Chapter 24 #2
The truth lands clean and merciless. I care more than I’m supposed to, more than fits inside the safe, unspoken rules we’ve been living by. The ones I helped write. The ones I told myself mattered.
I don’t know when pretending stopped working. Maybe it’s always been a thin, fragile line. Maybe being here, with her at this lake, just strips it bare. Every look, every almost, every second of her choosing to stay closer to me makes the lie harder to hold onto.
I’m tired of wanting her quietly.
And so what if she is Josh’s little sister?
The thought hits, and I don’t shove it away this time. I turn it over, let it bruise. Josh would lose his mind. There would be yelling. Lines drawn. Maybe worse. But he’d forgive me eventually. He always does. He forgives everyone, especially the people he loves.
The harder truth is that I’m not sure I’d forgive myself if I keep doing this. Standing this close and calling it harmless. Letting her look at me like I’m solid ground while I pretend I’m just passing through.
I tell myself I’m protecting her. That I’m being responsible. That I’m the good guy for wanting this quietly, from a distance.
Sometimes it hits me how much things have shifted.
How quickly we all grew into the next version of ourselves.
Josh and Margo are married now, both working full time, building the kind of life you can tell will last. I’ve got my own place, not far from them, twenty minutes at most, and the fire station keeps me busy in ways I never expected.
Rachel is stepping into her doctorate, living on her own for the first time, carving out a future that already feels solid.
We’re not kids anymore. And standing back, looking at all of it, it feels like everything landed where it was meant to.
The only piece out of place is us. Because if the world made any real sense, Rachel and I would already be together.
On the dock, Josh and Margo are bickering over who won their swim race. Margo climbs out of the water, triumphant, while Josh flops dramatically next to her, soaking her towel on purpose.
Once we get closer, Josh calls out from the dock. “Hey, you two done soul-searching? Margo’s sunbathing, and I need a snack.”
Rachel rolls her eyes and looks back at me. “Race you to the ladder?”
“Are you in the mood to lose?”
“Don’t worry, Rhett, I’ll slow down enough to make it close at the end, so the loss hurts less.”
She gives me a wink and kicks off the water, taking off toward the dock, and I follow, just a beat behind. Always a beat behind.
Later that night, the fire pit crackles as we grill Rachel’s favorite sausages and sit around it.
Rachel sits on one of the logs, hair still damp with her legs tucked up under her. She holds a paper plate in one hand, her sausage half gone. I sit a few feet away, feet stretched toward the fire, my beer bottle sweating in my grip.
“You going for a record or just trying to see how fast you can inhale that thing?” I ask.
She looks over at me and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. “I didn’t eat lunch, I’m starving.”
“You should have gotten out of the water and eaten instead of swimming for like four hours straight.”
She shrugs, chewing. “Josh kept daring me.”
From across the fire pit, Josh raises his bottle in our direction at the sound of his name. “She can’t help herself. She’s competitive. Always has been.”
“Yeah, and I still beat your ass to the dock,” Rachel calls back.
Josh doesn’t argue with her. He just grins and turns the sausage on the grill. The meat hisses against the grate.
The sun sinks lower, throwing gold across the lake in slow, melting streaks.
We finish dinner and stay out by the fire.
Margo brings out marshmallows. Josh makes a mess of his and blames the skewers.
Margo curls up next to him with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, smiling into his chest. To her, the world doesn’t exist beyond him.
“Rach, when does your semester start?” Josh asks, shifting the blanket higher on Margo’s lap like he needs something to fuss over.
“Oh—uh, five days, actually.” Rachel shifts in her seat, already bracing.
“Five days?” Josh echoes, sitting straighter. “And you have everything you need? Your books are ordered, all your classes are assigned, did you rent a U-Haul for moving your stuff into your apartment? Shit—I mean, you can use my truck. Or Rhett’s. Rhett has a good truck.”
I bite back a smile. I’m starting to think Josh is always going to sound like this when it comes to his little sister, even though she hasn’t been little in a long time.
“Josh,” Rachel says, firm but not unkind. “I’m fine. Yes, my books are ordered. Yes, my classes are set. No, I don’t need a U-Haul because I don’t own a couch.”
She pauses, then adds, “And Rhett already offered his truck.” She flicks a look my way, equal parts gratitude and please back me up.
Josh exhales, scrubbing a hand down his face like he’s trying to let go of something. “I just—” He stops, shakes his head. “I know you can handle it. I do. I just want to make sure you don’t have to.”
That gets her. Her shoulders ease, just a little.
“I know,” she says quietly. “Thank you.”
“And you start at Memorial when?” Josh presses on before she can answer herself. “Is that really a thing? They make you work while you’re getting your doctorate?”
Rachel lets out a breath, like she’s counting instead of sighing. “I start at Memorial in nineteen days. I think. I’d have to check my schedule.”
Josh opens his mouth again, but she keeps going.
“And yes, Josh, it’s a part of the new PT program. I get hands-on experience with other PTs at Memorial, I get paid while I’m in school, and if I do well enough, Memorial might hire me afterward.”
She lifts her chin just a fraction, daring him to argue with that.
Josh goes quiet. He studies her for a moment, and I think he’s finally catching up to the fact that she isn’t a little girl anymore.
“I’m proud of you, Rach,” he says finally. “You know that, right?”
Her smile is small but real. “Yeah, Josh,” she says. “I know.”
Margo chimes in from beside him, unmistakably pleased. “My best friend,” she says. “A complete badass.”
I watch Rachel laugh, and think Josh might still worry, but at some point, Rachel has to do these things on her own.
Eventually, they slip away. Margo yawns, tugging Josh up by the hand, and they disappear inside the cabin without a word.
Now it is just Rachel and me. Typically, how our nights as a foursome end.
She shifts in her chair, pulling the blanket tighter around herself. The fire has burned low, just a quiet cradle of embers now, glowing soft orange in the dark.
“You cold?” I ask.
“A little.” She doesn’t look at me when she says it, just stares into the pit like it might answer something. I grab the blanket Margo left behind and pass it over without a word.
I toss another log onto the fire, watching it catch. Sparks flutter upward, disappearing into the dark like they were never here. The new heat flickers against my face, enough to push the chill away.
Rachel tilts her head, letting it rest against my shoulder for a second before pulling back again.
I glance over at her. Her hair is a wind-tossed tangle, clinging to her shoulders and the curve of her neck.
Her face is bare. Freckles are dusted across her nose, eyes tired but lit from somewhere deeper, like there’s a quiet defiance in them, something that refuses to dim.
She looks right here in a way she rarely does anywhere else, as if the lake strips her down to her truest self.
And I realize, with a slow, sinking certainty, that this is the version of her I will always carry with me.
She catches me looking. “What?”
“Nothing.” My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to, but I don’t bother looking away.
Her gaze finds mine and stays there. Usually, she’d break it, offer a joke, a smile, anything to ease the moment. But tonight she doesn’t. She studies me instead, careful and searching, like she’s listening for something beneath the quiet.
And for some reason, I let her see it. Not just the wanting, but the history of it.
The way my eyes have always found her first. The way I’ve learned the shape of her moods, the sound of her laugh, the weight of her absence.
The words gather behind my teeth, heavy and dangerous, and for one reckless heartbeat, I consider giving them breath.
I consider what it would mean to finally stop carrying this alone.
She lets out a stuttered breath and looks away. But it’s already too late. The moment has lodged itself somewhere deep in my chest, settling there like a slow burn.
The fire snaps, sending a spray of sparks into the dark. I add another log and lean back, wiping the sweat from my neck. Rachel sits cross-legged beside me, cradling what has to be her third beer, her knee close enough to mine to be felt.
“Do you think the lake’s haunted?” she asks suddenly.
“Haunted?”
She nods, all serious. “Yeah. Like, old ghosts of fishermen or something. Maybe a teenage couple who went missing in the ’70s.”
I take a long pull from my beer. “Is this your way of scaring me into keeping the fire going all night?”
“No,” she lets out a light laugh. “I just think you’d be one of those people who gets haunted. You’ve got that ‘I’ll investigate the noise in the woods alone’ energy.”
I smirk. “That’s firefighter energy. Not ghost-hunting stupidity.”
“Same difference.”
I lean forward, poking at the fire with a stick. “What about you? You give off strong first-to-die-in-a-horror-movie vibes.”
She gasps, hand to her chest, clearly offended. “Rhett, that’s rude. I would absolutely make it to the end. You know I’m too stubborn to die early.”
I laugh. “Yeah. Actually, you’re right. You are way too stubborn.”
She lifts her cup, hiding a smile behind the rim, eyes peeking over at me, mischievous and knowing. “You’d save me, though.”
I glance at her. “That so?”