Chapter 10 Rhett
Chapter ten
Rhett
I fix things when I can’t fix myself. It’s a habit, and today I lean into it hard.
I shouldn’t have walked off. I tell myself it was the smart play. The yard filled up with strangers, and every nerve I own said retreat. Then Frankie looked at me like she always does, steady, there, and I still turned away.
The tool rack gleams. The floor’s swept into tidy lines. Nothing is better.
“Rhett?”
Grandma’s voice arrives with the soft scrape of her shoes. “You planning to polish the air next?” she asks. “Looks like you already shined everything else.”
“Barn needed it.”
“Mmm.” She sits on some hay and smiles at me. “I like her friends.”
“They’re… enthusiastic.”
“They’re loyal,” she corrects. “Frankie has her own cheering section. That tells me something about the kind of person she is.”
I check the knot on a rope beside me. “I didn’t say there was anything wrong with her.”
“You didn’t say much of anything at all.” She watches me with that clear-eyed kindness that leaves no place to hide. “And she watched you walk away like the floor disappeared under her feet.”
I grip the rope until my knuckles go white, then force my fingers to loosen. “You see everything, don’t you?”
“Only the important things.” She rests a palm on the bench. “You can’t keep pretending you’re saving people by leaving first.”
I hate that she’s right more than I hate how good it feels to hear it. “What if it’s me, Grandma?”
She smiles like she’s been waiting years for that question. “It is you. You are the kindest, most reliable man I know, and that’s something that attracts people. Some of them aren’t right for you, but some, like Frankie, are perfect.”
“If she walks away,” I manage, “I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“Then don’t let her walk away.” Grandma nods at the door like she just gave me the weather report. “She’s coming.”
“How do you—”
“Because I asked the Lord to send her and then I texted Luke, who’s faster.” She pats my cheek. She gets up and leaves the barn through the side door.
Footsteps cross the concrete a minute later—unhurried, sure. I stand with my palms braced on the workbench and take a deep breath.
“Rhett?” Her voice is soft.
Frankie stands by the big doors, sunlight at her back. She’s in jeans, my flannel, and boots she must’ve borrowed from the hall closet. A few curls have escaped from her ponytail. She looks incredible.
“Hey,” I say, and it comes out rougher than I intend.
She studies me for a breath, taking in the too-neat coils, the immaculate sweep lines, the man-shaped mess in the middle of it. “Hi.”
“Your friends seem fond of you,” I say, unsure what I should be saying.
“Mm.” Her mouth crooks. “They’re also chaotic and my ride or dies.”
“Good people, then.”
“The best,” she says. “Why did you run away?”
I swallow. “It was a reminder.”
“Of what?”
“That I’m not part of your world,” I say. “Videos, glitter, and excitement.”
She nods slowly, considering. “Okay. Is that it? Or was there also a reminder about a woman who once left when this place asked too much?”
I flinch. She watches the hit land and waits it out with me.
“I shouldn’t have walked off,” I say.
“No,” she agrees. “You shouldn’t have.”
The clean honesty of it steadies me more than comfort would have. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “I’m not good at this.”
“Same.” She smiles, small. “But you’re very good at making me feel like I imagined last night when you disappear without looking back.”
The words thread straight through the ribs I keep pretending are armor. “You didn’t imagine it.”
Her shoulders ease a fraction. “Then say it like you mean it.”
I look at her, really look, and stop worrying. “You didn’t imagine it,” I repeat, steady now. “Last night happened. I wanted you, I still do.”
Her eyes go bright, and she folds her arms like she’s cold or bracing or both. “Okay.”
“I heard your friends, and all I could think was how it felt when someone I cared about decided I wasn’t enough,” I add, the words finding their own path now. “I hate that I dragged you into my old story. You don’t deserve my ghosts.”
“Everyone brings ghosts,” she says, moving until the table edge is in reach and her fingers curl against it the same way mine did. “The trick is not letting them get in the way of something special.”
“I keep thinking if I keep distance, I can’t be the reason anyone leaves.” I huff a laugh that doesn’t have humor in it. “It’s bad math.”
“Terrible,” she agrees. “Plus, you’re not that powerful.”
I blink. “Thanks?”
“It’s a compliment.” Her mouth turns wry. “People leave for their own reasons. People stay for their own reasons, too. I really like you, Rhett.” She pauses, then adds, “Actually, I think I more than like you.”
For a second, everything freezes. I step in. She doesn’t step back.
My palms frame her face, and hers are fisted in my shirt, and I kiss her hard.
She makes a small sound, a moan, and it’s all I can do not to grin against her mouth like a fool.
My hands slide to her jaw, the curve of her neck, the place where pulse meets promise.
She rises onto her toes and comes closer, as if there was never any other choice.
When we break for air, we don’t separate. Our foreheads touch together, her breath skims my lips.
“Okay,” she whispers, a little stunned and a lot sure. “That was—”
“Yeah,” I say, because words are slow and the rest of me isn’t.
Her hands flatten against my chest, feeling the proof that I’m not as calm as I look. “Are you planning to run again?”
“Not from you,” I say, and know it’s true as I say it.
“Good.”
“Rhett,” she says, and I know that I want to hear her saying my name every day for the rest of my life. “I need to go back to my friends. Martha is entertaining them, but I can’t leave them any longer.”
“Right.” I touch a curl at her temple because I can’t not. “We can do all that.”
“We?” she echoes, testing the fit.
“Absolutely.”
She kisses me again, it’s a promise.
“Come on,” I say, finding the door with my free hand because my eyes are busy staring at her. “We can go see your friends, and you can either go with them to the retreat and then come back to me, or you can just stay here.”
“Stay?”
“If you want to.” I swallow past the lump in my throat. “I want you to.”
“For how long?”
“How does forever sound?”
“Perfect.”
I pull the big door open. Afternoon pours in, warm and gold, catching her hair. She steps into the sun without fear, and when she looks back over her shoulder, it’s not a question that I’ll be following right behind her. We cross the yard together, making our way hand in hand toward her friends.