Page 125 of Chasing Home
I could continue to push her toward the outcome I want, but this has to be her choice. This isn’t a decision I can make for her, even if the choice she wants to make is killing me inside. She’s my fucking person, but I can’t force her to stay with me. I’ve always known that Aurora was a woman who made her own decisions and followed her own path. I just never thought those two qualities about her would be the ones that hurt me the most.
She blinks, and tears leak from the corners of her eyes before she angrily swipes them away. Sniffling, she stares at my hat, then my boots, anywhere but my face.
“This is why I didn’t want to fall in love here.”
“Don’t do that. You’re not allowed to regret us. I sure fuckin’ don’t. I’d have rather had you for these few weeks than not at all.”
“I didn’t want—this wasn’t my plan. It should be easy to leave. A clean break.”
I close the gap between us and hold her cheek, letting my eyes drop at the comfort touching her brings me despite everything. She rubs her cheek against my palm, breathing fast as her eyes finally lock onto mine.
“I love you. Your happiness is the most important thing to me. If this will make you happy, then go. You deserve to have everything you’ve ever wanted. I’m not going to stop you.” Each word carves out a bit more of me, but I force myself to continue. To drop my heart at her feet and offer her everything I can at the risk of her kicking it across her yard. “The one thing I won’t give you is a clean break, Rory. You don’t get to leave and not come back. So, I’ll be here waiting for you. You go, and you learn what you need to, but when you come back, it’ll be my arms you run into. So take your time, darlin’. Get your answers and your peace because once I get you again, I’m not lettin’ you go again. Not ever.”
More tears fall down her cheeks, but I’m there wiping them away before she can.
“I can’t ask you to wait. If I take too long?—”
With a single shake of my head, I stop her. “You’re not asking. I’m telling you it’s what I’m doing. I’ve already waited for you for twenty-two years; what are a few more months?”
She tries to drop her head forward to hide her pain, but I keep it right where it is, not letting her pull away from me. Squeezing her eyes shut instead, she bites down on her lip and cries, her chest shaking with the force of it.
“I love you,” she declares between sobs.
I tuck her into my body and stroke the back of her head. “I know. I’ll keep loving you even while you’re gone. There’s no other option for me.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“Yes, you do. We deserve each other.”
I’ve never been surer of anything in my life. And I’ll spend every moment I can making sure that one day, she believes it too. Whether she’s here beside me or across the country, my heart is in her back pocket.
40
AURORA
I feel hollow. It’s a sensation I haven’t felt for weeks. The space in my heart that was empty filled so quickly with love that I never had a chance to miss it. But now . . . now it’s cold and silent.
My head is lost in thought when Eliza looks up from her rocking chair and spots me lingering at the bottom of the porch stairs. I’m too early to be here for work, and one up-and-down look at my appearance has her beckoning me to her.
“Sit beside me,” she says soothingly, placing her yarn and crochet sticks in the basket beside her chair.
I sit beside her in silence. The chair rocks beneath me, and I grip the armrests tight for stability.
“You’re here early, my sweets.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
Even after Johnny insisted on cooking for me despite everything that happened and I went to bed alone with a full belly, I tossed and turned all night. It was my first night alone in weeks, and the sheets still smelled like him. That made it all the worse.
“Does this have anything to do with why we were woken before dawn by Johnny on a tractor spearing bales?”
“He’s here already?”
She eyes me curiously. “Were you hoping he wouldn’t be?”
“Yes.”
Humming, she drapes a hand over my wrist. “Would you like to tell me what’s goin’ on?”