Chapter 13
RHETT
I’ve been staring at the same water stain on my ceiling for forty-five minutes.
It’s shaped like nothing in particular, but I’ve mapped it a hundred times over the last week as I lie here after long days on the ranch, with my boots still on and my arm thrown over my eyes, trying to find something to focus on that isn’t the thing I keep coming back to.
The water stain seems like a good choice.
A week.
It’s been a week since the birthday party, and I haven’t said a single word about what happened behind that barn, and neither has Colt.
We’ve worked side by side every day since like two men who are perfectly fine, but I am not perfectly fine.
I am so far from perfectly fine that fine has become a foreign country I can no longer locate on a map.
Here’s what I know.
I know that I put my mouth on Colton Dawson’s dick and didn’t hate it.
I know that, when I close my eyes, I think about his hands and the sounds he made.
I know that I am twenty-three years old and have never felt anything like that in my life.
And I don’t know what to do with that information.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand. I grab it and unlock it.
Unknown Number:
I heard the dick is pierced. Did you like it?
It’s been two weeks since the last one. My mystery admirer has been silent since I broke up with Molly.
I read the text again, then again, my pulse rising as heat crawls up my neck. No one should know that I know his dick is pierced, except for one person.
Colton.
It has to be him. He’s smart and calculated enough to try and play this game. He’s got me so twisted up inside, he must think he can just expose me for being something I most definitely am not.
Me:
Who told you that?
Unknown Number:
A little bird. Did you answer my question?
Me:
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Unknown Number:
Sure you don’t. How’s the jaw? Must be sore.
White hot. Everything goes white hot.
I sit up in bed.
Me:
Tell me who you are right now.
Unknown Number:
You already know, Rhett. You’ve known for a while. You’re just scared of what it means that you liked it.
Me:
You think this is funny.
Unknown Number:
I think you’re lying in bed right now thinking about it. Am I wrong?
I stare at the screen. My hands are shaking.
Unknown Number:
Go to sleep, golden boy. Dream about that piercing.
I’m out of bed before the screen goes dark.
The drive to Aria’s house takes twelve minutes at a normal speed.
I do it in eight, windows down, jaw locked, the night air doing absolutely nothing to cool the thing burning in my chest. Fury and want and humiliation all wind together so tight I can’t separate one from the other.
The lights are on in the house, but Aria’s car is gone, and Matt’s bike is gone.
Just Colt’s motorcycle sits on the side of the house, catching the porch light.
The door isn’t locked—this is Cedarbrook, nothing is locked—and I push it open to find Colt on the couch with a book, of all things, reading. He looks up when the door opens.
“Rhett.”
“Is it you?” My voice is flat and tight and barely controlled.
He closes the book, setting it on the cushion beside him. “What the fuck is wrong?”
“Have you been sending me those texts all summer?”
He looks at me for a long moment. “No.”
“The piercing, Colt. They knew about the piercing. Who else—”
“I said no.” His voice sharpens as he stands up. “Close the door and lower your voice. This isn’t just my house.”
“Aria and Matt are at The Bar.”
“I know where they are. Close the door.”
I close it, but I don’t lower my voice. “There isn’t anyone else that knows about that—nobody else was there. It was you and me behind that barn, and the next thing I know, I’m getting a text describing exactly what happened, and you want me to believe—”
“I want you to believe me when I tell you I didn’t send it.
” He crosses the room, and he’s not calm.
I can see it now—the tension in his jaw, the set of his shoulders.
He’s genuinely pissed as well. “You think I’ve been playing some game with you all summer?
You think I need a blocked number to get under your skin?
I’ve been doing that just fine to your face. ”
“Then who knew?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough.”
“Too bad.” He steps closer, but I hold my ground. “You drove over here at eleven o’clock at night to accuse me of something I didn’t do because it’s easier than dealing with the real reason you can’t sleep.”
“Don’t.”
“You’re not angry about the texts, Rhett. You’re angry because you liked it. You’re angry because you’ve been lying in bed all week thinking about it, and you don’t know what to do with that. So you drove over here to make it my fault.”
“I told you—”
“You told me you’re straight. Yeah. You’ve said that. Multiple times.” His eyes are dark and direct. “Does this feel like nothing to you? Right now? Standing here.”
I shove him hard, both hands on his chest. He takes one step back, and that’s it. He doesn’t fall, doesn’t stumble, just absorbs it and looks at me like I’ve confirmed something he already knew.
“There it is,” he says quietly.
“Stop doing that. Stop acting like you know me.”
“I do know you.”
“You don’t.”
He grabs my wrists and holds them against him—both of them—his hands wrapped around my pulse points.
I pull against his grip but he doesn’t let go, and we stand there, in the middle of Aria’s living room, in a standoff that has nothing to do with the texts and everything to do with every single thing that’s been building since the first night at the bonfire.
“Let go of me.”
“Stop running, and I will.”
“I’m not.”
“You drove here, in the middle of the night, Rhett.” His voice drops.
“You could have texted. You could have called. Instead, you got in your truck and drove here because some part of you, that you won’t listen to, needed to be here.
I’m not the person sending those texts, but I am the reason you can’t sleep, and you know it. ”
I stop pulling against his grip. “I hate you,” I say, but my voice comes out low and rough and completely unconvincing.
“No, you don’t.” He loosens his grip on my wrists but doesn’t let go. His thumbs press lightly against my pulse and I know he can feel how fast my heart is going. “You wish you fucking could. That’s different.”
I kiss him.
Not like in the forest. Not hard and angry and to prove something—or maybe it starts that way. My hands grab the front of his shirt, pulling him in because I have to do something with all of this, and this is the only thing that makes the noise stop.
But then, it shifts. Within seconds, the kiss shifts into something that scares me more than the anger did. Something that wants to go slow—that wants to stay.
Colt kisses me back, his hands moving to my face, tilting me where he wants me. And the thoroughness of it—the way he takes his time … the way he kisses … like he’s learning something he intends to remember.
We break apart, and he looks at me.
I look back.
All the fight has left my body.
“While you’re here …” he says, his voice rough, eyes dark. He tilts his head toward the hallway. “Let me show you something.”
My heart is slamming against my ribs. “Colt.”
“I’ve got you. I’ve always got you. You know that.”
I follow him down the hall, anxious as fuck. Is this actually what I want? The thoughts in my head war in my head. Should I leave now, while I’m ahead? Live a life that I know is safe and calm. Or do I go into that fucking bedroom and find out if this is what I’ve been missing my entire life.
His room is small and lived-in. A lamp on the nightstand casts a warm light, there are clothes on the chair in the corner, and the window is cracked, letting the night sounds in. It smells like him—tobacco and leather, something that has been living in my memory for weeks without permission.
He turns to face me, reaching for my shirt, and I catch his hands.
“I haven’t—” I stop, then start again. “I don’t know how to.”
“I know.” He says it simply. “I’m going to take care of you. All you have to do is tell me if you need me to stop.”
I let go of his hand.
He takes my shirt off slowly, then lays his palms flat against my chest before slowly moving them to my shoulders and my sides. I feel every point of contact with a clarity that’s almost painful. My whole nervous system has rerouted itself and is reporting exclusively from wherever his hands are.
“You’re tense,” he observes.
“I’m aware.”
The corner of his mouth moves, then he leans in, putting his mouth on my neck, just below my jaw, and the tension doesn’t leave so much as transform into something else entirely.
My hand comes up to his shoulder without being told to, gripping, steadying myself against whatever is happening to my legs.
He walks me back to the bed, and I sit on the edge of it.
He stands in front of me and takes his own shirt off, and I look at him the way I haven’t allowed myself to look for the entire summer.
The ink. His lines. The ring of the piercing catches the lamplight, and my mouth goes dry thinking about what it feels like.
“Stop thinking,” he says.
“I can’t just—”
“I know. But try.” He puts both hands on my jaw and tips my face up and kisses me again, slow and deep, and thinking becomes significantly harder to prioritize.
He lays me back, working my jeans off, and I let him because my hands have decided that his hair is where they belong, and I’m not fighting it anymore. He takes his time, and I am so far past the point of argument that the word no has left my vocabulary entirely.
“Tell me if it’s too much,” he says. There’s a click of a bottle opening as one of his hands rubs up and down my thigh.
“Okay.” My voice comes out rough.
“I mean it, Rhett. Tell me.”
“I will.”