Chapter 10 #2
Then—God help me—I raise my voice.
“Rhett? I’m in the shower!”
The words echo, and my face flares instantly. I hear footsteps. Then the door cracks open.
“I’ll just finish soaking up most of the water, and then I’ll be out,” he says. His voice is rougher now. Lower. Like he’s dragging the words out of someplace tight inside his chest. “I won’t look.”
The shower is only half a solid wall. The top third is glass. The hot water has fogged most of it, steam clinging to the glass like a thin veil, and I angle my body so my back faces it anyway. Still, I’m painfully aware of how little separates me from the rest of the bathroom.
He steps inside the bathroom, and I can feel him.
His presence fills the whole space, and it’ almost overwhelming.
I watch his shadow kneel as he picks up the fallen bottles I’d knocked over to make room for the bucket.
He grabs more towels and presses them into the puddles of water dripping from where I stood earlier.
Practical. Focused. His shoulders move under his shirt.
I shouldn’t be looking.
He is tense, but not because of me. It’s the mess, the inconvenience, the situation. He looks like a man handling a problem, not fighting temptation.
He grips a towel and wipes the floor, his jaw remaining tight. The muscle ticks as he concentrates. He swallows, shifts his weight and exhales through his nose. I force myself to turn away from him, facing the water instead.
“I’m almost done,” he says, voice not quite steady.
I close my eyes under the water and try to breathe. I’ve almost made it. But before I’m in the clear, a ridiculous thought slips in.
I wonder if he has looked. If curiosity has ever gotten the better of him. I mean, I am a woman, and he is a man, and I am standing three feet away, naked and wet. It is not entirely inconceivable.
I wonder if he is standing there right now, deliberately keeping his eyes fixed anywhere but on me, pretending not to notice how exposed I am; he must also be aware of how fragile that restraint is. How easily the steam could shift, how little it would take for him to see more than he should.
The thought lands harder than it has any right to. My pulse stutters, traitorous and sudden, and I resent my own body for responding before my mind can regain control.
Just as I turn to face him, I hear the door shut. I don’t know why disappointment flares anyway, a sharp little ache beneath my ribs. This is what I expected. What I told myself would happen. He is totally and completely unaffected by me.
When I come out, my hair damp but skin warm, the place looks halfway normal again, as if the disaster never happened. I get dressed and make my way to find him. I pass the laundry room, and Rhett is starting a load full of dirty, wet towels.
“You didn’t have to do all that,” I say softly, adjusting my t-shirt.
“Yeah, well.” He shrugs. “I wasn’t going to let you mop all this while you were shaking like a leaf.” His eyes sweep over me briefly, then flick away, though I catch the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth.
“Come on,” he says, grabbing the basket and setting it on the floor. “Let’s eat something. You’ve had enough of a day.”
I should tell him no. I should thank him and send him on his way. But all that cold water has clearly affected my critical thinking skills. Instead, I follow him into the kitchen.
“I also fixed your front door. I noticed the door stuck when I came in. Did you know it was doing that?”
He opens my fridge as if he has done it a hundred times, pulling out leftovers and bread, moving around as if he belongs here.
“Thanks.”
We end up sitting at the little table with our mismatched plates between us. I made us lunch. It seemed like the least I could do, considering he fixed both the shower crisis and the front door without once making me feel incompetent about it. Or without me even asking him.
I slide his sandwich across the table toward him.
He looks down at it, then back up at me. “This is mine?”
“Yes,” I say carefully. “Why do you sound concerned?”
He lifts it, turning it slightly. “I’m just trying to understand your design choices.”
“It’s a sandwich, Rhett, not an art project.”
“Rachel, the bread is uneven. The cheese is doing, whatever this is. And is that mayonnaise or a cry for help?”
I roll my eyes. “I didn’t realize I was being judged on presentation. Eat it or don’t.”
He takes a bite anyway, chews thoughtfully. “Okay. Flavor-wise, not tragic. Structurally, deeply concerning.”
“A simple, ‘thank you, Rachel’, would suffice.”
He looks over at me, grinning. “Thank you, Rachel.”
My stomach does that stupid flutter thing, and I try to ignore it.
“You’ve been a little MIA recently,” he says. “I hope you’re not avoiding me.”
“Why would I do such a thing?” I ask, knowing damn well why I would be avoiding him.
“It’s the question I’ve been asking myself, too.”
“I’m not avoiding you,” I say. “I’ve just had adult responsibilities. They’re very inconvenient.”
“Oh, the mysterious adult responsibilities.” He nods to placate me. “Are these different from my adult responsibilities, or?”
I know what he is doing. He wants me to admit I’m avoiding him so we can talk about why. I refuse to give him the satisfaction. “Uh, I guess so.” I pivot, looking for a distraction. “I heard you’ve been hanging out with Anderson and Connor a lot more recently.”
“Yeah, I think Connor is always down to have a good time.”
I take a bite of my sandwich. “It’s nice seeing you with them.”
He tilts his head. “Nice?”
“Yeah. I don’t know. You seem relaxed.”
“Are you saying I wasn’t relaxed before, Sunny?”
“I’m saying,” I reply carefully, “you used to look like you were carrying the weight of the world and pretending it didn’t bother you.”
He lets out a quiet laugh. “That sounds dramatic.”
“You are dramatic.”
“I am not.”
“You absolutely are.”
He shakes his head, smiling down at the table between us. “Connor just doesn’t let things get heavy, and Anderson provides a good perspective on just about everything. It’s easy with them.”
“Easy is good,” I say.
“Yeah.” He glances at me. “You could come out with us sometime. You know, if you ever get those adult responsibilities handled.”
Instead of giving Rhett the honesty he wants, I reach across the table and steal a chip from his plate. He tries to swat at my hand, but I make it just out of reach.
“Hey, those aren’t yours.”
“You weren’t even eating them.”
“That’s not the point. It’s the principle.”
“You and your principles,” I say, rolling my eyes.
“They matter,” he says, but he is smiling. And when I don’t respond, he follows with, “You know, Josh used to do that, too.”
My hand pauses halfway back to my lap. “Steal your food?”
“Every damn time. Didn’t matter what I was eating. He’d say he wasn’t hungry, then slowly eliminate half my plate. I started ordering doubles of things just so I could still eat my food.”
The memory warms my chest in a way I’m not totally prepared for.
“He was strategic about it, too,” Rhett continues. “Would wait until I was mid-story so I couldn’t defend myself.”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it. “That’s because you talk with your hands. It leaves everything unguarded.”
He narrows his eyes at me, but his smile only grows wider. “Traitor.”
We linger there, grinning at each other like idiots. Like Josh might walk up any second and insert himself into the argument.
“He was always so damn confident,” I hear myself say.
“And overly caffeinated and positive.”
I shake my head. “It was unnatural.”
“It was aggressive,” Rhett corrects.
A small laugh escapes me again, but it fades quicker this time.
“He was fun,” I say, softer.
Rhett nods, and his eyes drop to his hands. “Yeah. He was.”
The urge to patch up my feelings scratches at the base of my throat, but I don’t give in to it. I don’t rush to fill the space. I don’t tell Rhett that Josh’s death made me stronger, or that everything happens for a reason, or that I’m okay. I don’t try to tidy it up.
With Rhett, I don’t have to.
I can miss him without performing it.
“He would’ve liked Connor,” Rhett says after a moment, voice lighter but not forced. “They would’ve teamed up and made Anderson miserable.”
“That’s a terrifying thought.”
“It really is. Anderson wouldn’t have stood a chance.”
I let myself picture it anyway—the alternate version of the world where Josh is still here, loud and alive and inserting himself into every room. In that version, maybe Anderson never quite fits the way he does now. But maybe none of us do.
It’s a strange thing, holding gratitude and grief in the same hand. Loving the people who showed up in the aftermath. Knowing they are here because he isn’t.
I wipe my hands on a napkin. “He’d be happy you’re not just sitting around.”
Rhett glances at me. “You think?”
“I know,” I say. “He hated when you got in your head.”
“That was one time.”
“It was many times.”
He huffs a laugh, rubbing the back of his neck. “He’d be on your side right now, wouldn’t he?”
“Obviously.”
“And he’d be insufferable about it.”
“The worst,” I agree.
Rhett’s mouth tilts at the corner, that quiet almost-smile he gets when he’s thinking about something he won’t say out loud. He taps his foot lightly against mine under the table instead. And for a second, it almost feels like Josh is just running late.
It is so easy to be around Rhett. Not because everything hurts less, but because neither of us has to pretend it doesn’t hurt. When Rhett is around me, time slips through my fingers, and I almost forget this is exactly the thing I’m not supposed to be doing.
Until reality slams into me like a bucket of ice water.
Ben.
I look at the clock, and it is almost four-thirty. Shit. He’ll be home soon. If he walks in and sees Rhett here—sitting at our table, eating a meal with me, after fixing something Ben should have fixed weeks ago—he’ll lose it, and I don’t have it in me for a fight.
I push back from the table suddenly, the chair scraping loudly against the floor. “Uh, you have to go.”
Rhett looks up, frowning. “What?”
“Ben. He’ll be home soon.” My voice is sharp, too fast. I stand, running my hands through my still-damp hair. “If he sees you here, he’ll—he’ll freak. I can’t—”
“Rachel.” Rhett’s voice is calm, but his eyes are searching mine, and that is somehow worse.
I shake my head, panic rising in my chest again, but this time it isn’t about water flooding the bathroom. It’s about something messier, something I can’t mop up.
“You need to go,” I whisper, and even to my own ears, it sounds like a plea.
Rhett doesn’t move at first. He watches me, his sandwich half-eaten in his hand, weighing whether to listen or to fight me on this.
“Sunny,” he says slowly. “I just spent the last hour bailing out your bathroom, making sure you didn’t catch hypothermia. We are just a couple of friends having a meal together. And you’re throwing me out like I’m some dirty secret. Are you not allowed to have friends?”
I flinch. “It’s not—” My voice cracks. I bite down on the rest of it because I don’t even know how to explain. It isn’t like that. Or maybe it is. I don’t know anymore. I swear, not enough oxygen gets to my brain to think logically when he is around.
He sets his food down, leans back in his chair, and folds his arms. “What’s the worst that happens, huh? Ben walks in, sees me here, and what—thanks me for keeping his girlfriend from drowning in her own bathroom?”
The word girlfriend creates a pit in my stomach.
“You don’t get it,” I say, shaking my head. “Ben will think—he’ll make it a whole thing. It will inevitably start a fight, Rhett. He’ll think this means something.”
Rhett tilts his head. His eyes don’t waver. “And does it?”
The air rushes out of my lungs. My lips part, ready with an answer I’ve rehearsed a hundred times, but nothing comes.
The silence stretches, loud in all the wrong ways.
I can hear the ticking clock on the wall.
That coupled with the dull thud of my heart beating too fast is making it impossible for me to think.
I want to say no.
I want to say it cleanly, decisively, like it’s the only obvious answer.
Like Rhett being here, fixing things, stepping in when everything else feels like it’s slipping, doesn’t mean anything at all.
As if in such a short time, he isn’t quietly unraveling the careful, brittle balance I’ve built my life around.
But the word refuses to come.
Because saying no would be a lie, and saying yes would mean admitting that Rhett doesn’t just disrupt my day—he threatens to upend everything I’ve been avoiding.
Rhett watches me struggle, and for once, he doesn’t grin or tease. He just looks at me, as if he already knows the truth I’m still pretending not to see, and is willing to wait me out.
I turn away, clutching the edge of the counter. “He’ll be home soon. You have to go. Please, Rhett. I’m sorry.”
There’s a long pause behind me. I can feel Rhett’s silence pressing against my back, almost suffocating.
Then a chair scrapes quietly, and footsteps follow it. He stops just behind me, and I can smell the faint mix of soap and damp cotton. I turn back around as his phone rings. I watch as his face scrunches into something I don’t see often.
“Okay,” he says finally. “I have to go anyway. But Sunny?”
I close my eyes. “What?”
“Maybe ask yourself why you’re so scared of him finding me here.”
Before I can find a reply, before I can scramble for a defense that feels convincing, he is already moving. Jacket in hand. No hesitation. No dramatics. He heads for the door, giving me exactly what I asked for.
I don’t stop him. I don’t dare.
Having Rhett here was a mistake. A lapse in judgment I can’t afford to repeat. He doesn’t fit neatly into my life the way I need things to fit. He asks questions I don’t want to answer and looks at me like he can see the cracks I’ve spent years pretending aren’t there.
I’ll just go back to avoiding him.
I’ll skip bar nights again. I can find excuses, arrive late, leave early. I’ll keep my head down and my world small. Manageable. I’ll focus on what’s expected of me. That is safer. It has to be.
Every moment I spend with Rhett pulls at something fragile inside me. Something I'm not allowed to want, because wanting is dangerous. Wanting leads to choices. Choices lead to consequences I’m not ready to face.
So I straighten the plates on the table. I gather the towels. I erase the evidence of his presence piece by piece, telling myself that once he is gone from the room, he’ll be gone from my head too.
I just have to be careful. I just have to pretend none of this ever happened.
When the sound of Ben’s key rattles in the lock twenty minutes later, I realize I haven’t cleaned up nearly enough.
And I have no idea how the hell I’m going to explain the fixed shower head—let alone everything else I’m trying so desperately not to see.