25 #2
"I don't know what the fuck you hoped to accomplish with this, but now she's not speaking to me.
Congratulations, Hayley. You've made our daughter cry.
Happy? I swear to God, I never want to see your lying, manipulating face again as long as I live.
Don't give me that look. You know I can make that happen, and I fully intend to.
Now if you'll excuse me, you've also upset my girlfriend, and I want to go comfort her. "
Without another word, he side-stepped Hayley and continued down the hall.
As he drew nearer the room, Rhett swung the door wider and moved aside to let him enter.
One look at the pain on his face and she knew he was the one that needed comforting.
She pulled him into her arms and held him close, wishing she had magic words to make everything better.
"Christ, baby, I'm so sorry." His voice was muffled against her hair.
"For what? Rhys, you don't need to apologize for anything. You didn't do anything wrong."
"Sienna's reaction—”
"Was Sienna's reaction." She put her fingertips over his lips.
Even though she thought his daughter's behavior was over the top, even for a moody teenager, maybe it was par for the course, given her mother.
"Rhys, she had a shock. Girls that age blow up, sulk around for a while, and then get over it.
Give her some time. She'll come around."
––––––––
But Sienna Collinsworth did not come around.
Rhett sat on one of the loungers on Rhys's patio, her body rigid and her blood turning to ice water in her veins as she listened to him. Each word he uttered systematically tore her apart from the inside out as he outlined his daughter's plot to erase Rhett from his life. Only he didn't see that.
"Since it's her last summer at home before going to Stanford, she wants to spend it with me. She never asks for much, and I don't think this is unreasonable."
Hot words bubbled to her lips, words that spelled out her condemnation of a sulky teenager who would stoop low enough to manipulate her own father's emotions.
This little plan had Hayley written all over it.
It was the woman's vindictive way to one-up Rhett for the things she'd said in New York.
But Sienna embraced it and ran with it. For Rhett to lash out in anger at Rhys for falling for it, though, wouldn't do any good.
She took a long breath and willed herself to speak in a calm voice.
"I agree that it isn't unreasonable to want to spend the summer with you. What I do find unreasonable is her decree that you don't see me at all during this time."
"It's just temporary." Rhys took her hand and rubbed her fingers in what Rhett assumed was supposed to be a soothing manner.
It didn't feel soothing, though. It felt condescending, and she had to resist yanking her hand away from his.
"Once I'm there and can talk to her, explain my life to her, she'll loosen up. "
"And what if she doesn't?" Desperate, she tried to make him see sense.
"Flynn's brother is coming home, so you won't have this condo anymore.
That means you're moving away from Dallas, back to Chicago.
At the end of the summer you'll be recording a new album, then rehearsal, then another tour.
If I don't see you at all this summer, that means it'll be an entire year before I'll see you again.
Even you have to admit that's more than unreasonable.
And if you don't, maybe your feelings for me have changed. "
The rubbing motion on her fingers stilled, and he gripped her hand. "My feelings for you have not changed at all. In fact, I—”
"So you're okay with waiting to see me until Illicit plays Dallas next year? You're okay with your daughter handing down a fatwa that means you can only be with me one night a year?" She pulled her hand from his and stood up, cupping her elbows in her palms. "I'm certainly not okay with that."
Rhys stood, too, and firmed his lips. "I thought you'd understand better than anyone. You know what it's like not to have your dad in your life."
Her arms dropped to her sides in shock. "That's not the same thing at all. You can't compare yourself to a man who abandoned his family and never looked back. You're a part of your children's lives, you always have been."
"But not enough. I've rarely been there day to day, and that's what Sienna needs from me now.
She wants that security of having me there for her without my running off for months at a time.
She needs my undivided attention as her father, and not someone who's distracted by other things.
I've never been there for her the way she needs, and I can't deny her that now. "
Oh, the kid had really done a number on him, searching out all the guilt buttons to push that would put him firmly under her manicured little thumb.
Rhett might have bought into it herself save for the fact that Sienna relegated her to nothing more than a distraction in Rhys's life. She threw her hands up in surrender.
"Fine, Rhys. Move to Chicago. Turn me into a one night a year fuck. It's your choice. But remember this." She blinked away the hot tears that stung her eyes. "I'm not the one forcing you to make a choice."
She couldn't stay there another minute knowing he was walking out of her life.
And if those conniving bitches in Chicago had their way, he was walking out for good.
There was no way she would let him see how he was ripping her apart, and she stumbled out of the condo for the last time before Sienna Collinsworth won by having Rhys watch Rhett fall to pieces in front of him.