A few days had passed since Logan had seen Lorelai at the bar and he'd spent some time digesting the things she had told him. He'd had the chance to calm down a bit and even spent some time talking through things with Honor, which had helped. Honor had been utterly stunned but she urged Logan to talk to Rory and tried to make him understand that there was more at stake than he might realise. Whatever he thought about Rory if he ever wanted to have a relationship with his daughter he was going to have to be the bigger person.

It was the last thing he felt like doing but Logan took a deep breath and picked up the phone to call Rory.

"Logan?"

"Hey. I, erm, I'm just calling because I guess we should probably talk." Logan's tone was cold.

"Sure. Just name the time and place and I'll be there" Rory said.

"Okay. If you're free, how about meeting this afternoon, the same coffee shop we met at before in Hartford? I'll be there at 3 pm."

"Okay, that's good for me" Rory said quietly "Erm, Logan…" she trailed off.

"Yeah?"

"Do you want me to bring Lily with me?" she asked gently.

Logan closed his eyes and swallowed hard. "No.," he said quickly. "I'll see you later" and he ended the call.

Logan was already waiting inside the coffee shop when Rory arrived. It had taken her a few minutes to gather herself enough to actually open the door and walk in. Her insides were in pieces and she felt sure that she would throw up at any moment. Rory inhaled deeply, slapped on a smile and walked up to Logan's table.

"Hey," she said as she stood at the table.

Logan looked up at her with an almost-smile which Rory noticed didn't reach his eyes.

"Can I…." she gestured towards the chair opposite him.

"Be my guest. Here's your coffee" he said pushing the cup towards her.

"Thanks," she said, taking a sip. "I'm really glad you called."

Logan shrugged. "I wasn't going to…"

"So what changed your mind?" Rory said quietly.

"Honor. And your mom".

"My mom?!" Rory looked at him confused.

"She didn't tell you?" Logan said looking at Rory with surprise as she shook her head. "She came to see me."

"Oh, right" Rory looked at Logan wondering if she really wanted to know what had been said between himself and Lorelai. She decided that she was probably better off not knowing. She wasn't impressed that Lorelai had gone behind her back but she knew that her mom meant well. They spent the next several minutes in complete silence until Rory could take no more.

"Logan, we came here to talk so…I want you to give me the chance to explain."

"I'm not interested in hearing your excuses Rory because I honestly don't know what excuse you could possibly have that would make any of this seem okay."

Rory sighed "Then why are we here?"

"I don't know," he said quietly. "I don't really know what you're meant to do in this situation. I can't pretend everything is okay right now because it's not. I'm still really angry about it all." Logan said without looking at Rory. She reached over to touch his hand and he recoiled, pulling it away from her quickly.

Rory looked at Logan sadly. She knew him better than anyone and she could see how much he was hurting right now. She wanted to fix it for him but she also knew that she was the root cause of the problem.

"We can work this all out together Logan."

Logan looked at Rory. "I'm not so sure if that's possible"

"But we're friends, right? You wanted to be friends."

"That was before…" Logan paused "I can barely bring myself to talk to you right now Rory. The friend's thing? I think we're a long way off that don't you?" Logan looked at Rory and could see that she had tears forming in her eyes. He felt bad that he was making her cry. He sighed. "but I'm hopeful that with time that might change."

Rory looked up at him. "You do?"

"I need to believe that we can get to a good place." Logan nodded. "I just need some time to adjust to this, okay. I want to be involved with Lily I just…I still haven't got my head around it all yet."

"Okay," Rory nodded. "If time is what you need, then sure. I'm glad that you want to get to know Lily but Logan, you need to be sure about what you want because once you come into her life, I need you to be there. Like really be there."

"I'm not your dad Rory," Logan said firmly.

Rory bit her lip. Lorelai had obviously opened up to Logan about some of Rory's deep-rooted fears about her relationship with her own father. She'd always known Christopher but he'd never really been there for her on a permanent basis, always flitting in and out of her life. She could never depend on him. He was reliably unreliable and he had hurt both her and her mom too many times to count. It was the one thing that she wanted to protect her own daughter from.

"Okay"

"I want to be involved, I want to be there for Lily, but I need you to understand that I am not ready yet. I need to take this slowly."

"If that's what you need" Rory nodded.

"It is," Logan said as he got up to leave and put on his coat. As he walked away he turned back to the table. "I just wish you'd told me, Rory, things could have been different," he said before he turned and walked out of the coffee shop.

Later that evening Rory had just got Lily out of the bath when there was a knock on the door of the pool house. She hadn't been expected anyone so she wondered who it was. She wrapped Lily in a towel and walked over to the door to see who it was.

"Honor!" Rory said in shock "I wasn't expecting you."

"I know, sorry for turning up announced" she smiled. "Can I come in?" she asked.

"Erm, yeah, sure," Rory said nervously. "Come in, of course. Sit please" she said gesturing towards the sofa.

"So, this is Lily!" she exclaimed. "Can I hold her?" Honor said arms outstretched.

Rory handed chewed on her lip and silently handed over her daughter to Honor.

"Rory, there's no need to look so nervous, I'm not here to cause any trouble. I just wanted to meet my niece, and talk to you about my stubborn pig-headed brother" she rolled her eyes.

"Why aren't you just the beautiful little lady" Honor said bouncing a smiling Lily on her knee "She looks a lot like my Fifi, you know Rory. Different color eyes, but the similarities are there."

"Yes," she smiled "Logan showed me a photo of Fifi when we first met up. I kind of thought the same"

"How lovely that Lily and Ophelia are cousins, and so close in age. They're going to get up to lots of mischief I know it" Honor said with a twinkle in her eye. "They have both got a little bit of Huntzberger in them after all."

"Honor why are you being so nice to me? I'm an awful person" Rory said sitting down next to her on the sofa.

"Oh, nonsense. You're not an awful person"

Rory shook her head. "Look what I've done to Logan. I've really hurt him. I've never seen him so angry"

"He'll come round Rory, he always does. He has a short fuse but's not a complete ass."

"I saw him today," Rory said.

"You did?"

"We met for coffee. It was very strained and not exactly pleasant but he told me that he wanted to be involved with Lily."

Honor smiled "Of course he wants to be involved with this little princess," she said kissing Lily on the nose. "I never doubted him for one minute. He's just really hurting right now. Rory, why didn't you tell him you were pregnant?"

Rory took a deep breath. Right now, she had no idea. All her reasons, the reasons she had been so sure of just seemed ridiculous now.

"When he gave me the all or nothing ultimatum on my graduation day, I couldn't believe it. I thought we were really in love, I thought that we'd go the distance. The proposal came out of the blue and I was overwhelmed. Completely overwhelmed, but it wasn't the right time for us and he wasn't prepared to wait so we broke up and it was the hardest thing I've ever been through. It was like a bereavement. Logan never called or got in touch and I didn't think he would want to hear from me. It completely broke me Honor. And then I got this job offer – this fantastic job offer from Hugo to go on the Obama campaign trail. It was amazing and I started to pick myself up. I mean, one of my reasons for not marrying Logan was that I wanted to pursue my career and here was a golden opportunity but then…"

"…you found out you were pregnant."

"Yep," Rory nodded. "And I didn't know what to do. I considered having an abortion but I couldn't do it. Not when it was mine and Logan's. So I decided to go through with it, on my own. I thought about telling him I was pregnant, many times but I figured that he wouldn't want anything to do with me since I rejected him and there was no way I wanted him with me out of pity. I don't think I ever really intended to keep it from him this long but as time went on it became so much harder. And then when Lily was born, I felt this need to protect her. I don't want her to have a part-time dad. I'd rather she didn't have one at all."

Honor smiled at her sadly. "Logan would have done the right thing you know, and not out of pity, he really loved you."

"Yeah. I really loved him too." Rory said as she took Lily back off Honor. "Oh, what a tangled web we weave huh."

"How have you left it with him?"

"He wanted a bit more time to adjust to things"

"That's understandable" Honor nodded "He's probably still thinking about how he's going to tell them about it."

"Your parents?" Rory grimaced.

"Don't worry, they've mellowed. A bit. And they'll just melt when they see this little one." She said standing up "Right, I had better be going, I only popped out for tonic water allegedly. Don't tell my brother I was here!"

"I won't, thanks for stopping by Honor. I'm really glad that you're not throwing daggers at me."

Honor tilted her head at Rory and smiled "Never! Now, remember, underneath everything Logan is a really good guy Rory. Don't give up on him. He's going to get there." She said as blew her a kiss and walked out of the pool house.

After Rory had popped Lily into bed, she decided to run a relaxing bath. It had been an emotionally wrought day and she figured an aromatherapy bubble bath was just what she needed. God bless Emily Gilmore for installing a spa bathtub in the pool house for her, she thought as she lay back and let the jets get to work on the tight knots in her back.

She closed her eyes and digested everything that had happened today. Meeting with Logan had been a huge step forward. Sure, he was cold and unfeeling with her but she knew that this was a normal reaction for him. Anyone else might have run scared from it but she knew Logan inside out and was well aware that this was the hard outer exterior he put on to protect himself.

Rory thought about what Honor had said about not giving up on him. Rory had all these worries and concerns about letting Logan into their lives but Honor was right, he was a good guy and Logan was right too – he wasn't Christopher. Why did she feel like she had to shut him out before he'd even had the chance to prove himself? She didn't know how she was going to make any of this right but she knew that she couldn't give up on trying to fix it. She reached over to the side of the tub and grabbed her cell phone to type out a message.

"We're here when you're ready".

Logan had already got into bed when he heard his cell phone beep. It had been a long day and all the thinking and repeated overthinking he was doing exhausted him. He stuck his arm out of bed and felt the bedside table to find the phone in the dark. When he located it he picked up to read the message that was illuminated on the screen.

"We're here when you're ready".

He put the phone back down on the bedside table and rolled over to sleep but sleep wouldn't come to him. After a few hours of tossing and turning in the dark, he reached over to get his cell phone again before replying to Rory's message with two simple words.

"I'm ready".

A/N: I want to ask you a question - today I have been working on my first 'mature content'. It's not something I've put into any of my chapters before but it's kind of relevant to the story. Before I move forward with this angle (further into the future) is anyone vehemently opposed to sex scenes in fan fiction? Would you prefer this story to not have this? Do you prefer it to be implied? Let me know!