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“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.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

HEHADBEENWRONG. 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.