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I felt like she'd reached into my chest and squeezed my heart. "What if I was wrong about everything, Mama? What if I ran from the best thing that ever happened to me because I was too proud to fight for it?"
"Then that's something you're gonna have to live with," Mama said gently. "But it doesn't change the fact that your heart got broken. It doesn't erase the nights you've cried yourself to sleep or the way you flinch every time someone mentions London." She reached over and squeezed my dirt-stained hand. "Are you strong enough now to go back and find out the truth?"
"I miss him, Mama." The admission came out as barely a whisper. "I miss him so much it feels like someone carved out part of my chest and forgot to sew it back up."
"I know, baby. I know."
The sound of a truck pulling into our gravel driveway interrupted my emotional breakdown.
Through the kitchen window, I watched Rob climb out of his pickup, a bouquet of wildflowers in one hand and what looked like a small velvet box in the other.
"Oh no," I breathed.
Mama followed my gaze and sighed. "That boy's been working up to this for weeks. I was wondering when he'd finally get the courage."
Rob knocked on the screen door like he had a thousand times growing up, but everything about his posture screamed nervous energy. "Lili? You got a minute?"
I wanted to hide in Mama's pantry until he gave up and went home, but that would only delay the inevitable. "Come on in, Rob. You want some sweet tea?"
"Actually, I was hoping we could sit on the porch swing. Like we used to."
The porch swing where we'd shared our first kiss at sixteen, where he'd asked me to prom, where we'd said goodbye when I left for college with stars in my eyes and dreams bigger than our small town could hold.
This was either going to be very sweet or absolutely devastating.
We settled onto the swing, the familiar creak of the chains the only sound for a few minutes. Rob was fidgeting with the wildflowers, and I found myself studying his profile—the strong jaw, the kind eyes, the same face that had been part of my life since we were kids building forts in his backyard.
"These are for you," he said finally, holding out the flowers. "Picked them from the field behind the pharmacy. Remember how we used to go there when we were kids?"
"I remember." I took the bouquet, inhaling the sweet scent of Texas bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush. "Rob—"
"Let me say this before I lose my nerve." He turned to face me fully, and I saw something in his expression that made my stomach clench with dread. "Lili, watching you come home these past few weeks, seeing you hurt like this... it's been killing me."
"Rob, please don't—"
"I love you." The words hung in the evening air like humidity. "I've loved you since we were fifteen years old, and I never stopped. Not when you left for college, not when you moved to London, not even when you came back crying over some British guy who didn't know what he had."
The velvet box appeared in his hands like a magic trick. "Marry me, Lili. Let me take care of you. Let me give you the life you deserve—one where nobody ever makes you feel like you're not enough."
Rob was offering me everything I'd thought I wanted before Edward Grosvenor turned my world upside down—Sunday dinners with people who'd known me since I was in pigtails, kids who'd grow up secure in their place in the world, a life where the biggest drama was whose turn it was to host the church pot luck.
For a moment, sitting there with wildflowers in my lap and a ring box between us, I could see it all clearly.
The white farmhouse we'd buy outside town, the tire swing Rob would hang for our kids, and the garden where I'd teach them to tell the difference between weeds and wildflowers.
It would be a good life. A safe life. A life where no one would ever make me feel like I wasn't enough.
But my heart didn't race when Rob looked at me the way it had when Edward's eyes found mine across a crowded room. My skin didn't catch fire when Rob touched my hand the way it had when Edward's fingers brushed my arm. And after knowing what it felt like to love someone who made me feel like I could conquer the world, how could I settle for someone who just wanted to keep me safe from it?
"Rob." I reached for his hands, the ring box warm between our palms. "You are the best man I know. You're kind and honest and you'd never hurt me, not in a million years."
"But?" He already knew. I could hear it in his voice.
"But I can't marry you for the wrong reasons. And protecting myself from getting hurt again? That's the wrong reason." I pressed the ring box back into his hands. "You deserve someone who looks at you and sees forever. Someone whose heart races when you walk into a room. Someone who doesn't have to talk herself into loving you."
Rob's face crumpled for just a second before he managed a shaky smile. "That British guy really did a number on you, didn't he?"
"Yeah," I whispered. "He did."