Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
DANI
I fidget with my hair, keeping an eye on the homeless guy pushing his mangled shopping cart of bicycle parts along Hastings Street. Rhys finishes paying for our coffees and sets the tiny cortados on our table.
“Are you ready for this?” He eyes the tower of stacked sugar packets. My restless hands have been busy.
“Yes.” I blow out the breath I’ve been holding. “And thank you for coming with.”
He leans in to steal a quick kiss. “Are you kidding? Would not miss this for my life.”
Four weeks in Vancouver have blown by in a haze of hospital visits, family time, and working out our frustrations on my standard-issue mattress. A certain someone keeps coming after me, and Rhys has had enough.
Today it ends.
We actually have two meetings on the agenda today, and I chose this coffee shop on purpose for our first tussle.
Brett will seethe when the low-profile tires on his precious Maserati touch rubber on the grimy streets of the downtown east side. Plus, Rhys can fly under the radar. In this neighborhood, the residents are on the lookout for their next fix, not an Internet personality.
I down the coffee in two gulps, just as Brett rolls in at noon on the dot. Suit impeccable. Two-hundred-dollar haircut and million-dollar ego. He struts over like he owns the place, heels of his hand-tooled tasseled loafers clicking on the tile floor. It gives me immense pleasure when his smug smile curdles, recognizing Rhys.
I accidentally forgot to mention that he would be at my side today.
“Is this your legal counsel?” He throws a disdainful look at the mesh tank top I asked Rhys to wear on purpose.
“Yes and no,” Rhys takes the lead like he wanted to. “No, in that I don’t hold a law degree. Yes, in that I have enough cash to drown you in lawyers if you don’t back off.”
Brett whips off his sunglasses and scowls, the emerald green of his eyes I once found alluring flashing with indignation. “Is that a threat?”
Rhys stares him down, zero submission. Giving no shits. “Absolutely.”
“Why are you doing this?” I demand. “Slow news day? Time to kill?” I cut to the chase just to annoy him. Brett has an infinite capacity for combat. He loves to bicker as much as he loves to play power games.
In response, Brett shrugs, like duh, do I have to ask ? “Any businessman protects his assets.”
“You know those designs are mine. Created on my time, not yours.”
“No, actually,” he flips back, “I don’t know. And if your hobo friend here wants to waste his money in court, bring it on.”
“Are you that thirsty for attention?” Rhys shakes his head, beyond appalled. “Why else would you throw shade on Dani other than propping up your crushed ego?”
In the sticky silence, they size each other up.Brett is smaller than Rhys in every way. Uglier and meaner. A malignant little tumor. Hair blacker than his soul.
“Last I heard,” Brett says with a snigger, “your artwork embarrassed Dani and an entire town.”
Like a snake uncoiled, Rhys strikes. “Are you going to claim ownership of my drawings too?”
Brett laughs like it's the funniest thing he’s ever heard, his bone-white teeth on full display. “I’m not interested in amateur hour from a fucking influencer who’s eating my sloppy seconds. Is this the best you can do, Dani?” he asks. “Your version of ‘Reach for the stars’?”
I feel the air between me and Rhys shift, his entire body tensing. Brett's abominable behavior deserves a punch in the face, but we promised each other to keep things cool. Yet it still feels like I’ve been slimed. At one point, I swallowed my pride for this fool. Now I fight back bile.
And try to keep my voice steady.
“You used me, for my work. For your own pleasure. And then you replaced me when you got bored. We both know I could have come after you, and still could, for the bullshit lay-off.”
“But you didn’t,” he flips back. “And you won’t.”
“Because I’ve realized my worth.”
Finally, his air of doing us a favor evaporates. “And you think this airhead stud muffin is going to bow down to your precious altar for the rest of your life? Better and younger is always around the corner. Right, dude?”
I’m not the kind of person who gets violent. But Rhys proved the other day that, when push comes to shove, his fists could do the talking. What he and I have brewing together is too big for a tiny annoyance like Brett, but it all happens so suddenly, it's beyond my ability to stop it.
Rhys stands, his chair screeching across the hardwood floor. His fingers twitch into a fist. I watch his arm swing and brace myself for the crunch of knuckle against bone.
But there’s nothing but silence.
Between the curtain of my fingers, I peer out to assess the damage.
Rhys’s fist hangs just shy of smashing Brett’s pompous nose. Thank god for restraint. And I’ll take to my grave the endless enjoyment of witnessing Brett cower.
“Why don’t you spread your dirty dogma somewhere else, asshole?” Rhys bites out. “Dani is my person. I plan to make her morning coffee for the rest of her life. We’re going to get old together. And you’re just going to get old and ugly because that's who you are on the inside.”
Brett adjusts his blazer, red-faced. Uncomfortable that he didn’t live up to his personal standards of cutthroat idiot. This is a fitting place for him to go down: in a sketchy coffee shop, emasculated by an Adonis in board shorts who doesn’t take shit from anyone.
Me? I’m so fiercely proud of Rhys, my heart wants to explode. My lover, all business.
“To summarize,” Rhys says, “if you don’t retreat your sorry suited ass to whatever hole you crawled out of, prepare for war.” He crosses his arms, totally flexing in both manners of the saying.
I glare at Brett in utter disgust. The gaze he returns is dull at best, although I get the sense he is searching to find a biting reply.
“Screw both of you,” is the best he can come up with. Then, in a truly shining example of douchebaggery, Brett shoots his final lame bullet at Rhys. “You’ll be in her rearview mirror in no time, useless fuckboy.”
Brett kicks aside his chair like a tantrum-throwing child and storms out. The lone barista, who watched the drama unfold from behind the pastry display, fiddles with her nose ring. There seems to be nothing more to add.
But then she says, wise beyond her twenty-odd years, “Adulting much?”
For some reason, Rhys and I find this outrageously and immensely humorous. I laugh until my stomach aches and Rhys pulls me into his arms. His eyes, rimmed with thick lashes criminally wasted on a guy, shine with victory.
Seeing me for not only who I am, but who I can be.
“Who are you and what have you done to Rhys?” I ask.
Smiling like a fool, he says, “Not bad, huh?”
“You might have a career in law after all, my little pit bull.”
If anything calls for a celebratory kiss, this is it. Rhys weaves his hand up into my hair, tips my head back, and kisses me hot and open-mouthed. His demanding tongue punishes mine into the dark corners as the room, the sunny day, everything fades away, and I feel this ache of desire to take him right here, on any flat, available surface.
God only knows what else would have happened if the barista hadn’t cleared her throat, sending us stumbling into the table and our cortado thimbles flying to the floor.
“Sorry,” we sing-song simultaneously, giggling like pranksters.
Not sorry one iota.
Meeting number two—the Amelia Summit—commences at sundown. The sky has shifted from a brilliant bright blue to the indigo of approaching dusk, the moon hidden behind thinning summer clouds. My sister squirms awkwardly in her chair, caught between the past and the present.
The karmic journey of the three of us converges here, in my apartment, sitting at the Restoration Hardware dining room table I scored on Facebook Marketplace.
“I’m sorry,” Amelia mutters, eyes downcast to her untouched bagel and cream cheese. “For everything. I’m not proud of what I did.”
Rhys doesn’t respond right away. He wants the power dynamic made clear from the start. She can sweat it out until he’s ready to forgive and forget.
“I’d hope not,” he finally says, arms banded tight across his chest.
After wading through the sludge of Trenton family drama and Rhys at my side earlier to banish Brett, the baton now passes to the Rialto sisters to clean up their side of the yard.
“The past is the past, Ames,” I add. “And today is all about the future. Our future.” I reach for Rhys’s forearm, moving my thumb back and forth on his tanned skin like windshield wipers to soothe him. Now I can add “feisty” to the adjectives we use to describe him. “We need your word that what happens between us remains between us.”
“Because if I can’t trust you,” Rhys interjects, laying it on heavy, “that will only hurt Dani in the end.”
“I get it,” Amelia grits out, a touch hangdog after the fifteen-minute browbeating Rhys laid down shortly after she arrived. “And I’m not the same person I was back then. I’m a mother. I have different priorities. Better priorities,” she stresses.
Rhys leans back, his gaze landing on mine with the question, what do you think? We had intense discussions about this get-together all week. The ground rules he wants in place with Amelia. No hidden agendas or scheming intentions. No acting like a Crazy. If we’re moving forward together, the slate starts fresh.
Amelia reaches across the table and waits for my hand to twine with hers. She’s on fire, skin burning hot, no doubt from the heat of Rhys’s interrogation. God, he’s surprised me today. This entire week . How he’s navigated it all with tenacious resolve.
“I’m sorry I never said anything. Hopefully, you understand why.”
“Of course I understand.” I tilt my head gently at Rhys, the gesture implying we’ve put her through enough. “And we will never say anything about why your podcast ended. Or utter a word of this to Dean.”
Something flickers in the depths of Amelia’s baby blues. Surprise? Definitely shock. An understanding that we mean business. (With some low-key flexing if required.)
“Thank you,” she says, the words sounding snagged in her throat. Then she tucks two freshly ash-blond locks behind the pink shells of her ears and offers a peace pipe in the form of dinner with Dean and the twins.
Rhys takes a few seconds before replying, “If Dani’s cool, I’m cool.”
From the simmering intensity in his eyes, I know tonight when he touches me, it will be fierce and unforgiving.
I’m cool with that.