Chapter 6
RHETT
Iam watching my grandmother seat Sadie Collins directly across from me at the family dinner table like this was always the plan, and I realize I have officially lost control of my own house.
"Right there, honey." Evelyn pats the chair like the decision was made a week ago. "Best seat for the candlelight."
Sadie sits. She doesn't look at me, and that says more than if she had.
Knox drops into his chair across from Beck, boots still dusty from the stables, hat tossed somewhere by the back door where Rosa won't yell at him for it. Youngest of the three of us, and it shows.
Where Beck runs the winery like it's scripture and I run everything else like it might fall apart if I blink, Knox runs the resort and the event calendar like the whole operation is one long party he's hosting.
He's already grinning like a man who smells a good story coming.
"Didn't realize we were doing assigned seating now."
"We're not," I say.
"We are," Evelyn says, and takes her place at the head of the table like the matter's settled.
Candles down the center of the table, the good silver out, the kind of spread Rosa only pulls for company that matters. Smoke curls off the steaks. Somewhere past the porch screens, the cicadas are already going, loud enough to fill every silence nobody wants to sit in.
Evelyn lifts her wine before anyone touches a fork. Doesn't say much of anything, just, "To harvest season. And to having the right people back at this table."
Her eyes land on Sadie when she says it. Not long. Long enough.
"Wine tells the truth," she adds, settling back into her chair like she's said all she means to say tonight. "So do people, eventually."
Sadie turns her glass a quarter turn before she drinks, the way she probably does without knowing she's doing it. Reading the vintage. Reading the room.
Nobody asks Evelyn to explain that. Nobody needs to.
No phones. That rule's been in place since before I could walk, and tonight Sadie sets hers face-down next to her fork without being told, the same way she used to when she was sixteen and eating at this table like she belonged here. She did belong here. That was never the question.
Rosa brings out the steaks, the potatoes, the bread Sadie used to steal warm out of the oven when Rosa wasn't looking. Nobody mentions that part. Doesn't mean nobody's thinking it.
"So," Beck says, cutting into his steak, "should we talk about how the whole valley knows Sadie Collins is back at the Beaumont dinner table, or should we just let Knox spend the whole meal building up to asking?"
"I wasn't going to ask," Knox says.
"You were about to ask."
Sadie laughs, quick and real, and something in my chest loosens that I didn't know was tight.
"So how's your mama holding up?" Evelyn asks, reaching for her wine. "Haven't seen Diane at the co-op in weeks."
My hand goes still around my glass.
Diane Collins never had much use for the Beaumont name, not since the scandal, not since I stood by and let my father bury her family's reputation without a word. Can't say I blame her.
Six years hasn't made the lawsuit paperwork any easier to think about. Words like negligence and breach of duty, printed cold and final, deciding in a courtroom what nobody in this town has ever actually agreed on.
I set the glass down before my grip says more than I mean it to.
Something crosses Sadie's face. Quick, there and gone, gone so fast I almost convince myself I imagined it.
"She's good," Sadie says. "Busy."
"Busy" comes out a little too smooth. I tuck it away without knowing what to do with it yet.
Sadie asks about the horses, and Knox talks over Beck for a full two minutes about a reining prospect he's convinced is going to be a champion.
Somewhere in there he starts pitching the idea of working the colt into next spring's guest weekends, some kind of meet-the-herd photo op he swears the resort crowd will pay extra for.
Beck tells him not everything has to be an event. Knox tells him everything can be an event if you frame it right.
I let it run because watching her at this table again has my chest doing something I haven't felt since before she left.
She laughs at something Knox says, head tipped back, throat bare in the candlelight, and I lose the thread of whatever Beck's telling me about barrel counts.
I've been staring too long. Beck's gone quiet, watching me watch her.
I look back at my plate like it did something interesting.
The bread basket sits between us. She reaches for it at the same second I do.
Our hands land together on the warm wicker, the bread still steaming underneath.
Neither of us moves.
Her thumb shifts, just slightly, like she's testing whether I'll pull away first. I don't. I'm close enough to catch the wine and rosemary smell of her, some kind of leftover from Evelyn's garden clinging to her hair, close enough to see the exact second her breath changes.
"Rhett." Barely a whisper, just my name, and it lands somewhere low in my chest.
I make myself let go of the basket first. It's the hardest thing I've done all week.
Long enough that Beck's fork stops halfway to his mouth.
She sets the basket down her side of the table, slow, like she's making herself do it instead of letting her hand decide. I go back to my plate like nothing happened.
Something happened.
Knox opens his mouth. Beck kicks him under the table before a single word gets out, hard enough that Knox winces and reaches for his tea instead.
Nobody says a word about it. Evelyn's smile says she doesn't need to.
By the time Rosa clears the plates, the sun's dropped low over the vineyard rows, gold light stretched thin across the table. Sadie stands, thanks Evelyn, thanks Rosa, tells Beck his wine selection was "decent, for a man who peaked at seventeen," which gets a real laugh out of the table.
"I'll walk you out," I say.
Nobody looks surprised. That's the part that gets me. Like the whole family's been waiting on this longer than I have.
Outside, the gravel crunches under our boots. The air's cooled off fast, the way it does out here once the sun drops behind the ridge, and the sky's gone that deep, bruised blue that means the stars are about to come out all at once.
She wraps her arms around herself without seeming to notice she's doing it.
Her truck sits where it always does, parked crooked, same as it always used to be.
She stops at the driver's door and turns.
"Rhett."
Just my name. Nothing after it.
I'm closer than I meant to be. Close enough that professional distance stopped applying somewhere around the bread basket.
"I never got to say I was sorry," I say.
She goes still. "For what?"
That's the question, isn't it. For staying quiet when my father told the family to. For letting that silence stretch on long after it should've broken. For every version of the truth I've been circling since she got out of that truck on Ranch Road 12.
I open my mouth.
Close it again.
I'm close enough now that I could count her eyelashes if I had any sense left in me.
Her eyes drop to my mouth. Just for a second. Long enough that I feel it everywhere.
I lean in before I've decided to. Stop myself an inch out, close enough that I can feel her breath catch against my skin.
"For a lot of things," I say instead, and step back before I do something I can't undo tonight. "That's all I've got tonight."
The cicadas don't quit for a second of it. Neither one of us moves for a stretch too long to call casual.
She studies me the way she used to study a glass of wine before she'd say a word about it. Like she's looking for what's underneath.
"That's not an answer."
"No," I say. "It isn't."
She doesn't push. Just nods once, like she's tucking it away for later, and climbs into her truck.
I stand there while she settles behind the wheel, hands in my pockets, telling myself to go back inside before I say something I can't take back for real this time.
Her phone lights up on the passenger seat, the screen bright enough to catch through the windshield in the dark.
She looks down at it. Whatever's on that screen, it changes her face. Just for a second, there and gone, the same look she gets when a wine turns on her mid-pour.
She doesn't glance back up at me. Just pulls out, slow over the gravel, taillights swinging toward the gate.
I don't know what just landed on that phone.
But I've got a bad feeling it's got my name on it.