12. RHETT
RHETT
Shit! I’ve never wished I could be someone else more than I do right now, watching Avery walk away.
A heaviness sets in my chest, like all my fears and anxieties are congested in my lungs, suffocating me.
All the while I watch her talk to Jo, the weight getting greater by the second, the sun getting hotter.
For the first time since I left Boston almost ten years ago, I want to fucking run like a pussy from everything I’m holding back.
The truth is that Avery has enough on her plate—she doesn’t need more shit to weigh her down.
Besides, I’ve shouldered the past, kept it quiet long enough that it doesn’t need to be spoken of to anyone else.
Jo might have gotten it out of me a few years back, but no one else needs to know all the details.
It’s easier to be the asshole than to be the poor guy whose marriage fell apart because he couldn’t get his wife pregnant.
That’s not true. I could. She did. It just didn’t stick. It never fucking stuck. And all the jokes that everyone likes to make about practicing got really old when you’re trying so damn hard that it doesn’t even feel right anymore.
“Are you going to explain it to her?” Jo asks when I help her down, beside me.
“Explain what?”
“The circumstances,” she snaps like she’s the one being crushed on the inside. “You’ve obviously told Avery about the divorce.”
“No, you told her.”
“It slipped out when we were talking. If you could see the way she looks at you.”
“How does she look at me, Jo?” My question comes out short and frustrated.
“Now? Like you’re a cheating asshole.” Taking her hat off her head, she fans herself with it. “Before, like you could hang her moon.”
The disappointment that downturned Avery’s face earlier twists in my gut. And with it comes a low-simmering anger at her judgment, like it was her I hurt.
“Why did you tell her anything?”
“It’s better she knows now. You don’t want her to find out later on when she’s in love with you and it will feel like a betrayal or a lie.”
“Fall in love with me.” A scoff blusters from my lips, trying to dampen the warmth that the prospect breathes through me.
“She’s half in love with you already.”
That’s not true. Avery is all the things that every woman I’ve ever been with wasn’t, even the one I married.
Regardless of whether she believes it or not, she’s something extraordinary.
So easy to get lost in and carried away with.
Her and the little girl she’s paddling in the rock pools with.
They deserve the world and every treasure it has to offer.
“Rhett—” Jo stops as I get to my feet and start down the beach. “You can run away, but it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change the fact that you feel it too,” she calls, bringing me to a halt before I turn and head back to her.
“No.” Trying to take a deep breath, I look up at the blinding sun. It only serves to irritate me that it’s not enough that I still feel her closeness, but the stupid fucking sun reminds me of her too. As though it’s taunting me.
“No what?”
“No, we don’t even know each other. She doesn’t know me, and I don’t know her.”
“If that ain’t the biggest pile of shit you’ve shoveled, I don’t know what is. But say you’re right—which you’re not—that’s exactly why she should know it all. Let her in, Doc. Let her know everything, especially the parts that make you uncomfortable.”
“Why? Why do you even care?”
“There’s no redemption without forgiveness.
You can’t redeem your past if you can’t forgive yourself enough to allow yourself to be happy.
And if she looks at you like you hung her moon, you look at her like she is the sun.
And this old lady here is watching it all and thinking that it’s a sin to waste something so special. ”
With her voice breaking, she takes a deep trembling breath while putting her hat back on to shadow her eyes.
I feel like the biggest ass for making her cry. That on its own is a miracle—add the fact that she’s tearing up in front of me…
“Jo…”
“Take it from someone that’s been there and done it all. Your side and her side. I’ve been on both, and I can tell you that she’s going to need someone to stand beside her and endure what’s coming with her.”
“How can I be what she wants or needs when I’m no better than—”
“Finish that sentence and I swear to Christ I’ll whack you so hard with my stick you’ll be seeing stars to go with her moon.
” Looking up at me, she sighs. “It’s a goddamn tragedy if you have the brain and heart to help others, but not yourself, Rhett Reynolds.
Don’t be a fool, or even worse, a coward. ”
“You know, most people would just say sorry for getting in other’s business.”
“I’m not most people, and I’ll tell you what I told Avery.
” Leveling me with a glare, she holds her head high and mighty.
“We’ve all made mistakes. We all have a past, some that hurt others and some where we hurt ourselves.
Others where we hurt and get hurt. But if there is one thing I’m certain of, it’s that you will do anything for her and Iris. ”
“Why would you tell her that?”
“Because it’s the truth, and we both know it.”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a meddling old bat?”
Jo laughs, sticking her tongue out at me before she retorts, “Thanks, asshat.”
Iris falls asleep the minute she sits on the couch at my place, and Jo isn’t far behind her. It’s late afternoon, and the sun is just starting to set. Avery has barely said a word to me since our conversation earlier, and the sting of her silence is running through me.
Looking around the place, she appears tantamount curious and surprised. I notice the way she runs her fingers over every surface, as though she’s physically trying to get a feel of her surroundings. Everywhere her fingers touch, I have to trace mine.
“Avery,” I murmur, stepping around her so that we’re standing face-to-face at the long kitchen. “I don’t want things to be awkward between us.”
“They’re not.” Maybe I would’ve believed her if her tone wasn’t so high-pitched and awkward.
We’re silent for a second as I try to think of a way of addressing the elephant in the room.
“You have a really nice home. Not really what I expected.”
“What were you expecting?” I flatten my hand down beside hers on the counter and observe the way her fingertips curl.
“A lot more white.”
“I’ve spent too much of my life in sterile environments to live in one.”
“Makes sense.” She blusters a half-smile, backing away when I step closer, gaze flitting over the slate-tiled wall over my shoulder and then to the floor. “It’s beautiful.”
Taking her hand before she has the opportunity to pull away anymore, I lead her through to the small yard. It’s the size of a postage stamp, but it has a decent outdoor kitchen that boasts one of the few sea views left in Sunset Cove.
The breeze wraps around us as I guide her to my favorite seat in the house—a half wall that hasn’t been touched since Callie had Rowan landscape the yard when she first moved in here.
“This is pretty.” She looks around the kept flower beds as I sit. They’re mostly verdure, but there are random pops of color here and there. Mainly lavender and lilac sea daisies that Scarlett insisted on planting last year.
“Callie’s responsible for it. The garden was as is when I bought the house off of Rowan with the exception of the flowers. Scarlett went through a phase of obsessing over bees.”
“Was that after your divorce?”
“No, I lived closer to Silverlark Harbor town when I first moved here.”
The memory of the old place makes my skin crawl, and as if she can sense it, Avery sits beside me. Not near enough to touch, but close enough that I can smell her honeyed scent mixed in with the soft lavender.
“Rowan and Harvey knew each other, and it was close enough to the clinic and central to downtown, but some shady shit went down. Rowan could’ve died…
Callie and I had no real clue what the fuck was going on even though Harvey and I lived in the same place.
I remember him acting odd, but I was too self-absorbed to think more of it. ”
I should’ve been a better brother and been more aware of everything that was happening, but I was too busy paving the same road with my ex-girlfriend that I had with my ex-wife. They could’ve been two peas in a pod—Sarah and Willa.
“You can’t blame yourself for what other people do,” Avery whispers, nudging my arm with her shoulder. “I keep telling myself that. Maybe it’ll stick sometime soon.”
Maybe it’ll stick. There’s a phrase I’m familiar with. Maybe this time it’ll stick. Maybe next time. Why isn’t it sticking?
“Sarah desperately wanted kids.” The words bluster from me without warning. “I think she wanted a Band-Aid for our marriage.”
Avery sits straighter, pulling at the hem of her white cotton dress before clutching her hands between her thighs.
“We already had issues. We weren’t exactly a match made in heaven, but she was devoted to making it last between us, no matter what and by any means necessary.
I didn’t realize how much she wanted to stay together until she went from waiting for the right time to wanting a child more than a waitlist designer purse. ”
“Why are you telling me this?” Avery asks with an audible swallow. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”
“I know.” But strangely, I want to. The last few hours have possibly been the worst I’ve had in so long. That constant fret of what’s going through her mind and what she thinks of me. Of the possibility that she might not trust me anymore.
“It makes no sense for me to care about your past. It’s not like you owe me anything or like you lied to me. It’s not like we’re…you and me…we…it’s not like—”
“Isn’t it?”
Her stumbling murmur cuts deeper than a knife. Avery is the first woman in longer than I can recall to make me want to please her in every possible way. She’s all I can think of. A constant craving I can’t sate.
“We barely know each other, Doc.” Avery looks at me with tears lining her eyes.