Chapter Twenty-One
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
T HE LAST THING he expected was for his sister to show up when he was still standing shirtless in his kitchen, recovering from that evening with Rory.
He didn’t even feel like he’d caught his breath.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I knew you were...back.” She frowned.
“I was getting changed after the hike,” he said.
“Right. Did she finish?”
“Yeah,” he said, trying not to think of Rory finishing, by tossing her head back on the pillow, arching her breasts up off the mattress and crying out his name. Because that wasn’t what his sister meant.
It was the strangest thing, to have a good secret. All he’d had these last couple of years were shitty secrets.
Now he had Rory. Naked and soft and all his.
“She did great. She...” He kept trying to not think about the sex, but he was losing that battle. “She was brave.”
Lydia smiled. “I knew she could do it. Everybody was just so mean to her in school. Can you imagine trying to do something like that with a whole bunch of people who are rooting for you to fail? I have always been her friend, but I understand why I wasn’t quite enough. How could I be? When you have all those people, all those voices, saying all of that awful stuff to you, it just makes it not worth it.”
“Well. She did great. And she didn’t need me. She was an absolute champion.”
“Thank you.” Lydia looked down at her hands and made a study of her own thumbnail. “Will you please come over for dinner tomorrow?”
The realization she was afraid to ask hit him like a brick. That he was such a grumpy jerk so much of the time she expected him to turn her down.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice rough. “I could do that.”
“Would you mind if I invited Rory? I want to hear more about the hike.”
“Oh. Yeah. I mean, you could,” he said, feeling like the first time he and Rory saw each other after sex should maybe not be with his mother and sister, but...
“Great. I’ll give her a call.” She paused. “Thank you for doing that. For taking her. For taking care of her.”
“Yeah,” he said, feeling like a dick. “No problem.”
She grinned. He felt worse. “Looking forward to seeing you.”
“Yeah.”
As soon she left, he realized that he didn’t have Rory’s number, which seemed ridiculous. But they’d done all their planning in person. He went over to the little binder that was in the drawer in the kitchen that had information on the rental, and inside was Rory’s cell phone number. He opened up a text message and entered the number.
My sister is going to invite you to dinner. Just a heads-up.
He sent it off.
A second later, the phone rang.
“Do you want me to come?”
He stared at the back wall. “Yeah. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
“I’m not uncomfortable.”
“Good. I just... Given everything,” he said.
“Do you not want me to go?” she asked again. “Because I can tell her... Oh, she’s calling right now.”
“You can go. Please go. If you can. I mean, don’t rearrange anything on my account.”
“I can handle myself. I’ll see you later.”
She got off the phone, and he went to find something clean to put on, then got into the shower.
He wasn’t sure how he’d ended up here, but at least it wasn’t a dark pit. There was that.
I T DIDN ’ T EVEN occur to him to go pick Rory up. He probably should have; it would’ve made sense. But he had some hesitation about whether or not they should show up together. Technically, she was there as Lydia’s guest.
He had to ask himself why it mattered if anyone knew.
He couldn’t have his mom and Lydia thinking it was something deeper than it was, or something more permanent. It was deep. Truth be told, it was as deep as it got.
He cared for Rory. He would rather die than hurt her.
But she was leaving, and he was starting a new life.
He needed space and time; he knew he did.
There were too many ugly things inside him, and he didn’t want to risk exposing Rory to any of them.
He had failed one person already. Profoundly. A person he had promised forever to.
It wasn’t in the cards for him. Forever.
How could anyone promise forever? Life was way too unpredictable.
He would be an ass and an idiot to try again.
He would be cruel.
He just didn’t see the point of announcing it. Maybe because it felt like opening a part of himself that he didn’t want to. This was healing him.
That stunned him, that realization. That being with Rory had touched something deep inside him. He wasn’t just doing this for her.
Maybe she felt like it was checking off a box. Maybe she felt like it was just moving toward that new life. That new sense of herself. But for him, it was more.
For him it was something.
It might as well have been his first time.
It was his first time as this man. And there was something incredibly hopeful about the fact that he could still feel. That he might even feel more during sex than he ever had before. Because he was different.
Because this new version of him didn’t look forward to the moments of glory. He lived in the moment.
The old version of himself enjoyed pleasuring women, because he never wanted to experience glory alone, but he didn’t think he had ever savored the journey in quite the same way that he had with Rory.
This new sense that nothing was guaranteed, that gave his life a precarious feeling, also made his time with Rory feel precious. Every moment. Every second.
He was so deep in his feelings he might as well be a pop song.
He put on a black T-shirt, a pair of jeans and then his dad’s cowboy hat.
He got in his truck and headed out toward where his mother and sister lived.
His sister had a little house next door to his mother’s, and the arrangement seemed to work fine for them.
When he got the ranch back, they would move there. There were enough outbuildings and other facilities for them to stay comfortably. At least, that was what he figured.
He hadn’t talked to them about it. But...he didn’t see why they wouldn’t want that.
When he got there, Rory’s car was already in the driveway.
His heart hit up against his breastbone. And he couldn’t recall that ever happening.
He had loved Cassidy. She had turned him on. Made him happy. They had talked about the future. They had been united in things.
They had been shallow things.
He recalled an old story about a foolish man who built his house on sand. On temporary things.
But she never made his heart try to leap out of his chest. That was a whole new experience. He wasn’t sure that he liked it.
He certainly had never asked for it.
His body could stop doing weird shit he hadn’t given it permission to do anytime.
He walked up toward the front door and cleared his throat, then knocked.
His mom opened the door, and everything in him softened just a bit. He pulled her into his arms. “Hey, Mom.”
She would always smell the same. Like his childhood. Like a certain perfume he got her every Christmas—because she asked for it every year—and Dove soap.
A hint of coffee and sunshine.
She was home.
When he’d woken up in the hospital, he had smelled that smell. His mother.
He had never been more grateful for anything in all his life. For a moment, he’d thought he was dead.
But it was just that she was with him.
His dad had smelled like Old Spice, coffee and tobacco. He would never smell that particular combination of things again, not the way that it sat on his skin. And that was a grief he still didn’t know how to manage.
So many things had changed in his world. The loss of his father was the one he didn’t think he could entirely ever accept. Too bad it was also the thing he could do the least about.
There were ways he could rearrange his own life. He couldn’t bring someone back.
“I’m glad you came,” she said. “You’ve been busy the last week.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But happy to be here.”
She reached up and touched the brim of his hat. “He would be so proud of you. He was so proud of you.”
What would his dad have thought about the pills? If he’d known his boy had failed? As a husband, a caregiver.
Dad had raised him to be all those things and more. He never let hardship get to them. He’d had cancer. It’d been painful and debilitating, and he hadn’t lost himself.
“I hope so,” he said.
“Rory and Lydia are just in the kitchen finishing up dinner and chatting. Why don’t you come sit with me in the living room?”
“Sure.”
He walked into the living room with his mother and sat in the chair his father used to occupy.
“I should get rid of some of these things. They don’t fit in this house.”
A glow started at the center of his chest. Because for everything he’d done a bad job of in the last few years, he had this. This to offer his mother.
“Mom, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I got the ranch, and you know I have a place for you there. I don’t need the main house. I can stay in one of the smaller ones.”
His mother didn’t light up.
She frowned.
“Oh, no, I don’t intend to move back to the ranch. I like being a little bit closer to town.”
He felt like he’d been sucker punched. “Really?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Your father loved that ranch. But it was never the life for me. It was only mine because he was there. And when he wasn’t...”
“I thought you... I thought you wanted it back.”
She smiled at him and he felt all of five years old.
“ You wanted it back. And I’m very glad for you that you have it. But I’m doing well here. That isn’t to say that Lydia might not want to move out there with you. But honestly, I didn’t know that was something you wanted.”
“I just thought we would...”
He thought they would go back to the way things were. Like it would fix something. He would buy that ranch and it would set to rights things that had been torn asunder, starting with the death of his father.
Like it would fix him.
And it wouldn’t. He was just walking over the same ground, but with entirely different footsteps, and he was just kind of a fucking idiot.
“Sorry,” he said. “I realize that I’m not thinking clearly about this. I guess I thought that everything would go back to being the way it was. But it can’t.” He looked around the space. This was a different house, but the furniture was the same. And the hole his father had left behind was the same as well. “He’s not here. And he isn’t going to be here even if I get everything set up at the house just the way it was. I’m sorry.”
She reached out and put her hand over his. “There is a space that your father left behind, and nothing is ever going to fill it. But it’s not entirely empty. Because the love that he had for all of us is still there. I don’t mean to sound cliché, but he is with us. And everything we do. He’s in you. I see him in your face and the way you hold yourself. You’ve grown so much. You’ve changed so much. You remind me more of him now than you ever have.”
He was truly taken aback by that.
He didn’t think it could possibly be true. His dad hadn’t been the life of the party, that was true. He was kind of a taciturn old cowboy. A product of both his upbringing and his generation.
Not the quickest with a smile, but that made those smiles worth something.
“I’d like for that to be true,” he said. “But I think I’m trying to fix something that maybe isn’t fixable.” And he meant that to cover more things than his mother even knew.
“Sometimes you can’t repair. Sometimes you have to get something new. I know your dad was opposed to that when it came to trucks and household appliances. But for this kind of thing, it is true. You’re planning on doing something new with the ranch. That’s a start. You can make a whole different life. That’s what we have to do. I get to live where I want, in a nice little house that’s easy for me to keep up. I would trade it all to have your dad back. I would. But I don’t have that choice. So that means I will take what I do have. And that is this little house. My life is closer to town. My choices . The fact that I don’t have to consult with another person to do what I want during the day. Not that your father controlled me, he didn’t. But when you’re in a relationship, you always have to consult that other person. You know how that is.”
A partnership. Ideally. It was strange how all that had fallen apart. Had he and Cass really ever been a partnership?
And was he really the one to blame?
He shook that thought off. “Yeah. I do.”
“Sorry. I know it’s probably not a happy memory for you right now. Marriage. I am grateful for that. That mine always will be.”
“Mine is a happy memory the way anything in my past is. There were good things. I just don’t want it anymore.”
And that, he realized, was very true. He didn’t want it anymore, and he had seen it this whole time as a flaw. That his changing had shattered his world.
But he’d changed. So why be hard on himself?
Maybe because it was the only way he knew how to be.
Push, push, push. On to glory.
For whatever the hell it was.
For whatever it all meant.
Maybe this wasn’t glory, sitting in his mom’s living room, but it was meaningful. He would take that over glory now. Any day.
Because it wasn’t just the glory days that were numbered, it was the every days.
The days of his father were gone.
He couldn’t get them back. Any more than he could get back his high school football games.
Right now, he felt glory. Glory in the simple moment.
It reminded him of holding Rory. Just the joy in being present.
Lydia poked her head into the living room. “Dinner is ready.”
He made his way into the dining room with his mother and saw that Rory was already seated.
Their eyes clashed, and he felt his heart give a jump again.
He felt like a high school boy with a crush.
And that was a hell of a thing. To be able to feel like that.
Maybe that was the good thing about not having as much control over himself.
There was something kind of effervescent and wonderful happening that he couldn’t control.
It was better than the feeling of the darkness he couldn’t control. So why not marinate in it? Why not enjoy it? Why not cling to it?
Dinner was a pasta bake that his mother had made when he was a kid, that reminded him of his childhood and made him feel at home in a way that he hadn’t thought possible in a house he hadn’t grown up in.
Rory and Lydia talked about school days, and he found himself joining in and even laughing.
Rory’s gaze would intermittently meet his, and they would share a smile.
And this felt like family. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that. Feeling part of something. Not outside of it. But his memories were here. His foundation was here.
No, he couldn’t go back.
He was going to have to build something new, but he did have his foundation. His mother was right.
His father wasn’t here, but his father had loved him. Had loved all of them.
And that was one of the things he could build this new version of himself on.
He didn’t have to throw out everything.
He had felt like he was an entirely different person for the last few years, but now he didn’t feel like he was.
Just a different version of himself. A version of himself who thought a lot more about everything he did and why.
Maybe that was just the difference between being a person who had never made a mistake and being a person who had.
He’d made mistakes. He hurt somebody. Somebody he had promised to love and stay with.
If that didn’t make you stop and reevaluate, how you’d gotten there, and how you can keep yourself from being there again, well, there was something wrong with you.
So he’d become a deeper thinker. And maybe that was what made him want more quiet.
Because you needed quiet for thoughts like that.
Maybe that was the thing.
It was all a little bit profound to be thinking about that over a casserole.
It did seem to pair even better with the apple crisp his mom served after.
He cleared the table and brought the dishes into the kitchen, and decided that since dinner had been served to him, cleanup was his responsibility.
“You don’t need to do dishes,” his mother said.
“Nonsense,” he said. “You made the apple crisp, and Rory and Lydia made dinner. I ought to do something.”
“I could pass out,” said Lydia, fanning herself vigorously. “The golden boy doing chores.”
He frowned.
Had he not done them before? He couldn’t remember.
“Did I not help when I lived with you guys before?”
His mother laughed. “You did plenty in other ways. But no.”
“No,” Lydia said right at the same time.
He and Cassidy had employed a cleaner, so neither of them had done much in the way of household chores. She had been responsible for dinner, though she usually had dinners brought from a local premium grocery store.
He hadn’t cared.
But it was just another way he hadn’t fully engaged with that life. With the moment.
Maybe neither of them had. They hadn’t cleaned their house or cooked their meals. Hadn’t done their own yard work.
They’d been busy with other things.
Other things that surrounded their life, but so rarely life itself.
The whole memory of putting together that bookcase came back to him. Because normally, they would’ve paid for assembly, but for some reason he had been bound and determined to do it. Maybe because he felt so useless in every other way.
He hadn’t been able to cope with the events anymore. He was being discharged, and he hadn’t known who he was.
He had been drowning in his addiction, and that water was six feet high and rising, and he hadn’t seen a way out.
He was trapped in it.
And he could see now that what he’d been doing was trying to go back and fix mistakes he’d made starting years earlier.
He was trying to be more present than he ever had been before, and he was trying to do that while he was already overwhelmed.
Hindsight on the situation never became less complicated.
Shit.
“Well,” he said. “I think I ought to do the dishes now.”
He went into the kitchen and started running water in the sink.
A second later, there was a hand on his shoulder.
He turned around and saw Rory. “I’ll help.”
She stood beside him, and as he washed the dishes, she took them and rinsed them. Dried them. And when they were through they both put them away. They didn’t speak, but they didn’t have to.
He liked that about Rory. She could still be a chatterbox, just like she had been in middle school. But she could also sit in the silence with him.
He put a cereal bowl up on one of the top shelves, just as Rory put a saucer in a neighboring cabinet and turned.
They were so close right then and he wanted to touch her.
But instead, they just stood and stared at each other. Until he heard the sound of a throat clearing behind him.
They both jumped.
Lydia was standing there, looking between them.
“Just doing some dishes?” she asked, a little too sweetly.
“Yes,” he said.
“Yes,” said Rory right at the same time.
“Great.”
She disappeared again, and Rory did something completely unexpected. She covered her mouth and began to laugh.
“You think that’s funny?” he asked.
“I do think it’s funny.”
“So much for being discreet.”
“She’s never going to think anything is happening. You’re you.”
“Yes, and you are you,” he said, reaching out and taking a strand of her hair between his thumb and forefinger. “And I fail to see why anyone would think I wouldn’t want you.”
“Okay, your mother and sister are in the next room.”
He forgot why that was a bad thing.
Oh, right. She was leaving.
“Right.”
She was leaving. And he was him.
Which meant something different to her than it did to him, but he just couldn’t...
He was still sorting himself out.
Trying to untangle all the bad decisions he’d made, trying to figure out where he’d gone wrong. How long ago?
“Finished,” he said as he grabbed the last dish and put it in the cabinet.
“We should probably go play a game of cards.”
“A little game of cards, not a euphemism.”
“Not a euphemism.”
They went back into the dining room, and his mother did have a deck of cards out and was getting ready to play Old Maid.
Of course, it wasn’t gambling, because that was his mother. Just a family card game.
But they all joined in, and he felt content in a way he hadn’t in a long time.
His mother and father had always liked to have a card game after a family meal, and he could remember being restless about that. Wanting to get on with the next thing. Wanting to get out of there so he could go hang out with his friends.
He didn’t want that now.
He wouldn’t trade in the slower-paced family game for much of anything.
Except for maybe another moment alone with Rory.
Lydia beat everybody and was obnoxious about it, which she appreciated about his little sister, and he offered to clean up the card game to applause from that same sister, who he now wanted to throttle a little bit. But in a good-natured way. A way that felt normal.
He was back at the game closet when he closed the door and Lydia was standing right there behind it.
“Be careful with my friend,” she said.
“Everybody seems to be very concerned with that,” he said.
He’d already been warned off by Fia, and that was before anything even happened.
“Because she’s sweet. And I think a little bit naive.”
“And you aren’t?”
“Not as much as she is.”
What struck him was how much his relationship with Rory—whatever it was—felt like a first time to him.
He didn’t feel like he had any idea what he was doing, or like he could anticipate what would happen next, or control his feelings.
It was fucking weird.
But he could see why his sister would think he was the one that had to be warned. Like he was the one who had the experience. Like he was the one who might be experimenting or playing around.
“If you want to know what’s going on, just ask. But, Rory is leaving. You know that.”
Lydia frowned. “Well, maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she wouldn’t if...”
He realized that his sister wasn’t mad.
She was hoping .
“You want her to stay,” he said.
“Of course I do. She’s my best friend. If she leaves, then I’m not going to have anybody. I know that Rory felt like she was this big geek in middle school and high school, but I thought she was the greatest. And I never needed another friend. I don’t want her to go.”
“I can’t make her stay,” he said. “Rory has to do what’s best for her. And I am not going to hold her back. I’m not even asking.”
“She... She’s in love with you, Gideon.” That made him feel like he’d been stabbed through the chest. “You have to know that. She has been forever.”
“Maybe she thought she was. With the version of me she knew back then, but I am not the same man, and the one I am now has only been around her for a week. Yeah, there’s a spark there, but that’s not love. Believe me. I know.”
“Gideon...”
“I am not asking her to stay for me. Not for me. She has plans. She’s going to make a new life for herself, and I’m proud of her.”
“So am I. I just am going to be so lonely.”
“I’m back. And I just talked to Mom. She’s not interested in coming to live at the ranch again, but you know you’re welcome to.”
“Oh,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s great that you’re back, Gideon. But you haven’t let me come up to see you. If I hadn’t stormed your house the other day I—Oh, no , I interrupted you and Rory didn’t I? That’s why you were naked .”
He growled. “I was not naked. And finish what you were saying.”
“It’s just... Are you actually back?”
He looked toward the living room. Toward Rory. “Yes, I’m back. And it’s something to think about. Moving to the ranch. You don’t have to. But you can. There’s something new for you to do, if you want. That’s the point.”
“I appreciate that. But you know, if you’re going to sleep with my best friend, you could maybe try to make that work out for me.” Her voice was dry.
“Who said I was sleeping with her?”
“Well, you didn’t deny it.”
“This is why I didn’t tell you when I came back, by the way. You’re nosy. And sometimes people need a little bit of privacy so they can figure things out.”
“Sure,” she said.
“Tell Rory you want her to stay,” he said.
“You won’t, why should I?”
“Oh, I don’t think that you should try to get her to stay. I just think that you should tell her you want her to. Because I don’t think she believes people care about her as much as they do. I think it would make her feel good.”
“You think you know my best friend better than I do?” she asked.
“Some things about her,” he said. “Yeah.”
She squinted at him. “I guess I can’t dispute that.”
“No. Probably best not to.”
“Gideon,” she said, suddenly sounding very grave. “If you want her to stay, you should ask her to stay. You’ve been so unhappy... And I know there’s more to it... We had so many years where we just didn’t talk to each other. And I just want you to be happy. And if she makes you happy...”
“You can never count on another person to make you happy,” he said. “It’s not fair. Not to anybody. Because when things go wrong, and they can’t do it anymore, everything falls apart. Trust me on that.”
“I trust you,” she said. “But I’m also not completely sure that you don’t exist in a space where you’re trying to self-destruct.”
“If I was self-destructing, I would still be in Georgia.”
“Okay.”
She stepped away from him, and then they rejoined everybody in the living room.
“I should probably head out,” said Rory.
“Me, too,” he said.
They said their goodbyes and walked out the front door together.
“That wasn’t very subtle,” she said.
“Lydia knows, anyway.”
“Oh.”
“We were not very subtle. The whole time. It’s fine,” he said.
“She’s not upset?”
“Not at all. She wants you to stay.”
Rory looked devastated then. And he felt like a dick. Because that wasn’t what he was trying to do. He didn’t want to hurt her. And he didn’t want to make her second-guess herself. He had just wanted her to know Lydia cared.
He’d misread that.
“And I can see that doesn’t make you happy.”
“I don’t want her to be hurt. And I don’t want to hurt anybody. My sisters are upset that I’m leaving, and Lydia is upset...”
“That isn’t why I told you. I told you because I wanted you to know how much she cares about you. I feel like there’s just so much shit you’ve taken on board from back when you were in middle school, and Lydia was never a pity friend. She cares about you. She always has. And that’s all. I just wanted to make you feel good.”
It was such a strange declaration, he realized.
Not quite what he wished he could say.
But given how badly this was going, it was the right move, if he was going to test out anything.
“Rory,” he said, very intensely, very seriously. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. And I’m not trying to tell you that you shouldn’t go. You don’t owe anyone anything. You don’t owe anybody staying in one place for the rest of your life. But I wanted you to know that already, to a lot of people, you’re a legend, Rory Sullivan.”
Her eyes filled with tears. He was really making a mess of this.
“Thank you,” she whispered. “I do appreciate that.”
“I know we aren’t the whole town. But, there’s quite a few of us that think you’re pretty amazing.”
That was safe enough.
She wiped a tear away from her cheek.
“Well. I had a great time tonight. It was so good to be with your family. It was great. Even if it...it’s a little sad. Your house is missing somebody. Your family is. It’s like Sullivan’s Point in that way. Even if it’s a little bit different. My parents are gone, even though I can call them up anytime. The shape of it has changed. I’m about to change it again.”
“Planes go both ways, Rory. I know your parents haven’t made a lot of trips coming back to visit. That doesn’t mean you can’t.”
“That’s true. I’m not leaving under a cloud of smoke. I’m leaving on my own terms.”
“And you can come back on your own terms, too.”
She nodded. “Well... I guess I’ll go...”
“Spend the night with me,” he said.
He hadn’t meant for it to come out so intense, so strained and tortured.
But he felt every bit of it.
“Okay,” she said, her voice shaking.
“I want you.”
Even feeling like it was complicated, like it was messy and might not be the best thing.
He wasn’t a martyr, that was the thing.
That, at least, was consistent. He had never been a martyr.
He was willing to do uncomfortable things, but not so he could downplay his role in them. He wanted the glory.
He was hardly going around tying himself to wooden stakes.
And even though things were different now, he still didn’t have the kind of restraint required to turn away when he really, really wanted something.
He knew how to go without unless he didn’t want to.
That was a strange new revelation.
Because this version of himself had never really wanted anything.
Nothing beyond sobriety. Nothing beyond pulling himself back from the brink of death, simply because he knew that sinking into his own brand of oblivion was a piss-poor tribute to the people who had died.
And if he really wanted to do battle against the dark thoughts telling him he should have been the one who had been blown up instead, he needed to make a life worth living.
And that was the journey.
But beyond that, beyond survival, beyond building something that from the outside looked functional, he hadn’t wanted much of anything.
But now he wanted her.
He really fucking did.
“I’ll meet you at your place.”
H ER HANDS WERE shaking as she texted Fia to let her know she was spending the night with Lydia.
Then she texted Lydia.
If my sister asks, tell her I’m going to spend the night with you.
OMG, what are we in middle school?
Maybe. Maybe a little. Except not.
I’m only going to ask you once. Are you lying to your sister because you are going to look at my brother naked?
Gross.
Are you?
I probably won’t just look at him.
Have fun. Don’t hurt him.
She stared at that.
I won’t.
And that was it.
It felt momentous. And also not as weird as she had thought. For her friend to know.
And maybe she shouldn’t find it intoxicating that her friend thought she had to warn Rory not to hurt Gideon.
No, she definitely shouldn’t find that intoxicating. That was silly. It was madness.
But she took a little bit of pride in it. Even though she didn’t believe it was possible. But now she had an airtight alibi because there was no point worrying Fia.
It was amazing how this had shifted. It was no longer about getting attention. She didn’t want it.
She just wanted this to be about them.
About what passed between them. She didn’t need it to be about anything else.
She didn’t need it to be about her reputation, about the way the town saw her, about the way she left the place.
It simply didn’t matter.
It just didn’t.
She drove straight to his house and got out, walking with him up the front steps and inside.
Last night, she had never done this before. And that had given her a certain type of infusion of nerves.
The unknown.
This was different.
She had spent the evening with his family.
They had done mundane things like putting dishes in a cupboard, and it had felt transformative.
She looked at him, smiled, felt her heart beating like a wild thing, trying to escape.
Trying to get to him.
And when he kissed her, it was like a storm.
It wasn’t tentative, and it wasn’t careful. They already knew what she was doing here. They knew what they both wanted.
He lifted her up and set her on the counter, moving between her legs.
He cradled the back of her head and kissed her like he was starving.
He pushed her dress up her thighs, and she welcomed him in that space between.
Wrapped her legs around him, felt the hard ridge of his desire up against that cleft there.
This was wild, abandoned.
This had nothing to do with anything but passion. Wanting him. Needing him, and being wanted in return.
He moved his hands up her legs, grabbed hold of her underwear and pulled them down, effortlessly, easily, and then his hand was there, between her legs, stroking her and teasing her.
She was already so wet with her desire for him. Already so ready.
He was a glorious thing, the soldier in that moment.
Laser-focused and maybe a little bit dangerous, and she didn’t mind.
Because she felt equal to him.
She didn’t feel like she was the soft one, the weak one.
She didn’t feel like a weirdo. Didn’t feel like the sad girl mooning after a man she couldn’t have. She felt strong enough, brave enough for him. The woman who had married him hadn’t been strong enough for him. For the truth of him.
She hadn’t stood with him. She hadn’t helped him.
You are leaving.
That thought punctured a hole in that inflating sense of self, but she ignored it. And she kept on kissing him, rolled her hips in time with his touch.
Because he was glorious. Because she wanted him.
And that was more important than anything. Than what the future held, than who they were now, and who they would become.
This was what mattered.
He pulled the straps on her dress down, exposing her breasts, then lowered his head and sucked one nipple deep into his mouth.
With searching hands, she undid the buckle on his jeans.
He was still wearing his shirt, his cowboy hat.
She reached inside his pants and wrapped her hand around all that hard steel.
Then she exposed him, stroking the length of him, positioning him between her thighs.
She urged him into her, gasping when he filled her.
She had already been boneless and replete with the effects of one orgasm by the time he had been inside her last night. She was tender today, and it hurt a bit. But she didn’t want him any less.
She wanted him so, so much.
If anything, this just proved how much. How much she was willing to pay for the chance to be possessed by him.
That desperation almost frightened her.
Because she knew what it was like to want things she couldn’t have.
To want things that could be taken away from her.
She was far too familiar with it. With that freefall sensation that happened when the rug was pulled out from beneath you.
Those things had formed her. They had made her.
But she had climbed the mountain; she hadn’t fallen off. And she would climb this mountain, too.
Because she wanted to.
Because she wanted to acclimate. That was enough. They had decided that. That just wanting to was enough.
So she clung to his shoulders, and she met him thrust for thrust, kissed him with wild abandon as he moved in and out of her, the sweet slide of his hardness inside her softness making her feral.
Turning her into her own brand of soldier.
A warrior.
His equal.
She wasn’t Rory from middle school any more than he was Gideon from high school.
They were both changed. They were both different. More now than they had ever been. But somehow they had come to this moment together. And it was perfect. Glorious and brilliant, a shimmering testament to their strength and their need.
He was everything.
And so was she.
He planted his hands on the cabinet above her head, leaned in and kissed her mouth savagely as he continued to thrust, then he gripped her hips and pulled her against him even as he slammed home.
She could feel him beginning to unravel. With one strong arm around her waist, he lifted her up off the counter, and she clung to him, locking her ankles behind his back.
He was still buried deep inside her, and he carried her into his bedroom, laying her down on the mattress, thrusting harder, deeper, as he guided her legs up over his shoulders so he could drive himself in until she wasn’t sure where he began and she ended.
Until they might as well have been one body.
Until they might as well have been one soul.
The savagery of her need was shocking. But she didn’t want it to stop.
Didn’t want this to end.
She felt, in that moment, that this might be the truest example of who she could’ve been if she hadn’t been an object of ridicule. If her father hadn’t left. If her mother hadn’t left. If she had never been bullied at that frat party.
Would she have been this Rory all along? Brave and full of abandon, absolutely fearless when it came to the pursuit of her own pleasure. When it came to claiming what she wanted.
Maybe. But she couldn’t regret it, couldn’t spend time worrying about it, because right now she was that version of herself. Right now, it was like she was suddenly walking a whole different path. One she might’ve been on if only things had been different.
But she could taste it now. Test it now.
With his heat and strength above her, and their cries of pleasure mixing, their need and desire tangling together.
How she wanted him.
And she had him, and still, somehow it didn’t feel like enough. He was so deep inside her she could barely breathe, and it still didn’t feel like enough.
She turned her head and bit his neck, and he growled, pinning her hands down to the mattress as their climaxes reached a blazing finish at the same time. As he roared his satisfaction while she cried out her own.
“Dammit,” he cursed, kissing her shoulder. “That was... That was crazy.”
“I’m not complaining,” she said.
“It wasn’t too rough for you?”
She sniffed. “I’m capable of letting you know if something is too much.” She smiled. “I hear safe words are a thing.”
“Thanks for not shouting snowy plover in the middle of that,” he said, lying on his back and throwing his arm over his eyes.
“I told Fia I was spending the night with Lydia.”
He shifted his arm and looked at her with one eye. “Really?”
“I made sure Lydia knew what I was doing.”
“Wow. My sister is willing to lie for you?”
“On the off chance that Fia texts her, yes.” She rolled over onto her side and put her hand on his chest. “Fia means well, but she’s very protective. And she gets very weird when any of us is with somebody. I don’t know if that’s because of her experiences, her heartbreak or what. But it’s not something that I want to deal with right now. Because we only have a few weeks. Three weeks. I don’t need to spend any of that time getting warned about my own feelings by my sister.”
“Fair enough.”
“I’m not ashamed of it.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
A smile touched her face. “Of course you didn’t. Everybody brags about sleeping with you, don’t they?”
He frowned. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“If I was going to worry about anybody being embarrassed in this...relationship, it would be you.”
“I’m not embarrassed. I am sorry that anybody ever made you feel like they would be. They were assholes. You’re beautiful. But that’s not even the most interesting thing about you. I just like you.”
Absurdly, that made her grin. Silly and wide.
“Well, thank you.”
“It’s just true. You are strong. And just...so damned accepting. And you don’t try to give me advice, but you also don’t clam up and stop talking to me. I’ve never met anybody like that. And it’s funny, because I’ve known you all this time, but I didn’t have the same baggage that I do then, so I didn’t appreciate it. I’m discovering a lot of things about myself. Things that are different now that I’ve experienced what it’s like to make mistakes. To not be able to cover when things are hard. I thought that I could take a pill and just magically sort myself out. Because I had never in my life had something that I couldn’t just overcome, and it was my pride that led me down the darkest part of that path. I was an idiot. I was. I didn’t respect what I had.
“And I sure as hell didn’t have empathy for anyone else who wasn’t me.”
“I don’t think that makes you a bad person. I think that makes you human. We are all limited in our understanding.”
“I think some people know it a little more. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just different now because I have to think about what I’m doing. Because I do have to put limits on myself. Because I have to walk around knowing I’m not invincible and I could destroy my own life with ease. I don’t know.”
“You seemed bothered by the idea that you didn’t help with the house back then.”
“I am. Because I don’t remember that. I was self-absorbed. I don’t...” He turned over onto his side. “I don’t want to be the person that I was. I don’t think I liked him. At least I don’t now.”
“I always did. You were never rude. You were never unkind.”
“I wasn’t kind, either, was I?”
“You were to me,” she said. “And in the grand scheme of my life, you meant something. You always have. So don’t write off everything that you were. Just like you can’t write off everything that you are. Yes, you might’ve been the man who hit rock bottom, struggled with addiction, but you are the same man who climbed out.”
“That’s because I knew there was a path out. And some people don’t. I knew people were waiting for me on the other side. I’m not stronger than anybody else. And I don’t ever want to fall into the trap of thinking that I am again. That’s how you fuck your life up.”
“Did it ever occur to you that maybe after all these changes...you’ve changed for the better?”
“Not until recently. But now I’m starting to wonder. I was celebrated for the man I was then. But I’m not sure the man I am now would want to have a drink with him. With that person who believed he was as great as everybody said he was. Who was just...kind of full of himself. I don’t feel like Cassidy and I built a life together. We built a really beautiful facade. We had a beautiful house that somebody else maintained. Wonderful dinners that somebody else cooked. We got to go to parties in formal wear, and everybody looked at us and thought we were to be envied. And we both thought that, too. Because we had everything. But our love wasn’t based on loving the deepest parts of each other. And I am not immune to that. I don’t know the deepest parts of her. I don’t think she does, either. I didn’t. She’s never had a reason to think twice about who she is and what she wants. I can’t blame her for that. That’s just...a side effect of having had things very easy. The first struggle she ever had was her husband falling apart. I’m not mad at her. I’m not.”
“It’s okay if you are hurt, though. That she didn’t love you as much as you thought.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think I loved her as much as I thought. Because I didn’t know what to do with her when we weren’t bonded together by the stuff we did. It’s hard to explain. I thought we were in love because we liked to do the same things, because I thought she was beautiful. She thought she was in love because I was that model man she had always wanted to be with. That soldier. That man who would give her the lifestyle her parents had had, that she wanted to replicate. We liked the shallowest things about each other, and when those things were stripped away, we didn’t like what we found. She didn’t like me injured. She didn’t like me weak. And I didn’t like her dissatisfied. We couldn’t face the ugliness in each other.”
“What do you think the ugliest thing in you is?” she asked, for some reason compelled to hear the answer. She looked into his eyes and felt tenderness rise up inside her.
“That I don’t know how to struggle. I don’t know how to be uncomfortable. So I just tried to medicate it away. Because once I had to sit still, I had to acknowledge I had joined the military as nothing more than a little boy playing war. Men died around me. When I have to sit still, when I have to contend with what I am, I don’t know that I like any part of it. What was I ever worth? What did I ever do for anyone?”
“You fought for your country, don’t let hardship and injury and disillusionment take that away from you.”
“But I didn’t do it to protect people. I did it for the glory.”
“And you changed along the way. You realized new things. You changed. That matters. And it’s important. That proves you are a man of substance. You didn’t stay in one place. Everybody starts somewhere. And then things happen. Things happen to you, and they break you down a little bit, but it’s what you do afterward—that’s what matters. And I don’t know what it’s like to struggle, not the way you have, but I know what it’s like to be hurt. I know what it’s like to feel that you aren’t enough. Like you’re just a disappointment. I really do know what that’s like. And sometimes, even though we’ve been through different things, the feelings are the same.”
“Tell me about that book you’re reading again?”
“Well. It is about a woman who doesn’t know she’s a witch. But it turns out that she’s the magic all along.”
He leaned in and he kissed her on the lips. “I have to say, that sounds an awful lot like someone else I know.”
And when she fell asleep, he was holding her.