Chapter 16 Rhett
SIXTEEN
RHETT
The days between Christmas and New Year’s are supposed to feel lazy.
Soft.
Like the world took off its boots and decided to nap.
Up here, they just feel empty.
The Jubilee wrapped, the tourists went home, the banners came down. The square went back to normal. Kids on sleds, Lolly’s open sign swinging in the window, bells still ringing, just…quieter.
And me?
I went back up the mountain.
Back to the cabin. Back to my routines. Back to the silence I told myself I wanted.
It’s not the same.
The couch is the worst. Every time I look at it, I see her curled against me, laughing at some dumb story, or falling asleep with her hand fisted in my shirt like I was the only solid thing in the room. The bed is worse. The mug she used is still by the sink. I washed it, but it still feels…hers.
I work.
I chop wood. Fix fences. Oil harnesses. Run maintenance rides when the weather’s clear. I keep the horses’ routines steady, because they deserve that.
The whole time, it feels like I’m moving through a copy of my life that doesn’t quite fit.
At night, the stove ticks and the cabin creaks and the wind drags its fingers through the pines. Used to be that was enough. Used to be I’d sit in my chair, drink something hot, watch the fire, and tell myself quiet was a reward.
Now it sounds like everything I didn’t say.
Ivy’s voice hangs around the edges of the room. You’re a coward. If you’d just told me you needed time… I would’ve worked with that.
I try to tell myself I did the right thing. That she’s better off in Saint Pierce, throwing herself into her new job, not worrying about whether the mountain got enough snowpack or if I slept last night.
It works for about three seconds at a time.
On the fourth day after Christmas, my phone rings.
I almost don’t answer. Most calls this time of year are either the sheriff asking about road conditions or the mayor asking if I’ll do one last sleigh loop for someone’s New Year’s proposal.
But the screen says RUIN in all caps, which means I either pick up or he drives up here and kicks my door in.
I thumb the screen. “Hey.”
“Look who remembers how to use a phone,” my brother says, his voice edged with static and Texas. “Merry late Christmas, jackass.”
“Same to you,” I say, leaning back in my chair. “How’s the Lone Star State?”
“Hotter than your stove and twice as loud,” he says. “Figured I’d see if the mountain had eaten you. Again.”
“Still here,” I say.
“That doesn’t sound like bragging anymore,” he notes.
I grunt.
He hears it.
“So,” Ruin says. “I got a half-coherent call from Lolly on Christmas Eve. Something about you, a storm, a girl, and the mayor’s bells. Want to explain?”
Traitor, I think about Lolly, who absolutely promised she wouldn’t gossip. “Not much to explain.”
“Bullshit,” he says immediately. “Start talking.”
I stare at the stove for a second, watching the flames lick at the logs. If there’s anyone who gets it, it’s Ruin. He’s seen me at my worst. We bled in the same sand. Sat in the same VA waiting room that smelled like bleach and fear. He knows the nights I don’t talk about.
“There was a woman,” I say finally. “Marketing. PR. Came up to do some campaign for the Jubilee. Fell into my sleigh, broke a runner, got snowed in at the cabin for a couple nights.”
“Rom-com setup,” he says. “I approve.”
I ignore that. “We talked. A lot. She got me to…open up. About things I haven’t talked about in a long time.”
“Like Iraq.”
“Yeah.”
There’s a long pause on the line.
“Well, damn,” he says quietly. “That’s new.”
“Yeah,” I say again.
“What’s her name?” he asks.
“Ivy.”
He lets it sit there, like he’s tasting the shape of it. “And?”
“And we…started something,” I say. My throat feels tight. “Then she got the promotion she’s been busting her ass for—Creative Director, big campaigns, more hours. Job’s based in Saint Pierce. She wanted to try to make it work between there and here.”
“And you told her no,” he says, like he already knows.
“I told her I couldn’t do long distance,” I say. “That I didn’t want to hold her back. That I wanted my quiet. My mountain.”
“And?” he prompts.
“And she called me a coward,” I finish.
There’s a small sound on his end that might be a laugh, might be a muttered Jesus Christ.
“Is she wrong?” he asks.
The fire pops. The cabin shifts. My chest hurts.
“I don’t know how to be that guy,” I say. “The one who…drives down every weekend. Who lives half his life stretched between mountain and city. I barely figured out how to sleep up here. I don’t know how to sleep anywhere else.”
“You bare your ass in a Humvee in the middle of a firefight, but committing to a woman is what scares you?” Ruin says. “You realize how that sounds, right?”
“This isn’t about commitment,” I snap, then stop, because maybe it is. “It’s about…knowing what I can carry.”
“That’s some poetic bullshit, brother,” he says. “Here’s a thought: maybe you can carry more than you think. You just haven’t tried anything heavier than your own guilt in a long time.”
I scrub a hand over my face. “Why are you calling, Ruin?”
“Because I miss you, for one,” he says. “And because I didn’t crawl my way out of my own hole just to watch you dig yours deeper. And because I have news.”
I snort. “Let me guess. You and your bike finally got officially married.”
“Ha ha,” he says dryly. “Her name’s Dakota, and I’m about two minutes away from that, actually.”
I sit up a little. “You…met someone?”
“Yep,” he says, and there’s a softness under the bravado I rarely hear from him. “Met her on a job down near Austin. She’s stubborn as hell, tougher than most of the guys I served with, and thinks my scars are ‘textured.’ Whatever that means. I’m in so deep it’s embarrassing.”
I can’t help it. I smile. “She know you used to sleep with your hand on the wall so you didn’t bolt awake swinging?”
“She’s been on the receiving end of that once,” he says. “Didn’t flinch. Just put her hand over my chest and told me she was there. I stopped waking up like that after a while.”
Something twists in my chest. Ivy’s hand. Her weight against me. The way my breathing calmed.
“She sounds… good,” I say quietly.
“She is,” he says simply. “Point being, if you’d asked me three years ago if I’d be living in Texas, running private security with a woman I’m stupid in love with, I’d have laughed in your face and gone back to changing oil at that shitty garage. But here we are.”
“Private security?” I echo.
“Yeah,” he says, and I can hear the pride in it.
“Firm started by a guy who runs teams out of Saint Pierce. Offices in a few cities now. We handle everything from high-end bodyguard work to corporate threat assessment. It’s…
a lot. But it’s good. Feels like the kind of work we were built for. Protective. Controlled. Not… aimless.”
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “And you called to brag.”
“I called,” he says, “because the main office is still based in Saint Pierce.”
The words hit like cold air.
“Saint Pierce,” I repeat.
“City with a small town attached,” he reminds me. “Good coffee. Weird number of hot ex-military dudes.” I can hear his grin. “And at least one PR girl you’re currently being an idiot about.”
My pulse jumps.
“What are you saying?” I ask.
“I’m saying they’re looking to expand the close protection roster,” he says.
“Need someone good with logistics and people who don’t scare easily.
Minimal travel if you want it. Mostly regional.
I told my boss, Dean Maddox, I knew a guy who handled horses and tourists in blizzards without losing his shit. He said, ‘Get me his file.’”
“I don’t have a file,” I say automatically.
“You have a DD-214 and a brain,” Ruin counters. “And a brother who’s willing to put in a good word. You want in, I can make the call. You’d have to come down. Interview. See the place. Meet the team.”
Saint Pierce.
The name is a hook now, caught somewhere under my ribs.
It’s where Ivy lives. Where she works. Where she’s building this big, bright career I tried to step out of the way of like that made it easier.
Up until this moment, it felt like a different planet.
Now it feels…reachable.
“I’m not a city guy,” I say, weakly.
“Saint Pierce isn’t a city city,” he says.
“You’ve been. It’s got buildings and traffic, sure.
But there are trees. Trails twenty minutes away.
People who smile at you on purpose. And nobody’s asking you to move into a glass tower.
You could keep the cabin. Split your time.
Drive down for shifts, drive back up when you need quiet. ”
I picture it. Cabin in the winter, Saint Pierce a couple days a week. Work that uses muscles I haven’t flexed in years. Team. Purpose. A reason to get off the mountain that isn’t just groceries.
And maybe, if I don’t screw it up beyond repair, a chance to bump into a woman with a tote bag and candy cane socks and a promotion she deserves someone cheering for.
“I don’t know,” I say, but the protest sounds weak even to me.
“I do,” Ruin says. “You’ve been hiding up there since you got back.
You call it healing. I call it laying low until the memories fade enough that you can think without flinching.
And hey—it worked. You got steadier. You breathe better now.
But this?” He pauses. “This isn’t living, Rhett.
It’s…maintenance. And you deserve more than that. ”
The stove ticks behind me.
I stare at my hand on my knee, at the faint white scars that cross my knuckles. “What if I can’t do it?”
“What, the job?” he scoffs. “You can. They’ll train you on the parts you don’t know. You already understand risk, people, pressure. Hell, half the recruits they’re pulling in have less experience than you.”
“I meant Ivy,” I say quietly.
There’s a beat of silence.
“Then you show up and find out,” he says, voice softer. “You apologize. You own your shit. You tell her you were scared and wrong and that you’re willing to do the work to be better. You don’t just show up with a horse and a sled and say ‘Oops, my bad.’”
I huff, a broken sound that might be a laugh.
“And if she tells you to get lost?” he goes on. “Then you take it like a man. You hurt. You learn. You move forward anyway. With a job. With a life that’s bigger than four walls and old ghosts. But at least you’ll know you didn’t let fear make the choice for you.”
Fear.
Coward.
Her words echo, sharp and unforgiving.
She wasn’t wrong.
I hear myself say, “You really think they’d hire me?”
“I really think they’d be idiots not to,” he says. “But they don’t know you yet. You have to let them. Same with her.”
I sit with it.
The idea of walking into some Saint Pierce office, shaking hands, talking through scenarios. The idea of seeing Ivy again—not by accident in a storm, but on purpose. Sober. Honest.
The idea terrifies me.
The idea of not doing it terrifies me more.
“Make the call,” I say.
Ruin doesn’t make me repeat it. “Atta boy,” he says. “I’ll talk to Dean. You’ll probably get a call in the next day or two. New Year’s is coming, but they’re always planning ahead.”
“Okay,” I say.
“And Rhett?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t half-ass this,” he says. “Not the work. Not the girl. If you’re going to go after her, go after her. Grand gestures, real apologies, the whole thing. You hid long enough. Time to show up.”
“I’ve got a plan,” I say, and for the first time since she walked away from my sleigh, the words feel…right. “Step one: get the job. Step two: get to Saint Pierce. Step three…”
“Win the girl,” Ruin says, smirking through the line.
“Win Ivy back,” I correct. “Or at least try like hell.”
He laughs. “There he is. My stubborn bastard of a brother. Keep me posted, yeah? Dakota’s dying for an excuse to come up and see snow that isn’t fake.”
“Yeah,” I say again, but this time there’s something in it that wasn’t there before. “I will.”
We hang up.
The cabin is quiet again.
But it’s a different kind of quiet now. Not the static, heavy silence of someone trying not to feel too much. This quiet hums. Anticipates.
I stand up.
Grab my old duffel from under the bed. It still smells faintly like dust and desert, but it’ll do. I start tossing things in—clothes, boots, the folder with my old service records. I pull out the quilt Mrs. Hadley gave me and fold it, fingers lingering on the worn patches.
I think about Saint Pierce. About security work. About walking into Ivy’s orbit with more than apologies—coming with a plan, a direction, a willingness to try.
I still don’t know if I’m built for all of it.
But I’m damn well going to find out.
Because Ruin’s right. Living up here for the rest of my life pretending the best thing that happened to me was just a storm fluke?
That’s not living.
That’s hiding.
I’ve done enough hiding.
Time to go down the mountain.