Chapter 15
RHETT
I’m up before the sun.
That’s not unusual, though. What’s unusual is that I never slept in the first place.
I lay in this bed for six hours, staring at the dark ceiling, turning last night over and over in my head.
By the time the first gray light starts pressing through the curtains, I’ve already catalogued every moment of last night a hundred times.
Downstairs, the kitchen smells like coffee, and Mom is already at the stove. This kitchen. This family. This life that has been built around and inside of me for twenty-three years.
I know who I am in this kitchen—I know exactly who I’m supposed to be.
“Morning,” I say.
Mom turns and smiles. “You’re up early. Big day?”
“Just the usual.”
I pour coffee, sit at the table, eating what Mom puts in front of me, and nod in the right places when Dad comes in and goes over the day’s tasks. By the time everyone disperses to start their morning, I’m so convincingly fine I almost believe it myself.
Almost.
Dad pauses on his way out the back door, saying, “Colt called in sick—stomach bug, apparently. You’ll have to cover his section today.”
Something moves through my chest, and I take a drink of coffee so I don’t have to decide what my face is doing. “Okay.”
“You two get along alright yesterday?” Dad asks, not looking at me, hand on the doorframe.
“Fine,” I say. “No problems.”
He nods, goes outside, and I sit alone in the kitchen, with my coffee getting cold.
Sick.
He called in sick.
I sit with that for a moment. The realization is complicated in a way I don’t have time for right now, so I file it away and go to work.
I cover Colt’s section and mine, keeping me too busy to think, which is a good thing, I guess. Stay busy. Stay in control. That’s always been the only way I know to stay safe from myself.
But the thing about working alone, on a quiet ranch, on a still summer morning, is that the silence has a texture to it.
It gets inside your head whether you want it to or not.
And somewhere around the second hour, braced against a fence post with sweat soaking through my shirt and the cicadas screaming from the tree line, I stop being able to redirect my thoughts.
I think about his hands on my face, tilting me where he wanted me.
I think about lying in that room afterward, looking at a ceiling I’d never seen before, and feeling, for the first time in twenty-three years, like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Then I think about the headlights—about the panic. About grabbing my keys and walking out while he stood in the hallway, watching me go.
I think about his face in the rearview mirror as he stood in the driveway, not chasing me.
And the thing I keep coming back to is that running feels like a mistake in a way that none of the rest of it did. What happened in that room didn’t feel like a mistake, it felt like the first true thing I’ve done in years.
The running felt like the lie.
I reset a fence post twice because I got the angle wrong the first time and that never happens.
I’m not as present as I’m pretending to be.
By noon, I’ve built the case against it so many times it should be airtight.
We don’t make sense.
He’s only living with his aunt for the summer and then he’s going back—back to school, back to wherever he goes when Cedarbrook gets to be too much.
I have a ranch I’ll inherit, a family that expects things from me, and a life that was laid out for me before I was born.
I’m not built for whatever Colt Dawson is. I’m built for this—this land, this work, these early mornings and long days and the particular satisfaction of something done right.
I don’t need what happened last night.
I don’t need any of it.
I need to get my head straight and do my job, and when Colt comes back tomorrow, I’ll be professional and distant. There’s only six weeks left of summer and then he’ll leave and this will all have been a temporary insanity that I can put behind me and never speak of again.
I’m repeating it to myself for approximately the fortieth time when I hear the motorcycle.
I’m at the water trough on the south side of the barn, filling it, my back to the driveway when I hear it, and I don’t turn around immediately.
I hear the engine cut, and I hear boots on gravel, but I just stand there with the hose in my hand, watching the water level rise and telling myself to be calm and professional.
This is just another afternoon on the ranch.
“Hey.” His voice. Right there.
I turn around.
He looks like he didn’t sleep either. There are shadows under his eyes and his jaw has that particular set it gets when he’s holding something in check.
His knuckles are wrapped and I notice that but file it away and don’t ask.
He’s looking at me with an expression I can’t fully read, something between careful and certain—like a man who came here with a purpose and is deciding how to deliver it.
“Thought you were sick,” I say.
“I’m not sick.” He pulls his phone out of his jacket pocket and holds it toward me. “We need to talk. I got a text last night—from that number. The one you thought was me.”
I look at the phone, and I read the message. Then I read it again.
The water runs over the edge of the trough and I don’t notice until it’s soaking my boot. I shut off the hose before setting it down, taking a breath.
“What the fuck is this,” I say flatly.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Someone was watching us last night. Someone knows and they’re threatening to use it.” He steps closer. “Which means it wasn’t me sending those texts. I couldn’t have sent that to myself. Think about it.”
“How do I know you didn’t fabricate this?” I ask. “You’re pissed I left last night. You could have typed that yourself.”
Something shifts in his face. “Rhett.”
“No.” The word comes out hard. “I told you, what happened last night…it didn’t mean anything. I’m not gay. I don’t have feelings for you. Whatever you think is happening here, it’s not. I need you to understand that, and I need you to leave me alone.”
The silence that follows is very loud.
He looks at me for a long moment. “Say that again,” he says quietly.
“Tell me it didn’t mean anything. Look me in the eye and say it and I will leave.
I swear to God, I will get on that bike and ride out of here and I won’t come back.
Then you can go back to your perfect little life and pretend the whole summer didn’t happen. ”
I look him in the eye. “It didn’t mean anything.”
He nods once and something closes off in his expression, some door shutting behind his eyes. And as he takes one step back, I think it’s over. I think he’s actually going to go, but then—
“You’re a fucking coward,” he says. “You know exactly what you are and you’re choosing to lie about it because you’re too scared to lose something that was never going to make you happy anyway.
And what’s worse is you’re willing to hurt both of us to keep the lie intact.
” He tilts his head. “I hope it’s worth it. ”
I throw the first punch.
I don’t decide to, my fist just moves—muscle memory of a different kind. Rage launches itself before my brain can intercept it, and my first connects with his jaw, snapping his head to the side.
And for one second, everything goes quiet.
Then Colt turns back to face me.
He’s not surprised. He almost looks like he was waiting for it. He clenches his jaw once, then he’s on me and we go down together. He punches me in the eye socket. All I see is a white light, followed by that deep, specific throb that tells me it’s going to be black by morning.
“Fuck you,” I spit out.
“Fuck me? No, cowboy. I fucked you last night and you loved it, so I think the correct phrase would be ‘fuck me.’ And if that’s what you meant, then you forgot the please,” he says back at me.
I get a leg under him and shove. We roll. I end up on top for about two seconds before he reverses us and I’m back on the gravel with his forearm across my chest. We’re both breathing hard, and my eye is already swelling.
“Hey…HEY!” Cash’s voice.
“What the actual—” The barn door slams open.
Cash closes his hands around Colt’s arms from behind, and he allows himself to be pulled off me, chest heaving, jaw already going red where I hit him.
An arm hooks around my shoulders—Dad, hauling me up.
“Both of you, stop,” Dad’s voice booms.
“What the hell is going on? Rhett…your eye.” Cash has Colt by the arm and is looking between us like he’s trying to do math that isn’t adding up.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, you’ve got a—”
Dad interrupts, “Cash,” and Cash closes his mouth.
Colt and I aren’t looking at each other. I’m looking at the barn, and he’s looking at the ground.
The grip on Colt’s arm loosens and he rolls his shoulder, stepping back. Colt looks at me, his expression somber.
He looks at Dad. “Sir, I apologize for this. It won’t be a problem again, though, because I quit.”
“Colt—” Cash starts.
“I appreciate the opportunity,” he says to Dad. “I’ll make sure my hours are documented for the internship office.” He turns, walks to his motorcycle, and puts his helmet on.
The engine turns over.
He doesn’t look back.
I watch until he’s gone.
“Rhett.” It’s Dad’s voice, right beside me. “Inside.”
I storm over to the main house, watching my mom lean against the doorframe. She just watched the entire thing unfold, but her eyes are soft and her smile lines deepen as I approach her. “C’mon, sweetie,” she says, and I follow her in.
Cash hovers in the doorway, and Mom looks at him once. “Give us a minute.”
Cash leaves, and Mom gets an ice pack from the freezer before setting it on the table in front of me. Then she sits down in the chair across from me. I pick up the ice pack and press it to my eye.
“You want to tell me what that was?” she asks.
“Fight got out of hand.”
“I can see that.” A pause. “What was it about?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Mom is quiet for a moment, and through the kitchen window, I can see Cash outside, pretending to check something on the fence. Giving us space while still being Cash.
“Aria called this morning,” Mom says.
My hand tightens around the ice pack.
“She mentioned you were over there last night…late. She didn’t say much; she didn’t have to.”
The kitchen is very quiet. The refrigerator hums. The clock on the wall ticks. I’ve sat in this kitchen my whole life and have never once felt the walls of it the way I feel them right now. It’s like my entire world is caving in on me.
“Mom…”
“I’m not here to corner you,” she says simply. “I’m not here to push you somewhere you’re not ready to go. I just want to sit here with my son for a minute and tell him something I should have said a long time ago.”
I look up from the ice pack.
“I’ve been watching you your whole life, Rhett.
Watching you figure out what this family needed and then becoming it.
Watching you carry things that were never yours to carry because you thought that’s what being a good son looked like.
” She pauses. “I want you to know that I never asked you to do that. Neither did your father.”
She reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine, where it’s holding the ice pack. “You don’t have to tell me anything I don’t already know, baby.”
The kitchen goes quiet again, and I look at her—at the woman who has been watching me perform my whole life and never once said a word about what she saw underneath it.
“How long?” I ask, my voice coming out low.
“Long enough that I stopped worrying and just started waiting for you to be ready.” A pause. “I know I pushed Molly on you. I just thought that, maybe, if I—” She stops and shakes her head. “That wasn’t fair to either of you.”
My throat tightens so much that I can’t speak.
“Look, you don’t have to be ready today,” she says. “You don’t have to say a single word you’re not ready to say. I just need you to hear me when I tell you that there’s nothing you could be that would change what you are to me. Do you understand that?”
I stare at the ice pack in my hands.
“Rhett.”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
She squeezes my hand once and lets go.
The silence stretches on.
“Rhett.” Her voice is gentle—the same tone she would use when I was six years old and scared of something and she was telling me it was okay to be scared. “You don’t have to perform for me. Not in this kitchen. Not with me.”
I press the ice pack harder against my eye because I’m not going to cry in this kitchen. I am absolutely not going to cry in this kitchen.
“I thought—” I stop. “I thought if anyone knew, they’d want something different from me.”
“I know you did.” She says it gently. No judgment in her tone. “That’s the part that broke my heart a little—that you thought any version of you would be less than.” She holds my eyes. “You are my son—every part of you. That has never had a single condition on it and never will.”
I don’t cry. I come close, though, as I sit at this kitchen table with my busted eye and my mother’s words settling into me like water into dry ground. But I breathe through it and I don’t cry.
She stands and puts her hand on my shoulder for a moment, then moves to the sink and looks out the window.
“Your father will need you back out there when you’re ready,” she says, before putting on her beige hat and heading out herself, leaving me alone in the kitchen.
She knows.
Mom’s known for a long time and she’s been waiting. She sat across this table and told me that nothing about me could ever be less and she meant it.
And the world didn’t end.
The kitchen still smells like coffee, and everything is exactly as it was an hour ago, except something in me that has been wound tight for twenty-three years is fractionally, terrifyingly loose.
Not enough. Not all the way.
But still loose.
I sit with that in the quiet kitchen. The clock ticks, and outside the window, I see Cash has stopped pretending to check the fence and is just leaning against it, looking at the sky.
The afternoon light is going gold the way it does in August—that particular honey color that means summer is starting to end.
And that means Colt will be gone. But he said I fucking quit and got on his motorcycle and left, and I watched him go.
I don’t know if he’s coming back.
I don’t know if I want him to.
That’s the lie I’m telling myself, and I know it’s a lie even as I think it. But I file that away too because I don’t have room for it right now.
I get up and put the ice pack in the sink.
Then I go back out to the ranch and do the rest of the day’s work because there’s a lot to do. I’m still a Thornwood and the cattle still need moving and the fence still needs checking and some things don’t stop for personal revelations.
Because that’s what I am.
A Thornwood.