“That’s not true,” he said, persisting in that infuriatingly even tone. She wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake all the emotions free from the places where he’d stuffed them away. “What happened back at the house…He was trying to save face in front of the reps. He has a hard time admitting when he’s wrong, but he’s not callous.”
Her mouth opened wide in disbelief. “Even after everything that’s happened, you’re still taking his side.”
“I’m not ‘taking his side.’ I’m the one person looking at this objectively here. To negotiate the best solution for as many as possible.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Which is easy when whatever way this ends, you walk away a winner. Zaide was right—you have nothing on the line here.”
His dark eyes widened, and he went terribly still. The look on his face hollowed her out completely.
“I guess not.”
She turned away, racing toward the house. She couldn’t look at him anymore.
“Rowan.” His voice stopped her in her tracks. “For what it’s worth, I was going to do everything I could to make it up to you that night, but I couldn’t do what you were asking me to do…” He took a deep breath. “I was a kid. He was my world.”
The words worked their way into her head. She wanted them to be enough to make her stop, to stay, to figure out how to go back to that delicious feeling of presence in her body, mind, and spirit that she felt when they were together.
But they weren’t.
“I understand,” she said, “and I’d like to say that I’d never askyou to risk your relationship, but…I need you to be able to stand up to him. If you can’t…” She shook her head. “This isn’t going to work.”
He said nothing more as she opened the door and stepped inside.
Her parents were waiting in the living room. They stood up when she entered. Their eyes flicked to the storm of white curls on her head, but they knew better than to ask about it at that moment.
Rising to his feet, her father asked in a gentle voice, “Is Gavin coming back in?”
“No,” said Rowan, and then, as all the strength she’d mustered to walk away vanished, the tears it had been holding back arrived in a dam break flood. “No, I don’t think he’s coming back. Ever.” She walked straight into her mother’s open arms. “Go on, tell me how foolish it was to fall for a McCreery.”
Her mother pressed her forehead against the crown of Rowan’s head, murmuring, “I could never fault loving recklessly.”
Reckless it had been. Now Rowan lay prone on the shore, her body pierced with ten swords.
39
December 30
The Tenth Day of Yule
Zaide had been scheduled to work at the Magick Cabinet the next morning, but when she and Naomie arrived with armloads of Oreos and Pringles, Liliana only took one glance at them and nodded. “Calling out sick. Got it.”
“I’m sure your parents have this place filled with amazing food,” declared Zaide as she stomped around the living room. “But this situation calls forjunk.”
From her place on the sofa, Rowan mumbled, “You’re the literal best,” and popped a can of Pringles. As Zaide and Naomie settled in on either side of her, one taking her feet and the other her head, she mumbled, “What are we going to do? The Goshen Group stole our plan.”
“At the moment?” said Zaide, arching an eyebrow. “We are going to eat junk food. And we are going to watch comfort movies. Because you are in no state to be trying to take care of Elk Ridge right now.”
“We take care of you,” insisted Naomie.
Rowan opened her mouth to protest, but her resistance gave out, and she nodded. “You guys pick the movie.”
As the two women cocooned her in their support, she remembered with a stabbing ache what it had been like in the days following her breakup with Dade. She might not have been in love with him, but he’d still been a consistent presence in her life, and in losing him, she’d been entirely alone. She’d had nothing but Netflix and doomscrolling to get her through the messy internal reorientation of the breakup, and Netflix didn’t show up with your favorite trash food, or massage your feet, or give you any sense, really, that it would be okay, because whether you had a significant other or not, there were still people of significance by your side.
“No rom-coms,” Zaide declared as Naomie moved toward the Midwinters’ ancient DVD rack.
Unfortunately, they choseThe Muppet Christmas Carol,which seemed safe enough, but the Midwinters still had their old DVD copy—which meant the full, unedited breakup song between Scrooge and Belle.
“Let’s just turn this off,” said Zaide, exchanging a panicked look with Naomie as the Belle onscreen belted out, “The looove is gone.”
