Chapter 16
RHETT
Iam watching Sadie laugh at something Knox said across my family's dinner table, and I know with complete certainty that I am done pretending this is only about the harvest.
She has her chin lifted, laughing at the ceiling, dark hair catching the candlelight, and the sound coming out of her is real. Not the polite laugh she gave the first few weeks. Not the guarded one. This is the laugh I remember from the Old Oak, back before the county paperwork.
Back before I let her family's name get dragged through Red Oak Ridge without saying a word.
Knox is telling some story about a spooked gelding at last year's reining trials, waving his fork around like it proves his point.
Beck is shaking his head like he's heard the story a dozen times before.
Evelyn sits at my right hand, her wine untouched, watching Sadie the way she watches a vine she's been nursing back to health.
Sadie lifts her glass and turns it toward the candlelight before she drinks, an old habit she doesn't seem to notice anymore. I notice it. I notice everything about her lately, whether I mean to or not.
I don't say much. I never do at these dinners. But I don't need to. I just need to sit here and watch her fit into this house like she never left it.
"You're staring," Beck mutters, low enough that only I catch it.
"I'm listening."
"Sure you are."
Knox catches the exchange and doesn't bother lowering his voice. "He's been doing that all night. Staring." He points his fork at me like evidence in a trial. "Man hasn't blinked since the salad course."
"Knox."
"I'm just saying what everybody's thinking." Knox grins at Sadie like he's handing her a gift. "Our brother forgot how to use words around pretty women. Comes and goes."
"For the record," Knox adds, pointing his fork at the table in general, "this is officially the best dinner of the season. I'd put it on the winery's social media if I thought Rhett wouldn't fire me for it."
"I'd fire you for it."
"See? Everything's an event if you frame it right."
Sadie laughs, and it goes straight through me worse than the first one did. "Good to know some things never change."
"Some things," Knox agrees, "are getting worse."
Evelyn reaches over and pats my hand without looking away from her own conversation with Rosa, like she's confirming something she already suspected.
Rosa clears the dessert plates, and Evelyn starts in on a story about my grandfather and a mare he swore could count to ten. Sadie leans forward, elbows on the table, fully in it, asking the kind of questions that tell me she wants to know the answer. Not politeness. Curiosity.
I used to think this table only worked one way, all Beaumont, all the time. Tonight it doesn't feel like that at all. It feels like it's supposed to have her in it.
By the time the plates are cleared and Knox is arguing with Beck over the last of the peach cobbler, something in my chest has settled into a decision I've been making one day at a time for weeks now, without ever letting myself call it that.
I am not calling this business anymore. Not to myself, not to her, not to anyone who asks.
Sadie stands to help Rosa with the glasses, and I catch her wrist before she can carry the tray toward the kitchen.
"Leave it."
"Rhett—"
"Rosa's got it. Walk with me."
She looks at my hand on her wrist, then up at me, and whatever she sees there makes her set the tray back down without another word.
We step out onto the porch. The string lights Evelyn insisted on stringing up, just because the porch could use a little more shine, haven't come down, threaded along the railing, and they throw soft gold light across her face.
The night air smells like crushed grapes and cut grass, and somewhere out past the vineyard rows, a night bird calls once and goes quiet.
She stops at the top of the steps and turns to face me. "That was nice," she says. "Your family. All of it."
"They like you."
"I noticed." A small smile pulls at the corner of her mouth. "Evelyn especially."
"Evelyn decided about you before I did."
That gets a real laugh out of her, quiet and surprised. "Should I be worried?"
"No." I take a step closer. "You should be worried about me."
Her smile fades into something more careful. "Why's that?"
For a second neither of us says anything. The porch stays quiet around us, and somewhere behind us, through the window, I can hear Knox arguing with Beck about the cobbler. Out here it's just her and me and the dark rows of vines running down toward the river.
I have rehearsed nothing. I never do. But standing here with her looking up at me like she's bracing for whatever I'm about to say, I know I owe her the truth without dressing it up first.
"Because I can't keep calling this business," I say. "Not the partnership. Not you and me. Any of it."
She goes still. Not the frozen kind of still, the listening kind.
"I told myself the harvest deal made sense for both operations.
" I stop. Start again. "That's true. It's not the reason.
" I look away, out at the dark rows, then back at her.
"I've spent years wondering what I'd do if you ever came back through that gate.
You did. Every plan I had for staying professional went straight to hell. "
My hand finds the porch rail without my telling it to, gripping down hard enough that I'll feel it tomorrow. Old habit. Some part of me keeps scanning the dark tree line out of pure reflex, even now, even here.
"Rhett—"
"I'm not finished." My voice comes out rough.
"I made mistakes with you I can't undo. Stayed quiet when I should've stood up for your family.
Let six years go by telling myself it was too late to fix it.
" I stop, throat tight, before I make myself finish.
"Every day since you walked back into my house, I've been lying to both of us. "
Her eyes are bright, and she doesn't look away from me once.
"So say it," she says softly. "Whatever it is you've been not saying."
I close the last of the distance between us. My hand finds the side of her face, gentle, tilting her chin up to mine. "This isn't the harvest talking. It's not the deal, and it's not guilt, and it's not me trying to make up for something I can't undo. It's you. It's always been you."
For a second she doesn't move at all. I can see her deciding whether to believe me, the same way she's decided everything since she came back, careful, guarded, unwilling to hand anyone a piece of herself she can't afford to lose twice.
"If this is just another version of you trying to fix what your family broke?—"
"It's not." I hold her gaze so she can't mistake me for lying. "I'm not doing this to fix anything. I'm doing it because I can't stand one more day of pretending I don't want you."
She doesn't answer with words.
Her hand grips the front of my shirt, and she pulls me down the last inch, and then I'm kissing her again, except this time there's nothing careful about it. This time it's every year I spent not doing this, poured into one slow, certain slide of my mouth against hers.
She makes a soft sound against my lips, and it undoes something in me completely.
I back her against the porch railing, one hand cradling her face, the other sliding to the small of her back to pull her flush against me. She comes willingly, her fingers sliding up into my hair, and the kiss turns deeper, hungrier, years of almost collapsing into this one point of contact.
"Rhett." She breathes my name against my mouth, rough at the edges, like she's been holding it in too long.
"I know." I trail my mouth along the line of her cheek, down the side of her throat, and feel her pulse jump under my lips. "I know exactly what I'm asking for."
"Do you?" Her hands tighten in my hair, and she tilts her head back to give me better access, an involuntary arch of her body into mine. "Because I don't think I can go back to pretending after this."
"Good." I find her mouth again, slower this time, deliberate. "I don't want you to."
Her hands slide down from my hair to my chest, flattening against my shirt like she needs something to hold onto, and I feel the exact moment she stops fighting whatever's happening between us and just lets it happen.
Her whole body softens against mine, and I take full advantage, walking her back another step until she's caged between the railing and me, nowhere left to retreat to even if she wanted to.
She doesn't want to. That much is clear in the way she pulls me closer instead of pushing me away, in the small, needy sound she makes when my hand finds the bare skin just above the zipper at her back.
"You've been thinking about this," she says against my mouth, not quite a question.
"Since the road with the colt." My hand tightens at her waist. "Since before that, if I'm honest."
"That's a long time to keep something like this quiet."
"I'm done keeping it quiet."
She pulls back just far enough to look at me, and whatever she finds on my face makes her breath catch. Then she's kissing me again, harder this time, like she's decided something and isn't interested in taking it back.
"Someone's going to see," she murmurs, though she doesn't move to stop me.
"Let them."
She laughs against my mouth, breathless and a little wild, and the sound goes straight through me. I kiss her harder for it, until neither of us is thinking about anything except the two of us and the warm glow overhead and everything finally catching up to right now.
When we finally break apart, her lips are swollen, her breathing unsteady, her hands clutching my shirt like she isn't ready to let go. I rest my forehead against hers, both of us breathing hard in the dark.
"That's the truth," I say quietly. "All of it. No more pretending this is business."
She pulls back just enough to look at me, dark hair mussed, eyes glassy with want. "Then I guess we're done pretending."
"Guess we are."
Neither of us moves toward the door. The string lights keep glowing overhead, and somewhere behind us the family is still at the table, still laughing, still completely unaware their whole world just shifted out here in the dark.
I don't care who's watching from the house, who sees us out here, what any of it costs me tomorrow.
I'm not done with Sadie Collins tonight. Not even close.