Chapter 14
COLTON
Twelve years old
It took months for me to convince Aunt Aria to let me come with her to Scary Movie Night at Thornwood Ranch.
I’m twelve and I’ve seen scarier things than whatever is on this television, but I’m not going to admit that because Dawson Thornwood looks like he’s about to cry, and I don’t want to make him feel worse.
The living room is packed. Mrs. Thornwood’s boys are spread across every available surface—Cash upside down on the armchair, Dawson pressed into his mom’s side with a throw pillow over his face, and Rhett sitting on the floor, in front of the couch.
I’m on the couch, one cushion over from where Rhett’s shoulder is.
I have three classes with Rhett Thornwood this year.
He’s quiet in most of them. He’s the kind of kid who always knows the answer, but waits to see if someone else will say it first. I noticed that about him the same way I’d started noticing things about certain boys—not the way I noticed girls, which was barely at all.
The movie gets loud. Something on the screen makes Dawson yelp into his pillow and Cash fall off the armchair, laughing. Mrs. Thornwood even covers her own eyes while pretending to still be watching.
I reach for the popcorn bowl that’s between me and Rhett.
My fingers close and wrap around something warm.
I look down and find Rhett’s hand already in the popcorn bowl, his knuckles underneath my fingers.
He pulls back so fast the bowl rocks and kernels scatter across the carpet.
Then he gives me the most repulsive look.
And then, it’s gone, and he reaches back into the bowl himself, ignoring me.
I pull my hand back into my lap, look back at the television, and don’t say anything.
I didn’t know it would feel like that. I knew something was different about the way I noticed people.
I knew I didn’t feel the same as other boys in my grade when it comes to girls at school.
My heart didn’t thump particularly hard when it came to girls in the same way it does for boys.
But I thought maybe I was a late bloomer or something.
Grabbing Rhett’s hand solidified something in my heart that I was on the fence about for a long time. But I had no idea he would ever be someone to look at me in that way.
I watch the rest of the movie and eat none of the popcorn, and when Aunt Aria drives us home, I look out the window the whole way, telling myself it doesn’t matter.
It mattered.
Two years later
Colt and Rhett, 14
I’m standing outside of the locker room before fourth period when Rhett Thornwood steps into my path.
“I don’t think you should go in there,” he says, pointing toward the locker room.
I roll my eyes. “What the fuck are you talking about, Thornwood?”
“The guys in there …” He lowers his voice. “They’re not going to be comfortable changing in front of …” He stops again for a moment, trying to see if I will fill in the gap in his words. “I just think it’d be better if you—”
“Just say it.”
“I don’t think they’re comfortable changing in front of a gay guy.”
The hallway goes quiet.
I stare at him, and he stares back with a sympathetic expression, like he’s looking out for me. But all I feel is rage as my hand curls into a fist. Before I can swing, though, his friends come in behind him, protecting him like the pussy he is.
“How do you know?” I ask, because at this point, I’ve never admitted that to anyone except—
“Your aunt told my mom.”
People stop walking past us, and his friends now have their eyes on me, waiting to see how I’m going to react.
I want to hit him so badly I can feel it in my knuckles. I want to grab him by the front of his shirt and make him pay for outing me in front of everyone. But I see his friends watching me, waiting for me to pounce on Rhett so they can also have a swing at me.
Not happening.
“Move,” I say.
He moves, and I walk past him, not going into the locker room. Instead, I spend the entire gym period in the nurse’s office after I said I twisted my wrist.
But the damage is already done. By fifth period, the entire ninth grade knows, and by last bell, it’s across most of the other grades too.
Rhett Thornwood told the entire world the one thing I didn’t think I would have to tell anyone in this stupid town.
Present
I didn’t get to decide, or choose the words, or the timing, or who heard it first. I was fourteen years old and wasn’t ready, but Rhett Thornwood made that choice for me. I went home that night and called my aunt. I told her I didn’t understand why Rhett had to eavesdrop.
She apologized for it reaching him in the first place, but she gave me the ultimate advice.
“The people who feel the need to dim your light are just stumbling around in their own dark. Don’t you dare turn yourself down for them. Love loudly. Live like you mean it. Be so unapologetically yourself that there’s nothing left for anyone else to define.”
I took that to heart, and by the next morning, I decided I was going to be loud and never give anyone the satisfaction of watching me shrink.
Especially not Rhett Thornwood.
Until now.
Until I’m watching him peel out of my driveway, running away from me.
The taillights disappear around the bend, and as I stand there in the dark, I think about Aunt Aria’s voice on the phone when I was fourteen.
I think about every year since that I spent being exactly who I am without apology.
And then I think about how none of that prepared me for the specific feeling of watching someone run from something I didn’t even know I was still hoping for.
I go inside, moving through the house, before picking up the full beers from the coffee table, dumping them, and cleaning up the evidence of a night that meant something to exactly one of us, apparently. Or maybe both of us.
That’s the part I can’t figure out—whether he ran because it meant nothing or because it meant too much. And I hate that I’m still standing here, trying to work out the difference.
Rhett’s voice is in my head.
“Get the fucking beers.”
I’ve never needed to perform in my own life. Not once—not after that day, not for anyone.
But I watched him perform tonight and then I watched him stop, and what was underneath was worth something. I know what I saw. I know what it felt like.
He still left.
I sit on the edge of my bed and check my phone more out of habit than hope, and that’s when it comes in.
Unknown Number:
I know everything. I’m going to expose you both, because Rhett Thornwood doesn’t get to walk around like he’s the golden boy when we both know he was underneath you only an hour ago.
I saw the way he ran, just like he does from everyone else that tries to get close to him or love him. He doesn’t deserve to keep this hidden.
My blood goes cold.
I read it again. Then a third time.
Is this what Rhett was talking about? The texts he thought were from me?
He knew something was wrong. He’s been carrying this all summer, and I didn’t believe him. Someone has been watching us this entire time. They know his secret.
My thumb moves over the keyboard before I’ve fully decided to respond.
Me:
Who the fuck is this? How dare you threaten us like that.
Unknown Number:
You don’t need to know. But tell me this, how does he feel? From the looks of it, you both enjoyed that.
Me:
When I find you, I will put you in the fucking dirt. You don’t get to fuck with me and mine and walk away. I will burn this town to the fucking ground to find you.
Unknown Number:
Good luck, Colton.
I set the phone down and rub my face.
Here’s what I know about being outed: you don’t get a warning.
You don’t get to decide who hears it first, or what words they use, or whether the timing is right, or whether you’re ready.
Someone just makes that choice for you and then you’re standing in the middle of it, at fourteen years old, trying to figure out how to survive something you never got to choose.
Rhett is not ready.
Whatever happened in that room tonight—whatever walls came down, whatever was real about it, he still drove home, and he’s lying in his bed right now.
He is not ready.
That still belongs to him, though. The timing, the words, the who and the when and the how all of it belongs to him in a way that no anonymous coward with a burner phone gets to touch.
I know what it costs when someone takes that from you.
I’m not going to let that happen to him. Not because tonight erases ninth grade or the locker room or a decade of harboring a grudge toward him. Not because he deserves my protection after everything he’s put me through.
But because no one gets to out someone who isn’t ready.
So, I’m going to find whoever this is, and I’m going to shut it down, even if he never knows. Even if he goes back to being good old Rhett Thornwood tomorrow and looks straight through me the way he has for years.
I pull up Halle’s name and hit Call.
She picks up on the third ring. “Colt. It’s late. What happened?”
“Nothing. I’m fine. I need a sounding board.”
“Talk.”
She listens intently as I explain how Rhett came over, how he left, the text messages, and how they’re connected to others he’s had this summer.
She’s quiet for a moment after I finish, then finally says, “Miranda.”
“What?” I ask.
“Miranda. Doesn’t she live like an hour away? You guys cracked the Henderson farm records in forty minutes during freshman year. You think she can’t track a burner phone?”
I close my eyes. “I forgot about Miranda.”
“Go see Rhett first—in the morning. He needs to know that you’re on his side,” she says.
“I know.”
There’s a pause.
“Halle,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to.”
“I was going to say,” she says carefully, “that showing up at Thornwood Ranch the morning after he ran out on you takes either a lot of guts or a lot of feelings, and I’m not sure which one you’re running on right now.”
I don’t answer that. Mostly because I don’t know.
I don’t want to care this much. I’ve spent ten years building the specific architecture required to not care about Rhett Thornwood, and one summer on his family’s ranch has taken it completely apart, and I’m exhausted by it.
I’m going to go to that ranch in the morning. I’m going to tell him about the texts, tell him I’m handling it, and make sure he knows his secret is safe—that I’m going to make it safe.
And then, I’m going to leave.
That’s the plan.
“I’ll call Miranda after I see him,” I say.
“Good.” Then, quieter. “Be careful with yourself, Colt. Not just with him.”
“I know.”
“Love you.”
“Love you too.”
I hang up, text Eli something about having a stomach bug, then set my phone face down on the nightstand.
I toss and turn for a long time, unable to stop replaying the way his whole body stopped fighting.
The sounds he made. The way he looked at me afterward—unguarded and open.
Like he didn’t know he was supposed to put the armor back on.
I watched every wall he had come down tonight.
And I don’t know what to do with the fact that I’d do it all over again anyway.
Eventually, I sleep. Not enough, but some.
When the sun comes through the curtains, my phone says 10 a.m., and Halle has already called once and texted.