12. RHETT #2
Where she’s caught the sun, her freckles are a little darker, and her cheeks are a ruddy rose that makes me want to reach across and kiss her with everything I have in me.
The need to lick and bite those plump lips of hers is overwhelming enough that I cup her face and draw her to me as I shuffle close to her on the wall.
Avery is so fucking beautiful, and there isn’t a single part of her that’s fake. Not aesthetically or characteristically. She’s so fucking honest and good. So perfect. All I want to do is haul her to me and lose myself in her. Forget everything that has ever been and just be with her.
“Rhett,” she whispers when our noses brush.
“It doesn’t feel that way.” I press a kiss to her cheek, close to her ear. “Does it?”
She shakes her head in reply, and her stare flutters to mine.
There’s pain, so much pain laced with regret and disappointment, and all I want to do is take it all from her.
I want to shoulder every last bit of it on her behalf so that maybe she can see that it’s not all about what you know or what you hear.
It’s not the story you’re told of a past that defines the person in front of you and what they’re willing to do for you.
Jo is right—I would do anything for her. Anything to make her happy and keep her safe.
“Doc…” Her voice trembles as I press a kiss to her other cheek, resisting the temptation to take what I want from her, the way I want it and exactly how I know she needs it too.
“I’m not like him, and you are nothing like any of the women I’ve ever had. You are pure fucking sunshine, Avery. You’re smart, strong, caring…”
“And married.” She pulls away, looking around us as though she needs a quick escape. “Married people don’t…they don’t do this.” Gesturing between us, she gets up and takes a step back.
“Not for much longer, and anyhow, marriage only stands for anything if the person you’re married to means something. If you mean something to them.”
“Is that why you cheated on your wife? Because she meant nothing?” A tear escapes her, and angrily she swipes at it in frustration.
“Sarah and I were a disaster waiting to happen from the moment we hooked up.” I take a deep breath and force myself to relax, even though I know that dredging up the past is only going to make the guilt swarm through me.
It doesn’t matter that Sarah wasn’t a model wife, that her interest was in the lavish lifestyle she could have married to me. The feelings she had were over the money and class. It was a materialistic alliance, and in the end, it was a calamity. It all got too much and blew up monumentally.
“Trying to conceive a child only made things worse between us. The thing she was hoping would fix us was the ultimate nail in our coffin. Hormones don’t mix well with continuous disappointment, and the pressure…no one tells you about how consuming it all is.”
“It’s not an excuse.”
“No, it’s not.” I blow out a breath, feeling some of the weight on my shoulders dissipate along with the tightness in my chest when she takes a step closer. “It all got really cold, colder than it already was. At some point it all became about the biology and cycles. The best times, the best…ways.”
Avery stands right in front of me, stony-faced and looking more magnificent than ever.
I understand why this conversation is hard for her.
I get why she can’t understand. It feels like the biggest goddamn punishment to be talking to her about my past. I’m at her mercy right now, and it strikes me that this is exactly the position I swore I’d never put myself in again, after what happened with Sarah.
“It sounds exhausting.” Avery’s voice is soft when she finally speaks.
“It got really fucking tiring. Even though I didn’t want any of it anymore, I didn’t feel like I could tell Sarah that I was done.”
“Wouldn’t it have been better?”
“Yes, it would have been the right thing to do. The right thing, however, seemed too hard at the time. In hindsight, it would’ve been a lot easier and a lot less messy.
” Taking a deep breath, I continue. “The divorce was a shitshow. I had to give up the one thing I actually loved and worked my ass off for. My career was the most important thing at the time, the constant that kept me going even when everything else felt lacking, and I lost it because of sheer stupidity and cowardice.”
“Because you couldn’t keep it in your pants,” she asserts.
“That too.”
With a nod, Avery licks her teeth before she asks, “That night, by the pool, you asked me if I really thought I had nothing left. Why?”
Surprise warms my chest when her fingertips ghost the backs of my hands as she stands almost flush to one of my knees.
“You still have the one thing that matters most to you. You have Iris, and there isn’t a single person who isn’t going to fight with you to make sure that never changes.”
“Including you.”
“Especially me, sunshine.”
“The absurd thing about it all is that I know you’re a good man, Rhett.
Your past doesn’t change anything you’ve done for me.
It just hits home too damn hard, and I need time…
to process and to deal with all…this stuff.
” One of her hands flattens to the side of her head.
“Maybe I need to talk to someone. I don’t know…
All I’m certain of right now is that I need time. ”
“Take all the time you need,” I tell her, turning my palm up to catch her lingering fingers in my hand.
A breath escapes her when I stand, her body almost touching mine. Avery is tall and slim, making her fit perfectly with me when I close the distance and press a kiss to her forehead, relishing the heat of her body as she closes the gap between us.
“You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?”
“Time and space are two very different things, sweetheart.”