Chapter Twenty-Six
HE HAD BEEN WRONG . This was the worst thing he could imagine.
He was supposed to be starting things up at the ranch, and he couldn’t concentrate. He was just a miserable dick.
And he felt...isolated. Rory had connected him. To his sister, his mother. Because Rory had been the one person he was vulnerable with. Who he was honest with.
Rory had been the one person who had known the truth.
All of it.
And he wondered...he wondered if he had to change that.
He didn’t know what to do.
Because he was miserable.
And he’d been miserable before, but this was different.
This was brokenness.
He cleared his throat.
And he went inside. He unzipped his bag, and he took out his Purple Heart, which he generally never looked at.
What was the point?
Why hadn’t he died in Afghanistan?
So that you could live.
And it was like that wall he put up inside of himself had been broken down.
So that he could live.
Not as a symbol, not as a legend, not as anything damned near close to perfect. Just a living, breathing man.
He was fucked up and broken, and wanted to do better.
What was the point of going off into the sunset? It was selfish.
It wasn’t living.
It was dying before his time.
He found himself driving to his mother’s house.
Lydia was over there for dinner, and she gave him the side-eye when he came in.
“Rory’s in Boston,” she said.
“I know,” he grunted. “I told her to go.”
“ I know,” she said. “She told me.”
“Well, I’m glad she went. But... I need to talk to you. I need to tell you something.”
“Me?” Lydia asked.
“Both of you.” He looked at his mother, and he could see the worry in her eyes. He hated that he’d put it there. He took a sharp breath. “Remember, Mom, when you told me that Dad would be proud of me?”
“Yes,” she said. “He was. He was so proud of you.”
“I want to believe that. He would be proud of me, but it would only be because he didn’t know everything about what happened after my injury.”
And he told him everything. All the things he had decided he needed to keep bottled up, to protect them from.
“I couldn’t call you,” he said, when his mother had asked through her tears why he hadn’t asked for help when he was homeless.
“I was too ashamed. I didn’t want you to see me like that. I couldn’t stand to see the disappointment in your face. It’s a thing that scares me more than anything. That if I’m not perfect, if I’m not a legend, who’s going to...” He took a sharp breath. “Why would anyone love me ? Why would anyone be proud of me? That’s what I’ve been this whole time. It’s what I’ve had to be. And the minute I wasn’t... Cassidy was done with me. I blamed myself, and I carry some blame. Trust me. I wasn’t a great husband to her those last few months. But the truth is she didn’t love me. Not the darker parts of me. Not the deepest parts. I was living two lives even before my injury. One as a deployed soldier who was beginning to question what we were doing, and who had reservations about a lot of things, and one who came back and relished in the military life. In our status. But I couldn’t share any of that with her.”
He breathed in deep. “So when I couldn’t do that anymore, she was done. And that confirmed what I think I always feared. If I wasn’t chasing glory, if I didn’t find it, who would stand by me? Rory always felt like there was nothing special about her. And she had to find that strength inside herself. And that’s what draws me to her. She is just herself. And I’ve never known quite how to be that. I just know how to be a thing. A symbol. I don’t want that anymore. I can’t want it.”
“Gideon,” said his mother, wrapping her arms around him. “We would never stop loving you. We were proud of you. But you were born naked, and not good at anything but screaming your head off and eating. You hadn’t done a damn thing for me and you were the apple of my eye, and still are. You both are. I’m sorry if that was never clear to you. I’m sorry if us being proud got mixed up somehow. But I don’t need you to be a military hero.”
His mother’s scent enveloped him. That same scent that had been there waiting for him when he woke up after his injury.
And of course, she loved him.
“I just couldn’t stand the thought of letting you down.”
“We’re all going to let each other down. Because we’re human. You were disappointed that I didn’t want to move back to the ranch. I don’t know that you understand it, but you love me.”
“Well, yeah.”
“I don’t need you to be perfect, Gideon,” Lydia said. “In fact, it’s really damned annoying. I don’t like you perfect. Because that just makes me feel inadequate.”
“Well, I think you can safely say that you’re maybe doing a little better than your addict brother.”
“Don’t say that. You’re a hero. Because you’re here. And that’s it. You will always be a hero to me. Not in spite of the fact that you have weaknesses, but because you do. You’re not an invincible robot. Don’t you see that only makes everything you’ve ever done that much more brave? Don’t let Cassidy’s failures speak for the rest of us.” Lydia swallowed. “And don’t let her speak for Rory.”
He realized, though, that it wasn’t really Cassidy. That was a convenient excuse. He just didn’t want to risk loving like this.
But he knew he had to be brave again.
He thought that his days of that were over. That now that he wasn’t in the military he didn’t have to suck it up quite so hard.
But he did.
“I might need to move to Boston,” he said. “And I bought the ranch. I was going to make that our thing. But I think I need to go to Rory.”
“What?” Lydia looked confused.
“If Rory is in Boston, then that’s where I’m going. I’m in love with her. And I can’t live without her.” He took a sharp breath. “Boston would be too loud, and it would be a step closer to my personal hell, but I’m in hell without her. So.”
“Rory didn’t move to Boston. She’s just visiting. She already had a one-way plane ticket, so she thought she would buy a return one and spend a little time there. Eat some food.”
“Lydia,” he said. “Do you know where she’s staying?”
“Yes.”
“Can I have her contact details?”
“Of course. What are you doing?”
“I think I have to do a grand gesture. I think...it has to be nothing short of a parade.”
“Well. This is perfect. Let’s get you a plane ticket.”
“Yes. Let’s get me a plane ticket.”
R ORY WAS ON her nightly circuit, wandering the north end, looking for delicious food. She had found some and was carrying her pastry bags back to her hotel room when she stopped. The sun was setting, a glorious pink backlit by the bridge in the distance.
And there he was.
Like that day in the woods. All in black. As if needing him had made him appear.
Like magic.
Like love.
She knew it was him. There was no mistaking him.
Gideon Payne.
The legend of Pyrite Falls.
“Rory,” he said.
He sounded broken and hopeful, and it was the hope that got her.
It was the hope that just about did her in.
“Gideon,” she breathed. “What are you doing here?”
“I came for you. To visit, to move here, whatever you need. I would give everything up to have you. I need you to know that.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you. Because I love you, and I can’t be afraid of that anymore. And I was. I feel like I have nothing to give you. And by that I mean I feel like I don’t have what I used to. The ways that I used to be sure that I was good enough. All my life I have needed a parade. But I don’t need one for me. Not anymore. I just need you.”
Rory’s heart jumped in her chest. “Gideon...”
“But, I did think that maybe you deserved a parade. Because you’re the legend, Rory. And legends should have parades.”
She turned just as a group of men in uniform came around the corner, holding a banner in front of them.
It said I love you, Rory Sullivan .
“What is this?”
“I called in a favor. It turns out that I still have some connections that I can make use of.”
They marched and saluted her, and then went back around the block and around another time.
And Rory was effectively speechless. “This is... It’s too much.”
“No. It’s just enough. Just enough for you. For me. For us. Rory, I love you. I have lived two lives now. This life is filled with glory and the pursuit of it. This need to prove myself, because I had been doing it from the beginning, and I didn’t know another way. But even though I’ve had the thought for a long time that I didn’t want to go back, it occurred to me that if I could choose to live one of these lives twice, it would not be that one. It would be this one. With you. You make the silence sweet. You make me feel like my moods aren’t something broken in me. You are strong when I need you to be, and you also asked me for help. And that... I need that. I do need it. I want to be needed. I need it. You tell me about books so that I don’t have to read them.”
She laughed. “It wouldn’t hurt for you to read a book.”
“No. It probably wouldn’t. And see, you’re going to change that for me, too. Rory, you are everything.”
“It’s so funny,” she said. “Now that I have a parade...it turns out I just want you.”
He scooped her into his arms and kissed her.
“I just want you, too. You make me feel like I’m not broken.”
“You aren’t,” she said. “You’re you. This version of you is just fine to me. More than that. This version of you is the one that I love. I don’t need you to be unscarred or unscathed. I don’t need you to be perfect. I like you like this. Because you’re the man that was strong enough to climb up from rock bottom. And we don’t have enough stories about that. Because people think it’s romantic to write a character into a corner and leave them there. To let them die. But the bravery is in getting back up. The bravery is in healing yourself. The bravery is in defining yourself not by the bad things, but by choosing to embrace love again, and that is glory.”
“Hell yeah,” he said. “Rory Sullivan, you are my glory. I thought you were a sunset. The last sliver of my sunshine disappearing behind a hill before I went on to nothing. But you’re my sunrise. You’re the reason I’m here. I have asked myself why. I’ve asked myself why so many times. And now I know the answer. It was to live. And it was to love you.”
“I realized something, too, that I was going to have to go through this to be fixed. To be as strong as I needed to be. And it hurt, but... I needed you. And even the way that it ended, and has started again, I needed all that. To get to who I needed to be.”
“I realized something similar. I needed to have that block removed. I needed the Jenga tower to fall. Because it’s what made me a man who could love someone more than I love myself. It’s what made me the man who could be with you. And I would walk that road a thousand times if it brought me here. It brought me to you.”
She closed her eyes and folded herself into his arms. And then they went upstairs to her hotel room, and they told each other how in love they were with their hands, with their lips. And with words.
So many words.
“I love you. We can go back home now.”
“Let’s stay here for a while. Let’s make Boston ours. And then after that, we will go home.”
W HEN G IDEON P AYNE returned home this time, he didn’t need a parade. And he didn’t need to hide in the darkness. This time he walked down the main street of town holding Rory Sullivan’s hand.
And he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they would all think she was a legend.
But he already knew that.
And best of all, so did she.
Rory Sullivan was his. And that was all the glory he would ever need.