1. Rhett
ONE
RHETT
"Y'all owe me. I got in there," I chuckled, my arm around Sage. "Or rather in her."
Sage groaned. "You're such an asshole, Rhett."
"I know, darlin'." Sage and I had been dating on and off for a couple of years. I was her first, and she was mine, but we weren't planning on being each other's last. We were seventeen, and life was too short or maybe too long to be stuck with the same girl forever.
"I can't believe you fucked Fat Pearl," Gary said in awe.
"You said I couldn't do it, and I showed you I could. She was easy. Real easy."
She wasn't. She'd made me work for it. Pearl was na?ve but not stupid—in fact, she was brilliant. I had gotten close to her because of our shared love of reading, and we'd started a book club for two. In three months, I'd read more books I loved than ever before.
"How the heck did you do it? She doesn't even talk to anyone," Larry wondered.
"Did you have to roll her in flour to find the wet spot?" Gary cackled.
A part of me wanted to tell Gary to shut the fuck up. But Rhett Vanderbilt, the cool dude and future playboy, was too young and too much of a douche to fuck with his carefully curated image of callous cruelty.
"It was virgin pussy, wasn't it? Bet she was tight," Larry leered.
She was a virgin, sweet, and, fuck…sensuous.
I, who prided myself on having slept with more girls than any other guy in my circle of friends, had been shocked at how sex could be emotional and beautiful, even while it was dirty.
I wanted her again and again and again. But I couldn’t have her because choosing Pearl as my girlfriend would shatter my standing in the high school hierarchy.
"She was a bet, and yeah, she was tight, so it made up for…
you know, how she looks," I said, but the words tasted like ash in my mouth.
Pearl had looked stunning naked, with silky skin, amazing tits, and an ass that was made for—I reined in my thoughts before I got a hard-on just thinking about her.
"Now, pony up, assholes. Hundred bucks from each of you. "
That was when I heard Sage gasp.
I turned and saw Pearl standing by my pool gate, clutching a copy of The Grapes of Wrath. A few days earlier, she had told me she wanted me to read it and was convinced that I would love it.
There was no chance that she hadn't heard me, because her beautiful, usually happy face was pale, and there were tears in her deep gray eyes. I wanted to apologize, but then Gary laughed, "Hey, Fat Pearl, my friend here give it to you good or what?"
I should've told him to shut up. I wanted to, but I didn't.
"You lucky girl," Sage added, joining in the fun. "Well, savor it, 'cause that's the last time someone like Rhett is going to fuck your big ass."
"What are you doin' here, Bumblebee?" I knew she hated the nickname she'd gotten when she was a kid, dressed for Halloween as a bumblebee, and it had stuck.
She'd been round and roly-poly. It was cruel, but that was life, yeah?
"You come here for round two? I don't do seconds, so you should run along. "
She held up the book in her hand and then shook her head before turning around and leaving.
I'd never in my life seen someone look as devastated as she did—not until then, or since. She was crushed. I had done that.
I woke up sweating, breathing hard. The nightmare swarmed inside me, making me nauseous.
I sat up, my heart pounding.
I'd had the same memory show up in my dreams on and off for years, but they'd become more frequent since Pearl Beaumont had returned to Savannah.
I looked at the clock on my bedside table.
It was four in the morning. I could get another two hours of sleep before getting ready for the day, but I knew that wasn't going to happen.
If Josie was in bed with me, I could've fucked her to get some respite, but I hadn't been spending the night with her or fucking her for a while now.
How differently had my life turned out than I thought it would.
When I was a seventeen-year-old asshole playing with the feelings of nice girls like Pearl—okay, so maybe only one nice girl; the others were sophisticated, like my fiancée Josie and my friend Sage—I'd thought I'd have the world at my feet.
On paper, I did.
I had a thriving business. Between the family wealth and my consulting firm, the Vanderbilt Trust had only increased in size.
The Vanderbilts of Savannah were old-money aristocrats, our wealth a legacy carefully tended across generations.
I now not only ran a successful business but also oversaw my family’s extensive portfolio, ensuring our fortune remained as formidable as our reputation.
Personally, my life was a shitshow.
Four months ago, Josie became pregnant with my baby. I'd had no choice but to propose to her, and we got engaged. Hell, the engagement party was in a week.
I'd known Josie all my life. We grew up together, and since she ended her engagement with Dylan Rafferty a year ago, she'd become part of my friends' circle, and one night, when I'd had too much to drink, we had sex. That led to us casually dating, and I knocked her up. Before she crossed the twelve-week mark, though, she’d had a miscarriage.
I'd been traveling and found out by text from my mother because Josie had been so distraught.
My first thought had been about the innocent child we'd lost, and it wasn't until I saw Josie back home did I wished I'd waited to propose to her, as my Aunt Hattie had suggested.
But Josie had told everyone and their mother, especially mine, that she was knocked up, and there was no way around that.
A part of me wondered if she'd trapped me.
A part of me wondered if she'd even been pregnant and then conveniently lost the baby.
That thought made me feel like the seventeen-year-old prick I used to be.
I wasn't that boy anymore. Also, Josie had been so devastated that I'd pushed the thought out of my head.
I couldn't break off my engagement to a woman who had been expecting my baby and had cried for days after she lost the pregnancy.
So, I let the status quo remain. We were now going to have an opulent engagement party and get married in a year.
I ran a hand through my hair and closed my eyes.
I'd always wanted to marry for love like my friend Royal recently had.
Royal Legere had married his best friend's sister after what had seemed like an untenable and unending courtship. He was happy with Nevaeh, and as I’d stood with Noah, Nevaeh's brother, as co-best man, I'd wondered if I'd be lucky enough to find the love of my life.
Now, I knew that would never happen. I'd marry Josie and have the kind of marriage that so many men around me did—the kind Gary had entered with his father's business partner's daughter, Dixie May.
The way Sage had been with the man her parents had deemed "appropriate"—the one she eventually had to divorce after ending up in the emergency room following yet another fight that turned physical.
The sad thing about my situation was that I’d always known I didn’t want what my parents had—a marriage based on what was suitable for the family.
George and Dolores Vanderbilt had a cold relationship, communicating only to discuss logistics around their appearances in society. That would now be my life, my marriage.
I didn’t want that, I silently screamed inside my head.
I wanted…more out of life. I wanted a partner, a lover, a friend—someone who I trusted with myself.
With Josie, it was all surface. The sex had been okay.
The first drunken night hadn't been memorable, as they never are.
After that, it had been missionary all the way.
But I hadn’t been planning to marry her, so I didn’t care.
But now we were engaged, and we were not compatible in bed.
Josie wanted the lights out and to think about goddamn England while I fucked her.
She didn't participate. She didn't make love.
She faked her orgasms. She did what she had to do to make me think I was a great lover—but I wasn't an idiot, and I knew that Josie wasn't interested in sex, at least not with me.
And that was fine. I just didn't want her to be my wife.
I liked sex. I enjoyed it. I'd had a lot of it—but since Josie, the whole fucking thing, pun intended, was a barren wasteland.
"Why don't you join Belle?" Royal suggested when I'd told him that I was going to lose my mind being engaged to a woman who thought her duty was to be a serviceable hole for me.
Belle was a sex club in Savannah that no one talked about, but everyone knew about. A journalist had recently written a scandalous story about a senator who'd been a regular member.
Beau Bodine had been a member until he'd gotten married—for love. If that man could fall in love, that meant it was possible for anyone.
"I don't want to have sex with strangers. I want to have good sex with my spouse."
"Then I suggest you change your spouse," Royal advised.
He didn't like Josie. Hell, none of the people I considered true friends did. Damn it, I didn't even like Josie.
"You know I can't do that," I muttered.
The Vances, Josie’s family, and Vanderbilts shared deeply-rooted business ties that spanned generations, intertwined through land holdings, real estate ventures, and joint investments.
The Vances, known for their real estate development firm, had often partnered with the Vanderbilts to transform Savannah’s historic properties into modern, lucrative ventures.
It was a relationship built on old Southern alliances—equal parts mutual benefit and social expectation.
This marriage was going to cement that alliance.
My father and hers were fucking ecstatic.
"I don't get it, Rhett." Royal shook his head. "You're a grown-ass man; live your life on your own terms."