Chapter 10 Rhett
RHETT
“You’re not even trying,” Dawson says, pulling his dart out of the board.
Double twenty. Again. He’s been hitting it all night and it’s annoying as hell.
Dawson’s loft is in the second story of the horse barn. He spent most of last year fixing it up into a studio apartment. It’s nothing fancy, but it is a bachelor pad with a beat-up leather couch, mini fridge, and a dart board mounted to the wall beside the bed.
“I’m trying.”
“You’re thinking.” He hands me the next dart. “That’s your problem. Stop thinking and just throw the damn thing.”
I throw it. It lands wide, on the left side, and Dawson makes a sound that’s not quite a laugh but is definitely close to one.
“See.”
“Shut up.”
He grabs two beers from the mini fridge and drops onto the couch, stretching his legs out. I pull the darts from the board and line up again, rolling the weight of one between my fingers. This is good. This is exactly what I needed.
My phone buzzes when I’m mid-throw and I finish the motion, the dart finally landing somewhere decent for once. I pull out my phone, expecting Molly to text me, drunk, or my mom asking where I am.
Unknown number:
Image
It’s Colt. At the bonfire. He’s got his fingers under the chin of a girl, tilting her face toward his, and she’s looking at him like she’s starving.
It’s Molly.
I realize the second dart is still in my hand when I squeeze my fist so tight the thing almost breaks.
“Rhett.” Dawson’s voice is careful as he watches me from the couch. “What’s wrong?”
I turn the phone around and show him, watching his face come to the same conclusion I did.
“Where is that?” he asks.
“I don’t know.” But even as I say it, I’m already moving, pulling my jacket off the hook by the loft ladder. “Bonfire somewhere. Miller’s Creek, maybe.”
“Rhett—”
“He did that on purpose.”
A beat, then Dawson sets his beer down and stands up. “I’ll drive.”
I don’t argue. I’m already down the ladder.
The drive is fifteen minutes of me staring out the passenger window with my jaw locked and my hand flat on my knee to stop it from doing something I’ll regret.
Dawson doesn’t try to talk me down. He knows me well enough to know that’s not what I need and to be worried about what I’m going to do when we get there.
But he drives anyway because that’s who Dawson is.
We hear the party before we see it—music thumping through the tree line, firelight flickering where the woods thin out. Dawson parks behind a row of trucks and I’m out before the engine is fully off.
“Hey.” Dawson grabs my arm. “What’s the plan?”
“I’ll find you after.”
“Rhett. What’s the plan.”
I look at him. “I’m going to handle it.”
He lets go of my arm, but he doesn’t look happy about it.
I walk into the party and scan for Colt first, moving through clusters of people I half recognize from high school, nodding at the ones who call my name, keeping my eyes moving.
No Colt.
What I find instead, on the far side of the fire, is Molly.
She’s dancing with someone. Not the way she dances with me, but loose and laughing, head tipped back, hair moving, completely in tune with the music. She looks happy. The observation lands somewhere behind my sternum with a dull ache that I don’t have time for right now.
I cross the field.
She sees me coming and her face changes, the happiness dropping into something more complicated, then into wariness. The guy she’s dancing with clocks my expression and takes a generous step back.
“Rhett—” she starts.
“Can we talk?” It comes out harsher than I intended, but I don’t soften it.
She follows me away from the music, and I turn on her before she can get a word in. “You want to tell me what that was?” I ask.
She blinks. “What was what? I was just dancing—”
“With Colt’s hands on your face twenty minutes ago and some other guy’s hands on your waist right now.” I look at her and feel the fury and the guilt and the exhaustion of three months all hitting at the same time. “Half of Cedarbrook is here, Molly. Everyone knows we’re together.”
Her chin comes up. “Maybe if you actually acted like it I wouldn’t be dancing with anyone else.”
And there it is. The thing she’s been holding in for three months, finally out in the open.
She’s not wrong, but I’m still furious. And I’m furious at myself for being furious because I don’t even have the right to be standing here, feeling this way about a girl I’ve never once been able to give a damn about the way she deserves.
“You’re right,” I say. “You deserve better than how I’ve treated you. You deserve someone who shows up. I’m not him. I never was.” I hold her eyes. “We’re done, Molly.”
The slap comes before I can even think of my next move. Open palm, hard, catching me across the left cheek with enough force that my head turns. The sound of it cuts through the music nearby and a few people look over.
I let my head turn with it. Let the sting settle. When I look back at her, she’s got her hand pressed to her mouth, her eyes full of tears. She looks furious and devastated in equal measure, and she deserves so much better than anything I could have given her.
“Molly…”
“Don’t.” Her voice cracks on the single syllable. “Just…don’t.”
I just nod, because I owe her that much. Then I turn and walk away and don’t look back, because looking back would be for me and not for her and I’ve already taken enough.
My cheek throbs. Good. The physical feeling is the only thing I can process right now as I push into the woods, toward where Dawson parked.
As I make my way past the tree line, Colt steps out of the dark between two trees like he’s been leaning there for a while.
Like he knew exactly which direction I’d come from.
He’s got a bottle loose in one hand, his eyes on me, and that expression on his face—that still, knowing expression that I’ve wanted to wipe off since the first night at the bonfire.
I stop.
“There he is. I was wondering if you’d show up, Golden Boy. You look a little rough around the edges.”
“You sent that photo.”
He tips his head. Doesn’t confirm, doesn’t deny, just watches me with those blue-green eyes that catch the faint light and I hate him. I genuinely hate him. My hands are shaking, which makes me fucking hate him more.
“You used her. You put your hands on her to get to me. You know that’s what you did.”
“Did it work?”
The words hit like a lit match. “She’s a person, Colt—”
“You’re right. She is a person. She’s also the girl you’ve been stringing along for months because you don’t have the guts to admit what you actually want.” He pushes off the tree, taking one step toward me, unhurried. “I did her a favor. You did too, just now. I saw.”
“Stay out of my life.”
“You don’t want me to stay out of your life.” Another step. “You want me so deep in it you can’t think straight and that’s exactly what’s killing you right now.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I felt your hard dick in that hallway, Rhett. I’ve been thinking about that every night this week.
Thinking about wrapping my hand around you.
Thinking about dropping to my knees right here in the dark and putting my mouth on you until you stop lying to yourself and start making sounds I know you’ve got locked up somewhere behind all that control. ”
My breath leaves my body entirely.
“I want to taste you. I want to take you apart so slowly you forget every single thing you think you’re supposed to be. And the only thing standing between you and that right now is four inches of air and your own stubborn bullshit.”
“Shut up.” My voice comes out wrecked and we both know it.
“Make me, Rhett.” His eyes drop to my mouth and stay there, dark and patient and absolutely certain. “Or better yet, put that pretty mouth on me, Cowboy, and make us both stop talking.”
He’s so close I can smell the whisky on his breath. A single curl falls across his forehead as the corner of his mouth curls into a smile, and my walls crumble.
I grab him by the front of his shirt and kiss him.
It’s not tender. It’s hard, immediate, and furious—my fist in his shirt, my mouth on his, shutting him up the only way I can think of.
Proving something I can’t articulate, disproving something else entirely.
I feel him go still for one split second—just one—and then he kisses me back and it’s nothing like any kiss I’ve ever had in my life.
It’s like being leveled.
The kiss breaks something open in me that I didn't know was closed.
His hand comes up to the back of my neck, angling me exactly where he wants me, and I let him, because all logic has completely vacated the building and left someone else in charge, someone who has been waiting a very long time for exactly this.
I pull back first, breathing hard.
“There,” I say, my voice wrecked. “That what you wanted? That prove anything to you?”
Colt looks at me. His mouth is slightly bruised, his eyes are dark, and he looks like a man who just won something and knows it. “Yeah,” he says. “It does.”
I release his shirt and step back, turn to head deeper into the woods, toward the truck, toward anything that is away from him.
I make it four steps.
His hand closes around my wrist.
His fingers wrap around my pulse point, but he doesn’t yank me back, just holds my wrist, stopping me. And I stand there, with my back to him, my heart slamming against my ribs, but I don’t pull away.
“Going somewhere, Golden Boy?” Colt’s voice is smoke and gravel, right against my ear. His chain is cold where it presses my neck, and his rings dig into my hip where he’s gripping me. “You don’t get to kiss me like that then run. I’m tired of letting you run away from me like some fucking coward.”
I shove back with my elbows, but he doesn’t budge. He just laughs, the sound vibrating through my spine.
“Let go,” I rasp.