Chapter 42
42
AURORA
Leaving Cherry Peak hurts worse than leaving Calgary ever did.
Every kilometre that ticks by intensifies the gnawing sensation in my gut that feels a lot like homesickness. The kind I used to get when I was young and slept over at a friend’s house. I used to spend those nights wishing I had stayed home with my mom and wishing that I had her to tuck me in instead of a stranger I only faintly knew.
It’s a sign as obvious as any I’ve ever known. Even if I was still adamant about not believing in them, I’d have second-guessed this one.
Wanda hasn’t spoken much the entire drive. She’s busied herself with her phone and the paperback book she brought with her. Usually, I enjoy silence, but not when it’s the awkward type. And this? This is awkward.
Is she regretting leaving the way I am?
“Does awkward silence not bother you?” I ask, too nervous to look across the car to see her reaction.
“It does. It really does. But I don’t know what to say.”
“There should be a million things for us to talk about. We just have to find one.”
She tucks her phone beneath her thigh and twists to face me as much as she can with her seat belt on. “When’s your birthday?”
“May thirteenth. Yours?”
“June seventh.”
The closeness of those two months makes me cringe as I check the rear-view mirror and see nothing but dust kicking up behind our tires. Dirt roads are always a pain, but with the constant tinging of rocks jumping around the wheel wells and the inability to see behind you, they drive me nuts.
Tightening my hold on the steering wheel, I glance at the GPS instructions on the dash and ask, “You’re a traveller, right? Where’s your favourite place you’ve travelled?”
“Scotland. You?”
“I’ve never been out of North America.”
“What?” she shrieks, causing me to jerk on the wheel in surprise before straightening. “You’ve never left North America? How is that possible?”
“I don’t like planes. The longest flight I’ve ever been on is five hours.”
“We’ll have to change that. You can’t be thirty and not have experienced another country outside of Canada and America. Trust me, those are the two least impressive places ever.”
“Why Scotland?”
She whistles softly. “Why not Scotland? You’ve got the Highlands, the castles, the wildlife. It’s beautiful and scenic and just . . . a breath of fresh air after being trapped in cities like Toronto or Calgary for so long. I’m at peace there. Before I went to Toronto, I spent three months in Edinburgh. I had to force myself to leave.”
“It sounds incredible.”
“It is.”
The GPS tells me to turn in a kilometre, and I carry on with the random and personal questions while starting to brake. “Are you seeing anyone? ”
“Like dating?”
“Yeah.”
“God no. I haven’t been in a relationship in three years. It’s hard to date when your dad is famous.” She winces, adding, “Boohoo, I know. I just mean finding someone who isn’t just interested in getting to know Lee isn’t ideal.”
“I know what you meant. That hasn’t been much of a problem for me, so I can’t say I understand, but I can imagine.”
“Speaking of dating, you and Johnny, right? He’s a nice guy. How is he doing with this?”
“With what? Lee or the fact I’m leaving to go pretty much beg him to love me?” I ask, hearing how bitter and angry I sound and hating it.
“Shit. I guess both?”
“I haven’t seen him since I told him I was leaving. Goodbye in person would have been too hard, so we spoke on the phone before I left to get you.”
“Can I be frank with you, Rory?” she asks, and my stomach twists with discomfort.
“I’d prefer that.”
“Dad . . . he’s not the guy you’re hoping he is. Yeah, he’s our father, but that doesn’t excuse his behaviour and the way he treats people. Take it from someone who grew up with him in her life when I say that he’s not doing this out of the kindness of his heart. He feels guilty for both of us, and if there’s one thing I know about him, it’s that he doesn’t like feeling bad about anything. Once he gets what he wants from us, we’ll be invisible to him again.”
My throat grows tight. “Why are you coming with me, then? You shouldn’t be giving him the satisfaction of spending time with you if he doesn’t deserve it.”
“Because I want to get to know you, Rory. This seemed like as good a chance as any. If you’re going to Toronto, then so am I.”
I don’t realize I’ve pulled over onto the side of the road until a truck whizzes by, spitting rocks at the hood of my car. Once I’ve shifted into park, I pull my foot off the brake and look at Wanda. She’s already watching me softly, patiently.
“I don’t want to go,” I admit out loud for the first time.
She isn’t surprised by that. If anything, she looks relieved.
“I know.”
“Should I call him?”
“Lee or Johnny?”
I almost laugh at how obvious I have to be for her to ask me that. “Lee.”
She hands me her phone, and I take it with shaky fingers. His contact name isn’t dad or father; it’s Riley.
The line rings three times before he answers, sounding annoyed. “What is it, Wanda?”
“It’s Aurora.”
“Oh. Well, what is it? Is there something wrong?”
I bristle at his tone. “I can’t go with you. I don’t want to leave Cherry Peak. It isn’t right.”
“Leaving Cherry Peak is always right. Don’t go back on your decision now.”
“I still want the chance to get to know you.”
“So, you are coming, then?”
I shake my head even though he can’t see. “Can you stay here for a couple of weeks instead? Even for a few days? Just long enough to talk?—”
“No. If that were an option, I would have already offered it. Come to Toronto if you want to talk,” he snaps, sounding completely done with this conversation.
“Why?”
“Toronto, Aurora.”
Wanda rubs my arm, watching my every reaction. I offer her a weak, appreciative smile.
“No.”
He pauses. “No? What do you mean, no?”
“I’m not going to Toronto. Maybe if I knew that this was for both of us and not just for me, then I would. Can you honestly say that you want to get to know me as much as I want to get to know you?”
“Look, Rory, I can’t stay.”
“It’s Aurora to you,” I correct sharply. “And can’t or won’t? Because you’re avoiding my questions, and that’s answer enough. I want to know you, but I also imagined that you’d want to get to know me as well. Even slightly.”
“Don’t waste this chance because of ties you’ve made in Cherry Peak like Wanda and her mother have. Let me show you what life could look like outside of that place.”
I swallow the fury climbing up my throat. “I’ve seen what life is like outside of Cherry Peak, Riley, and it pales in comparison. Do you even want to get to know me, or do you just want to be able to know you took me out of the one place you seem to feel is unworthy of Roses?”
“If you make memories in that town, they’ll only hurt you in a few years. You’ll walk down the street and hate every storefront and set of porch steps. Trust me, Aurora, you’ll want to leave and not come back.”
Suddenly, it all makes sense. Hurt shackles me before contempt replaces it. A throttling anger that tints my vision.
“This is about my mom, isn’t it? Maybe you did hate Cherry Peak because it wasn’t good enough for you, but now you’re too scared to stay because it reminds you of her. The woman you lost because your desire to be adored by others became more important than her. And now? Now you think you owe it to her to spend some pitiful, allocated time with her daughter as if that will earn you forgiveness.”
I laugh humourlessly, the sound cold in the car. “You won’t get it. There’s a reason my mom never mentioned you once in the past three decades. You’re nothing more than a ghost of her past. I’m glad you turned out to be the man everyone else told me you were because now I can move on. Thank God I realized before stepping onto that plane. ”
Wanda watches me with tears in her eyes, smiling proudly at me as she nods. I exhale a breath heavier than I’ve ever released, returning the smile.
“Goodbye, Lee. You’ll be leaving Cherry Peak alone.”
“Put Wanda on the phone,” he demands, but I pull the phone from my ear and end the call without bothering to tell him no.
Wanda collects both my hands in hers and holds them tight. I squeeze her fingers, letting this moment sink in. Not just my final words with Lee but the sisterly support and love that swirls between Wanda and me. It’s a feeling I’ve never experienced and one I didn’t think I’d ever get to. I could have used it a thousand times growing up, but I don’t want to live in the past anymore.
Right now, I have everything I could ever want.
Well, almost.
After leaving Wanda at the house she keeps in town, I head straight for Johnny’s place. My gut tells me he’s there, and I refuse to ignore that instinct again the way I did with Lee.
I struggle to find the proper road to take to his house, especially because I stayed with Wanda longer than I anticipated, and now it’s dark out. I can’t see for shit when I’m driving at night. I’m so concentrated on not hitting a deer or coyote that I nearly miss the road I remember riding down on Frost’s back.
Slamming on the brakes, I press a hand to my clammy forehead and turn onto the twinkle-lit road. It’s as pretty as I remember. Something out of a fairy tale.
I’m positive that was the reasoning behind why he strung them.
I bring my car to a jerking stop in the middle of the road when I see him standing in front of the house, watching me. My breath stalls in my throat as I take him in. The purity in his lazy grin and wonder in his eyes.
He’s got his hair hidden beneath a backward cap tonight and another one of those damn cropped shirts on with his usual jeans and boots. I’ve never seen him without his boots outside, and I don’t want to.
I’m out of my car in a blink, the door left open in my rush to get to him. He stands patiently and waits for me, his hands patting at his thighs.
“You’re back,” he whispers when I get close enough to hear him.
I fly into his chest, my face buried in his throat and arms around his neck. He tugs me the rest of the way against him, hips to hips, toes to toes.
“I’m sorry,” I cry, slickening his throat with tears. He shooshes me, but it’s no use.
Jerking back, I meet his eyes and blink to try and clear my vision. The strong lines of his face slowly become visible, and I lift a hand to trace his jaw.
“I don’t want to find another family. You are my family. Everyone in this town is. You were right about everything. I was desperate to get to know Lee out of some fucked-up sense of blood loyalty, but that’s gone. Leaving to get to know him was not worth the risk of losing what I have here. The family I’ve found in Cherry Peak is the best one I could have ever asked for.
“I’m sorry that I made you feel unimportant to me or that I wasn’t head over heels in love with you. I was a fool, and I’m begging you to forgive me because I don’t know what I’ll do without you. You’re engrained in every molecule of my being, and I?—”
He shuts me up by lowering his head and kissing me. It’s gentle, a soft brush of our mouths, but it doesn’t matter. He steals another piece of my soul with it, anyway.
I sigh into his mouth and thread my fingers through the hair at his nape, loving how long it is now as it curls around my knuckle.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he murmurs, gliding his nose up the length of mine. “I will never be the man who makes you choose. But I will be the one that helps you learn what it is you need or waits while you figure it out on your own. I love you, and I’m just happy you’re here. You chose me this time.”
“I’ll choose you every time,” I promise.
“I like the sound of that.”
Pulse thumping at a natural pace now, I tip my head back and push onto my toes to kiss him. His large palms frame my face as he meets my enthusiasm with a passion that makes my toes curl. I shiver, inhaling a lungful of his scent.
The addition of sawdust to his regular smell makes my brows scrunch as I look at him curiously.
“Why do you smell like sawdust?”
With a smirk, he tucks my hair behind my ears and then turns me to the right. In my rush to get to him, I completely bypassed the wooden lawn chair and long table with a giant saw built in standing beside it on the grass.
The chair is a light brown colour with a high back that grows shorter on either side as it gets further to the edge and thick armrests that round at the ends. I take a slow step toward it, my eyes focused on the words burned into the first arm before swinging my head to the second.
Once upon a time . . .
I wished upon a star . . .
“I wanted you to have something of your own for when you got back,” he says softly, stepping up behind me. “You’re renting that damn haunted house, and I was plannin’ on continuing to fix it up just like I promised I would. The owners don’t deserve all the work we’ve done to it, but I like to think it’ll be yours for however long you want it to be. So, if that means I need to work on it every damn night for the rest of my life until I believe it’s good enough for you, then that’s what I’m going to do. At least now, you can sit and watch me work on a real chair.”
Reaching down, I trail my fingers over the burned words. He joins me, his touch steady as his palm covers the back of my hand. Lips press against my cheek, holding there .
“If I could, I’d go back and change all of my wishes,” I say, my voice hardly more than a puff of air. “Maybe we’d have met earlier.”
He removes his lips and tucks a finger beneath my chin before turning it until I face him, our eyes clashing, emotions bared. “I think everything happened exactly the way it was supposed to. Couldn’t have asked for anything more than what I have right now.”
Flicking his eyes upward, he laughs in disbelief and snags my waist. I follow his stare and gasp as a star shoots across the dark sky.
“I haven’t seen one in years.”
“Take the wish, Rory.”
I stare up at the star-flecked sky and shake my head. I’ve never been as happy and content as I am in this moment. As at peace.
“Let someone else make a wish. I have everything I need right here.”