Page 149 of The Hometown Legend

She knew it was him. There was no mistaking him.

Gideon Payne.

The legend of Pyrite Falls.

“Rory,” he said.

He sounded broken and hopeful, and it was the hope that got her.

It was the hope that just about did her in.

“Gideon,” she breathed. “What are you doing here?”

“I came for you. To visit, to move here, whatever you need. I would give everything up to have you. I need you to know that.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you. Because I love you, and I can’t be afraid of that anymore. And I was. I feel like I have nothing to give you. And by that I mean I feel like I don’t have what I used to. The ways that I used to be sure that I was good enough. All my life I have needed a parade. But I don’t need one for me. Not anymore. I just need you.”

Rory’s heart jumped in her chest. “Gideon...”

“But, I did think that maybe you deserved a parade. Because you’re the legend, Rory. And legends should have parades.”

She turned just as a group of men in uniform came around the corner, holding a banner in front of them.

It saidI love you, Rory Sullivan.

“What is this?”

“I called in a favor. It turns out that I still have some connections that I can make use of.”

They marched and saluted her, and then went back around the block and around another time.

And Rory was effectively speechless. “This is... It’s too much.”

“No. It’s just enough. Just enough for you. For me. For us. Rory, I love you. I have lived two lives now. This life is filled with glory and the pursuit of it. This need to prove myself, because I had been doing it from the beginning, and I didn’t know another way. But even though I’ve had the thought for a long time that I didn’t want to go back, it occurred to me that if I could choose to live one of these lives twice, it would not be that one. It would be this one. With you. You make the silence sweet. You make me feel like my moods aren’t something broken in me. You are strong when I need you to be, and you also asked me for help. And that... I need that. I do need it. I want to be needed. I need it. You tell me about books so that I don’t have to read them.”

She laughed. “It wouldn’t hurt for you to read a book.”

“No. It probably wouldn’t. And see, you’re going to change that for me, too. Rory, you are everything.”

“It’s so funny,” she said. “Now that I have a parade...it turns out I just want you.”

He scooped her into his arms and kissed her.

“I just want you, too. You make me feel like I’m not broken.”

“You aren’t,” she said. “You’re you. This version of you is just fine to me. More than that. This version of you is the one that I love. I don’t need you to be unscarred or unscathed. I don’t need you to be perfect. I like you like this. Because you’re the man that was strong enough to climb up from rock bottom. And we don’t have enough stories about that. Because people think it’s romantic to write a character into a corner and leave them there. To let them die. But the bravery is in getting back up. The bravery is in healing yourself. The bravery is in defining yourself not by the bad things, but by choosing to embrace love again, andthatis glory.”

“Hell yeah,” he said. “Rory Sullivan, you are my glory. I thought you were a sunset. The last sliver of my sunshine disappearing behind a hill before I went on to nothing. But you’re my sunrise. You’re the reason I’m here. I have asked myself why. I’ve asked myself why so many times. And now I know the answer. It was to live. And it was to love you.”

“I realized something, too, that I was going to have to go through this to be fixed. To be as strong as I needed to be. And it hurt, but... I needed you. And even the way that it ended, and has started again, I needed all that. To get to who I needed to be.”

“I realized something similar. I needed to have that block removed. I needed the Jenga tower to fall. Because it’s what made me a man who could love someone more than I love myself. It’s what made me the man who could be with you. And I would walk that road a thousand times if it brought me here. It brought me to you.”

She closed her eyes and folded herself into his arms. And then they went upstairs to her hotel room, and they told each other how in love they were with their hands, with their lips. And with words.

So many words.

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