Chapter 24
twenty-four
The cool air of the NICU faded behind us as the double doors hissed shut, cutting off the rhythmic beep-beep-beep of the monitors and the faint, sweet memory of tiny fingers wrapped around my pinky.
Baby Maya—as we’d been told they’d decided to name her—was tiny and fragile.
As one of the youngest in my family, I’d never met a baby before, but she was so much smaller than I ever could have imagine.
Seeing her in the NICU had been painful, with all the tubes and the oxygen mask, but I was grateful to see what she was okay—and infinitely more happy that we had all agreed to be in life.
Maya was utterly innocent of the wrecking ball our father called a life. Seeing her had felt like a clean slate—a promise that no matter how broken the roots were, the new branches didn’t have to carry the rot.
We walked through the fifth-floor corridor in silence.
The heavy, suffocating silence of an emotional crash after an adrenaline surge.
Lavender had her arm hooked through Imogen’s, both of them staring at the floor, their faces pale, eyes swollen and bloodshot.
My own limbs felt leaden, but inside my chest, the cold, hollow space where my anger used to live was strangely calm.
Rhys, who stood by the elevators, fell into step beside me, his thumb lightly brushing the back of my hand. He didn’t say a word, didn’t force a comforting smile, just offered his presence like an anchor in a churning sea. I let my fingers slip between his, squeezing tight.
Then, the elevator bell dinged. The doors slid open, revealing the reflective steel interior. Imogen and Lavender stepped in first. I took a step forward, but the hand in mine was suddenly yanked back.
Not by Rhys. By my brother.
Sebastian grabbed my wrist, pulling me out of the doorway. Before I could even ask what he was doing, he reached out, grabbed Rhys by the collar of his denim jacket, and pulled him back.
“Sebastian!” Imogen snapped from inside the elevator, her hand darting out to jam the Door Open button.
Sebastian ignored her, stepping directly into Rhys’s personal space until they were chest-to-chest. He didn’t lay a hand on him, but his tall frame towered over the space, his jaw clenched so tight the muscle in his cheek twitched.
“Why are you with her?” Sebastian asked. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was laced with a dangerous, razor-sharp edge. “I let it go downstairs because of the baby. I let you stand around while my family was bleeding out. But we’re done now. Why are you holding her hand like that?”
“Seb, stop,” I said, stepping between them and placing a hand against Sebastian’s chest, feeling the rigid, frantic pulse underneath. “Please. Not right now.”
“No, Ainsley,” Sebastian said, his eyes never leaving Rhys’s face. “I’ve let a lot of things slide today, but I’m not ignoring this.”
Rhys didn’t back down an inch. He held Sebastian’s furious glare with total, unwavering composure, keeping his hands loosely in his pockets. “I’m here because she wanted me here, Sebastian. It’s as simple as that.”
“It’s not simple,” Sebastian snapped, turning his glare onto me, his eyes bloodshot and raw with exhaustion.
“Ainsley, you’re vulnerable right now. Our family is completely falling apart, Dad is acting like a psycho, and he’s taking advantage of the chaos—he’s bored, or he’s power-tripping, or he’s just using you to get under my skin. ”
“I’s not like that,” Rhys said. He didn’t posture or raise his voice to match Sebastian’s volume. “I know you have no reason to trust me, Sebastian, but I need you to believe me when I say I love your sister.”
My breath caught in my throat as the words rattled around in my mind. Love. He loved me. Sebastian stared at him, emotions warring on his face. “Today is really not the day for your jokes, Montgomery.”
“I’m not joking,” Rhys said. His voice held none of the hostility it normally did when he and Sebastian were in the same room.
He shifted his gaze to me. His eyes were burning with an intensity so fierce that it was like a physical weight settling onto my chest. Every mask he had ever worn—the confident charm, the easygoing smirk, the protective fake boyfriend—was gone.
Stripped away completely, leaving behind a boy entirely open for me to see him.
“I’ve wanted her for years. But I knew I could never have her—not when she was your little sister.”
Sebastian looked between the two of us, likely trying to gauge Rhys’s words. My breath caught in my windpipe. The world narrowed down to the space between Rhys and me. The hospital hallway, my siblings, the fluorescent lights—everything bluffed out into a blur.
“What... what are you talking about?” I whispered, my voice barely a thread. My mind raced backward, tumbling through memories like loose papers in a storm. “You said there was a girl. Before Kelcey, there was a girl—”
“Ainsley,” Rhys interrupted, a light disbelieving laugh leaving his lips.
“You told me...” My voice cracked, my mind reeled. “You told me there was someone else. Someone you loved for years but couldn’t touch.”
Rhys took another step, stepping right past Sebastian, who stood frozen between us like a ghost.
“Don’t you see, Ainsley?” Rhys whispered, his voice trembling with emotion. “That other girl was you.”
The quiet confession in his house weeks ago when he told me about the girl he had loved before Kelcey—the girl he said he couldn’t have, the girl who was completely off-limits, the girl who had broken his heart without ever even knowing she held it.
But it couldn’t have been. We didn’t even know each other, not really.
And yet… it wasn’t like he hadn’t been around.
He’d been living down the street the whole time, watching with narrowed eyes as Sebastian yelled at those neighborhood bullies for picking on me.
He’d been at the ballet studio picking up Leah the last few years, sometimes lingering in the hallway my class had just let out of.
He’d looked up at the stands at every Parkhurst vs. Crofton game.
I was seeing all of these interactions with a brand new light. Seeing him happy the bullies were being reprimanded for bothering me. Waiting in the hall to maybe see or talk to me. Looking for me in the stands to see if I saw his goal.
And all this time, until I’d agreed to a fake relationship, I’d looked at him with that same disdain Sebastian has on his face now. But these last few weeks showed me a new side of Rhys, a compassionate one, a hurt one, a patient one—one I fell in love with.
Tears blurred my vision completely. “You... you loved me?”
“I have been drowning in you for four years,” Rhys said.
He closed the final inch between us, standing directly in front of me.
“Ever since the first day I saw you cheering Sebastian on at a Parkhurst-Crofton game. I loved the way you yelled at the top of your lungs and cheered as loud as you could for him. I loved the way you blasted your music with the window wide open all summer. I loved the way you defended your family above all else, especially to me. And I loved that you never let me get away with anything, you always called me out on stuff. I loved that you’ve always been so authentically, unapologetically you. ”
A warmth spread through my chest, up my neck, my cheeks. “You’re lying,” I said, but my voice had no conviction in it. We both knew he was telling the truth.
“The reason I wanted a fake relationship, the whole reason I came up with that stupid, desperate plan... was because when I saw you needed help, I saw a crack in the door. I knew it was wrong. I knew it was selfish. But I was so in love with you that I thought it might kill me to not even get the chance to try.”
“That’s why Landon was so excited when he saw us in the closet,” I realized. “He thought we’d finally started dating.”
“Every fake touch was real to me. Every time I held your hand, every time I kissed your cheek, every time I looked at you like you were the only girl in the world—it wasn’t an act, Ainsley. Not to me. It was the only time I was ever truly breathing.”
He reached out, his hands shaking slightly and cradled my face. His palms were warm against my tear-stained cheeks, his thumbs gently brushing away the wetness under my eyes.
“I love you,” Rhys whispered, his forehead leaning down until it rested against mine, his breath hot and sweet against my lips. “I love you so much that it scares me. I don’t care if the whole world thinks I’m out of my mind. I am yours, Ainsley, if you’ll have me.”
The world seemed to stop spinning. The aching, heavy weight that had sat in my chest for months—the fear of being second best, the fear of being an option, the constant belief that I was just a substitute for some unnamed ghost in his past—shattered into a million pieces.
There was no ghost. There was no other girl.
It had always been me.
“You idiot,” I sobbed, a laugh bursting through the tears as I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling myself up to him. “You absolute idiot.”
“Yeah,” he breathed against my mouth, a soft, breathless smile touching his lips. “I know.”
And then he kissed me.
He pulled me flush against his body, his arm wrapping around my waist with a fierce strength that almost lifted me right off my feet.
I tangled my fingers in the short hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer.
His lips were warm and soft against mine, firm and patient.
They moved fast and slow all at once, like they were memorizing this moment, savoring every second of it.
Behind us, the hallway was silent. When he finally pulled back, just a fraction, his chest was heaving, his lips flushed and parted. He rested his cheek against mine, holding me so tight I couldn’t tell where my heartbeat ended and his began.
“Don’t ever fake it again,” I whispered into his ear, my voice thick with emotion.
Rhys let out a shaky, quiet laugh, kissing the skin just beneath my ear. “Never again, sweetheart. From now on, it’s all real.”
Slowly, I let my feet touch the floor, though I didn’t let go of his waist. I turned, still wrapped in his arm, to look at my family.
Lavender was wiping her eyes, a massive, tearful smile spreading across her face. Imogen was leaning against the elevator frame, clutching her chest, looking like she’d just watched the climax of her favorite romance movie.
And Sebastian.
He was leaning against the opposite wall, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, staring at the floor.
The defensive, intense anger was gone, replaced by a deep, weary realization.
He looked up, his eyes moving from Rhys’s arm locked firmly around my waist, to my face—flushed, glowing, and happier than I’d looked in a year—and finally to Rhys.
“Four years?” Sebastian asked quietly, his voice heavy with the realization.
“Four years,” Rhys answered honestly, keeping his hand firmly planted on my hip.
Sebastian swallowed hard. He looked at me, his eyes softening as the last of his protective armor crumbled away. He let out a long, exhausted sigh, shaking his head.
“You’re an idiot, Montgomery,” Sebastian muttered, rubbing the back of his neck as he let out a breath that was half-disbelief, half-acceptance.
He took a step toward the elevator, pausing right in front of us.
He looked at Rhys for a long moment, then at me.
“If you break her heart... we’re going to have a very different conversation. ”
“If I break her heart,” Rhys said steadily, “you won’t have to. I’ll do it myself.”
Sebastian looked at us for one more second, then let out a faint, reluctant huff that was almost a smile. He stepped into the elevator, holding the door open for us.
“Are you two coming,” Sebastian said, “or are you going to keep making out in the hospital hallway?”
I laughed, a bright, clear sound that felt completely foreign after the dark morning we’d had. I looked up at Rhys, who was staring down at me with a look of pure, undivided adoration.
“Let me take you home,” Rhys whispered, brushing a thumb over my lip.
“Yeah,” I smiled, wrapping my fingers tightly in his. “Take me home.”
And this time, when he dropped me off, he pulled up in front of my house, proudly walking me to the door like a real, true girlfriend.