and analytical thinker that he couldn't possibly understand the mind of an artist - as if he wasn't also a writer with an inherent love and appreciation for the written word. They thought that because Alex had more in common with Odette on paper that he had nothing in common with Logan at all - as if Logan didn't know exactly how it felt to be an angry hormonal seventeen year old boy dealing with the weight of a family legacy.

They thought that because Logan had been such a girl-crazy playboy in his youth that he couldn't possibly fathom the fact that his son was gay.

As if one of his best and oldest friends wasn't a borderline non-binary pansexual who painted his nails regularly and whose father was a drag queen.

Everyone else seemed to think that they had all the answers where Alex was concerned. That they understood him so much more than Logan did. But if any of those people actually did know what to do, none of them had managed to communicate it to him.

"I don't know…" Bobbie whispered. She reached out to touch his arm and give it a gentle squeeze. "I'm sorry."

"Fuck!" Logan said with a huff. He raised his hand to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose to work out some of the tension that had accumulated in the inner corners of his eyes. "I'm sorry. I didn't… I didn't mean to yell like that. I just…"

"No," said Bobbie. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything."

"Will this ever get any easier?" he asked, his voice weak.

Would he ever get to the point where he wasn't agonizing over every word that he said to his son? Would he ever get to a point where the future didn't seem like a violent swirling sea laid out in front of him? Would he ever feel calm waters again?

No one had ever told him that grief was so much more than loss. It was also chaos. In a time when you were in the worst pain of your life, you also had to figure out a way to keep the entire world from falling apart around you.

And how was that fair at all?

"I think you just get used to it," Bobbie answered, softly.

Logan nodded.

It wasn't exactly something that he wanted to get used to, but he didn't have much of a choice either. He'd never been the primary parent before. He'd never faced fatherhood without having backup - without having an agent on the inside who could put in a good word for him when he'd managed to thoroughly piss his kid off.

And now he had two.

It was almost laughable really.

His mind suddenly drifted to Riley and an entirely different batch of worries and anxieties. He hoped she didn't feel dismissed by him earlier. He hoped she didn't feel like he didn't like the idea of what Bobbie had been implying. Because that wasn't the case at all.

He turned his head in the direction that she left. He didn't really expect to see her. By this point he was sure that she would have made it to the bar and gotten into line. So he was surprised when he did end up seeing her still standing there in the middle of the lawn.

What was more surprising, though, was that she wasn't standing there alone.

There was a boy with her. A tall boy. With a thick head of hair and shoulders that filled out his blazer a little too well. And he was touching her. He was touching her and she was flirting with him.

And Logan felt the blood in his veins rise to a temperature that he'd never quite felt before.

He watched as the boy held out an arm for her. Riley accepted it without hesitation, and without even realizing what he was doing, Logan suddenly found his feet moving in their direction. Behind him he could hear Bobbie asking where he was going, but he ignored her. He ignored everyone and everything around him, stopping only when he reached his giggling daughter and the boy that had decided to appear out of nowhere and make a move on her.

"Hi there," he said as he walked up behind them.

Riley jumped in surprise at the sound of his voice, and she placed a hand over her heart.

"Logan!" she said with a laugh. It really was a beautiful sound. It just rubbed him the wrong way that this random kid had brought it out of her. "You scared me!"

"Sorry about that," he said. "I was just checking on you. I thought you'd be back by now."

"Oh," the mystery boy said. "She got sidetracked by Oliver Wells ."

"Kidnapped more like," she replied with a laugh. "He saved me."

Logan forced a smile on his face and took a good look at the 'he' in question. He was even broader up close, and considering the Yale Crew blazer wrapped around his torso he supposed that made sense. What didn't make sense, though, was how he was so comfortable around his daughter.

"And he is?" Logan asked.

"Oh! Sorry," said Riley. "This is my…uh…. friend. Jax. We go to Yale together. I wasn't expecting to see him here. So that's kind of fun…"

Logan didn't like the way that Riley said the word friend. He didn't like it one bit. And judging by the sudden change in her demeanor, it seemed she was starting to pick up on it. The smile on her face faded a little bit and she started fidgeting with the necklace he'd given her a few days ago.

"Jax, this is my father. Logan Huntzberger."

The boy's eyes went wide and he looked over at Riley.

" Huntzberger?" he asked. "Like… the news guy?"

"That's me," Logan replied.

There was a tense moment of silence between the three of them as Jax looked between him and Riley and Riley looked between him and Logan. It was almost like a verbal Mexican standoff of sorts. And to the kid's credit… he at least had the balls to end it.

"Jaxton Hearst," he said, holding out his hand to Logan. Logan accepted.

"Hearst?" he asked as they shook hands, his eyebrows raised at the name of one the other most prominent families in American media.

"Yeah," said Jaxton before Logan watched his face suddenly dawn in understanding. "Oh! Uh… no relation!"

"Ah well. That's good. That's good," Logan replied with a smirk and a nod. "Otherwise I'd have to kill you."

Jaxton laughed, but Logan could tell that he was uncomfortable.

Good.

He wanted him to be uncomfortable - the little twat.

"I'm just kiddin' around," he said, slapping the boy on the shoulder. "So, Jack…"

" Jax," Riley interjected with a pointed tone.

" Jax …" Logan repeated. He made sure to really accentuate the 'x' at the end. What a stupid fucking name… "What are you studying at Yale?"

"Computer science," the boy replied.

"Computer science…" Logan repeated with a nod. "So you gonna be the next Mark Zuckerberg then?"

"Um… well… I don't know about that, sir."

"Sure. Sure. What college are you at?" asked Logan.

"Uh. Berkeley."

"Berkeley!" said Logan with a nod. "Good college, Berkeley. You know I was a Berkeley man myself."

"Oh that's… great…"

"Riley is at Saybrook."

"I know," Jax replied.

Logan smiled, though there was no joy behind his eyes whatsoever. He didn't want to spend too much time thinking about how this guy knew where his daughter slept at night.

"You know her mom was across the courtyard from Saybrook at Branford…"

"Oh yeah?" Jax asked. "One of my crew mates is at Branford."

"It was nice, you know?" Logan continued. "Right across Elm Street. I used to just… sneak over there at night and crawl through her dorm room window. She had a pesky roommate… You know how it is…"

"Um…"

"No?" Logan asked. "Never climbed through a window, Jack?"

" Jax, " Riley growled.

"Well she's on the third floor. So…"

"Aw well… too bad ."

"I mean I - I wouldn't have any reason to anyway."

"No. Of course not…" Logan said. "Otherwise I'd have to kill you."

Logan watched as the color drained from the young man's face. His eyes went wide and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed in discomfort. Next to him, Riley looked like steam was about to start pouring from her ears, but Logan paid it no mind.

If the kid couldn't take the heat, he should get out of the kitchen. Especially when said kitchen was his only daughter's kitchen.

"So how'd the race go?" Logan asked. "I think we missed it. We got here later in the afternoon…"

"Oh well… uh… we lost," Jaxton admitted. "But we beat Harvard yesterday. So that's all that really matters."

" Absolutely… " Logan replied in an overly agreeable tone.

Jaxton looked between him and Riley one more time before his eyes landed on something else in the distance. With a slight turn of his head, Logan looked over to see a group of young men dressed in the same uniform waving him over in their direction.

Jaxton seemed grateful for the out.

"I think they need me for a photo or something…" he said.

"Aw. Duty calls, huh?" Logan asked. "Well it was nice meeting you, Jack."

"Right," the boy replied. "You too, sir."

He looked back over at Riley and touched her arm again. Logan managed to keep a growl from bubbling up in his throat somehow. Probably because it was only a quick squeeze and not a lingering caress.

"I'll text you," he said. "We're going to be in London for another week so…"

"That would be great!" she answered. "I'll be here."

"Cool."

Jaxton gave him one more courteous nod before he made his way over to his teammates and left him and Riley standing there. She watched him for a few moments as he walked away, and Logan was just about to nudge her into the bar line to get them both a drink when she suddenly turned around and pounced on him.

"What is wrong with you?!" she asked.

Logan started. He had never heard that tone in her voice before. He'd never seen that look on her face before either - with her eyes narrowed and her mouth open in disbelief. But he had seen it on someone else before… a long long time ago.

"What?" he asked with an unassuming shrug. "I was just talking to the kid. Trying to get to know him. What's so wrong with that?"

"That's not what you're doing," Riley insisted.

"Oh well… Then please enlighten me," he said in a tone that was maybe a bit too condescending. "What exactly am I doing?"

"You're being an asshole!"

"Woah! Hey!" Logan exclaimed, holding his hand up in front of him in a gesture not unlike a traffic controller stopping an influx of vehicles before a crosswalk.

He had no idea where this was coming from. Riley had never spoken to him like this. Granted, he hadn't known her very long. But in the short amount of time he had known her, she had been nothing but sweet and kind. Gentle and unassuming. She never seemed to get angry. She never argued.

In their limited conversations over the last few weeks Rory had warned him about this. She told him that she could be hot-headed and opinionated and argumentative. But he hadn't seen it. He'd started thinking that maybe she was only that way with her mother. Or that Rory was somehow exaggerating…

"That kind of language is uncalled for," he continued, calmly but firmly, confident that it would be enough to get her to calm down and see that she was overreacting.

In hindsight, that was probably incredibly naive.

"No it's not!" she snapped in return instead. "If you don't want to be called an asshole, then maybe you shouldn't act like an asshole!"

"Alright…" said Logan as the anger started bubbling underneath his skin. "That's enough. I know that we've been spending a lot of time together and getting to know each other and things have been fun and friendly. But I am not your friend. I am your father, and you don't talk to me like that."

"Well you don't get to treat my friends like crap and expect me to - "

"Riley… honey… " Logan interrupted with a scoff. "That boy does not want to be your friend."

"So?!" Riley asked, incredulous. Logan could practically feel his soul leaving his body. "Who cares if that's not what he wants?! It's my life. And besides you don't actually know anything about him. You don't know what he wants! You don't know what's going on in his head!"

Logan laughed.

"Yes. I do," he said with a confident nod. "I was him. I know exactly what's going on in his head. And I don't want my daughter to be the one starring in it."

"So.. what? Since you were a dick to women when you were twenty years old, that means every guy must be a dick to women when they're twenty years old?!"

"I was never a dick to women - "

"Oh really?!" Riley asked. "Then why did my mom think that she was better off being a single mother than telling you about me?"

There were no people in the world quite as skillful as hurting you as your own children.

Logan had learned that lesson a long time ago with Alex.

In some ways it was because they knew you better than anyone else in your life. But it was also because you loved them more than anyone else in your life. And somehow in the matter of just a few weeks both of those things had managed to become true between him and Riley.

It had been so nice for so long - learning who she was, falling in love with her. It had filled him with such joy and light at a time when they were desperately needed in his life. But they'd finally arrived here. At the dark side of love. The side that was home to pain and anger and despair so consuming that it could alter the state of your soul.

The funny thing was… as much as Riley's words had torn through him, there was a part of him - the paternal part of him - that was happy to hear them. Rationally, he knew this was a good thing. A milestone in their relationship. The moment where she was so confident in his love for her that she knew she could bear her claws and shred him to pieces and she would still be safe.

But that didn't change the fact that he was left there bleeding.

As he stood there, trying desperately not to show an ounce of the aching pain he was feeling, he watched Riley's eyes widen in horror. The color left her cheeks and her hand flew up to her mouth. Tears started to brim along the bottom of her lash line. And suddenly, his own pain was entirely forgotten.

"I'm sorry!" she squeaked, her head shaking back and forth.

"It's okay," he said, simply - unemotionally. Riley just continued to shake her head.

"No it's not. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I swear!"

"I know you didn't," he said with a nod. "It's okay."

They stood there for a few moments, just staring at each other in silence. Riley was trying her best not to let the tears escape her eyes, and honestly Logan was at a loss for what to do or say. The only thing he knew was that it was probably best not to make a scene. By this point they'd probably gathered more than enough unwanted attention as it was.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alex heading their direction. He had a scowl on his face - not that such an expression was rare to see on his son's face these days. At least this time he'd been in good company. Surely none of them looked particularly happy at the moment.

"Can we go home now?" Alex asked the moment he reached them. His hands were shoved in his pockets and his shoulders were hunched slightly. "I fucking hate it here."

Logan sighed.

He'd just scolded Riley for using language far less severe. But, the truth was that he didn't have the energy to pick another fight. Between Bobbie and Riley, he'd already had his fill of confrontations. And for once Alex didn't look like he was ready to pounce and bite his head off at any moment.

Plus all that aside… Logan couldn't help but agree with his son's sentiment whole heartedly.

"Yeah," he said, breathily.

He rubbed at his eyes and looked down at his watch. It was far earlier than he had intended to leave. But at least at this rate, they'd get home before Miriam would be gone for the day and she could make them dinner. Logan didn't have the energy, and at this point he doubted either one of his kids wanted to sit in a restaurant with him.

"Right. Let's go then," Alex said, turning instantly on his heel and making his way toward the exit without so much as a second thought.

"Are you read - "

Before Logan could even finish his sentence, Riley had already rushed past him to catch up with her brother. She kept her face down as she did, refusing to even look at him at all let alone make eye contact. She fell into step next to Alex and Logan kept a few paces behind the two of them as they walked to the valet to get the car.

The entire drive home was painful.

It passed mostly in complete silence. The only sounds were those coming from the radio and the rushing of other cars as they passed them on the M40. Alex had managed to lay claim to the front passenger seat - not that Riley had put up much of a fight. She seemed more than happy to sit in the back. Away from him. Not making a sound.

Every once in a while, Logan would throw a glance into the rear-view mirror. She didn't move much at all during the entire hour's journey. She just sat there quietly, her arms crossed across her chest and her head turned to look out the window as if mesmerized by the neverending blur of green from the trees on the side of the motorway. Occasionally, she would reach a hand up to wipe a silent tear from her cheek, and Logan felt his heart breaking all over again.

"What the hell did you do?" Alex whispered somewhere around Beaconsfield.

Once again, all Logan could do was sigh.

If only Alex knew that he'd been asking himself the same question this entire time. And not since their fight. Not since they'd climbed in the car and started making their way home. That he had a pretty good grasp on.

No… Logan had been asking himself that question since she had shown up on his doorstep and thrown his entire adult life into question. What the hell had he done to make the love of his life think she was better off raising their child as a single mother than telling him about her?

"I don't know…" he answered, taking a deep breath. "Something really stupid, I guess."

TBC…

AN: Don't kill me! Hahaha. In the end… this is a good step in their relationship. It's just… painful in the moment.