Chapter 61 Brighton
Ishouldn’t have given Kaia control of my phone, because she turns on the playlist Rhea affectionately calls Songs to Get Dirty To.
I know it the second the first song starts.
It’s mostly trash. A combination of rap, country, and mainstream pop music that she considers worth adding, but there’s one specific song I know Rhea loves.
It pours over the field from every speaker they’ve got.
Loud. Consuming. And it puts a smile on her face.
Her hair is loose around her sharp jaw, and her eyes are bigger and sadder than I remember.
She’s in a dress I’ve never seen—she must’ve bought it while I was gone — and it hugs her chest and her waist. It’s soft, and it makes it hard not to touch her, but I keep my other hand in my pocket until she’s ready.
It’s been weeks. She’s nervous, angry, and sad — and she doesn’t believe we’re just friends. She doesn’t. Give her a second to catch up.
But I miss the way she smells, and being patient with her is the worst pain imaginable.
“Come on, Hellcat,” I say gently. “We have our best conversations when we’re dancing.”
“The girls are here somewhere,” she huffs. “If you think they left, you’re delusional.”
“I promised them a romance movie moment. Here it is.” I smile more widely at her.
It was a whole fight when I called them together. They were pissed at me, and I let them berate me for nearly an hour before they finally agreed to help me get my sad girl back. Cosy was the first to cave and made her demands very clear.
Go big or go home.
Reaper deserves the drama.
“Are you serious right now?” She looks around, confused.
“Quit acting like you don’t love the attention.” I smile at her, praying to whoever will listen to get her to cooperate. Just for one song. “You can be high maintenance and petty over here, with me.”
I step forward when she doesn’t move, and she crosses her arms over her chest. I breathe her in, the orange in her shampoo, the subtle smell of her favorite lotion.
I slip my hand between her arms and grab her wrist until I can tangle my fingers into hers, and I spin her in a soft circle that makes her fight to keep the serious look on her face.
“What song is this?” she asks me, and I shrug even though I know. “Is this the 'Get Dirty' playlist?” she asks, her eyes flickering up to mine.
“It is,” I say, guiding her back into my steps as my hand finds her back and her fingers rest gently on my shoulder blade. Her touch makes my entire body shiver.
“You’ve been home a whole week, Brighton.” Her sad accusation isn’t a lie, but it pinches at my nervous system, and I nod to confirm it.
“I fixed it,” I say to her, and she looks at me with a confused expression.
“Brighton…” She opens her mouth to argue something, and I shake my head.
“I came too close to losing everything that night, Rhea,” I tell her. You, Daisy. Even a friend I thought would be in my life. For every step. Someone who understood me better than anyone. And it was a lie.
“I was here,” she whispers.
“You’re the only reason I’m here.” I tell her, “You and Daisy.”
“I have nothing to do with that.” Rhea shakes her head. “There’s no forcing you to do anything you don’t want to do, Brighton.”
“That morning, waking up, remembering what I did. How I treated you when you were just trying to help me. I stripped myself of my pride and got help. It’s not perfect.
There’s so much medication my head spins, but I’m in control,” I tell her, confident in my actions, in myself.
“I couldn’t do this back then, I didn’t have it in me.
I didn’t know I could. But I’m stronger now, and I had to make things right, with more than one person this week.
Daisy, Riona, and my siblings. I had to prove to myself that I could handle this without an outburst. The stress, the guilt. ”
She stares at me like I’m talking too fast, and it’s taking everything in me not to kiss the look off her face. “I couldn’t make my last stop until I knew that I was the man you needed.”
“Oh,” she exhales.
The man you deserve.
“You're it for me. I don’t know what I need to say to you to convince you to forgive me. Maybe you never do, but I’ll do anything.” She tenses in my grip, and I know she’s conflicted. This is all a lot, and she’s been bombarded.
“Brighton,” she sighs, and her teeth sink into her bottom lip.
“I’ll stick glow-in-the-dark stars to every surface in the apartment, eat all your tomatoes, learn all the wrestling moves, never make you eat pasta ever again,” I whisper as the song comes to a soft conclusion and the next one is a loud, trap song that cracks a smile on her face.
“Hell, I’ll even relinquish music privileges in the truck as long as you promise to never make me listen to this song ever again. ”
Rhea starts to laugh and shakes her head, “I don’t even know what this song is.”
“Seriously?” I scowl.
“I added a bunch to the playlist without listening to them to see if you actually played them all the way through without complaining,” she admits.
“You’re a terror—” I shake my head and bite my tongue.
“You sure you want me back as a roommate? It was such a hard adjustment period the first time.” She smiles, and I think every muscle in my body tightens in excitement. There you are, my emotional, sad girl.
“I never thought I‘d say this, but the apartment is too clean,” I tell her, and her smile grows. “There’s no hair ties in the sink, week-old leftovers growing mold in the fridge, or energy drink cans in my truck.”
“I don’t like to litter,” she says weakly.
“And if I can’t find a garbage can, what am I supposed to do?
Throw it out the window—” I stop her, dropping her hands to cup her face and bring it close to mine.
I groan and lift her face to meet mine in a long kiss that feels like heaven.
Five months of missing her, waiting for this exact moment.
The feeling of her in my arms again was enough to get me through every single second of therapy, and now that I have her—
I never want to let go.
I push my hands into her hair and pull her closer to deepen the kiss as fingers dig into my shoulders to mold us together.
I can feel how much she missed me, and every worry fades into the background around us.
She tangles her hand into the front of my suit, pulling me harder against her, and somewhere in the distance, the cheers of three very proud friends echo into the morning air.
“They are insufferable,” I groan, and she smiles against my lips.
I kiss her again, unable to get enough as the music shifts again and her brows furrow in the funniest way. “This song is really horrible,” she laughs as she pulls back.
“It really is,” I breathe finally, inhaling her completely. “I missed you,” I tell her when I refocus on her face. “A lot.”
It’s a weird feeling to be so happy and simultaneously so wrong about something, because when I really look at her this time, I see it. Rhea Drake glows the prettiest shade of purple.
“What does purple mean?” I ask her, and she furrows her brows. “Your color trick,” I chuckle, “what does the color purple mean?”
“Uh,” she straightens out, “it’s love, empathy, balance.”
“Glad we got that figured out,” I whisper. Love. “Is mine still dark red?” Almost black—it’s so dark, I remember her telling me.
“I can only do it when I’m drunk,” she confesses, and I shake my head at her.
“Pretty sure that’s just blurred vision, Hellcat…
” I sigh, but she starts to laugh like a wild thing, and I gravitate toward the sound, peppering her jaw with kisses.
“Thank you,” I say to her. “For taking care of Daisy while I was gone. She told me that you kept taking her to school when you could and watched out for her. You didn’t have to do that. ”
“She’s not just yours, Brighton,” Rhea reminds me.
“No, she’s not, is she?” I realize that now more than ever. “I found this,” I say, and pull her key from my pocket.
“I…” she trails off, “I’ve been staying with your brother. I have an apartment lined up.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No,” I repeat. “Absolutely not.” I didn’t do all of this work to lose you again.
“Me living there is what got us into this situation,” Rhea hums, and all I hear is her telling me she doesn’t want to be around me anymore. “Maybe it’s just best we—”
“Come home and make a mess, Hellcat.” I press my forehead against hers, and she responds by tangling a hand into the front of my shirt. “Please.”
“So we can go back to being friends?” she asks me after a long moment of silence that kills me with every passing second.
“Don’t ever use that word around me again,” I snap and kiss her hard, reminding her that we stopped being friends-who-kiss a long time ago.