Chapter 9 Rhett
RHETT
My brothers and I help Violet take everything to her bakery and put it all away. It’s impressive, how organized she is about everything, making notes about when things were added to the industrial sized fridge and large pantry.
The whole place has her vibe to it, from the decor to the way it smells, and it’s interesting to see this piece of her life after hearing her talk about it earlier.
“Okay,” she says, once everything is accounted for. “Let’s get out of here, otherwise I’ll be tempted to start baking right now.”
We get back in the car as it starts snowing, and Violet drives carefully back to her house. We all hustle inside as it starts coming down harder, grateful for the warmth of her entryway.
She taps her boots to get snow off them on the welcome mat and then brushes snow off her coat before hanging it up. When she shakes out her hair, it sends auburn curls flying around her face, and it’s a captivating sight.
There’s a flush on her cheeks from the cold, and it looks good on her.
Her clothes hug her curves, drawing attention to the plush softness of her body.
She looks solid and comfortable in a way that’s completely appealing, and I find myself watching her as she moves, stepping out of the way so the rest of us can shuck off out coats as well.
All at once, I’m hit with the memory of what I said to Andrew just an hour or so ago.
I was just trying to defend Violet because Andrew was being a petty asshole, as usual.
But ever since I said those things about her, talking about how exciting she is, I’ve had a hard time dislodging those images from my mind.
I can picture how she would look, if we were in the position to make the things I said true. Warm and inviting, smiling the way she smiles when she talks about baking.
It would be too easy to go down that rabbit hole, so I clear my throat and shake myself out of those thoughts, taking off my coat and hanging it up.
Violet wanders into the living room, and we follow after her. “Is that a working fireplace?” Lennox asks, nodding to the wall. The TV is mounted above a fireplace laid out in brick.
“Yeah, it is,” she says. “It’s one of the perks of this place.
It’s really small, but the fireplace is so nice in the winter.
” She tilts her head, her plush lips pulling to one side.
“I don’t have any wood ready for it though.
I haven’t had a chance to deal with the logs from last summer when I had a tree cut down, so they’re too big. ”
“I’ll take care of it,” I tell her. “Are they under cover?”
“Lumberjack Rhett to the rescue.” Sawyer snorts. “He’s got tons of practice living in the middle of nowhere all alone for the past couple of years.”
“It’s not the middle of nowhere,” I grunt. Sure, my cabin is deep in the woods, miles away from any neighbors, but it’s only about an hour’s drive from Sweetwater Lake. I just usually never choose to come into town.
I shoot a questioning look at Violet, getting back to the task at hand.
“Come on, I’ll show you,” she says.
It turns out there’s a little shed in the backyard, just large enough to store some tools and a stack of wood under a tarp.
“I remembered that it needs to be dry to burn,” she says. “So I had them stack the logs in here.”
“That’s right,” I tell her. “You did good.” Her cheeks flush, and I jerk my head back at the house. “Go back to where it’s warm. I’ll take care of this.”
She hustles back inside, looking over her shoulder once or twice while I start carting logs out of the shed. The stump from the tree she had cut down is still there, and I use it for my purposes, setting up one of the logs on it and testing out the axe I found in the shed.
There’s always been something Zen-like about chopping wood. The repetitive movements, the burn of my muscles, the satisfying give of the wood as the heft of the axe blade hews through it.
It’s easy to lose myself in it, chopping log after log into neatly split sections.
As much as I hate to admit it, Sawyer wasn’t wrong. This is something I do often at my cabin, splitting wood regularly so I never have to worry about my supply dwindling.
It’s definitely different from the way things used to be when I was working with my brothers. The three of us were together more often than not, and life was much less rough and tumble back then.
I can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness when I think about everything I lost since then. Sawyer rags on me for being a hermit, living all alone in the middle of nowhere, but what’s the alternative, when the only people I wanted to be around weren’t there anymore?
Nothing good comes from going down that path, so I shake myself out of those thoughts. The stack of wood keeps growing, and I let the swing and thunk of the axe clear my head again.
Eventually, my muscles are burning, and there’s a sheen of sweat on my skin, rapidly going cold in the frigid air.
There’s enough wood for tonight and probably the rest of the week, so I start stacking the cut logs neatly in the shed and hang everything back up where I found it.
I gather a pile of wood and shoulder my way back into the house, slipping my boots off before walking into the living room.
Violet has disappeared, leaving Sawyer and Lennox alone in the room, sitting on opposite sides. There’s a weak tension in the air, and they’re not talking, but they’re not arguing either. Lennox is scrolling through something on his phone, and Sawyer has the TV on, flipping through channels.
I drop the wood near the fireplace with a clatter, beginning the familiar work of building a fire.
It’s weird, being in silence when my brothers are right there.
There was a time when we couldn’t be in the same room without laughing, bantering back and forth with each other.
One of them would have an idea, and that would spark a whole conversation about hashing out logistics and refining it until it was something usable.
Now the best we can hope for is not biting each other’s head off.
I shake my head and add kindling to my wooden pile, striking a match and lighting the newspaper crumpled at the bottom. It catches immediately, fire flaring to life with a rush of heat.
“Where’s Violet?” I ask after a while, adjusting the wood with the fireplace tongs.
“Cooking dinner,” Sawyer says absently.
I twist around to glare at him. “What?”
“I said she’s cooking dinner,” he replies. “Are you deaf?”
“I fucking heard you, but what the fuck? You didn’t offer to help?”
Lennox looks up, annoyed now. “Of course we did. But she kicked us out of the kitchen. What did you want us to do, argue with her in her own home?”
Unbelievable. The fire spreads, catching enough of the wood to start it burning on its own, and I get to my feet, ignoring my brothers as I make my way to the kitchen where Violet is stirring something in a pot.
“Hey,” I say, trying not to startle her. She seems like she’s in the zone, squinting down into the pot.
“Hey.” She looks up with a smile. “Everything good?”
“Yeah. Fire’s going and there’s a ton of cut wood now.”
“Thank you, Rhett. That’s going to be so nice.”
I quirk a tiny smile back at her. “Is there anything I can do to help with dinner?”
Violet shakes her head. “Nope. You can just go wait with your brothers. I’ve got this.”
“Are you sure?”
She puts her hands on her hips, pinning me with a playfully stern look. “Yes, I’m sure. I can handle making dinner on my own. You’re my guests. Let me do this.”
I could argue and say that since we’re invading her space that’s all the more reason for us to help, but Lennox is right that it’s shit manners to argue with someone in their own home.
“Fine,” I say grudgingly. “But I’m going to help set the table.”
“I can’t stop you, can I?”
I shake my head, and she sighs, a smile playing around her mouth. She looks in her element, in the kitchen, happy and relaxed. It’s nice to see.
“Fine, fine. Plates are there, utensils there.” Violet points to a cabinet and drawer with her wooden spoon, and I get to work, setting the small kitchen table that’s set between the kitchen and the living room.
It’s better to have something to do with my hands, a task to keep me busy and keep me from having to sit in the living room in that weird silence with my brothers, so I take my time, setting out the plates, getting paper towels and glasses, making sure the forks are arranged just so.
A little bit later, Violet calls us all to dinner.
“I’m starving,” Sawyer says as he drops into a chair. “Lunch feels like it was a long time ago.”
“Sorry,” Violet replies, making a face as she dishes up a pasta dish. The red sauce is fragrant, mixed with meat and veggies, coating long strands of spaghetti that she piles onto each plate. “I tend to lose track of time when I’m doing errands, there’s just so much to cram into my one day off.”
Sawyer waves a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’m a grown man, and I could have a snack if I wanted to.”
“But instead, he’d rather complain about being hungry than do anything about it,” Lennox mutters under his breath.
So much for the fragile truce.
Sawyer doesn’t rise to the bait, either because he didn’t hear it from across the table or because he’s more focused on the food. He twirls his fork in the pasta and shovels it into his mouth, licking sauce from his lips.
And then his face freezes as he starts to chew.
It’s been years, but I know that look on my brother’s face.
I take my own bite of the pasta, and nearly have to choke back the urge to spit it out onto the plate.
It smelled amazing, savory and garlicky, but it tastes…
well, it tastes fucking terrible. Somehow too salty and spicy all at the same time.
The garlic is overpowering, and there’s a bitter note in there somewhere, like something burned and then was scraped off the bottom of the pan and added to the pot of sauce anyway.
I force myself to chew and swallow, and then wash down the mouthful with a large gulp of water, desperately trying to keep my face under control.
Lennox takes his own bite, and his face is utterly expressionless as he eats. Damned military training.
“So?” Violet says, when we’ve been eating in silence for several minutes. “How is it?”
“It’s good,” Sawyer says quickly. “Really good.”
“Yeah,” Lennox echoes.
“Thank you for cooking,” I add.
Her eyes are bright as she smiles at us, and she looks so happy as she takes her own bite of pasta. She chews thoughtfully for a while and then has another bite, like she needs to be sure. Then she puts her fork down and sighs, looking at the three of us in turn.
“It’s terrible, isn’t it?”
For a second it seems like we might try to convince her otherwise, but Lennox breaks first. “Sorry, Violet, but it’s… not good.”
“Kind of terrible,” Rhett agrees.
She looks to me and I shrug a shoulder. “They’re right.”
“What I want to know,” Sawyer says, gesturing with his fork. “Is how you can be so good at baking and so bad at this. Is this just an off night or what?”
Lennox stifles a snicker, and I have to cover my mouth to hide my own, but Violet laughs, slumping in her chair. She doesn’t seem upset, so that’s something, at least.
“I don’t know, honestly. I really tried to follow the recipe, but all the instincts I have for baking just don’t seem to translate to cooking. It’s like a completely different beast.” She sighs, pushing her plate away from her. “Pizza?”
We all agree to that, gratefully.
Violet gets up to grab her phone, but as she passes my chair, her sweater snags on the arm of it, and she’s pulled back, stumbling.
She loses her footing a bit and ends up falling right into my lap.
There’s a yelp of surprise, and my body reacts almost instantly to the feeling of hers against mine. She squirms a little, and I can almost feel the heat radiating from her blush, clearly embarrassed about the situation.
But her squirming just makes her plush ass grind against my cock, and that has me getting hard in a second. I feel a flash of worry that she’s going to feel it and be weirded out, so I stand up quickly, practically dumping her on her feet.
“I should check on the fire,” I mutter, sliding past her to stride out of the room.