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“We had a good…experience,” Rory said, her voice both breathy and choked. “I used to think…well. But. Experiences can be good. I hope you’ll remember me as a good experience. And…London will be lucky to have you,” she said haltingly as if grasping for words.
The murmurs of the crowd had dwindled as we’d first began speaking, but now they grew louder, word obviously moving through the room that Nathan Hale had had a secret love child, or at least, that’s what I gathered from the few loud murmurs that made it to where we were standing.
Even over the rising buzz, a series of gasps could be heard as the crowd parted behind Rory and every person in the vicinity swung to see who had entered.
It was the pirate.
And next to him stood…well, Rory had described him well because I knew immediately who the man who looked like a cross between Elvis and Prince Charming was—Romeo Casteel. In the flesh. As tall as the pirate, but not nearly as hulking.
“Rory,” the pirate said, planting his feet wide. Cassius. His name is Cassius.
“Cassius. Romeo,” Rory said and the absolute, utter relief in her voice almost killed me. She sounded saved, as though we were all hyenas coming in for the kill and she was a deer. Her uncles had shown up to rescue her from the circling horde of predators.
For several stilted moments we stood across from each other, the Casteels and the Hales standing against…the rest of us.
Rory turned away from me and I reached for her, my fingers grasping only air as she practically flung herself at her uncles. “You sounded awful on the phone, darlin’,” I heard Cassius tell her.
“We were really worried,” Romeo said. She replied with a nod as she took their hands in hers.
My heart knocked hollowly, my fingers curling. Rejected. Shut out.
And the worst part was, I knew she felt the same way.
Cassius looked around, letting out a low growl that made the circle around the three Casteels widen. He set his stony glare on me. “We’ll be takin’ our leave now,” he said.
Blakely pulled at me again, my father stepped up next to me on my left, and my mother and Lexi appeared to my right. Rory met my eyes for only a moment before she turned her head and leaned behind Cassius.
To me it was only a fling. A fun one but…that’s all it was. I’m not right for you, and you’re not right for me.
Was she lying? Maybe. She was undermining what we’d had. But the fact remained that she was going home. She seemed to need it. My gaze found that of one of my coworkers, peering at me with confusion. I was going to London, after all.
Cassius put his solid arm around Rory and though every cell in my body called out to her, she was being protected, and she was walking away from me by choice.
She’d made a decision. She had looked me in the eye and ask that I stand by it.
She’d solved the mystery of who her father was. And now she was leaving. That had always been the plan.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Rory
I wiped the table listlessly as the strains of an old Patsy Cline song played from the jukebox, which, to be perfectly honest, wasn’t doing a damn thing to boost my mood. Who’d chosen that song anyway? Probably someone who made a career of wallowing.
I picked up the tray of empties, tossing the towel over my shoulder as I turned with a sigh. “You look like the poster child for this song,” Romeo observed as he set clean glasses he’d brought out from the dishwasher on the shelf behind the bar.
I managed a lackluster eye roll as Patsy wailed about falling to pieces.
“Stop wallowing and pull up a chair,” Romeo commanded and though there wasn’t actually a chair to pull up, but rather barstools bolted to the floor, I slid into one. “You’re a real mess, you know that?”
“Gee, thanks. I feel better already.” I put my elbows on the bar and propped up my chin. “Remember when you told me to stop looking for my happiness in Claremont Landing? I wish I’d extended that advice anywhere past the town limits.”
“I don’t think that was your mistake.”
“Then what was it, wise one?”
Romeo leaned forward, looking me in the eye. “It seems to me, you didn’t make the wrong choice in locations, you made the wrong choice by coming back.”
I grunted. “I had to come back. My life is here in Mud Gulch. And…Gage’s life is in London.”
