Chapter Seventy-Seven. Rory
Rory
Rory leaned against the train doors, watching the familiar skyline of St. Claire rushing toward him for the first time in months. He was almost there.
Four months. It had been four months, and he was full to bursting with facts, with new faces, with the sound of the sea at night, with things he couldn’t wait to tell Daye about.
For weeks now, he had been itching to get home, the feeling nagging at him like a dog pulling at its leash, until he found himself heading to the train station a day earlier than he’d planned, slipping apologetically past half-packed dorm rooms and invitations for one last round of beers.
He sighed. With the sea air tangling in his hair and the hours tumbling before him like eager puppies, ready to play, it was almost easy to ignore the mess he had left behind.
But now that he was here, with the city rushing at him like it was readying for a fistfight, he almost wished he could just turn around and head back. Try again in a few days, a week.
God, he already missed the privilege of people looking at him and seeing nothing but a nineteen-year-old from a far-flung part of the country.
Not the Blodeuwedd guy. Not the guy who made himself a girlfriend.
Not the baby brother or the complicated friend or a boyfriend or the person tasked with keeping someone else alive. Just Rory.
For the first time in years, he had felt …
normal. Relaxed. That constant hunch in his shoulders, the clench in his jaw, not gone—the nightmares were still there, the bouts of midnight anxiety that made him frantic with the need to know, still regular as clockwork.
But under all of them was the certainty—soft as the grass under the first snow, as the silt at the bottom of the lake—that Daye was safe. That it was finally, finally done.
“Rory!” A hand on his shoulder, making him startle. “I can’t believe I didn’t know you were on this train, too—and after barely seeing you all semester! If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were avoiding me.”
Rory tried for a convincing smile. “Adam, hi. How are you?”
Adam leaned on the wall beside him, smiling with a relentless sort of affability that Rory always found disconcerting. “Decided to head home early, too?”
Rory shrugged. “Yeah, seemed silly to wait another night. You?”
“Same. Though I don’t have a girlfriend waiting at home to hurry to,” he added wryly. “Would it be the first time you’ve seen her since the semester started? Or did I miss her visiting?”
Was it possible that Adam didn’t know? Had Rory spent the whole semester avoiding him for no reason?
“Definitely the first time.”
“Huh. How come? After ten years together, I would have expected the two of you to travel back and forth any chance you got.”
Rory shifted his bag higher on his shoulder. “You know what our schedule was like. There wasn’t exactly time to take a week off. And she doesn’t like to travel.”
“Bummer,” Adam said. “I was hoping I’d get to see her. I never saw a real-life Blodeuwedd.”
So much for not knowing. Rory gave him a tight smile.
“Well, maybe I’ll catch her in the city sometime,” Adam pressed, undeterred.
“Maybe,” Rory hedged.
“Does she come often?”
“Not really.” Rory’s smile was definitely more of a grimace now. “Like I said, she prefers to stay home.”
Finally, finally, the train screeched to a stop.
“Look, Adam, I’m sorry, but I have to run if I want to catch the next train up north. I’ll see you around?” Rory was already stepping onto the platform.
“You’re a brave man, going back to the tin can after two days of travel,” Adam said with a theatrical shudder, as if Rory’s curtness slid off him, butter-like, without finding purchase.
Rory shrugged. “Just eager to get home.”
And suddenly, he was. Now that he was almost there, he couldn’t wait to see Daye, to bury his face in her neck and feel her against him.
To sleep with her curled against him in his own bed, instead of the creaky, lumpy dorm one.
To escape this drab, freezing weather for the blue-skied softness of spring.
She couldn’t still be mad, right? No matter how awful their last fight had been, she couldn’t still refuse to talk to him. Not after four months apart.
Rory squinted at the ornate clock suspended above the platform.
It was still early. If he caught the next train out, he’d be home in time for dinner—eight thirty, nine tops.
Just in time to catch the spring sunset, Rory thought, wrapping his scarf tighter around his neck, and headed toward the ticket counter.