Wild Side (Rose Hill #3)

12. Tabitha

CHAPTER 12

TABITHA

Rhys:

Checking in. How’s Milo?

Tabby:

He’s just fine.

Rhys:

I’ll be away for another week.

Tabby:

Great.

Milo is curled beside me in bed. It’s Tuesday morning, and I don’t have to work until dinner. Rhys has been away for two glorious weeks. The sun has been shining, the birds have been chirping, and I’ve been pretending that he and his “I don’t know” plan to take Milo to a place filled with snakes and crocodiles doesn’t exist.

I definitely have not been thinking about his head between my legs. Though, if I was, I could argue that’s a great place for it, because at least I wouldn’t have to listen to him talk or look at his grumpy fucking face.

Milo stirs, reaching for me in his sleep, and although I had been considering rolling out of bed to make a coffee, his sweetness has now convinced me to stay.

I’m paralyzed by how much I love him. By how much I need him. And by the knowledge that he needs me too.

Ever since we told him about Erika, he’s been having nightmares. He wakes up scared, and though they aren’t ever about something real, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know he’s processing a lot. Another call with Trixie confirmed as much.

So I’ve kept him with me in my king-sized bed. We both get more sleep this way, and truth be told, I enjoy watching him sleep. I can lie beside him and pick out all the fragments of my sister. It feels like she’s not as gone when I look at him. Like she lives on in him because his earlobe is shaped exactly how I remember hers. Or the way his bottom lip is slightly fuller than the top—she had that too.

Telling him might have been worse than finding out Erika was gone. Rhys looked like a stony-faced ghost. He sounded like the male version of Siri reading a script, and he looked blank—traumatized—as he did it. It might be the first time I’ve felt a true flicker of empathy for him. I itched to reach out and hold his leg like he’d done mine. But with Milo there, I didn’t. Instead, I jumped in and wove softer wording and a few more sentimental lines.

I don’t know if it helped Rhys, because, as usual, the man barely talks to me. But I do think one glare he shot my way might have been appreciative.

Or at least that’s what I tell myself.

The conversation was brutal, watching the emotions flicker over Milo’s face. He didn’t cry. Not then. Instead, he’s cried over inconsequential things. His tears have come out in different ways at various times.

And mine? They haven’t come at all. Not since the night I was packing things up in Erika’s house and dropped a heavy box of journals on my foot. The black bruise on the bridge of my foot has only recently smudged away into my regular skin tone. My nose had stung, and my eyes had welled. It had hurt like hell.

But one thing I know will hurt more is opening those journals. That’s the one box left taped shut and pushed into a corner in the basement—formerly called “The Dungeon” and recently renamed “Rhys’s bedroom.”

Letting him stay here was out of character in every way. And I do my best not to dwell on my decision. I tell myself I’m just doing what needs to be done. Keeping us all afloat—like always.

Which is why I’ve worked so hard at being present and emotionally available for Milo these past weeks. We’ve spent our days unpacking his mom’s things and incorporating them into the house. Trixie recommended the exercise to weave Erika and conversations about her into our everyday lives. A photo here, a trinket there, a worn Persian rug from her house laid out in the entryway.

Erika’s will stated that she didn’t want a funeral, so the urn housing her ashes sits on the mantel, flanked on both sides by small frames we spent the week filling with our favorite photos of her.

In a dark twist, Milo named the plant I brought back from her house in Emerald Lake “Erika.” Every morning, he gets up and greets her by name. It shouldn’t be funny, but it makes us both laugh. And strangely, I find myself smiling over at the plant when something cute happens with Milo, as though I’m looking at my sister and exchanging a look that says this kid .

He probably needs a pet, but for now, there’s just a corn plant named Erika, with a slightly angled trunk and broad green leaves.

Today our bittersweet bubble is going to be popped though, because the big broody porn star is set to return for a few days. And I’m as nervous as one would be before a major final exam.

I know Rhys says he means well, but I can’t help feeling like I’m being tested. And if I’m not up to his standards, I’ll have failed. Something I hate to do.

I already feel like I failed Erika.

I can’t fail this too.

After a morning spent picking roses for my signature tea blend at the bistro, Milo is napping when Rhys arrives.

He rolls up to the front door and darkens it with his width. From where I sit at the kitchen table flipping through an industry magazine, I feel his shadow snuff out the light.

“Door’s open,” I call, ignoring the urge to get up and greet him. The way my stomach flips with the eager anticipation of knowing he’s about to walk into my house is best left ignored. Shoved down into a dark corner where I hide all my other unpleasant feelings.

When Rhys steps in, I peek up. My eyes have the perfect straight shot down the hallway to see him looking downright murderous and wearing black from head to toe. Jeans, T-shirt, slicked-back hair. Probably his boxers too .

It’s the way he carries himself. There’s something… I don’t know, ominous about him? I blame the fact that I’ve been too busy to have sex for some time now for the way my core clenches. How fucked up do I have to be to get all horny over a man who is here to make my life miserable and looks at me like he wants to kill me?

“You gotta stop leaving your front door open,” he grumps, while using his toes to pull off each of his black leather sneakers.

“Why?” I flip through the magazine with a little extra flourish, doing my best to appear completely unaffected by him. He looks like himself, but all tidied up. Hair a bit shorter. Full beard leaning more toward sexy stubble than scruffy mountain man.

Him being so attractive is deeply annoying.

“The gun under your pillow isn’t enough.”

I laugh. “That was a joke. This is Canada, Rhys. I don’t own a gun. Neither does anyone I know.” Peeking in his direction provides proof that my empty threat of a gun under my pillow has pissed him off. My body hums as he starts toward me.

“It’s not safe.”

I roll my eyes with intentional petulance and flip another page. My tone comes out mocking when I ask, “What are you going to do? Punish me?”

His approach has him towering over me. I can feel his gaze, and the way the air shifts around his thickly corded body. “Not in the way you’re thinking.”

A tug in my pelvis betrays me, and I look up at him, meeting the challenge in his eyes. For a flash, I note how tired he looks, but I brush that aside. “And what way are you thinking?” I push the magazine away and sit up tall in my chair, crossing my legs and looking up to give him my best innocent doe-eyed look.

His teeth strum once over his bottom lip as he glowers down at me. And for the first time, I can’t tell if the darkness that flashes in his irises is because I piss him off or because he does want to fuck me. All I know is he seems more focused on my mouth than on my eyes.

My head tilts as I consider him. Then I decide to push just a little further. Because if nothing else, this situation between us is a power struggle, and I’m not afraid to take my power where I can find it.

If he thought he was squaring off against some timid little girl, he thought wrong.

“Does it involve bending me over this table?—”

“Tabitha,” he cuts me off, voice hoarse. But I don’t miss the way his eyes flit to the table, his fist clenching around the strap of his bag.

I blink innocently. “What?”

He shifts, hiking his duffel up over his shoulder and moving it to his front. Like it’s a shield between us. “You should be worried about an intruder.”

My lips press together as I nod my head. This man is out of touch with what it means to live in this small town. “Just think, if I get murdered, you’ll be free of me. You and Milo can skip off into the sunset without me holding you back.”

He shakes his head as he turns away and saunters toward the basement. And I do mean saunters. His hips sway in a slow and natural motion. His ass…

His. Ass .

I give my head a shake too and glance up at the ceiling, asking the sky for a little self-control here. And I remind myself that I do not like Rhys Dupris, no matter what my pussy thinks about him.