Free Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues by Ruthie Knox

people wanted her to be, but none of it had taken her where she needed to be.
    Ashley looked at Roman. “You know that when we met, I was going to give you this whole speech?”
    “How was it supposed to go?”
    She closed her eyes, trying to recall the words, but she couldn’t recapture it. “I don’t remember.”
    “Just give us the gist of it,” Nana said encouragingly.
    “The gist of it,” Ashley said, “was that I have lived a lot of places. Probably dozens of places. But Sunnyvale is the only one that has ever felt like home.”
    “Oh,” Nana said.
    “Yeah. And that it was wrong for Roman to be taking that away from me.”
    Beneath the table, she lifted her foot to balance on his kneecap. He covered her toes with his hand and squeezed. She met his eyes.
    “But what I’ve figured out since then is that you didn’t
take
anything. My grandma gave it to you, and it was hers to do what she wanted with. I guess that’s not the choice I wanted her to make, but I’m starting to get used to it. What I’m still kind of stuck on is the whole question of what happens next. I think about that little Key deer in the pool, and I think … you know, I’d like it if there was a place for that deer to go. I’d like it so much if, even if that place isn’t going to be Sunnyvale anymore, it doesn’t completely
erase
what Sunnyvale was. I’d like it if it could still be something beautiful.”
    “You mean there really was a Key deer?” Roman asked. “You didn’t just invent that?”
    “Of course I didn’t. It was in the pool, drinking from a puddle when you pulled up. If you’d looked, you would have seen it run away.”
    He sat back in his chair. Ashley was caught in his stare, her foot snared in his hand, his thumb idly strumming over her arch.
    “Roman?”
    “I’m thinking. It’s funny—” He looked at Nana and Stanley. “ ‘Of course,’ she says to me. ‘Of course I didn’t make it up.’ As though she would never do something so unethical as
invent
a Key deer to blackmail me with. It’s only
aboveboard
blackmail for our Ashley.”
    Ashley thought there might have been something to take exception to in this appeal to Stanley and Nana, but she was stuck on the words
our Ashley
, so she tasted her coffee.
    Sweet and dark, slightly bitter. Just how she liked it.
    “Blackmail?” Stanley asked.
    “You don’t know this story?” Nana chirped. “It’s a good one. See, it was Mitzi’s idea. Ashley needed a way to keep Roman from bulldozing Sunnyvale, so Mitzi said—” She broke off, turning to Ashley. “Is it all right if I tell it?”
    Ashley made a lazy go-ahead motion with her hand, too in love with her coffee and the curious light in Roman’s eyes to take the mug from her mouth.
    Nana told the story while Roman rubbed Ashley’s foot and then her ankle. When Nana got to the part where Roman sank his Escalade up to the axles in the mud, Stanley laughed so hard that he choked on his own spit and turned red.
    Roman leaned toward her and asked in a low voice, “How many?”
    “How many what?” she whispered, not wanting to interrupt Nana and Stanley’s entertainment.
    “How many Key deer did you see at Sunnyvale?”
    “Just one. I mean, they were always on the beach, and there’s the refuge right across on the other key, but I only ever saw that one drinking in the pool. Why?”
    He shook his head. “I’m not sure yet.”
    Stanley pounded the tabletop, breaking into their conversation. He was beaming. “Ashley-girl, I didn’t know you had it in you!”
    “Had what?”
    “This whole thing! Blackmail. Chaining yourself up. Sittin’ out there in the rain and in the dark, taking a stand. I’m proud of you.”
    “Why? It didn’t work. And plus, it was kind of stupid.”
    “No ‘kind of’ about it. But it’s the first time since I knew you that you stood up for something you really cared about.”
    “I stand up for myself all the time,” she protested.
    “You stand up for