Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
Rhett
Present Day
L ainey was still staring at our old high school, so I took a quick glance at the building. A place where I’d spent the best four years of my life.
“I don’t come here to remember. I don’t need to. I remember while I’m at work, and when I’m forced to travel for work, and when I’m driving, and when I’m home. Everywhere and anywhere—that’s where I remember.” I waited until I earned her gaze. “My mind likes to fuck with me. Torture me really. Especially when I try to go to sleep. Whenever I close my eyes, it likes to replay the past on an endless loop, and my eyelids open right back up. I don’t like what I see in that darkness … and sleep never comes.”
I didn’t know why I was telling her this.
But I knew she could relate.
I could see it in her face.
Pain recognized pain.
It attached to it, it attracted it, it sympathized in its misery, and the ends looped around, like a ball of yarn that was too knotted to use.
She swiveled on the metal bleacher until she was fully facing me. “I need to know why you want to talk to me. Rhett, please, just rip off the Band-Aid already.”
There was a lot to unload, and I still hadn’t come up with a starting point.
Time wasn’t helping.
Maybe if I showed her the proof, I could then work backward.
I took out my phone and stood from the bench. Crossing the one between us, I sat on it, which positioned her directly in front of me. “I want to show you something.” I held my cell so we could both see it, flipping through the years of pictures. There wasn’t much—I rarely took photographs. My life looked the same every day; there was no reason to document anything, no purpose in saving memories that were as dark as yesterday.
“Wait, go back,” she said.
When I halted, her finger hit the screen, and she swiped a few times, stopping on a photo of Ridge and me. We were at the beach, and we’d just gotten out of the water, the ocean dripping from our bare chests.
“Ridge. My God, he’s changed so much. He’s all grown up.” She shook her head. “Your tattoo, Rhett.” Her voice was only a whisper. “I’m surprised you didn’t cover it up with something else or get it lasered off.”
The way my arm was extended in the shot, the tattoo I’d gotten for Lainey was in plain sight.
“No, I didn’t do that.” As she looked at me, I added, “And I never will.”
She used her fingers to zoom in—she obviously wanted a better view of my ink. Her hand stayed on my phone for several seconds before she pulled it away and softly said, “Rhett, my name is on your body. Why wouldn’t you want to remove it?”
That answer was so clear to me, and I was sure it would be shocking to her.
“Because I want your name on me, Lainey.”
Without even looking, I sensed her chest rise, her lips mash, her brows furrowing.
“I don’t understand. We broke up on the worst terms ever without any chance of reconciling. We haven’t spoken. There’s absolutely nothing between us.”
I searched her eyes. “That’s not true.”
“What? How can you say that?”
A moment of silence passed.
Within it, I swore she saw the answer to her question.
I fucking swore she could feel it.
If she couldn’t, then she wasn’t the woman I thought she was.
I waited.
For what felt like a goddamn eternity.
And then I saw it—the glimmer, the recognition, the long, deep sigh that left her lips.
“Lainey …” I’d been holding in these thoughts since the last time I had seen her, and I could finally speak them. Why did it feel so hard to get started? Why was my heart pounding so fucking hard? “Do you really think those fifteen years made me stop loving you?” I shook my head. “Not even close.”
I let those words set in—not just within her, but within me.
“I would wait an entire lifetime to have another chance with you. That’s how I felt when you walked away from me, and that’s exactly how I feel now. Maybe there’s nothing pulling you to me, but what pulls me to you is love. It’s grown every single day that’s passed.”
My free hand clenched, preventing me from reaching out. From cupping her cheek. From brushing my thumb across the side of her mouth. From doing everything in my power to make her smile.
“I’ll only ever have one why, Lainey, and you’re the one.”