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But of course, I’d sworn I’d never go that dark. Revenge would only matter if I saw him destroyed. That meant he’d need to be alive, just without all the power that had made him what he was.
I returned Rory’s phone to her, my expression grim. “Thank you for showing me this, Rory. Emory Abbot, as you probably know by now, is a persistent creep.”
She looked like she was struggling to find the right words. “I get it. I actually thought about leaving this place. But after everything it’s taken me to get here...”
And that’s when I realized. I couldn’t have her leave. I... none of us could. Rory belonged with us.
In different ways, yes. But she was the antidote to the darkness that consumed me. She...
Was this real? What was I feeling?
I didn’t know. I couldn’t put a name on it because that would bring... that would mean I’d fallen.
“Rory.” I spoke again, my voice hoarse. “Don’t make any decisions on the fly. Meet me for dinner tonight?”
She gave me a wan smile. “Are you asking me out on a date?”
Was I?
I returned her smile. “Let’s call it that. I’ll pick you up from your place?”
She shook her head. “I need to go finish my paper. I plan to bury my head in the library until seven. Just text me the address, and I’ll be there.”
Rory’s fierce urge to do things on her own terms was one of the many reasons I felt the urge to hold her in my arms, kiss her, and protect her harder.
It was like I was afraid that if she kept running by herself, she’d meet a dead end.
I was getting possessive. Again.
Not good.
I called Sally. It was time to go home, anyway. She planted a kiss on Rain’s little nose and came pottering over to me. “Daddy, can I meet Wain again?”
I looked over her soft head of hair at Chelsea, who nodded brightly.
“Of course you can, my darling.”
Sally fell asleep in my arms on our walk back home. When I got inside, I put her in her bed and stayed with her until sunset fell across the windowsill. It bathed her bedroom in red and gold.
I got up, drew the curtains, and went into the study. A sheaf of papers lay on my table, remnants of poems I’d been trying to write for two nights.
Ways to remember June.
Ways to hold on to what was happening right now.
Something egged me on, and I picked up my pen and chewed at the tip. Suddenly, words poured out like a dam had burst open.
I do not know where this will take us.
Love frightens me. I am afraid of who I become and what I am capable of when it consumes my heart. The last time, it almost drove me past the edge and pushed me to my end.
But in my heart, I also know there is another kind of love. The kind that sustains and nurtures and drives me onwards, the way it is with Sally.
I am afraid. Does that make me a coward? I do not know, Aurora.
But I think of your sweet smile, the way your hair falls past one eye—its iris so green it could be the heart of a forest—the way you always make a funny little snort when you laugh so hard.
I think of your way with words. How you write your emotions with such elan. How you see past the falsehoods of society and how it has caged us again and again.
