Page 135

“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 ifheasked.”

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.”