Chapter Twenty-Three
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I T HAD BEEN two weeks of spending every night in his bed.
Fia hadn’t asked, but she was fairly certain Fia knew.
Maybe because Quinn had had a talk with her, or maybe something else.
It wasn’t like it was a huge mystery, she supposed.
The bigger mystery was why Fia wasn’t questioning her.
But that could be because Rory was leaving.
She looked at all her clothes that she had laid out on the bed.
Her phone lit up.
I’m here.
It was from Lydia.
Rory smiled and went downstairs. Fia was by the front door, but she was busily stirring the pot on the stove.
“I think Lydia is lingering on the porch,” she said.
“I know.”
“What are you doing?”
A rare question from Fia, who had been very hands-off.
“Choosing which clothes to bring to Boston.”
The sadness in Fia’s smile betrayed the fact that it probably was the reason she was leaving her alone about Gideon. The move.
She opened the front door, and Lydia came in.
“Hi.”
“Hi. I am here to choose your defector wardrobe.”
She hadn’t talked to Lydia about what Gideon had said to her. In fact, she hadn’t talked to Lydia about the situation with Gideon at all.
But she supposed tonight was as good a time as any.
Lydia came up to Rory’s bedroom.
Most of Rory’s precious things had been packed away.
“I can only bring one suitcase of clothes. I can’t be crazy.”
“Well,” said Lydia. “I think Boston is very cold in the winter, maybe colder than it is here. And I wonder if your winter clothes are going to be sufficient or if you should just get new ones.”
“That feels like a very well-thought-out directive.”
“I’m trying to be helpful. And supportive. Because I am happy for you.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I... Gideon said that you wanted me to stay.”
Lydia sighed. “Of course I do, Rory. You’re my best friend. Not having you here is going to be really lonely. I can’t leave. I’ve got my mom. And I know that Gideon is back, but that’s an even bigger reason I can’t go.” She looked up at her. “I thought he might be a reason for you to not go.”
She remembered that day at the ranch. When he had told her about the men he’d lost.
When he had shared that pain with her, and she had felt something shift within her. Rearrange.
A core of steel, a sense of resolve.
It had been shifting inside her ever since, and she didn’t quite know what it meant.
She knew that she cared about him. That she even might...love him.
Not like the poems she wrote when she was a girl, about the blue-eyed boy who seemed so perfect. No. She loved the man. This intense, broken, put-back-together, beautiful man.
She had from the moment she saw him in the woods.
But she wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to be learning from all this.
Because she still felt like he was holding a piece of himself back, and she had to go to Boston, otherwise she was a quitter.
She felt something shift inside her yet again. Like turning away from something. A renewal of something.
“Well, I think that depends on if he would want me to.”
“Well.” She shook her head. “It’s like that?”
“Like what?”
“I mean, that you would stay for him if he asked.”
She sighed. “Please don’t take that in a hurtful way. We’ve been friends for a long time, and I... I care about you.”
“But you’re in love with my brother.”
She nodded. And she couldn’t say everything that maybe needed to be said about Gideon. About what he’d been through. Because it was his story to tell.
“He seems so different,” Lydia said softly.
“He is. But I love this version of him even more.”
“But you aren’t staying.”
“I said that I was going to do this. I’ve been a quitter for so long. I just can’t be a quitter anymore.”
Right there, all that shifting inside her crumpled. Fell. It was like an extreme shift in her soul.
Which thing was she actually quitting?
Was it quitting to recognize something new was happening in your life, and maybe you needed to be there for that?
She remembered the most important thing that she got from him talking about his marriage.
He had changed. But Cassidy hadn’t wanted to change for him.
And here she was, finding all this new bravery inside her soul, changing because of her interaction with him, but not recognizing what it all meant.
She had hugged him, folded herself around him when he had told her about the dead men. About how responsible he felt. How much he grieved it.
And that had been the evidence of what needed to happen inside her.
He had changed. And he was changing her. So that they could fit around each other.
Was it quitting to understand that? Was it quitting if she redirected when a new path presented itself? She had been convinced that it would be.
That she had to go to Boston no matter what.
Because she had set herself on the path. But this wasn’t choosing not to climb a rope in gym, or being afraid to go down a narrow path.
She wasn’t reacting to anything. Not fear, not to what anybody might think of her.
That was actually the greatest tragedy. When people kept on paths they weren’t meant for.
Knowing when to quit was a skill.
Being in control of it was even more important.
It wasn’t fear guiding her now.
It was her heart.
It was love. And nothing could be more diametrically opposed to the anxiety she had struggled with for so many years.
She wasn’t making this decision from that place.
“I can’t leave,” she whispered.
Lydia’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“I’ve been sitting with this, with this feeling, for the last week. I felt like he didn’t want me here. He doesn’t want me to not go to Boston, he doesn’t want to have another life. I think he’s shot that part of himself down.
“But I also think that he might need somebody to make that bold decision for him.
“No, I can’t make him be with me. But as long as I’m going off to Boston, he gets to tell himself that he’s being some kind of hero by not giving us a chance. And I think he needs to feel like a hero. And believe me, he is one. He is so profoundly wonderful. He is so brave. And he is so...everything. And he has rebuilt this part of me that was so weak. Built me up.” She had to smile, because it was like weight lifting for her self-esteem, being with him.
And maybe that wouldn’t make sense to Lydia. But it did to her.
“I’m strong enough now. To do this. To step back, actually make my own choices. Instead of just quitting because it’s hard, or trying to prove myself because other people made me feel bad. I do not care what anyone thinks. And I’m not running from anything. So... I’m staying.”
“Are you sure, Rory?” Lydia asked. “Because it was such a big deal that you got that job, and you were very excited.”
“I know. I was. I am. It’s not nothing. Giving it up isn’t nothing. But I wanted to leave here because I was ashamed. Of how little I had done.
“And I’m not anymore. I’m good at my job, and I’m good at it here. We started the farm store here. We have accomplished a lot. I have. I just couldn’t see it because nobody was throwing me a parade. And he’s right, I can’t live my life toward that. It’s a stupid thing. A foolish thing. I’m staying.”
Lydia reached out and hugged her. “I’m really glad. And I’m really, really glad that you’re there for him. That he has you. That is so amazing. And I am... I’m overwhelmed, actually. Because I didn’t feel like I could reach him. And I think you did. You are extraordinary, Rory. I think you were maybe always exactly the right person to love him.”
It was bigger than destiny. Rory knew that.
Because there were so many paths that he could’ve taken. Dark roads he could’ve gone down that would’ve led to oblivion.
Just like she could choose to walk away now. But she wasn’t going to.
She had felt all her life like she didn’t match up to other people.
And he was feeling that as well.
And they had both shifted just enough to meet each other’s needs.
It was better, honestly, than finding someone who fit her perfectly just as she was.
She found somebody who had changed her in all the right ways. Whose story gave her the kind of perspective she never had before.
Who listened and accepted her, and never tried to make her hurt feel less, and who somehow accomplished all that at the same time.
Because he was Gideon.
There was part of her that did feel like maybe they were meant to be. Like her heart being set on him from middle school to now was something sort of predestined.
There was a magic to that.
But there was also magic in knowing that they had to claim this. That they had to make choices now. To have that life. To have a new life for both of them.
Yes, she could go off and have one alone.
But it would never be as wonderful as the one she could have here.
With love.
With Gideon.
“I have to tell Fia.”
“Oh,” Lydia said.
Rory flung the door open. “I’m not going to Boston.”
Fia appeared at the bottom of the stairs. “What?”
“I’m not going to Boston. I don’t want to go anymore. I want to stay here.”
“Rory,” said Fia. “If this is because I’ve been sad...”
“It’s not. It’s not for you. Or you,” she said to Lydia. “And it’s not for Gideon, either. I swear to you. It’s for me. Because it’s what I want.”
She went down the stairs, and headed out the front door. “Where are you going?” Fia asked.
“I’m going to go see Gideon. I think I’m going to tell him that I love him.”
And then she got into her car, and drove to his house.