Chapter Forty-One. Rory
Rory
‘Don’t go.’
Rory swallowed hard. “I have to.”
‘No, you don’t.’
They were sitting in the garden looking at each other, misery wrapped around them like a blanket.
‘You said you wouldn’t go away again. You promised. You said it was done.’
“I was wrong.”
In the silence, Rory could hear a faint sound of carols and bells from the direction of the village. It must be Saint Winebald’s Day today, he thought. The year was drawing to an end. He felt shipwrecked. Things kept crashing around them, slipping away between their fingers.
“We hardly see each other—” he tried.
‘I’ll do better. I’ll come to the house more. And winter is only for a few months. Please.’
His heart was breaking, sharp and splintery. “It’s not about you doing better. You don’t need to do better. You’re perfect. None of it is your fault. If anyone’s at fault, it’s me. I’m the one whose solution failed.”
She raised her hands to say something, to object probably, but Rory reached out, stilling her hand as gently as he could.
“Daye, we can’t go on like this. We need a solution.”
‘Why?’
“I need to know that if something happens to me, you’ll be okay.
” I need what happened last month to never happen again, he thought.
He needed to never again feel this helpless, this terrified.
He needed to know that she chose to be with him, that she could leave him if she wanted.
He needed to never wonder again if she was here with him because she wanted to or because she had to, because it hurt so much that he couldn’t breathe. But he didn’t say any of it.
“It’s only until I find another way. The things I tried so far don’t work, and I don’t even know where to start looking again.
I have to know more, and going to university is the only way I can think of to do it.
It’s only for five days a week, and the semester is only four months long.
I’ll be home every weekend and for all the vacations.
And I’ll stop the moment I find the right way to solve this. I promise. It won’t be like before.”
‘When?’
“The semester starts in three weeks. But I’ll need to go early to figure out registration.”
‘Don’t you need to do an exam?’
“I, uh, already did. Last winter.” He had taken the test on a whim, while oscillating between putting as much distance as possible between Daye and himself and clutching her as close as he could.
“It’s good for another year, so …” He trailed off at Daye’s betrayed expression.
“I know it doesn’t seem that way, but I’m doing this for you. ”
‘If it’s for me, shouldn’t I have a say if I want it or not?’
Neither of them had anything to say after that.