Chapter 1
RHETT
"Y'all owe me. I got in there," I chuckled, my arm around Sierra, "Or rather in her."
Sierra groaned. "You're such an asshole, Rhett."
" I know, darlin'." Sierra and I'd 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 sixteen, 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 of two of sorts. 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," someone whose voice I couldn't recognize said.
"Did you have to roll her in flour to find the wet spot?" Gary laughed.
A part of me wanted to ask Gary to shut the fuck up. But Rhett Vanderbilt, a cool dude and future playboy, was too young and too much of a douche to do fuck with his carefully curated image.
"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. I did, and since I didn't like thinking about Pearl as a girlfriend, I shrugged off the thought.
"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 smooth sexy 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 Sierra gasp. I turned and saw Pearl standing by the pool gate, a copy of Grapes of Wrath clutched in her hands. She'd told me she wanted me to read it and that I'd love it.
There was no chance that she hadn't heard me because she was pale, her beautiful, happy face blank, and 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 asked him to shut up. I wanted to, but I didn't.
"You lucky girl," Sierra 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 that 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 walking away. 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 it.
I woke up sweating, breathing hard. The nightmare swarmed inside me, making me feel like I needed to throw up. 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 and sat up. It was four in the morning. I could've gotten another two hours of sleep, 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 since she had the miscarriage.
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 Sierra—I'd thought I'd have the world at my feet. I had a thriving business. Between the family wealth and my finance consultancy, 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 financial consultancy but also oversaw my family’s extensive portfolio, ensuring our fortune remained as formidable as our reputation.
Personally, my life was a shitshow.
Six 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 drink, we had sex. That led to us casually dating, and I knocked her up. Before she crossed the twelve-week mark, she had a miscarriage. I'd been traveling and found out by text from her mother.
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. And 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 pregnant with 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 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 Sierra had had with a man her parents had deemed appropriate, who she'd eventually had to divorce.
I saw my parents and knew I didn't want what they 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 was okay . The first drunken night hadn't been memorable as they never are—after that, we'd had okay sex. I wasn't planning to marry her, and I didn't care. But now we were engaged, and we were not compatible in bed. Josie wanted the lights out and think about fucking 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 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 of. A journalist had 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. I mean, Beau Bodine had 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 told me.
He didn't like Josie. Hell, none of my friends did. Damn it, I didn't.
"You know I can't do that," I muttered.
The Vances and Vanderbilts share deep-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.
"Why?" Royal shook his head. "I don't get it, Rhett. You're a grown-ass man; live your life on your terms."
That was easier said than done, though Royal had done it. He'd walked away from his family and had only had a relationship with them because of his grandmother. Once she passed, he'd even stopped pretending to have anything to do with the Hilton Head Legere's. But I couldn't do that. Family was important to me. My parents, my sister, and everyone expected me to behave like a Vanderbilt, and I had no choice.
Since I wasn’t getting any sleep, I got out of bed and decided to go for an early run. The air outside was heavy with the faint scent of azaleas and jasmine, the first signs of Savannah waking from winter. A pale blush of dawn was just beginning to bleed into the dark sky, and the streets were still quiet, save for the occasional hum of a distant car or the rhythmic chirp of crickets that hadn’t yet surrendered to the coming day.
I lived in the historic district, in the kind of house that tourists liked to snap pictures of—the kind that made you think of long-dead cotton barons and gala balls under gaslight chandeliers. It was old-money Savannah through and through, with Greek Revival columns and wrought-iron railings that seemed too delicate to hold up under the weight of their age. The house had been in my family for generations, and though I owned it now, it felt more like a museum I was tasked with maintaining than a home. I grew up in this house, and when I was ready to find a place of my own, my father suggested I live here. They had moved to live on the expansive Vanderbilt estate in the countryside in Richmond Hill, where we went to celebrate the holidays, as we'd have a full house with aunts and uncles and cousins. This estate was an old plantation-style home with acres of land, including stables, a small lake, and even the remnants of old rice fields and outbuildings. I fucking hated that place almost as I hated the one I lived in.
The cobblestones beneath my feet felt slick with the dew as I turned off my street and headed toward Forsyth Park. The sprawling live oaks arched above me, their limbs heavy with Spanish moss that swayed gently in the early morning breeze. The park was quiet at this hour, save for the occasional dog walker or an older man setting up to sell fresh-cut flowers from a cart.
I settled into an easy rhythm, the slap of my sneakers against the pavement blending with the whisper of the trees. Running was one of the few things that cleared my head, but not today. My thoughts kept circling back to Pearl, as she always did when I had the dream. She was everywhere, it seemed—even here, in the stillness of a Savannah morning.
I hadn’t meant to, but my route took me toward my aunt Hattie’s property on the edge of town. Aunt Hattie’s estate was a sprawling old plantation-style home surrounded by acres of land she’d somehow managed to keep intact despite all the encroachments of modern development. It was a place that always felt a little frozen in time, like something out of a Flannery O’Connor story.
Since Pearl returned to Savannah, she was staying in a small cottage just beyond the line of camellias that bordered the estate. It was small, tucked back near the garden where Aunt Hattie’s roses would bloom in a riot of color later in the season. A large lanai with a couple of wicker chairs and pale yellow paint shutters the color of the sea after a storm. I didn’t slow down, but my eyes lingered, and so did my thoughts.
I found it remarkable that she was closer to Aunt Hattie than I was, despite Pearl living in California. Pearl left Savannah after high school and studied at Stanford.
No one blamed me for shaming her—everyone accused her of trying to fuck above her station, not societally since the Beaumonts were as old and wealthy as the Vanderbilts—no, it was because of how she looked. The plump, dull girl deserved to be used for a bet. That had shamed me more. Aunt Hattie hadn't been reticent in telling me what a terrible human being she thought I was. But I'd been a young buck then and had not paid much attention to my crazy aunt. However, what I did stained my life—and me. I carried it with me like my own scarlet letter carved into my soul. Now, fifteen years had passed, and the guilt was steady, my need for redemption growing just as steadily. And now Pearl was back in Savannah and I wanted nothing more than to make right the wrongs I'd done her.
It would be something I could do if she even talked to me, which she didn't. I'd tried, and she'd given me a blank look, said something polite, and extricated herself from my presence. Pearl had always had a spine of steel and I had nothing but regret for what I did high on youth and arrogance. Unlike me, she wasn't going to submit to familial pressure. She’d once told me when I'd been wooing her for that dumb bet that she didn’t want any part of the Savannah society we’d grown up in. She’d said it with a fire in her eyes, that rare kind of defiance that had made me both furious and fascinated by her.
"All that legacy nonsense, " she’d said, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the dock at her family’s summer house by the river where we used to meet up, where ultimately she'd given me her virginity. " It’s not a legacy, Rhett—it’s just an excuse to cling to a rotten past. You can call it Southern tradition if you want, but that doesn’t make it any less dark. "
I’d argued with her, of course. At seventeen, I’d been so sure of myself, so convinced that it was our responsibility—our duty—to carry on what our families had built. " You can’t just turn your back on it, Pearl. It’s our history. It’s who we are.”
She’d laughed, low and bitter. " Are you sure? Our history is that of exploitation and slavery, of Jim Crow and the Klan .””
" That was years ago; you can't hold us responsible for the sins of our ancestors ."
" You sure, Rhett? Look at how we live; look at our lives and those of the less fortunate. Have we really moved past the past ?"
I thought I’d been protecting something worth preserving, but maybe all I’d really been doing was hiding behind the weight of tradition. The conversation had stuck with me, even after all these years, though I didn’t want to admit why. Maybe it was because she’d been one of the few people brave enough to challenge me—or maybe because deep down, I’d known she was right. It was because of Pearl that I contributed heavily to the ACLU, the Southern Poverty Law Center, Planned Parenthood, and several other non-profit organizations my family would be shocked to learn about.
Now, as I ran past her little cottage, I wondered who she had grown into. What had the past fifteen years done for and to her?
She looked different, for sure. No one would dare call Pearl big now. She was slender and elegant. Her auburn hair was cut into a sophisticated bob and made her look like the finance executive she was. She wore skirt suits to work—I'd seen her once when I'd gone to her place of work to meet with the CEO there, who had contracted Vanderbilt Finance to do work for them. She elevated her five-four petite body with high heels. She had an air of insouciance about her. I hadn't seen her at any of the society events since she'd moved three months ago—her brother, who I occasionally met at the country club, Cash, had told me how exhausted he, his wife, and his mother were that Pearl continued to shun society and embarrass them.
"How on earth is she doing that?" I demanded.
"She just refuses to behave like a Beaumont," Cash lamented. "Caroline has tried to get her to meet some women, but she refuses and hangs out with all those Nina Davenport suffragette gangs."
Nina Davenport was the CEO of Savannah Lace, an all-woman design and architecture firm where Pearl was a director of finance.
"Suffragette was a long time ago. Cash since women have been voting since the nineteenth amendment was ratified in 1920. And Nina is a brilliant CEO, and Savanah Lace is involved with some of the biggest projects we've seen in this city," I remarked, annoyed with Cash. Nina was a mentor and friend, and I had tremendous respect for her. My aunt Hattie and Nina were close friends, and I would not have anyone tarnish their names.
"Oh, please, don't tell me you too believe in that nonsense."
"It's not nonsense, Cash, it's called progress."
I had learned from my aunt that Pearl was close to Cash's daughters, teenagers and that he pissed off his wife, Caroline. She worried that her daughters would become like their aunt. They should be so lucky.
When I saw a light flicker on in Pearl's cottage, I felt like a creepy lecher, so I picked up my pace, not wanting to be caught gawking at her home.
The cool morning air stinging my lungs as I pushed harder like I could outrun the memory of her voice or the feeling in my chest that told me I still hadn’t figured out how to be the kind of man who was worthy of her forgiveness.