Chapter Thirty
Rhys
I order us both a coffee and a plate of pancakes.
He asks for peanut butter. So do I. Why not. There are worse ways to self-medicate.
His face is purpling. Tomorrow, he might regret starting a bar fight. Probably not. Men like Jett, men like me, we don’t flinch from pain. We drink it. We bleed just to make the silence stop echoing.
Men like Jett. The ones she fucks in motel rooms with broken locks and sheets that smell like smoke. The ones she thinks I belong with. It’s not who I am anymore.
Or is it?
Jett and me. The not-Benji’s. Though he’s ahead. One and a half points, if we’re keeping score: fingers, then cock. Meanwhile, I’ve got a stack of ethics and a goddamn clipboard.
That’s not why I’m here. This is about Jett. My client who needs me. And now I’m balancing between duty and pure, acidic resentment. He touched what I keep locked behind every fucking rule I wrote for myself. And she let him.
“Do you want to tell me what happened with Chad?” I ask.
He stares at me, long enough for the waitress to bring our food.
“You know Benji? She mention him?” Jett’s voice flattens. “She talk about me too?” He’s bracing to be gutted and trying not to show it.
“What she tells me stays in the room,” I say, voice clinical, hollow. Like I didn’t jerk off thinking about her mouth. “Chad?”
“My lawyer will handle that. Fucker came to my work mouthing off in my face. It was provocation,” Jett says.
“Did you do more than hit him?” I ask.
“Only took one hit to knock him out,” Jett says and smears his fork in the peanut butter before spearing a bit of pancake.
They’re alike in all the ways that matter. Fire feeding fire. And Benji she adores with a softness I’ve never earned. I’m just the one watching the whole fucking thing and pretending it doesn’t rip me in half.
Resentment’s a razor under my tongue. I swallow it down with coffee.
Why is she chasing men like us, volatile, dangerous, not safe, when she has a Benji?
A golden boy. A fucking lighthouse. Does she want to drown?
Maybe she sees herself in Jett. Not safe, not soft, not good enough to be loved without blood.
She’s used to chasing ghosts in male form.
Men who run. Men who confirm every fear she tries to outgrow.
Especially the one that says she’s too fucked up to keep.
Her and Jett, caught in that feedback loop of need and destruction? They’ll break each other, and call it love.
“Why did you hit Chad? Really,” I ask.
“He had her name in his mouth,” Jett says. “Like I’m not the fucking owner.”
Well. Shit.
“You want to talk about what happened with you and her,” I say at last, voice even. Always even.
Jett snorts. Looks out the window like the darkness might offer an answer.
“No,” he says. “I want it erased.” Like it wasn’t the best and worst night of his goddamn life.
He loves her. I can see it now. That’s what tonight was. Not anger. Not possession. Love. Brutal, unprepared, self-loathing love.
I shouldn’t think it, but I do, raw and rotting in my gut: If I’d just broken, if I’d let myself fall, would she have climbed into my lap instead of his? Would she have moaned my name in that filthy, ruined voice that haunts me?
I take a bit of pancake with peanut butter. Because I’m not allowed to think like that. It’s good that way.
“She’ll understand, eventually. Intensity isn’t something she always knows what to do with.”
Jett doesn’t say anything right away. He drags his fork through syrup and peanut butter like it’s something to kill. When he finally speaks, it’s quiet.
“She’s not supposed to understand me,” he says. “She’s supposed to fuck me and disappear.”
I swallow the heat in my throat. Coffee’s cold. Pancakes too. Everything’s gone lukewarm and bitter. “Consider the class on Friday. It helps quell the inner voice.”
“You think drawing naked people is gonna make me forget she’s fucking some asshole named Benji?” he says.
“It helps,” I say.
“I’ll think about it, doc,” he says.
“Are you going to do anything stupid tonight?” I ask. My voice is calm. Like I didn’t just imagine her in my lap, mouth open, taking me like she belongs there.
“Define stupid,” he says.
“No more bars. No more fights. No stalking Chad with a tire iron,” I say.
He snorts. “Christ, I’m not her.”
“I’m serious, Jett.”
He looks up, jaw flexing. “I’m good. I’m not gonna kill anyone.”
“Swear to me.”
“I just did.”
I stare at him. He holds the look, eyes bloodshot but clear. Or clear enough. I nod once, push up from the booth, and toss down enough cash to cover both plates and tip. “If Chad presses charges, let me know. I’ll… do what I can.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my patient.”
He scoffs. “Is that what this is?”
“Tonight, yes.”
He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t thank me. Just goes back to the pancakes like they might have answers.
I make it to the door before I let myself breathe. Before the image of her with her bare knees on motel sheets, mouth slack with need, gasping Jett’s name rises again.
I shove it down. Into the box where I keep every broken rule I’ve never spoken aloud.
I’ll see her Tuesday. Same time. Same chair. Pretending I still know what’s right.
I slide behind the wheel. Who the fuck am I kidding? I’ll see her tomorrow when she shows up to group with Jett and sets the room on fire just by looking at him. Because Trenton’s not built to handle what happens when she pokes Jett. And she will poke him.
I watch him in the big window as he picks at his pancakes.
I could have been Jett. Not just the man who fucked Delilah, though yes, that too. I could have been the man who was all teeth. I was. Until I wasn’t. Until therapy sanded me down and told me to draw instead of bite. Gave me the leash she keeps yanking.
I start the car.
Take another look at Jett.
Lucky bastard.
Brave enough to be himself in a world that punishes men who live by fuck around and find out.
I can’t help but smile.
Because Chad fucked around with both Delilah and Jett and found out.