Chapter 33
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Rhea
I’d spent most of my life being Lucas Cooper’s wife.
Not Rhea.
Not Gabriella.
Not even really a woman with wants or needs that existed outside the man I married when I was sixteen years old.
Lucas’ wife. Kronos’ old lady. Zeus, Diana, and Irene’s mother.
The woman who kept the clubhouse from eating itself alive when men came home bloody. Drunk. Furious. Grieving. Too broken to admit they were one bad night away from putting a bullet in their own heads.
For decades, I thought that meant I knew my life.
That I knew my husband.
That I knew my marriage.
Then Diana sat in front of me with haunted eyes and told me the truth, and every memory I’d ever trusted turned rotten in my hands.
The drive to Lettie’s house was only two miles.
It felt longer that morning. Maybe because for the first time since Lucas died, I was alone with my thoughts, not surrounded by men watching me like I might shatter.
Or maybe because every tree, every fence post, every stretch of road between the clubhouse and Lettie’s home looked normal.
I resented it. The world had no right looking normal when mine had become unrecognizable.
I pulled into Lettie’s driveway and sat there for a moment, both hands wrapped around the steering wheel.
Her house was pretty in a soft, lived-in way that had nothing to do with money and everything to do with care.
Flowers spilled from beds along the front walk.
A small vegetable garden sat off to the side, fenced in just enough to keep the chickens busy and out of whatever she had growing in the back.
The house itself looked warm. Clean. Peaceful.
The kind of place a woman could breathe if the life inside it allowed her to.
I wondered how much breathing Lettie actually did here.
Before I could talk myself into leaving, the front door opened.
Cerberus stepped onto the porch first. The dog looked less like a pet and more like judgment made flesh.
Solid black and enormous. Watchful. He stared at my car without barking, but there was no mistaking the warning in the set of his body.
Then Lettie appeared behind him. The dog’s entire posture shifted.
Not relaxed, exactly. I wasn’t sure Cerberus ever relaxed.
But he accepted her hand on his head, accepted whatever silent command passed between them, and stayed at her side instead of coming down the steps to decide whether I was a threat.
Lettie smiled when she saw me, making something in my chest ache.
She was barefoot, wearing one of those long floral skirts she always seemed to float around in and a fitted tank top that made Brock look like he was five seconds from killing any man who glanced too long.
Her golden hair flowed loose down her back, catching the sunlight.
For one strange second, I understood why Brock looked at her the way he did.
There was something alive about her. Something soft. Something dangerous, too—though I doubted most people noticed that part.
“Rhea,” she called, coming down the steps. “You made it.”
“I said I would.”
Her smile softened. Like she’d heard the weight beneath my words and decided not to press on the bruise. “Lunch is almost ready. I hope you like tomato basil soup.”
“I do.”
“Good. The tomatoes are from the garden. The basil too.” She glanced down at Cerberus. “And this one’s been pretending he doesn’t care that you’re here.”
Cerberus stared at me.
I lifted an eyebrow. “He has a funny way of showing it.”
Lettie laughed softly. The sound loosened something in me I hadn’t realized was clenched. “That’s Cerberus being polite.”
“Remind me not to meet him when he’s rude.”
“Oh, you’d know.”
I believed that.
She led me around the side of the house instead of through the front door. The moment we stepped past the gate into the backyard, I understood why.
The front of Lettie’s home was pretty.
The back was something else entirely.
Gardens stretched farther than I expected, layered in color and texture.
Neat paths wound between vegetables, herbs, flowers, and plants I couldn’t name.
Some grew tall and wild. Others had been trained carefully along trellises or tucked into raised beds.
Wind chimes hung from an old oak near the porch, their soft music drifting through the warm air.
It should have been chaotic.
It wasn’t.
Everything had a place.
Everything had a purpose.
“This is beautiful,” I said.
Lettie’s face softened as she looked around. “Thank you. It keeps me busy.”
A simple answer. But I heard what lived beneath it. Busy meant useful. Busy meant needed. Busy meant no one had time to notice the loneliness.
That was something I understood.
Cerberus moved ahead of us, patrolling the edge of the path before returning to Lettie’s side. I watched the way he tracked every sound. Every bird. Every shift of shadow. He reminded me of Brock in that way. Silent, intense, and completely devoted to guarding what he’d chosen.
“Does he ever let anyone close to you?” I asked.
Lettie looked down at him with a smile. “He likes Brock.”
“I noticed.”
“He likes you too.”
I glanced at the enormous black dog currently watching me like he was tallying my sins. “Does he?”
“He hasn’t tried to stand between us.”
“That’s the standard?”
“With Cerberus? Yes.”
Despite myself, I laughed. It felt rusty. Strange. Like I was using a muscle that had gone stiff from disuse.
Lettie glanced over. For a moment, I caught something in her expression that made me ache. It wasn’t pity. I would have hated pity. It was hunger. Not for food or attention, but for connection. For something maternal, maybe. Something gentle and steady and freely given.
I knew that look.
Diana had worn it when she came home.
Aspen had worn it before she left.
Hell, maybe I’d worn it my whole marriage without ever realizing.
We ate on the back porch at a small table shaded by climbing vines.
Lettie served soup, fresh bread, and a salad filled with vegetables that still tasted like sunlight.
She moved around the porch with quiet competence, setting things down before I asked, refilling water, checking that I had enough without fussing. It was care without performance.
That made it harder to breathe.
Lucas had loved performance.
He knew how to make people believe what he wanted them to believe. He’d made me believe I was cherished. Protected. Chosen.
But if what Diana said was true, I had been chosen.
That was the problem.
I no longer knew what the word meant when it came from him.
“Rhea?”
I blinked and realized Lettie was watching me. “I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“I keep doing that.”
“Going somewhere else?”
I looked down at my bowl. “Yes.”
“My mother does that sometimes.”
The words were casual, but something about her tone shifted. Not enough that most people would notice. I noticed.
I’d spent decades listening to what people didn’t say.
“Does she?” I asked.
Lettie’s smile stayed in place. “In her own way.”
That meant yes. But not in a way worth discussing. Or maybe not in a way Lettie wanted to discuss with me.
I let it go.
For now.
“This soup is wonderful.”
“Thank you.”
“Brock eat it?”
Her cheeks colored slightly. “Brock eats anything I put in front of him.”
“That sounds like Brock.”
Her eyes softened before she could stop them.
There it was.
I’d seen women look at men with lust. With pride. With possession. With the desperate hope of being chosen.
Lettie looked at Brock like she was terrified of how much she wanted to believe him.
“He’s different with you,” I said.
Her hand froze around her spoon. “Different how?”
“Quieter.”
She looked surprised. “Brock?”
“Yes.”
“Most people wouldn’t call him quiet.”
“Most people don’t know what quiet means in a man like him.
” I leaned back in my chair, studying the girl who’d somehow walked into our clubhouse and become the center of Brock Davis’ world before any of us had time to brace for it.
“Brock has always felt deeply. He just learned young not to let most people see it.”
Lettie lowered her gaze.
“He loves harder than anyone realizes.”
Her fingers tightened around the spoon.
I let the words sit between us.
Outside the porch, Cerberus stretched out near the steps, head on his paws, eyes still open. Chickens clucked somewhere beyond the garden fence. A breeze moved through the basil, carrying the scent of herbs, warm earth, and flowers.
For a moment, I could almost pretend the world was gentle.
Then Diana’s voice came back to me.
Soft. Broken. Furious.
Mom, you need to know what he was.
I closed my eyes.
Lettie didn’t speak.
That was one of the things I liked about her. She didn’t rush to fill silence. She let it exist.
“Diana told me everything,” I said.
Lettie went very still.
I opened my eyes and looked at her. “Or enough.”
Her face softened with pain. “Rhea—”
“No.” I held up a hand. Not sharply, but enough to stop the apology before it came. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”
“I don’t.”
I believed her.
“I don’t know what I feel most days,” I admitted. “I thought it was grief at first. Lucas died, and I thought what I felt was grief.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” My throat tightened. “But not only grief.”
Lettie waited.
I looked out over her gardens because it was easier than looking at her when I said it.
“I loved my husband. That’s the ugliest part of all this.
I loved him. I built a life around loving him.
I defended him. I raised children with him.
I slept beside him for decades. I believed him when he told me who he was. ”
My hands curled in my lap.
“And now I know he lied about everything.”
The words tasted like ash.
Lettie’s eyes shimmered, but she didn’t interrupt.