Chapter 13 #2
Rhys glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, his hands steady on the steering wheel, but he didn’t ask any questions.
Five agonizingly quiet minutes later, we pulled up to Clementine’s house.
The moment the car came to a stop, Clementine reached for the door handle with the speed of a woman escaping a sinking ship.
“Wait,” I said, turning around in my seat.
Clementine froze, her hand on the lever, looking at me with wide, desperate eyes.
“Remember,” I said, pointing a finger at her. “Not. A. Word. To anyone. Not even Nora—in fact, especially not her because she will tell my brother. You saw nothing. You know nothing.”
Clementine placed a hand over her heart, raised her other hand in a solemn, trembling vow, and nodded furiously.
“I swear,” she squeaked out, her voice cracking from disuse. “My lips are sealed! Ironclad! Locked in a box and thrown into the sea!”
“Good,” I said.
She practically threw herself out of the car and skipped up her driveway with an unnatural, manic energy, clearly rushing inside so she could scream into a pillow.
I fell back into the plush leather of the passenger seat, letting out a massive, exhausted sigh as Rhys pulled away from the curb.
“Well,” Rhys said in amusement as he turned the heater up, blowing warm air over my damp shoes, “that wasn’t strange at all.”
“You have no idea,” I muttered, resting my head against the headrest.
The drive back to our neighborhood was quiet, but it wasn’t the suffocating, tense silence from before.
It was comfortable. The rain drummed a steady, soothing rhythm against the roof of the SUV, the warm air filling the cabin with the scent of Rhys’s cologne—something dark, woody, and masculine—mixed with damp cotton.
We pulled into his long, winding driveway, the headlights sweeping over the manicured hedges and the dark stone facade of his house. Rhys shifted the car into park, but left the engine running, the headlights illuminating the thick sheets of rain falling in front of us.
I turned in my seat to look at him. His dark hair was still damp, clinging slightly to his forehead, and he looked entirely too comfortable sitting next to me in the dim light of the dashboard.
“So,” I began, a small, teasing smirk pulling at the corner of my mouth. “Ten minutes, huh?”
Rhys didn’t look at me right away; he just rested his wrists on the top of the steering wheel, staring out at the rain. “What about it?”
“I called, and you answered on the very first ring. You sounded like you were responding to a three-alarm fire.” I leaned closer, tapping my chin thoughtfully. “Did you break speed limits to get to the candle shop, Montgomery? Because I’m pretty sure I saw you drift around that corner by the park.”
Rhys turned his head, his bright eyes fixing onto mine with that quiet, steady weight that always made my breath hitch just a little.
“You’ve never called me before, Ainsley,” he said softly, his voice flat, devoid of any of his usual bravado. “Not once. So when my phone rang and it was your name on the screen... yeah. I thought something was wrong.”
The teasing words died on my tongue.
I stared at him, caught completely off guard by the quiet honesty in his voice. There was no cocky grin, no sarcastic comeback. Just him, sitting there in his wet clothes, admitting that he’d panicked simply because I’d needed him.
A strange, heavy warmth bloomed in my chest, spreading down to my fingertips.
It was weirdly nice. We were supposed to be pretending—supposed to be executing a fake-dating strategy to irritate his ex and save my reputation—but sitting here in the warm, dark car, it didn’t feel like a game.
It felt like, somehow, we were actually friends.
“Well,” I said quietly, offering him a soft smile. “Thank you. For coming so fast. Even if I was just being dramatic about the rain.”
Rhys stared at my smile for a second, his expression unreadable, before a slow, reluctant smirk finally broke across his face. “You’re always dramatic, Novak. I’m just getting used to it.”
“I am not—” I cut myself off mid-sentence as movement near the front porch caught my eye through the rain-streaked side window.
The heavy double doors of the Montgomery house swung open. Stepping out into the covered entryway was Justin, wearing a dark jacket, followed closely by Kelcey. She was laughing at something he’d said, her arm looped casually through his as he turned to lock the door behind him.
“They’re going to wonder what we’re doing out here,” I said in a hurried whisper. I whipped my head around to Rhys. “Right?”
He glanced at them then at me. He didn’t look nearly as worried as I was. “It’s fine. We’ll just say we wanted some privacy.”
“Sitting in the car in the rain instead of going up to your room? Kelcey’s already suspicious of us.”
I looked at them again. Kelcey was opening an umbrella now, holding it over both of their heads as they began for the stone steps down from the porch.
“I have an idea,” Rhys said, “but I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
I only had a split-second to make the decision.
Whatever he was going to do, I would let him.
At my nod, Rhys unbuckled his seatbelt in one swift motion.
He didn’t say another word. He didn’t give me a warning.
He leaned across the center console, grabbed my face in his hands, and pressed his lips firmly against mine.
A quiet gasp escaped my throat, lost entirely against his mouth.
His hands were cold from the rain, but his lips were warm—soft, firm, and completely overwhelming.
He shifted his weight, pulling me closer by the back of my neck, deepening the kiss as if he were trying to pull the air straight out of my lungs.
My mind went completely, brilliantly blank.
Every logical thought, every rule of our fake-dating contract, every ounce of common sense I possessed evaporated into thin air. I didn’t push him away. I didn’t freeze. Instinctively, my fingers reached out, gripping the damp cotton of his hoodie, pulling him an inch closer as I kissed him back.
This was real, heavy, and dizzying. It smelled like rainwater and his dark cologne and quiet secrets. A sharp, electric shudder ran straight down my spine, making my toes curl inside my shoes.