Chapter 5
FIVE
Rhett
Present Day
S he was still standing in front of me with her hands on my chest, shaking me, yelling, “Rhett!” Each time she said my name, she got a little louder. “Wake up! Please!”
There was no doubt in my mind who I was looking at. She was missing the dimple on her right cheek and the freckle to the left of her nose. And then there was her voice.
What I couldn’t understand was why Penelope had kept telling me to wake up and why she repeatedly shouted my name over and over.
I was awake. I was gazing at her.
Her grip turned harder, her movements rougher. “Rhett!”
Talk to me , I tried to say. Explain to me what’s going on . But those were no more than thoughts. My lips felt glued together, like they had been since she’d appeared, making it impossible to open my mouth.
“Rhett!”
She looked so good. Tan, like the summer we’d spent on the beach between our junior and senior year of high school. She was smiling the way she did whenever she talked about having fun.
“Rhett, open your eyes.”
But they are open, Penelope.
“You’re sleeping. You need to wake up.”
I’m … sleeping?
“Yes,” she replied as though she’d heard my thoughts. “Now, get up.”
Get up— oh!
My eyes flicked open, and that was when I realized I’d been sleeping.
I expected the morning light to blind me.
But there was no light.
There was only darkness.
Penelope, the yelling of my name, the shaking—it had all been a dream.
Except …
Fuck me. Some parts had been real.
Because there was a woman hovering over me. Her hands were on my chest. Her eyes were gazing into mine.
I blinked, making sure what I was seeing was real, that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me, that the shadows of the night weren’t showing me a ghost. And while my eyes proved that every inch I was seeing was real, it all came rushing back to me—getting out of the rideshare, walking along the sidewalk, lying down here .
The heaviness.
But the fact that I’d actually fallen asleep? That shocked the hell out of me.
“Lainey,” I whispered.
When her name came through my lips, something inside me shattered. It broke me to the point where I’d never be the same person again.
“I was getting worried,” she said. “I thought something was wrong or you were sick or … I don’t know. I couldn’t figure out why you wouldn’t wake up.”
“I don’t ever sleep. When I do, it’s deep.”
She got on her feet, stepping a few feet away, and I sat up, not taking my eyes off her. If anything, her new placement allowed me to study her even harder. Hints of her light-brown hair showed in the moonlight, along with the outline of her body and a tease of her hazel stare.
Beneath the remnants, there was a beating.
A fucking throbbing that increased every second.
“I can’t believe you’re here.” I didn’t know what else to say. Words weren’t coming to me. My head was a mess of thoughts and grogginess.
I’d thought about this moment—if it would ever happen, what it would look like—and now that it was here, I sounded like a fucking idiot. What I did know was that it was late. Eleven thirty, according to my watch. It made sense why I was here at this hour, but not her.
“Are you all right?” I tried to understand the look in her eyes, but I couldn’t see enough of them. “Seems a little late for you, no?”
“Am I … all right ?” She huffed—a sound that told me she was surprised I’d asked that question. “What are you doing here, Rhett?”
If there was a way that my chest could split open from the rapid beating of my heart, that was happening right now.
“I come here a lot.”
“Why?”
Why?
To remember.
To reminisce.
To relive.
But what I was doing here wasn’t nearly as important as the fact that she was here. That she was only feet away from me. That it would take me just a few paces to reach her.
“It’s been fifteen years and?—”
“I know how long it’s been,” she said.
Of course she knew. It had been stupid of me to offer the recap, even if it was a small one.
“I come here when I have things to get off my chest. Given the date, I had a lot to say tonight.”
She glanced around as though she didn’t know what the area looked like. “Shouldn’t you go to a therapist for that? That’s what most people would do. They wouldn’t come here to purge their soul.”
“I suppose you’re not wrong. But it feels right, doing it here. It’s not like I can call you …” I pushed off the grass and stood, the bottoms of my shoes feeling round instead of flat, threatening my balance. I grabbed whatever was near, feeling the instant coldness on my skin, and once my feet adjusted, my hand fell to my side. “You know … it’s been fifteen years since I’ve seen you.”
A statement that fucking pounded through my throat and across my tongue.
That day—the last day—was one I’d never forget.
When streams of tears had dampened our cheeks and voices had reached every octave and accusations had flown through the air, like a sky full of jets.
Despite coincidences and fate, I’d never expected this moment to happen. That we’d cross paths again.
That, like sleep, I would get that lucky.
But here we were.
Together in a way I could barely fathom.
And I had so many questions; I didn’t know where to start. I went with the obvious and asked, “Did you ever think you’d see me again?” A trembling was happening inside me with the intensity of a goddamn earthquake. “What it would look like if you did? What it would feel like?”
“Rhett—”
“Because I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about it every day, Lainey.”
“No.” She went quiet, her head dropping, a curtain of hair falling toward both sides of her face. “I never thought about it.”
I didn’t believe her.
Not when pasts were as intertwined as ours.
Not when there had been so much love between us.
But, goddamn it, all it had taken was one moment with Penelope to blow that apart.
“Lainey …” I sounded breathless even though I was breathing, my head still wrapping around the fact that she was here, that I was getting to say her name and earn myself a response, like the way she was looking up at me now. “You’ve never once thought about me?”
“No.” Her hands tightened into tiny balls. “I’ve only hoped for one thing for the rest of my life and beyond.”
I drew in as much air as I could hold. “And that is?”
“That I never saw you again.”