Chapter Twenty-Five
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
R ORY DIDN ’ T WANT to go to Boston. She wasn’t going to stay there. But she had her plane ticket to get there, and she had some money saved up, so she had felt like she really should go. At least see it. At least to get moving for a while, rather than sinking into depression. Because that’s what the last few days had been. Nothing but crying. She had really gotten her heart broken.
It was strange, though. Because it wasn’t over a breach of trust.
It wasn’t like her dad leaving, it wasn’t like getting bullied.
It wasn’t because she’d quit.
She’d checked off all the items on her list, after all.
It was life .
She had watched him. She had watched him come up against the edge of his strength.
And not be able to push past.
She was asking him to get over all his trauma very quickly.
And even though she thought he could, she really did, she knew he wasn’t doing this to hurt her. He thought he was doing it to help her.
And he was probably protecting himself.
When she had talked to Fia and Quinn, Fia had been in a rage.
“I told him not to hurt you.”
“Yes. You did. But in fairness, I think he has convinced himself that this is better.”
“Well, he’s an idiot.”
“Yeah. But it comes from somewhere...good.”
Fia grumbled, but didn’t argue. She supposed that was because she looked so sad, and even Fia, who had a propensity toward being a hard-ass, couldn’t be mean to her when she was that devastated. If she had to be pitiable to get softness from her older sister, she supposed that would do.
For her part, she was grappling with this very adult heartbreak.
And trying to figure out what it meant for her.
It was her third walk through Boston Common today. And she would be wandering from there to the north end to get some pizza. She’d had the cash-only Italian food last night, and it had been amazing, but she had a feeling her appetite was going to be compromised for a while.
Which she felt wasn’t fair.
She went into the bustling pizzeria after waiting in line for a while, and looked at all the eclectic photos lining the wall.
There was a celebratory atmosphere, and she tried to absorb it.
One thing she thought was so amazing about Boston was the way it felt familiar, even though she had never been there before.
There were so many iconic places she’d seen in movies a hundred times. This pizzeria was like that. Ingrained in her as a sense that this was what a pizzeria should look like. And so it felt as if she had walked into this place numerous times before. Like she was a regular, and just maybe everybody might know her name.
Even though she was a stranger. Just passing through.
She hadn’t thought a city could feel like this, but this one did.
But not even that fully soothed her. Not when everything was so precarious inside her. The pizza was delicious, though.
She could have been starting her new life here. Instead, she’d fallen in love.
Not just with Gideon, but with the possibility of what she could do in Pyrite Falls.
With her own list of accomplishments.
She’d needed to escape when she had felt inferior to the people around her.
She didn’t feel that way anymore.
Something in her had changed. And she knew that was because of Gideon.
She knew that it was.
And she could be thankful for it, even though it hurt.
She pulled her phone out and called Fia. “I had pizza. I thought of you.”
“Liar.”
“I did.”
“Are you wandering around all sad?”
She looked up the street, at the red brick buildings and the bustling crowds lined up in front of restaurants. There was an especially big line in front of a bakery that served Italian pastries, and Rory decided to get in it while she talked on the phone.
“I am not wandering around sad.”
The women in front of her turned around and looked at her as she said that. And judging by their quick appraisal of her, they knew Rory was a liar.
But she would never see them again.
That was the interesting thing about wandering around the city. She might feel like she could know them, but she didn’t. Her pain was anonymous. She wasn’t even the only woman wandering the streets looking sad. There was a woman just across the street screaming into her phone with no regard for anyone or anything else but her own rage. These people were all strangers. She was the main character. Why bother to rein her anger in at all?
It was very different than Pyrite Falls in that way. Where she would always run into people she knew.
And that just didn’t feel like as big of a disaster as it once had.
“Well that’s good,” said Fia.
“I’m going to order pastries. So I’ll get one and think of you.”
“I appreciate that. Are you going to be sad that you didn’t move there?”
“No,” she said easily. “This place is beautiful. But it’s not home.”
Though she realized something interesting. She could be at home here. If she wanted to be. Just like she could now be home in Pyrite Falls.
Because she was at home in her own skin.
That was what had happened to her over these past few weeks.
She had found that she could be brave. She could climb a rope and a mountain, and she could declare her love for a man who couldn’t declare it back.
She was beautiful, when it mattered.
She felt that now, too.
She didn’t need to prove anything. She simply didn’t.
And that was its own kind of triumph.
What a terrible thing to know that she could never have achieved this growth without Gideon. Without walking through this particular valley of the shadow of death.
Without this dark night of the soul.
She couldn’t have found this wholeness without being broken.
And it really sucked.
“Well, I’m glad you’re staying. You know we have a lot of work at Sullivan’s Point. And the new era is just beginning. We are finally pulling our weight. We aren’t beholden to the Kings.”
“No. That gives us less of an occasion to have town hall meetings, I suppose. And less reason for you and Landry to fight.”
“I’m sure we will think of reasons,” said Fia. She sounded just a little bit distracted.
“Fia,” she said. “I’ve been very consumed by my own feelings of awkwardness and inadequacy for the last... My whole life. And you have done so much for me and Quinn and Alaina. And sometimes I wonder if we’ve missed some things with you.”
“You’ve seen everything I wanted you to.”
That was what she was afraid of.
“Fia. I love you to pieces. You would tell me if there was something? If there was something you needed to tell me.”
There was a slight break before Fia responded. “I would. I might not have before. I believe that you’re strong enough now, Rory. Because I’ve seen your growth. And it’s pretty amazing.”
Well, the fact that her sister saw it, that made her feel better. That made her feel like maybe it was a real change. A lasting change.
“Well, in the meantime I will enjoy my Boston sabbatical for the next couple of weeks.”
“Good. Do that. Enjoy it. Don’t let a man stress you out.”
“I’ll do my best.”
She got off the phone just as she went into the bakery, and she ordered herself a cannoli, and went back to her room and ate it.
It wasn’t being in love. But it was an adventure. And suddenly that on its own was kind of amazing.
She could have these adventures sometimes. Could take time off to travel.
She could be whoever she wanted to be.
And she’d been able to do that all along.
But it had taken Gideon to show her.
She took a deep breath and looked out the window at the city below.
Another thing she learned from Gideon was that healing didn’t happen overnight.
But that you could heal. From pretty much anything that didn’t kill you.
And she had just discovered all this great new stuff about herself, so she wasn’t going to die.
She laughed into the silence of her hotel room.
As triumphant declarations went, that was sort of the bottom of the barrel.
But sometimes the bottom of the barrel was all you had, and the trick was to just keep scraping.
Because Rory Sullivan wasn’t a quitter.
Not anymore.