“I didn’t ask him to.”
“You didn’t have to. He did it because he loves you, like I love Jess. I’d do anything to protect her. And Elliott proved he’d do the same for you.”
The whole left side of my face went numb, like I’d stroked out at the very thought of Elliott and Jess being in the same category. She was going to marry Quinn and be by his side the rest of his life. I couldn’t imagine holding Elliott’s hand on the day I died.
I loved him; I did. But not the way Quinn loved Jess. Or any of my siblings loved their significant others. Elliott and I were friends. Lovers. But we weren’t soulmates. Not like Rory and me had once been. Did it matter?
“You all right?” Quinn asked.
I nodded.
“No, you’re not. What aren’t you telling me?”
“You don’t need to hear my petty concerns.”
“No, but I want to. Unless it’s about frappuccinos. I don’t want to hear about that.”
“Right.” I smiled. “Of course not. Okay, here it goes. What if I don’t actually love Elliott in an ‘all or none’ sort of way? Is it wrong for me to build a life with him knowing it’s the best my heart will get?”
I’d already lost Quinn. Totally blank stare. Honestly, he probably would’ve preferred a conversation about a caramel skinny vanilla decaf frap.
“Hear me out. I’m just being realistic. Lightning almost never strikes the same person twice, so if I’ve already been struck, then Elliott’s not my bolt of electricity. But that doesn’t mean I can’t build a loving, stable life with him and be happy that way. Right?”
He stared back with a glassy-eyed expression.
“I think so too.” I breathed in deeply, allowing a sense of calm to fall over me. “I’ve already experienced true love, so there’s no sense in waiting around for it to happen again. Don’t you think?”
Quinn slowly nodded, like he wasn’t quite sure what he was agreeing to but instinctively understood the direction I was heading.
“I feel better now,” I said, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “Thank you.”
“On second thought, Grace. Can you give the bag a little squeeze?”
14
RORY: OLD FRIENDS
Three simple words. That’s what they were. Apart, they meant nothing, but together they were a rallying cry.Bring it on. I couldn’t sleep that night, nor the night after. My brain held on to the words, repeating them over and over even during the most mundane of tasks. Washing dishes. Eating dinner. Fixing cars.Bring it on.
Only problem—I wasn’t sure what my subconscious mind was telling me. Was I supposed to move forward or circle back? Maybe for some it would be an easy decision but not for me. Hell, I couldn’t even decide who I was. Even though I’d told Jake I was using my real name again, I was straddling between my old identity and my new. For work purposes, I was still Rory Robinson, the son of a welder and his occupational therapist wife but only because all my job experience went through him. For everything else—which was nothing really—I considered myself Rory Higgins. Yeah, I know. It was confusing as shit.
I probably should have kept hold of my picture-perfect past, the one that had been specifically crafted for me courtesy of the US Marshals Service. In that fictional world, I’d grown up in a sprawling ranch house with a brother and a sister and a trampoline out back. We were a happy family, or so it had been written. None of it existed, of course, but I’d had to memorize the details all the same.
The first day under my new alias, I remember sitting at the round four-person dining table by myself and staring at my updated ID card, thinking that at least they’d given me a false identity I could be proud of. A dad I could watch the big game with. A mom who’d bake me cookies. A home to celebrate Christmas in. I’d never had that. No parents. No siblings. The closest I’d ever come to a real family was the McKallisters, and, well, that did not end well. Not that I’d had much of a choice once my past came for me and threatened the ones I loved. I’d given them up but not easily.
For years I lived in limbo as Rory Robinson, working an unassuming life as a mechanic while quietly being prepped for trial as the star witness for the Department of Justice. There were supposed to be two of us, but Nikki skipped out well before the trial began, leaving me to testify alone. I bared my soul and gave those who deserved it a one-way ticket to life in prison. I’d kept my word. My job was done. And everyone was happy but me. I wanted my old life back, the one with Grace and the McKallisters, even if I knew it would never happen.
I clung to Rory Robinson as long as I could. But it got to the point where everything felt wrong, like an alien assuming control of me. I was now nothing but the host human. I didn’t see the point of pretending anymore. Alias me had nothing to offer. It was like my fake life dissolved after my real one settled the score.
Asking for my old identity back, such as it was, I returned to Los Angeles with nothing to show for my twenty-three years except the clothes on my back. Not because I couldn’t have taken Rory Robinson’s things with me; I just didn’t want anything that was his. If I was going to shed his skin, I had to leave every part of him behind.
This was me moving forward… or was it back? I still wasn’t sure. But I was tired of both. What I wanted was to carve myself a new life free from the spoilers of the past and the nothingness of my future. I wanted to drop myself back into the only time in my life when I had been happy and loved. A time when a bright future seemed all but guaranteed. I’d had that once, and I could have it again… if I brought some old friends back from the past.
I stood up and walked into the bedroom, circling the mattress on the floor until I arrived at the only piece of furniture within these four walls—a side table with a broken drawer that I’d thrifted from beside a dumpster. One man’s trash was another man’s treasure, and this one served just one purpose. I forced the drawer open and stared down at a pair of well-worn sticks, the ones Michelle McKallister had gifted to me that night in the rec center. The ones she’d used to train the bad habits right out of me. The ones I’d been clutching like a security blanket the night the black van picked me up and whisked me away from the bright future I was forced to give up when the past came knocking at my door.
During all the security briefings, I’d been “strongly advised” to abandon the drums because they would attract too much attention and put a target on my back. I understood, yet it had pained me all the same. In the early days as talentless Rory Robinson, I’d sometimes bring my sticks out and draw out a beat on a table or chair, but soon, even that thrill was lost. With no dream to carry me through, drumming was just a hobby, and hobbies were things people did as a mental escape. And since there was no escaping my crucified brain or the trial that loomed over me like the mother ship, I just stopped playing.
These abandoned sticks were the key to it all. With them I could take back what I’d lost. The life I’d always wanted came at the end of these sticks. The career I dreamed of. The respect and adoration I craved. The redemption I’d paid my dues to gain. And Grace. Yes, I heard what she said—that she was in love with another—but it wasn’t true. No matter how brutally she’d annihilated me in that bathroom, I knew it was her anger talking. If I could explain to her why I’d left, why I’d made the choices I did, and who the girl was she thought I was cheating on her with, then maybe I could make her see.
