Happily Ever After: A Day in the Life of the HEA (Rook and Ronin #3.5) (8 page)

We both laugh as we picture Spencer with all his little girls. Dressing them up in biker jackets and boots. Making them little Shrike Trikes for Christmas and birthdays. Teaching them how to change the oil while the cameras rolled for the TV show, or choose the right tailpipe for the design he was working on.

“I guess I should give Ash what she needs, right?” I look at Ronin.

He lets out a long breath and looks out the window. “I guess I need to do the same for Rook,” he says back.

We get out of my car and walk up to the massive double front doors to the mansion. “Good talk, man,” Ronin says as I pull one door open.

“Right, good talk.”

We are accosted with the smell of food the second we enter, and then the noise, and my pack of face-eater dogs. Maybe I have so many dogs to take my mind off the children I was afraid to have?

The bustle of the families we’ve created over the years brings me out of my funk and I look around and enjoy it. Spencer is slow-dancing with Ronnie in front of the fireplace. Rook is lining cookies up on the long dining room table so the kids can decorate them like we do every Christmas Eve. And Ashleigh is standing in front of the fifteen-foot-tall Christmas tree, backlit by bright lights, watching me come into the fray.

I smile at her as I take off my coat and hang it over a chair in the foyer.

She shrugs, like she’s apologizing for wanting something she shouldn’t.

I walk over and take her hand, give it a kiss. “I missed you today, Mrs. Aston.”

Her face crumples a little and she looks like she might cry. But she doesn’t. She holds it together and leans up on her tiptoes in a way that reminds me of another mountain house, in what seems like another lifetime. “I have something to tell you,” she whispers as she kisses my cheek.

I pull her into a hug, knowing full well what she wants to tell me. She’s not done mothering. She’s not ready for kids in college. She needs another baby. And she’s afraid to tell me that because I was so worried about me, so worried about what sort of genetic contribution another child of mine might get, that I never once thought about what she was giving up to ease my concerns.

But we both stay silent and enjoy the peace we have. We just dance alongside Ronnie and Spence to
Silent Night
, our feet slow and our hearts full.

And then I glance up at Spencer and find a confused look on his face. “What’s wrong?” I ask.

“Where the hell are Rory and Oliver?”

“Shit,” Ashleigh says. “Fucking Five.”

Chapter Twelve

I hold Rory’s hand as Oliver finally gets his turn at Santa Claus. He’s rattling off gifts like he’s got a catalog in front of him.

“And I want a bike, just like my dad’s,” he says.

The Santa here in downtown FoCo is pretty realistic. Genuine white beard and everything. “Ho, ho, ho,” Santa says. “What kind of bicycle does your daddy have, son?”

Oliver screws up his face. “Bicycle? My dad makes Shrike Bikes. I don’t want a bicycle, I want a motorcycle! I want one with white skulls and black ravens. I want the tank to be scarlet red, just like the one my dad rides to work in the summer. I want leather seats and cool pegs. And I want a jacket to go with it. And tattoos, just like the ones my mommy drew on my dad. And I want—”

“Little boy, you can’t have a motorcycle for Christmas! Ho, ho, ho!”

“What?” Oliver squeaks, like his dream is being crushed. “Yes, I can. My dad made all the girls a Shrike Bike. Ask my sister!” He points to Rory and we get a stern look from Santa.

“Trikes,” I correct Oliver. “He gives the kids Shrike
Trikes
. Not bikes.”

“Yeah.” Rory laughs. “Are you kidding? My dad wouldn’t give us motorcycles!”

“Ho, ho, ho,” Santa says again, setting Oliver down and shaking his head a little. “Well, a trike I might be able to manage. Now hurry along and don’t forget to put out cookies for me tonight! Ho, ho, ho!”

Oliver shoots Santa a look, but reluctantly walks over to Rory and me. He lets off a huge sigh. “He wasn’t even listening to me.”

“Don’t worry about it, Ollie,” Rory says, taking his hand in her free one. “Santa can’t afford a Shrike Bike. Only Daddy can give us Shrike presents. And I’m sure he’s got something special for you under the tree.”

“If it fits under the tree, then it’s not a real Shrike Bike.”

“Come on,” I say. “It’s almost dark. Let’s go look at the lights before we have to get home.”

“Yeah, what time is it? We need to go grab the present and Uber back to Vail soon,” Rory says.

“Plenty of time,” I tell her. It’s already four thirty, so we’re going to be late, but I don’t care. I’m not ending our date until we have that perfect moment.

Now it’s Rory’s turn to sigh. She stops walking just as we reach the huge community Christmas tree and looks up at me with a smile. “This was the best day ever, Five.”

It really was. Fantastic lunch at Anna Ameci’s, ice skating—even though Oliver ate shit like six times and then wanted to stop. The carriage ride, window-shopping, and then the art gallery. We had to sneak by Sick Boyz, which was open until one today, to avoid all Rory’s uncles. But they’re closed down now, and we can enjoy the walk back over to the Shrike showroom where she insists she has the perfect present for her mom stashed away in the back of Spencer’s office.

I look down at Rory. Her sapphire-blue eyes and her sweet, sweet face. She’s the perfect girl for me. She’s been the perfect girl for me since I laid eyes on her. And even though most of my thoughts growing up were about how to get her to join me in my delusional dreams of science fair domination at Saint Joseph’s, the past year or so I’ve been starting to think of what we might become instead of what we already are.

We’re friends now, but somewhere in the back of my head, I’ve always wanted to marry her. Even if it was just the little-kid version of marriage. And now I’m leaving. Just as we get to the age where we might start imagining about the more adult version of our relationship.

I’m going to lose her. I realize this. There is no way to make time stand still. There is no reasonable way to ask her to wait for me. There is no possibility of me not going to Oxford. And I don’t even want to stay, either. I want her, but I want to start moving forward too. I’ve been holding myself back just to stick around. But I can’t do it anymore.

We have to grow up some time.

“This was the best day of my life as well, Rory.” I mean it too. And she knows I mean it.

She frowns a little, her face lit up by the brightly colored lights of the tree. “I’m gonna miss you so much, you know.”

I nod. “I’m gonna miss you too.”

“I know I play girl games with you. Pretending not to notice you looking at me. Or pretending not to look at you back. But Five, I’ve counted on you to be there for me my whole life. I cannot even imagine you leaving.”

I feel a little sad all of a sudden. “I go away to school all the time, but I always come back, Rory.”

She nods. “I know. But this is different. You were a kid. And you might only be fifteen, but you’re not a kid anymore, Five. You’re going to be thousands of miles away this time. There will be an ocean and so many time zones between us, we’ll never even chat on the phone. We can’t even text unless we figure out the time difference beforehand. It’s going to be different. Everything is going to change.”

“We can just…” I sigh now too. “We can just make a pact, you know? Like, we’ll promise each other that we’ll talk all the time. Make an effort.”

“I don’t want our friendship to be an effort. It’s never been an effort before. You were just there. You were always just there. And now you won’t be anymore. I’m going to be all alone.”

“You have Sparrow. And Kate.”

“I know.” She looks up at me, her sapphire eyes watering like she might cry. “But I want you.”

I pull her into a hug, wrapping my arms around her tightly. “Don’t be sad, OK? I promise I’ll be back for Spring Break. And all summer too.”

She shakes her head as she buries her face in my coat. “You always do geeky stuff in the summer. You go to special places for geniuses and think about things that will change the world. You’re going to meet people over there who are just like you, and you might even come back a few times, but then…” She looks up at me. “But then one day, you’ll be like, I’m too busy to go home this time. I’m just going to stay. And that will be it for us, Five. We’ll never recover from that. Because we’re still kids right now, but we won’t be kids forever. We’re going to grow up.”

God, she’s so right. Everything she just said is right. And I’m not even sure there’s a way to stop it. Life just… goes on. I want to make it better. Make her stop being sad and be happy. Make her smile again. I don’t want her last memory of this day to be all the things we will regret in the future.

So I lean down. My heart beats faster. I lean down and she leans up, and we are so close. Our lips are so close.

“Rory?” A deep voice makes us pull apart unexpectedly. “Five? Oliver?” Vic Vaughn—Veronica’s older, massive, built-like-a-monster, and tatted-up-in-scary-ways brother—is looming over us with a scowl on his face. “I thought you guys were in Vail for Christmas? What the hell are you doing down here in Fort Collins?”

Chapter Thirteen

“Don’t glower at me,” Ford says.

“I’m not glowering,” I say back. But it comes off as defensive, and irritable, and glowering. “I’m just saying he should know better.”

“Spencer,” Ash says. “We’ll talk to him, OK? He doesn’t mean any harm and I’m sure they were never in danger or they’d have called. All of them know that we’re on their side, no matter what happens, and they can call us for anything.”

“That’s not—” I soften my tone with Ashleigh. Not just because Ford won’t tolerate me taking out my anger with Five on her, but because Ashleigh is a soft sort of woman and shouldn’t be spoken to the way I started speaking to her. So I take a deep breath. “It’s not that I think she’s in danger, Ashleigh. It’s that my daughter is fourteen, she looks like my wife, and I’m getting the urge to keep a shotgun on my person.” I sigh. “If you get my drift.” I catch a small chuckle from Veronica, which makes me stop and smile at her. It might be the first sign today that she’s feeling better. “Right, Ronnie?”

She sighs heavily, reminding me that things are not OK. “I think they’re fine. I think Five was wrong to take them so far away, but Five is Five. And his last name is Aston, so even if something did happen, he’d know what to do about it. I think Oliver probably had the time of his life and Rory finally got a chance to say what’s on her mind. What’s been on her mind for months now.”

“What?” I ask. “What’s on her mind?”

“OK,” Ford says, looking at his phone. “I just got a text. They’re getting off the freeway now and they’ll be here in a few minutes. I’ll talk to Five.” With that Ford takes Ashleigh’s hand and they walk out of the library and back to the party going on in the great room.

“Come on, Spencer,” Ronnie says. “You know what’s going on. Five is leaving in a few weeks and she’s sad.”

I scrunch up my brows. “Define sad.”

“Sad,” Ronnie stresses. “Like first crush, broken-hearted kind of sad.”

“Sad like you,” I say, not even meaning to.

She frowns so heavily, it makes me sad too. “I’m not really… sad, Spencer. I’m just feeling… undesirable. And tired. And this is new for me, you know?”