Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter. I really love and appreciate the feedback. I am still completely astounded by the response to this story!

CHAPTER 9: Nowhere To Run

"Rory? Is she mine, too?"

Rory is Logan's Ace. 90% of the time, she is 'Ace' to him.

In fact, he only uses her name selectively the other 10% of the time and at the most appropriate moments; like if he is trying to reassure her or when he is serious about something. In this instance it is the latter.

The ironic thing is that Rory has spent the last decade thinking about what she would say, how she would say it and what words she would use to tell Logan that he has a daughter. But, now the truth is out without her even saying one word.

In response, but before she even says a word, she just looks at Logan silently as she tips her head a little; as if asking for or seeking some understanding from the man standing in front of her.

"Logan..." she begins to say, trailing off. While her words might not be answering Logan's question yet, her body language and the expression etched into her face, the guilt in her eyes says it all for her, instead.

"Then why the hell didn't you tell me?"

Logan's eyebrows tighten and furrow unhappily, but he manages to keep his calm, despite how furious he is feeling on the inside in this moment. To Rory, he just looks hurt; betrayed, even.

With one final look in Rory's direction, Logan just shakes his head and storms out of the small home, following the hallway back to the front door which he had entered around twenty minutes earlier. Twenty minutes before his life turned itself upside down after asking just one question.

"Logan! Just stop for a minute. Let me explain" Rory calls frantically, trying to stop the blonde in his tracks.

"You've had ten years to explain, Rory. Excuse me if I'm not quite ready to hear it right this second."

She sighs.

He's right.

She made the decision to keep him in the dark, now he can make the decision to not hear why she did so. She doesn't have a leg to stand on and if he doesn't want to talk, she can't force him to. So, she just stands there from the sidelines, watching as he climbs into the limo that he had returned their daughter in as it speeds off and away from Stars Hollow.

#

The moment that Logan jumped inside the limo, he pulled his phone out and made plans to meet up with his three closest friends and fellow Life and Death Brigade members; Finn, Colin and Robert.

Since Finn and Colin were already out drinking in New York together when they got Logan's call, they simply collected Robert from his apartment before all three boys hit the road to meet Logan at a pub halfway between New York and Stars Hollow.

As soon as they got the call, the boys knew that something was up with Logan, but it's only after the first round of drinks when anyone musters up the liquid courage to raise the issue and ask the question.

"So what's troubling pretty boy today?" Robert asks, surprising all three of them with the fact that he is the first one to bring it up.

"Has daddy dearest struck again? You don't have enough money in your account to afford a factory full of Bentley's? Lady dramas? I volunteer to sort those out" Colin asks, adding to Robert's question.

"I'm a dad."

"What's head honcho done now?" Finn asks with a grimace after mistaking Logan's statement: 'I'm a dad' for 'my dad'.

"No, not my dad... I am a dad."

There's a lethal combination of too much alcohol consumption and too much noise in the room. None of the three boys quite understand what Logan's trying to say. They don't quite get that he's just not reiterating the same thing that they are until Logan uses another keyword to convey what's he's trying to tell them.

"I have a daughter."

"Flamin' hell...' and 'Wow...' are the two exclamations of shock from Finn and then Robert, consecutively, when Logan's three friends finally comprehend what he's been trying to tell them. Colin then raises the next question after the shock begins to subside.

"So, who's the baby momma?"

This sets off a flurry of conversation among the boys, before Finn quite succinctly summarises a conclusion.

"It has got to be reporter girl from Yale. Our dearest Rory Gilmore."

"That's the one. Who else..." Logan confirms before trailing off with a sigh.

Robert smirks, reading Logan's sarcasm as a challenge that he is ready and willing to rise to.

"Who else could it be?... Is that a trick question, Logan?"

With a light slap in his direction, Finn silences Robert's cocky tease to focus on getting more detail on what the main story here is.

"How old is she? I didn't know you guys had hooked up lately!"

"I haven't seen Rory since she graduated. Our little girl's nine... I would have been twenty-five when she was born."

While Logan and his three friends are known for their antics, regardless of how inappropriate they may be, the three boys stay silent in this particular moment.

Their collective silence acknowledges the fact that Logan's just had his world upside down and that now is not the appropriate time to make jokes that they normally would. Now is not the time to joke about that poor kid having a dad like him or laughing as they imagine all the bad traits that the poor girl could inherit from him. Rather, they just stay silent until Colin raises the next question.

"Nine... You have a nine-year-old and Rory never told you? Hell... Do you know why?"

At the sore point that his friend has just raised, Logan takes a mouthful from the scotch in front of him before answering.

"I have no idea. I didn't hang around long enough for Rory to explain herself before I left. I'll call her in the next few days, but I just couldn't hear whatever her reason was today."

Finn can see the pain in his friend's face, so he quickly says the first thing that comes to his mind to try and spin the conversation into a more positive light.

"Well, let me just say now that Uncle Finny will be the favourite uncle."

Finn's typical comment sets off a chain of competition between the three men -if you can even call them that- as the pounding in Logan's head just grows harder and harder.

He had come here to drink. He had come here to stop feeling all the pain that's flooding him. He had come here to forget that Rory's spent nearly a decade keeping something this big from him. Or someone, rather.

"Fellas, I don't care who her favourite uncle is. I don't even know what's going to happen from here on. I don't even know if Rory is going to let me be a part of her life now since she never did for the first nine years. I'll cross that bridge if I come to it, but my point is I came here to forget about it - not sit around chatting about it. If I wanted to have a chat about it, I would have met up with my sister, instead."

"You heard the man!" declares Finn, instantly standing up to make the next round of drinks happen.

#

After several rounds of drinks, it's while Colin is pursuing a waitress and Robert is off fetching the next round when Finn and Logan finally have a quiet moment alone.

Finn scoots over to the bar-stool closest to Logan. The boys heads are looking down, closing in on the bar-top that they are sitting at. With their alcohol consumption from during the evening warring with gravity, they are both being pulled down. Fortunately, not looking at each fortunately acts a buffer, stopping the conversation seeming too intimate and personal for men.

"Mate, I know you said you don't want to talk about it, but how are you really doing? A kid, that's pretty heavy, but a nine-year-old?..."

Finn and Logan have been best friend's since kindergarten. Sure, for the most part, the fact that their friendship is the longest and the deepest among the boys rarely reaches the surface, nor does it have any impact on the dynamic between the four boys when they are all together.

But, in this moment and despite his intoxication, Finn knows that Logan's hurting. While he might not always let on, Finn knows Logan like the back of his hand. He knows that Logan needs a friend and Finn knows that he is that friend that needs to be there for him right now.

In response to Finn's question, Logan does not utter one word. Yet, a brief glance in his direction shows Finn exactly how Logan is feeling... How shattered he is. Finn hasn't seen his best mate like this and in this state since the day that the same woman broke his heart almost ten years ago.

Seeing this and reading his friend, Finn just claps a hand onto Logan's shoulder supportively. "Enough said, mate... 'Nuff said."

#

Long after Logan had left and the limo had driven off, Rory stays standing outside; just standing there and thinking, trying to wrap her head around the events of the day before she has to enter the home and play the adult again.

Within the last twelve hours, her day had started off as normal, then she'd faced the worst fears of her life after learning that her daughter hadn't made it to school and even worse that she was missing. Then, the relief of Elle returning home was filled with puzzlement as she learned that not only had Logan returned her home, but she had been the one to go and see him. Then, before leaving and just to top off one-hell-of-a-day, Logan asked her about the secret that she had spent the last nine years concealing; with a lot of evidence mounting up in favour of his suspicions.

It has been a whirlwind of emotions and right now, Rory just needs a few minutes to catch up again, to be able to keep pace...

#

When Rory takes one final deep breath of the fresh air outside, she returns inside her home and she heads straight for her daughter's bedroom.

"Has Logan gone?" Elle asks as soon as her mother enters her bedroom, looking up from the book that she has her nose in. Tonight it's Ally Carter's 'Heist Society'.

"Yeah, he has hun."

Elle's eyes just return to her book as she nods in response. However, Rory has other plans, as she takes a seat at the end of her child's single bed where Elle is trying to busy herself with reading and attempting to avoid what's coming next.

"So let's have a chat about today..." Rory gives her daughter an unimpressed look to indicate that she will be doing most of the talking.

"Do I need to tell you again how disappointed I am in you for running off to New York like that? Not to mention, do you know just how reckless that was?"

Elle shrinks into her bed a little more, pretending she's still reading when really she had stopped as soon as Rory began speaking.

"I'm sorry... I just had one chance and I didn't think you'd let me go."

Rory doesn't admit that her daughter is right and that -yes- there is no way that she would have let her daughter go to New York to see Logan, with or without her, if she had of known.

"So why did you even go to New York to see him in the first place?"

"I did some research... I saw that Logan was going to be doing a talk and meeting people in New York and I wanted to go and see him, so I went."

Elle speaks so simply, so carefree, that it's almost as though she had just stole a cookie from the cookie jar as opposed to ditching school and catching a bus to the city on her own like she had done.

"But why, Elle? I still don't understand why you snuck off like that... I still don't get why you went to see Logan."

"Because... Well, because I thought that I had a story -a scoop- and I wanted to be like you."

Rory is instantly puzzled. This is clearly reflected on her face and expression. Elle sees this, so she continues speaking and she continues explaining herself before her mother has a chance to ask her more questions to clarify.

"... I wanted to see him because I thought that he's my dad."

Elle just shrugs as she explains her theory that she had pursued, as though it is nothing. Meanwhile, Rory is rendered speechless at the very same theory.

As her world of secrecy unravels itself even more, Rory realises that she has nowhere to run from the truth.

In fact, the truth has outrun her.

... She should have always known it would.

I know it must seem like forever before Rory and Logan will talk it out, I'm sorry! I just couldn't imagine Rory explaining the last nine years on the same day that Logan learned he's a father, with Elleigh just a room away. I think Logan's head would have exploded. Anyway, that big, long chat is coming very, very soon though...

I loooove the Life & Death Brigade. They'll be back again later on in the story. Who's your favourite LDB boy? I think at one point or another, each of them have been my favourite, but you just can't beat Finn. I may just be a little biased as a fellow Aussie.

Next chapter: Rory seeks Lorelai's advice before extending an olive branch to Logan. Also, we have a flashback to the day Elle was born!