“We don’t have a ghost!” Ben cried, his mind somehow holding on to this detail because the rest were too true to address.
Abby released a guttural moan of frustration and threw her head back. “Ofcoursewe don’t. We’re just havingfunwith you, Ben. Wemissyou.”
Ben pulled another clump from the pipe and hesitated, unable to drop it without hitting his friends.His friends. He had spent so many years convincing himself he was content to be alone, but he wasn’t, not really. This strange, motley family of Brooklyn Heights had established him as their patriarch, a role he was unworthy of holding but had been given nonetheless, a benevolent and reluctant king.
And Rose was his queen.
“Shit,” he muttered, and wished he could hear Rose say her favorite word again.
He turned slowly, leaned against the window—poor Mrs. Korzakowski—and met the twin gazes of his friends. “If I promise to be more present, will you put the ladder back?”
Abby tipped towards Garrett and gave him a conspiratorial wink. “Cass told me this would work.”
Garrett crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes. “Not enough,” he barked.
Throwing his head back again, Ben groaned. “What do you want me to say?”
“We want the old Ben back,” Abby said, but Garrett shook his head.
“No, that’s not true.” His face was twisted in an uncharacteristic scowl. “Abby and Cass didn’t know you before Aiko died. I knew you when you were a boy, full of hope and ideals. The man who came to New York was a wreck, a shell of a human.” Garrett looked at his shoes and shook his head once, as though summoning his bravery.
“Rose turned you back into the boy you were,” he continued. “No, that’s not right. She turned you into the man you were always supposed to be.”
Despite the speed with which he pressed his hand—the onenotcovered in bird shit, thank God—over his mouth, a sob still escaped. How long had he tried to stay strong for the people around him, had forced what he was feeling below the surface to protect those he loved?
They saw him for who he was anyway, Cass and Abby and Garrett and probably Mrs. Korzokowski and everyone else in this neighborhood. And they loved him.
And they wanted more for him.
Ben cleared his throat roughly and sat back down on the ledge, his legs no longer capable of holding him up. He swiped at something on his cheek—please, not bird shit—and was simultaneously relieved and horrified to realize it was, in fact, a tear.
And it wasn’t the first. Another fell, followed by a heaving sob, then another, until his shoulders shook and his vision blurred. “Fine,” he barked when he could catch his breath. “If I agree to come down and talk—” Ben gulped, “—to you, will you put the ladder back?”
Abby beamed. “I think I have some more scones in the kitchen for you.”
The human body couldn’t process such a glut of feelings in a short time. Volleying between emotional turpitude, controlled elation after the measure failed, then abject melancholia over Rose, was too much to bear.
“She’s gone, she’s—” His mouth and throat worked, but comprehensible phrases still escaped him. He’d descended the ladder and returned to Abby’s apartment, and she had been steadily feeding him baked goods, insisting cookies were an important part of healing a broken heart. “I’ve lost her forever.”
“But she loves you,” Abby called from the kitchen, where she was channeling her nervous energy into another sugary concoction Ben would ingest without tasting.
He shook his head, then rubbed his burning eyes. Cass sat beside him on the sofa and rubbed his back as she pressed a cup of coffee into his hands; she’d arrived in the apartment after a long but successful delivery to find Abby baking furiously, Ben catatonic, and Garrett staring out the window and muttering. She had rolled up her sleeves and went into the kitchen for provisions.
“Rose went to her uncle to help all of us,” Cass said. “She wouldn’t have made that decision if she didn’t love you. Loveus.”
Rose had loved all of them, hadn’t she? She’d not only joined his strange family at 138 Willow, but she loved them as he did, probably more so. “I know, but she’s still across the goddamned ocean,” Ben muttered. “She’s marrying a fuckingmarquess.”
Cass wrinkled her nose. “What’s that?”
“It means he’s powerful,” Abby called. “Practically royalty, if I remember correctly.”
“And rich,” Garrett barked. “But not royalty. Entire fleets of people would have to die before a marquess ends up on the throne.”
Practicalities and a plague amongst the aristocrats aside, Lord Timothy would be the prince Rose deserved, a man who would keep her in luxury for the rest of her days.
But the marquess would never love her like Ben would. But what power did love have in a situation like this? “I stood there like an idiot,” he said, shaking his head. “I just… accepted it.”
“What could you have done, Ben?” Garrett asked, his voice pinched. “She was already on the boat home, and not by her choice.”
