“Dear God, Malachy. How have you been? I’ve been meaning to come check on y—”

“Have you seen a strange-looking man around by any chance?” I cut her off. I did not consider the fact that the entire village treats me like Moses left in the reeds of the Nile River—maybe to survive, probably to die a slow, lonely death.

Surely Rory’s going to pick up on my sob story soon, if she hasn’t already.

Brenda’s brows nosedive. “How do you mean? Dodgy looking? Suspicious?”

“More like crazy looking. Golden robe, long hair. Sort of like a Kardashian version of Jesus Christ.”

She tsks. “Sorry, dear.”

“All right.” I turn around. “Cheers.”

“Wait! Come in! Have some pie!”

Brenda is calling after me, eager to help the poor, lost boy, but I jerk at Rory’s hand before she listens to the questions, and the pleas, and the condolences.

“Must you always act like you’ve been raised by swamp creatures?” Rory breaks away from my touch, jamming her fists in her pockets.

Her teeth are chattering. The girl is going to die if she tries sleeping in the living room tonight. I don’t answer her.

“Ryner is blowing up my phone.” She tries changing the subject. “Yours, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Should we answer?”

“We are not a thing. I do whatever I choose to do, and you are free to do the same.”

Today, when Rory and I had the argument in the bathroom that resulted in all the blood in my body rushing to my cock, I almost told her she could take my bed and I’d take the sleeping bag. Then she had to go and bring up the locked room, and all the dark memories poured in, washing away every good intention I may have had.

“Where could he go? He didn’t take the car.” She skips to warm up, unfazed by my behavior.

The car is still parked in front of my house. Besides, I highly doubt he can operate a light switch, let alone an actual vehicle. No, Richards must be somewhere nearby. My phone rings again. Ryner. I don’t particularly care that we missed the call. I give a shite about this job a little less than I give one about the wellbeing of endangered cockroaches in Madagascar. Richards is the one with the problem.

Rory, too.

“Ryner is pissed.” She ughs. “This project is going to kill my career.”

“We’ll find him,” I say.

“Yeah.” She does weird things in her body, twisting and skipping to keep warm. “Maybe. Other than this house, it’s all open fields. I’m surprised you even get mail here.”

You’d know.

You sent me one hell of a letter.

We make our way past the Smiths’ house and down a valley. It’s getting darker, and I know we’re going to have a problem if we don’t find him in the next half hour. I don’t want to call the police and report him missing. It’s one thing to lose your wallet, but how does one lose the biggest rock star in the world?

In other news, Rory is on a mission to talk until my ears fall off.

“I think I hear something coming from over there.” She points at the sheds out left, a five-minute walk from us. “Let’s go check. Anyway, I know how that is. For the first two years in college, the dorms were full, so I got a partly subsidized house off-campus. The place was huge, but it was on this farm that was really far away from civilization. People got their mail maybe once a week. We were constantly late on bill payments. So we ended up having to rent a P.O. box on campus, but those were broken in to all the time because parents were sending their kids money and lots of valuable things. It was a nightmare.”

She’s babbling. I don’t care about her P.O. box.

About her former house.

About dorms and random people’s parents, and I definitely couldn’t give a toss about what bills she paid eight years ago.

“Finally,” she continues, undeterred, “I decided to redirect all my mail to my mom’s house. You know how I feel about her, but I just couldn’t risk it. I was already drowning in debt. I didn’t need unpaid bills with interest on top. Plus, she offered to pay for the entire thing and took care of it herself, so that was a bonus. Here, let’s go this way.” She stops, pointing behind the barn. “I think that’s where I heard the noise coming from.”

I follow her, frowning. I believe my views about her verbal diarrhea have changed.

“So you got your mail redirected to New Jersey,” I say, controlling the level of interest apparent in my voice.

“Yeah. Living in the middle of nowhere is bad for mail, dude.”

“Since when?”

“Like, three months after I moved out? Something like that.”

“Huh.” I’m keeping it bored, though my mind is screaming WHAT. THE. FECK. All in capitals.

Pieces of the puzzle seem to be falling into place, but the overall picture is all wonky and wrong. Different from what I thought. It doesn’t paint Rory as the villain and me the hopeless protagonist.

“The house was neat, though. I shared it with eight other girls. One of them was my best friend, Summer. I don’t remember if I told you about her. She became an actress in an off-Broadw—”

“That means your mam opened your letters for you,” I interrupt, my brain threatening to melt now.

She is still bouncing and shivering. I could put her out of my misery by touching her—getting her hot and bothered has never been an issue—but being rejected by her would crush me.

“Yeah. But I didn’t get letters letters, you know. Just…bills and stuff. I was starting to build my credit. I couldn’t afford late payments.” She messes with her camera, which is attached to a strap on her neck.

Through my carefully crafted exterior, it hits me like a ton of bricks.

I’ve been missing a big part of the truth of it all. The one unspoken. Her truth.

I never bothered to ask her version of things—not that I had the chance to. Still. Still.

I listened to two sides of the story, but neither of them was hers. Neither of them came from her mouth.

One came from Kathleen.

The other from Debbie, her mother.

And all that time, it seems Rory was oblivious. Her mail was going to New Jersey.

Sure, there are a few loose ends, but with a crushing weight, I know in my gut that everything I’ve believed all this time was a lie. Everything I believed about her. Rory never set out to destroy me. Rory didn’t know. Her mother was responsible for this. All of this.

Rory didn’t reject me.

She didn’t betray me.

She didn’t hate me for what happened.

What probably never happened at all.

She is still talking, oblivious. Trying to win me over, maybe. She’s playing with the hoop in her nose. Nervous.

God, Rory. God.

The earth under my feet is moving. Things inside of me are shifting, too. This changes everything.

Rory is still pure and good and meant to be mine. And I will make her so. Even if I have to fight Callum and her mother, and the entire village.

Which I will.

(I might have to resume my morning push-ups if I plan on starting a full-blown war with the entire universe.)

She’s craning her neck now, looking for Ashton, oblivious to the life-changing pep talk I’m giving myself in my head. She has no idea that my whole world has transformed in the last minute.