Chapter One - Rory
“Rory!”
Tera is calling up the stairs for me, eager for us to finish moving out of our apartment for summer break and get on our way. But I’m still staring at my phone. At the text message that just came in.
“Rory! Do you have that last box or what?”
“Yes,” I call down to her. But I have a weird, sick feeling in my stomach and it comes out in my voice.
I stare at the text. Come home, it says. Five is here. I’ve booked you a ticket.
It’s from my little brother, Oliver, and home is Fort Collins, Colorado. Five is…
“Hey,” Tera says, appearing at my door. “You OK?”
I start out with my head nodding but it turns into a shake before I can make a real decision.
“What’s happened?” Tera asks, coming towards me. “What’s going on?”
At the same moment, Cliff appears in the door, knocking on the doorjamb. “You ladies ready?”
He’s tall. Handsome. Muscular. Perfect. Honors student here at Princeton. Newly graduated and on his way to predetermined greatness at Yale Law next fall. We’ve been dating for about a week and I like him. He’s funny, and charming, and attractive. Which is why I’m going with him and Tera, my BFF and his little sister, to their family home up in the Hamptons for the summer.
Tera is the female version of perfect Cliff. Also tall, also beautiful, also funny, and smart, and good. We’ve been rooming together in this four-story walk-up apartment for two years and we’re only moving out now because we’re gonna live together next fall for senior year.
“What’s going on?” Cliff asks.
“I don’t know,” Tera says, putting her hand on my shoulder. “I was just asking Rory that same question.”
What is going on? I’m not sure. I have the most perfect summer planned. Boating, and sunbathing, and parties, and—
“Rory?” Cliff has maneuvered his way between Tera and me and he’s pulling me close. His hand is warm on my waist, his scent powerful and masculine. I like him. I’ve been hinting around for more than a year that we should date. And finally, last week, he caught on. I’m right where I want to be with him. Where I want to be with everything in my life right now. I’m an honors student at Princeton, I have my pick of the best senior internships next fall in start-up marketing, and I have no fewer than six professors who are ready to give me a glowing recommendation to grad school at Yale the following year.
But that text…
“Rory. For fuck’s sake, can you answer me, please?”
“Sorry,” I say, looking up at him. He’s taller than me by miles. At least eight inches. “I just…” I hold up my phone. The sleep screen is on, so he can’t see why I’m holding it up, but he can guess.
“Did you get bad news or something?”
I nod, still speechless from those words. Five is here.
“What is it?” Tera asks, crowding her brother out so she can be close to me again. “What’s going on? Is it bad?”
Is it bad?
I don’t think Oliver meant it that way, but—“Yes,” I say. “It’s bad.”
“Do you need to go home?” Cliff asks. “Did something happen at home?”
I nod again, swallowing hard. “Yes. Something’s happened at home. I don’t really want to talk about it, but—”
“Do you need a ride?” Tera asks. “I can ask my father to let you borrow the jet.”
Borrow the jet. It should be shocking to hear those words come out of someone’s mouth, but we’ve “borrowed” her father’s jet many times in the last two years.
“No,” I say, coming to my senses. “No. They’ve sent me a plane ticket.”
“Oh, God,” Tera says. “Did someone die? Oh, Rory—”
“No,” I say quickly. “No. No one died. It’s just…” I sigh and then walk over to my stripped bed and take a seat on the sagging mattress. “I just need to go home for a few days. That’s all. I have something to sort out and then I can meet you up in the Hamptons.” I look up at both their concerned faces. “Will that be OK?”
“Oh, honey,” Tera says, sitting down next to me. “Of course.” She swipes a stray piece of hair away from my eyes and tucks it behind my ear. “Whatever you need. We can take you to the airport.” She looks up at her brother. “Can’t we, Cliff?”
“Absolutely,” Cliff says, crossing the few feet of distance between us, kneeling down on one knee. “Anything you need, Rory.”
“I’m sorry. I know this is probably ruining everything, but…”
But Five Aston has come home. After all these years, he’s there. And I’m here. I cannot be here when he’s there. And I cannot tell my boyfriend and best friend any of this, either, so I just keep quiet.
“Don’t worry about us, sweetie,” Tera says. “You take care of you. We’ll be here when you can come. And if you can’t come, I’ll come to you, how’s that?”
She’s such a good friend. “I’m so lucky to have you,” I say. Then to Cliff, “You too. You guys are the best friends a person could ask for.”
I don’t miss the raised eyebrow I get from Cliff at the word ‘friends.’ But I don’t elaborate either.
Five is home.
Five.
Five.
Five.
It echoes in my head like some kind of special effects through a microphone.
“Rory?” Cliff asks.
I’ve been waiting for Five Aston to come home from England for six years.
“Sorry,” I say, managing a smile. But I don’t feel like smiling and I’m not happy about this. Not at all. He stayed away for six years. Six. Long. Years. And he did that for a reason. He’s not here. Not in New Jersey where I am. He’s there. In Colorado, where I’m not.
But I don’t care. I’m gonna have my say with Five Aston if it’s the last thing I do.
“Sorry,” I say again. “I’m just a little preoccupied with the news, that’s all.” I stand up, making Cliff stand as well, since he’s crowding me. And then I sling my pack over my shoulder and grab the final box left in the room I’ve lived in for the past two years and look around. I won’t be back. No matter what happens with Five, I won’t ever come back here. And the past two years were good. The five that came before that weren’t. Those were horrible because I was left waiting… and wondering. Why did he leave and never come back? Why?
But the last two—the ones I spent with Tera here in this apartment…
“Do you want to talk about it?” Tera asks, holding onto my arm.
I shake my head. “Not now. Not yet. Maybe when I get back, OK? I just… I just need some time to process.”
“What time does your flight leave?” Cliff asks.
I look down at my phone, tab open the airline app I’ve been using since I left home for college, and check. “Three hours. I guess I better hurry.”
They drop me at the airport departures lane. Cliff and I have an awkward kiss. I was aiming for the cheek, Five still on my mind, but he was aiming for the lips, so we met somewhere in corner-of-the-mouth territory. Tera kisses me too—on the cheek, no misunderstanding there—and then I quickly turn away and go inside to the first-class check-in.
My dad is gonna freak out when he finds out Oliver booked me a first-class ticket, but I won’t be the one to get that lecture. Ollie will. So I let it go and enjoy the service.
On the plane, I ask for a drink while we wait for takeoff. I really need a drink. So I get Jack Daniels in a little single-serving bottle and drink it straight from the plastic cup with ice. It’s barely noon, so I get some looks—and I get carded—but I’m twenty-one now. So they leave me alone after that.
When I get off the plane in Colorado there’s a thundercloud coming in over the mountains. The sky is every shade of gray, and blue, and purple you can imagine. God, I’ve missed this place. I haven’t been home since Christmas and it was a mild Christmas, so I didn’t have any pretty storms to look at.
I grab a rental—also prearranged by Oliver via text message—and head out of the airport to make my way up north. No one is home at our family farm. They are all in Florida with Ford and Ashleigh and the twins for a Disney World trip. So I don’t bother driving out to Bellvue when I get into Fort Collins. I stop at my cousin Sparrow’s house. Belle and Oliver are staying with her. Belle has been to Disney every year since she was born—our mom has a thing for Disney. So she said no this time around. And Oliver insisted he was too old for it, even though Jasmine went, and she’s three years older than him.
It makes me laugh a little. How much Oliver wants to be like Five. He has always idolized him. And even though he’s only twelve, he acts like he’s twenty-seven. Just like Five did when he was that age.
Sparrow’s family home is in downtown, not too far from Five’s house. It’s a sprawling mid-century modern on almost an acre of land, just a block off Mountain Avenue. The driveway is long and there’s four cars there when I pull in. For a moment, I wonder if one of them is Five’s, but then I remember that the unfamiliar BMW is the car that Sparrow got for Christmas last year. The other three belong to Rook, Ronin, and Kate.
Kate is home too.
I’m not surprised. She graduated this year and she’s waiting out the summer here at her parents’ house before she goes to grad school next fall.
But the fact that Five is here and not here is what surprises me. Where is he? If everyone left in town is over at Sparrow’s, where the hell is Five? Does he know I’m coming? Is he avoiding me? Did he bail out before I could get here?
The sick, sick feeling that’s been sitting in the bottom of my stomach like a sinkhole is back and worse than ever. If he ditched out on account of me… I will die. Shrivel up and die of heartbreak and humiliation.
“Hey!” Sparrow is standing in the open screen door on the side of the house near the driveway. “You’re here!”
“I’m here,” I call through my open window. But Five isn’t.
“Oliver and Five went out to run an errand.”
“They did?” I ask, getting out of my rental.
“I’m sure they’ll be back soon.”
“He knows I’m coming?” I ask. Almost dumbly. Definitely on the edge of desperate. Pull yourself together, Rory.
“Of course, you silly bitch. Five can’t wait to see you! He was so excited that you agreed to come home.”
I grab my pack and meet her at the door. “I’m nervous,” I say. The words that have been sitting in the back of my mind ever since that text came in finally come out. Words I couldn’t say to anyone except the people I call family here in Colorado.
“Don’t be,” she says, taking my pack from me and opening the door wide. “He’s here for you, Rory.”
Here for me. But if that’s true, why didn’t he tell me he was coming home? I’ve been waiting for that call for six years and it never came. He’s here. But that call never came.
Why?
I follow her inside and find Belle and Kate chatting at the kitchen table. When they see me, they squeal and get up, rushing over to shower me with hugs and kisses.
“You look great,” Kate says, holding me at arm’s length so she can take me in.
“Me?” I say, laughing with her and letting that horrible ache wash away in their love. “You look like a goddamned Wall Street wolf in that suit!”
Even though Kate isn’t really Ford’s daughter, she’s more like him than she is her mom—aside from looks. Kate and Ash both have small, delicate Asian features. Plump pouty lips and fair skin. And the most beautiful raven-dark hair.
But her personality is all Aston. She’s a ruthless businesswoman. She’s smart. Not weirdly smart like Ford and Five. But clever. And intuitive. And wise for her young age.
“Jesus, Rory,” Belle says. “You need to put on something sexy. What’s up with the Shrike Bikes look?”
I look down at my t-shirt. My dad made this shirt for me when I was fifteen. It’s got a few holes in it, sure. But that only makes it cooler. My shorts are frayed denim. The little white strings hang down across my tanned legs. And my boots are Frye. I look hot as fuck and I know it. Five loves this look. “What I’m wearing is fine. I was on my way to the Hamptons in this outfit. If it’s good enough for that place, it’s good enough for here.”
“Well, Five came home looking like a billionaire. I’m just saying—”
“She’s just saying,” Kate interjects, giving my sister the stink eye. “You look perfect.”
And that’s when reality hits me again. “What is going on?” I ask. “Why is he here? And why didn’t he tell me he was coming?”
“It was a surprise,” Sparrow says. “No one knew he was coming home. Not even Ford and Ashleigh. Obviously”—she snorts—“or they wouldn’t have gone to Florida for the annual Disney trip.”
I squint my eyes at her. “So no one knew he was coming?”
“Nope,” Kate says. “I didn’t either. I’m just as surprised as anyone.”
“Where is he staying?” I ask. “At home with you?”
“He’s not staying,” she says. “He’s got some business in Denver.”
“What?” My heart sinks again. “So he didn’t come here for me?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Belle says. “Why else would he come to Fort Collins? He drove up here from the airport, right? He came to see you, Rory. We all know that.”
But that’s not true. We don’t know that. In fact, we know nothing of the sort. He’s here for business in Denver. He probably had some time to kill, so he stopped by to see his parents and siblings. He probably forgot about Ford and Ash taking the twins to Disney. And he certainly didn’t think I’d be here. I haven’t come home for a summer in two years. I’ve spent them up in the Hamptons with Tera. I only come home for Christmas now and Five never comes for Christmas.
I grab my pack and walk out the door.
“Hey!” Sparrow calls, running after me. “What the hell are you doing?”
“This was a mistake,” I say, getting back into my car. “A big, fat, stupid mistake. He never wanted me to be here, you guys!” Both Kate and Belle have followed us outside. “I’m going to the Hamptons.”
They call out every reason why I’m being stupid and immature. Why I should stick around and wait it out. Why I should give Five Aston a second chance.
Fuck that, in the words of my mother. Just fuck that.
I back out of the driveway, squealing the tires on my little Honda rental, and drive off before I have to listen to one more lie about how much Five Aston loves me.
Because if that man loved me, then he wouldn’t have slipped out of my life so easily six years ago. He would’ve called me. He would’ve sent me presents for my birthday or Christmas. He would’ve texted me goodnight and congratulated me on my fucking high-school graduation using that stupid secret Love Notes app he gave me for Christmas back when we were still kids.
And he didn’t. He did none of those things.
So that man is sadly mistaken if he thinks some half-ass trip to Colorado—when I’m not even here—is what it takes to get a second chance with Princess Shrike.