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She shrugged. “Just normal stuff.”

“I would never have known. I drove you every day. Until the diary thing, I had no idea.”

It hurt. To realize that he’d been used to hurt her.

It wasn’t a happy thing, or even funny.

He was the guy that drove her to school every day. And she’d had a little crush. And that had been used against her because people thought something about him that wasn’t even true or fair or real.

“Oh that was just...one of the many things but that was the thing that hurt the most. Because if it was about my knees or my boobs, at least it wasn’t really me. But that diary...that was me. It was why it hurt so bad. Thank God your sister is such a good person because we used to make fun of the way girls acted about you, and then I would go home and write these furtive, ridiculous things. She could have been hurt by that. She could have said I was a liar, which would’ve been even worse than the whole school just thinking I was sad. Or stupid. She didn’t. She just understood. She said it was okay. She was so nice to me.” She sucked in a sharp breath. “And then you stepped in and you told everyone to stop, and if you’d been anyone else, that would have made it worse but you were you. So they respected you and they listened to you. Maybe that’s the real reason I wanted to have a parade. I just wanted... I wanted it to matter the way it did for you.”

He was glad he’d done that. It was maybe the only thing he could feel a little heroic about at this point. But it still made him mad that she’d ever been treated that way.

“I don’t understand how this town treated you that way. You didn’t do anything to anybody. There’s nothing inherently wrong with you. Just like there’s nothing inherently good about me. It’s bullshit. When things fell apart for me, they fell apart. When I couldn’t be the best anymore, I just wanted to make it go away. I just wanted... I didn’t handle myself well.”

Hypocrite.

Yet, he was. He didn’t want to share all that yet. All guts, no glory.

Because he already knew what it was like to have a woman look at him like he was the biggest disappointment on the planet, and he couldn’t bear it if Rory Sullivan thought he was a disappointment.

Maybe that was his real problem. Maybe he was drawn to Rory because she had looked at him like he mattered. It was more than hero worship.

He was also tired, though, and he didn’t want to excavate his entire soul to answer these questions. He just wanted to be with her right now.

And he wanted to keep protecting himself.

“I don’t know. But whatever that thing is that you have, Gideon, I just don’t. And I’ve known forever.”

“I don’t anymore, either,” he said.

“Maybe we’ll find it here on the mountain.”

It was as good a plan as any, he supposed. The mountain might hold some answers. Or maybe it was just a rock. But either way, he was doing something.

They parked the truck at the trailhead and got their belongings together.

He helped her clip her backpack into place and then moved away quickly because he didn’t need to encourage the intensity of the feelings that were pounding through him.

“All right, we ought to make it to a spot by sunset. Then we can get the camp set up and make a meal.”

“Sounds good. I hope you know how to cook camp food,” she said.

“I’m okay at it. We were in charge of dealing with our own rations when we were on assignment.”

“Right.”

They started up the trail. It was narrow and uneven, big rocks protruding up through red clay. The pines on either side towered above them, scrubby madrone trees interspersed between them, and ferns and other plants that loved the shade clinging to the forest floor beneath all that green coverage.

It was beautiful out here. He had forgotten. He had never really let himself sit in the stillness, in the silence of nature, all those years that he had lived here.

He hadn’t done it in the desert; he hadn’t done it in Georgia. He was so driven to be around noise.

Around people.

And then these last few years had been like being in a sensory deprivation tank. Cut off from all of it. But worse, cut off from the enjoyment of it. Because it was all there. He could’ve gone out and found that life again, except he didn’t like it anymore. So he was just alone.

But this didn’t feel like quiet isolation. It felt like peace. Walking with Rory felt like peace.