Chapter 15 #4
Rhys just nodded and pulled my ankle again, this time moving my leg into the sink.
He murmured a quick apology and I wasn’t sure why until he ran the water over the cut, making it sting.
He followed it by cleaning the wound, while I tried to fight the wave of dizziness that was coming over me because I would not be proving him right by fainting.
Rhys worked in methodical silence after that, his fingers surprisingly gentle despite the firm pressure he applied as he patted the skin around the wound dry with a clean paper towel.
He opened a small tube of antibiotic ointment, spreading a thin layer over the length of the cut before peeling the backing off several large, flexible adhesive gauze pads and smoothing them carefully over the span of my skin.
“There,” he murmured, his thumb running along the edge of the tape to ensure it stuck against my damp calf. “You’re survived.”
“Barely,” I muttered, though the sting was already beginning to dull into a manageable throbbing.
Landon leaned against the doorframe, letting out a loud, dramatic sigh of relief as he tossed the bloodied towel into the laundry hamper. “Great. Now that the trauma unit is closed, can we address what we’re going to do about Justin and Kelcey?”
Rhys didn’t answer right away. He stood up from the counter, his hands hovering near my waist for a fraction of a second before he pulled back, closing up the plastic first-aid kit with a sharp snap.
“They can stay out there if they want,” Rhys said, his voice flat. “We’re done anyway.”
“I should probably get going soon,” I said, making a move to slide off the counter, but Rhys immediately put a hand out to stop me, his palm resting against my shoulder.
“You’re not going anywhere yet,” he said firmly. “You just cut your leg open, and your clothes are still wet. Come upstairs.”
Landon waved a hand dismissively as he backed out into the hallway. “I’m going to head out, man. My mom wants me home for dinner anyway. Call me later?”
“Yeah,” Rhys called back. “Thanks for the kit, Landon.”
“Don’t mention it. Literally. I never want to see that much blood again.”
“So I guess Landon’s never becoming a doctor,” I joked as he headed out.
Rhys snorted. “Definitely not.”
Ten minutes later, I was in Rhys’s bedroom for the second time ever.
It was stripped back and uncluttered, filled with cool neutrals and warm natural wood.
A king-sized bed with a plain charcoal comforter sat against the main wall, flanked by two simple nightstands holding heavy lamps.
I was very familiar with his large window that looked out over the street.
If I stood in just the right spot, I could see my room easily.
On one side stood a heavy wooden desk stacked with neat binder dividers, color-coded notebooks, and a framed soccer schedule.
The room smelled faintly of cedar, laundry detergent, and the subtle, clean scent of his cologne.
“Sit,” he instructed softly, pointing toward the edge of his mattress.
I climbed up, sliding my back against the padded headboard and extending my injured leg carefully over the dark comforter. My shin was throbbing with a dull, rhythmic heat under the fresh gauze, but the bandage held firm and tight.
Rhys tossed my beach bag near his closet, grabbed two dry hoodies from a basket near his dresser, and handed me a soft, oversized gray one before pulling a second dark blue one over his own head.
He pulled a wooden chair away from his desk and sat directly across from me, but within seconds, he seemed far too restless for it.
He slid off the seat, leaving the chair empty, and dropped down to sit on the floor right beside the edge of the bed, resting his forearm on the mattress near my knee.
The room was completely quiet except for the low, soothing hum of the central air conditioning and the faint, distant rustle of wind in the pine trees outside.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, turning his head to look up at me. His green eyes were softer now, stripped of the defensive edge he’d put on the second Justin and Kelcey had arrived.
“Just stings a little,” I said, offering a small, tired smile. “It’s fine. Thanks for playing doctor down there. You were much better at it than Justin.”
“Justin is a useless idiot,” Rhys said plainly, a flash of irritation passing over his features before he caught himself.
He let out a slow breath, his posture relaxing slightly as he leaned back against the frame of the bed.
“I’m sorry about them, Ainsley. Really. I didn’t know they would be here today and I definitely didn’t want your afternoon ruined because Kelcey felt like making a point. ”
“It’s okay,” I said softly, looking down at my hands folded in my lap. “Honestly... it was kind of illuminating.”
“Illuminating how?”
“Just... seeing them together. Seeing how Justin reacted when I cut my leg—how he backed away like the blood was going to ruin his afternoon.” I let out a soft, humorless breath.
“I used to think Justin was... I don’t know, this perfect, effortless guy everybody wanted to be around.
And sitting there watching him recoil while you were running into the house to get bandages...
It just made me realize how blind I was. He’s completely empty.”
Rhys stayed still, watching me carefully. “He’s selfish,” he corrected gently. “He doesn’t know how to care about anything that isn’t directly benefiting him at that exact moment.”
“And Kelcey,” I added, my voice dropping lower. “She looked at me like I was invading her territory, even though she’s the one who dumped you for Justin. It’s like she wants you to sit on a shelf until she decides she wants you back.”
“She can look all she wants,” Rhys said, his voice steady and resolute. “She doesn’t own the shelf.”
His fingers hovered over the edge of the charcoal blanket, hesitating for a fraction of a second before moving casually to rest on the bare skin of my calf, just an inch above the top of my white gauze bandages.
His skin was warm and slightly damp from the pool, his thumb beginning to move in tiny, absentminded strokes back and forth across my leg.
It was a rhythm so gentle, so unthinkingly intimate, that my breath hitched in my throat, a sudden wave of heat prickling behind my ribs.
I took a deep breath and looked away from him, needing to focus on anything else.
My eyes snagged on a framed photo on his nightstand that I hadn’t noticed before.
It was a simple photo, what seemed to be a family picture of Rhys and his parents when he was a kid, but what struck me right then was that I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard Rhys mention his mom.
I glanced at him now, wondering if it would be the worst thing in the world to ask. But when I looked again, he followed my gaze.
“You’re wondering what happened to her, aren’t you?” he asked.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said hastily. “ I won’t be mad—”
“It’s fine,” he interrupted gently. “It’s just... a story I don’t tell very often. Mostly because people usually get this awkward, pitiful look on their face when I mention it, and I hate that look.”
“I won’t give you that look,” I promised. He searched my face for a long second, as if confirming the promise, before he leaned his head back against the wall with a quiet exhale through his nose.
“She left when I was seven,” he said plainly.
The starkness of the statement hit me like a cold breeze. “Left?”
“Yeah.” He looked out the large windows toward the pine trees, his gaze fixed on the distance.
“She wasn’t happy here. She grew up on the coast in Nova Scotia, and moving to a quiet suburban neighborhood in Ontario because my dad landed a surgical position at the regional hospital was never really what she envisioned for her life.
She hated the weather, she hated the town, and...
honestly, I think she hated being a mother. ”
He paused, his thumb smoothing over my skin as if grounding himself in the present moment.
“My dad was working eighty-hour weeks as a surgical resident back then,” Rhys continued quietly.
“He was barely home, and when he was, he was exhausted. One Tuesday afternoon while I was at elementary school soccer practice, she packed three suitcases, walked down to the kitchen, left her wedding ring sitting on the quartz counter right next to the coffee maker, and caught a flight out of Toronto to Halifax.”
My chest tightened, a sharp, cold ache blooming behind my sternum as I imagined a seven-year-old Rhys coming home from practice with grass stains on his knees, expecting his mum to be in the kitchen.
“Did she... did she say goodbye?” I whispered.
“No,” Rhys said. He didn’t even sound angry, just apathetic.
“No note, no phone call. She sent a postcard about three months later from somewhere on Prince Edward Island. It had a picture of a lighthouse on the front and a message on the back that said, ‘Hope you’re doing well in soccer, Rhys. Be good for your dad.’ And after that...
nothing. She never called, she never came back, and she never filed for formal visitation during the divorce. She just... erased herself.”
“Rhys...” I reached down, my fingers wrapping around his wrist, feeling the strong, steady thrum of his pulse beneath his warm skin. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said softly, though the slight, subconscious tightening of his jaw betrayed the old, lingering ghost of that pain.
“For a long time, when I was eight or nine, I convinced myself it was my fault. I thought if I’d been better at soccer, or if I hadn’t made so much noise in the mornings, or if I’d been a better kid, she would’ve stayed.
That’s a fun thought process to run through your head when you’re nine years old. ”