11. AVERY
AVERY
The sun is rising from behind the hills when I look out of the back window from where I’m sitting on the couch with Jo. Rhett’s running along the edge of the lake at the back of the house. The three younger dogs are running with him, leaping in and out of the water to fetch the stick he’s throwing.
I find myself studying Rhett with my heart beating a hundred miles an hour in my chest. He’s tall and strong in a way that isn’t intimidating.
On the contrary, everything about him screams safe.
His broad shoulders are lean, and his muscular arms are defined but not exaggerated. His build is athletic but not bulky.
I know I shouldn’t be mesmerized by him the way I am.
I know that it should be wrong to gravitate to him whenever he’s near—to miss him when he’s gone—but it doesn’t feel it.
All noise fades when he’s here, and I swear I can breathe without my chest threatening to cave in on itself, even if every breath burns through me.
Rhett makes me feel things I have never felt.
When he’s around me, I feel safe and nothing like the person I got used to being.
Useless. Worthless. Plain Avery.
When he calls me sunshine, that’s exactly what I feel like on the inside.
“I like giving him shit,” Jo says, muting the television even though it’s low enough that I can hear without her raising her voice.
“It keeps him on his toes. Truth is, he keeps me from going stir-crazy. I never got to have children—it wasn’t in the cards for me and Duke—but if we had been blessed…
” She pauses with a low whistle as Breeze sneaks up behind Rhett and pounces on the back of his legs like she did to me the first time I came here.
He doesn’t budge, and she doesn’t stop until he takes a piece of carrot from his pocket and holds it high until she sits patiently. Looking straight at us, a grin spreads over his face when our eyes meet, and all I can do to hide the fact that I was ogling him is gulp down the coffee in my hand.
“You know,” Jo chuckles. “Duke came home one day and told me he was selling half of his practice to a down-in-the-dumps hotshot from Boston, and I laughed. Truth is, it was the best decision he ever made.”
If it wasn’t obvious that she cares for Rhett like a mother dotes on a much-loved son, the way she smiles while she watches him run back toward the stables says it better than anything she could tell me.
“I don’t want him making any more shitty choices he’ll regret.
One bitter divorce is more than enough.” There’s one tick of a second where she looks as though she wants to take her words back, like she’s said something she shouldn’t.
All the while my chest is constricting so tight that it’s a vise around my panicked heart.
Rhett’s words from the night by the pool murmur in my ears. Take it from a pro, Avery…
It doesn’t make sense that someone might want to give him up. Maybe she was awful. Maybe she was a Carl or a Kayla…
Diverting my gaze to the paddocks, I try to push down my confusion.
He could’ve told me, couldn’t he?
“He’s a good man,” Jo states, bringing me out of my thoughts. “But, Christ, does he have the worst taste in women.”
“Oh,” I murmur, diverting my stare down to my lap.
My cheeks heat when she tips my chin up, narrowing her wise eyes on me. It feels like she can see so much more than I want her to. She can see what Rhett makes me feel, and I want to hide it from her. I want to silence all the accusations whirling around my head—Worthless. Useless. Whore.
“Avery…”
“Hmm…”
“We all have pasts, you know that, don’t you?”
“Of course.” I nod, but disappointment stings at my insides.
I’ve trusted Rhett with more than I care to admit to myself or anyone. I’ve trusted him with my shame, my fear and my pain. Why can’t he trust me with his past?
“Rhett isn’t everything you see. There’s a lot more beneath the surface.
Not all pretty, but then I don’t believe there is a single soul in the world that is all pretty.
” Wrapping her arm around me, she pulls me into her side.
“Duke used to say that the most precious souls were the ones with the deepest flaws and darkest shadows.”
I swallow at the memory of what my father used to tell me about everything having a flaw if we search for it hard enough.
“Was he right?”
“I always felt precious with him, even after spending most of my life being told otherwise. Any man can put you down, sugar,” she tells me, taking my empty cup from my hand and sitting closer.
“But words…they don’t mean shit. Nothing.
And a past is a past. We all have them. Crappy, shitty, and hellish. ”
I’m not sure where mine falls. Some days it feels crappy and others it’s hellish, and others it doesn’t feel like a past at all.
Maybe it’s because I’m still looking over my shoulder, anxiously waiting for the ground to crumble beneath me.
Sleeping dogs don’t sleep forever, even if you let them lie.
Eventually they wake up and they sniff you out.
“The water is probably going to be really cold this morning. It’ll be warmer after lunch,” Rhett tells Iris, and I can’t help notice the way the longer strands of his hair curl slightly at the ends as they fade into the shorter sides and back.
“Yeah.” She beams up at him with chocolate still smeared around her mouth from the pancakes we picked up at the waffle house. “That’s because the sun is so high in the sky that it’s like a heater to the water.”
“All right, smarty pants, stop showing off! You’re making me look bad!”
The two of them carry on joking around while I watch, completely rapt by their friendship. In this moment I feel so full and so happy that it takes me by surprise given the conversation Jo and I had this morning.
There have been a couple of times that I’ve almost asked him about his divorce. I’m not even sure why I’m so caught up in it, but my curiosity and the need to know him better are niggling at me.
Laying his board on the sand, he stands on it and shows Iris the right stance. “You’ve got to bend your knees like this so that you can balance.”
My eyes meander down his body in awe of the shape he’s in, but then I should’ve expected it given how active and outdoorsy he is.
It’s obvious he’s not a young guy, but damn, his lean muscles have muscles of their own.
Even if I didn’t know firsthand from the few times he’s held me, I’d know from looking at him that every inch of his person is hard and strong.
“You think you’re ready to give it a shot?”
“Yes! Yep, yep, yep…” Iris is running toward the water before Rhett can get his board in hand.
“Are you sure you got this, Doc?” Jo calls from beside me, laughing her ass off when Iris waves at him to hurry up.
In reply, he sticks his tongue out at her and jogs to meet Iris by the water.
The waves are pretty tame, and when he has the board down, he sits her on it before taking her deeper.
He’s got the patience of a saint as he helps Iris up onto her feet while keeping the board stable.
Of course, she doesn’t last two seconds, but they keep going and going until the sun is right over us.
“Does she ever get tired?” he asks, standing in front of me, hugging his board with one arm. Water sparkles over inch after inch of lightly tanned skin.
Although Rhett is fair, his skin has a golden kiss to it from all the hours he spends in the sun.
He might be the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen, and it’s intimidating as hell when he stabs the board into the sand and sits beside me on the towel, watching as Jo and Iris collect shells ahead of us.
I feel so self-conscious in my faded baby pink swimsuit.
The bruises on my thigh are yellowed, and they look more like a patchy tan than actual evidence of what I ran from.
“For someone whose job is all about the sea, you haven’t even dipped your toes yet. If you tell me you’re scared of sharks…” His words fade into a teasing chuckle.
“Not quite. In fact, I’m pretty okay with sharks. I had to get close and personal with some blacktips for an exhibition, and they were skittish creatures. Big and fast, and I wouldn’t mess with them, but…”
“Huh.” He side-eyes me with an impressed grin. “That’s kind of badass.”
“Thanks.”
“Now I’m intrigued. What other cool exhibitions have you worked on?”
“I think that working on the main tank is probably as cool as it gets, so the sharks are definitely it.”
“Hmm…” He turns to look at me, narrowing his gaze. “How about your favorite?”
“The reef and invertebrate exhibitions. I’m a sucker for all the bright colors, and there’s so much more life to it all than people think. It’s a real ecosystem where every creature plays its part…it’s not all rocks and shells.”
“It makes you happy.” He smiles, and I notice that my cheeks are starting to hurt from smiling too. “It looks real good on you, sunshine. Beautiful.”
My heart stutters at his unexpected statement.
I can barely breathe as his gaze meanders over my face, flitting between my eyes and my lips.
I’m overwhelmed by the heat that courses through me.
I can’t remember the last time a man called me beautiful, let alone said it to my face.
It baffles me even more as to how he’s divorced. He seems so good, almost too good.
You know how it goes, kiddo, my father’s voice whispers around my thoughts. If it seems too good, then…
“Can I ask you something?” I try to ignore the hard twist of my stomach.
“Anything,” he replies instantly from where he’s now leaning back on the towel.
“How long have you been divorced?”
The relaxed look on his face straightens, and his body tenses, and I instantly want to take back my question. I hate that I’ve made him uncomfortable.
“Sorry, Jo mentioned it and…” I cut myself off because I can’t bring myself to actually tell him that I don’t understand how someone like him could be unattached. Or even divorced.
If I’d been lucky enough to marry someone like Rhett Reynolds, I would’ve held on damn tight and counted all my lucky stars that he was mine. Instead, I got Carl. Asshole, liar and cheater. If he hadn’t given me Iris, I would say he ruined my life.
“A while,” he says, sitting up. “A long time actually.”
“Oh, was it awful?”
“What has Jo told you?” Crossing his ankles, Rhett turns toward me. Although his usual lightness is gone, the look he holds me with promises to give me anything I ask for.
“Only that you were married and that you have the worst taste in women.” I try to inject some levity into the latter part, hoping that it will make him relax again.
Even though Rhett laughs lightly at my remark, it’s not his usual deep baritone that makes my heart sputter and my stomach fill with butterflies.
And it’s so odd that I’m only now noticing the things his laugh does to me. In this moment where I have somehow ruined them.
“I was married,” he ventures with a sigh. “It was a long time ago, and I was a very different person. Or at least I had lessons to learn, you know?”
“Yeah, I do.” I’ve learned quite a few the last month.
“And maybe my taste in women wasn’t exactly all that great, but I’m sure others could say that their taste in me wasn’t good either.”
“Oh.” My heart pinches for a beat before it hangs somewhere between my chest and my stomach.
All I know of Rhett is good. His big heart and generosity. His softness and patience. The immeasurable kindness that he has shown me and Iris. I’ve never felt anything but safe with him, yet something tells me I’m not going to like what he’s about to tell me.
“I was young, stupid, and had more money than sense. Not to mention I was a cocky shit who thought I was a gift to the world. When I decided to become a doctor, I saw the glory side of it—wealth, success, and all the trappings a guy could want. And I got it all.” Pausing, he draws a line in the sand with his finger, dotting either side of the line so that it looks like a scar.
“I had it all, but it wasn’t the life I imagined.
It didn’t make me happy like I had envisioned myself to be. There was always something missing.”
Falling to my stomach, my heart breaks for him. The sadness in his eyes resonates with every fiber of my being. It’s the first time I’ve looked into someone’s eyes and found my desolation looking right back at me.
“It made me miserable, and I became an asshole. I slept around on my wife, and it got ugly.”
I clear my throat, trying to ignore the way it swells, threatening to choke me. I’m not even sure why I’m so disappointed by this new knowledge. It shouldn’t hit me as hard as it has.
“Why? Why cheat?” I hiss, blankly staring at the way his hand claws into the sand, squeezing as hard as my chest is pulverizing my heart. “Was she horrible? Terrible? Was she a bad wife? Is that why…?”
Carl said I was a bad wife, didn’t he? He wanted me to be better. Maybe if I had been…
“Avery, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but my past has no bearing on what your husband did to you. Sarah and I were unhappy. We married for the wrong reasons, and…” Rhett stops, reaching toward me. When I pull back, he drops his hand. “Don’t cry,” he groans.
The pained sound cuts through me deeper than anything he’s told me.
“I’m sorry.”
His lips tip up a tad, barely a smile. “Why are you apologizing?”
“I-I don’t know.”
Something inside me is wrecked by what he’s told me. Since Jo first said that he’s divorced, I’ve gone over every possibility in my head. Another thing that I don’t understand—why I’ve thought about it so much. I shouldn’t care at all.
Except, I thought he was different. All the sides I’ve seen of him until now have been so perfect.
There’s no such thing as perfect, and if it seems too good to be true… My father’s voice taunts me.
Maybe it’s better that I steel myself. I need to trust myself. Stop entertaining hopes and ideas when there is nothing to them. My life is a big enough mess as it is without adding more feelings and hopes to it.
“I should go make sure Iris is doing okay,” I tell him, fully aware that she is more than okay. Iris is in her element, but I need to put some distance between me and him.
Rhett nods, offering me his hand to help me up. It’s the first mistake I make, because his touch wreaks havoc through me. The current reaches every nook and cranny of my being. It takes every ounce of my strength to pull back and hold myself together.
And like that first mistake, I already know that there’s going to be more.