Chapter 3 #2
“Yes, ma’am. Leave it to me.” I patted her arm in female solidarity as I moved past her to make my way to Rhett’s bedroom.
“He’s so lucky to have you,” Ms. Clark called after me.
“That’s so kind of you, Ms. Clark,” I called back, wishing her son felt the same.
I didn’t bother to knock when I reached the door at the top of the stairs. Instead, I barged in hoping to … What? Catch him in the act of something?
I was being silly. Those days were behind us now.
Perhaps my paranoia explained why I threw open the door with all the dramatic flourish of a jilted lover on a soap opera.
However, what I found was the man I was supposed to marry curled up in a fetal position in the middle of his double bed looking like he hadn’t showered in days. He stared blankly at the wall, not even registering my entrance.
“I’ve been trying to call you for days, Rhett. What in the hell are you doing? People are starting to talk.” I didn’t bother to hide my rage. All he had to do was act normal, and everything would be okay. Instead he was being suspicious as hell.
His eyes finally flicked in my direction. “Lucinda.” He said my name flatly. Without emotion.
Hearing him say my full name was jarring. In all the years we had known each other, he had only ever called me Lucy.
“Your mom says you haven’t been to school since last week.” I put my hands on my hips in an imitation of my mother when she lectured my sister. I forced myself to relax my stance. The last thing I wanted was to be like her.
Rhett squeezed his eyes shut as if to block me out. “How can I think about school with everything that’s happened?” he asked, his voice unnaturally monotone.
I glanced at the open door, knowing his mother was most likely in the hallway listening. Frowning, I marched across the room and closed it with a loud click before turning back to my frustrating soon-to-be husband.
“What’s wrong with you?” I hissed, letting the full scale of my fury unleash itself. “Get up now!”
Rhett slowly sat up and ran his hand down his face. “Please stop, Lucinda—”
“I will not stop! Think about how this looks, Rhett. We can’t have that, not with what’s happened.”
Rhett’s cheeks flushed red and I saw a spark of something in his eyes.
It looked a lot like disgust. “Oh, we can’t have the neighbors talking, can we?
” His lip curled. Finally, he looked at me.
“But I’m not going out there and acting like everything is normal.
Because it’s not. It never will be again.
” His voice broke, his lips trembled. I knew he was trying to stop himself from crying.
I stared at him, hardly recognizing the man I was looking at. This person I thought was my savior had shown who he really was beneath his kind exterior.
I had been taught, since an early age, that my role in life was to find a man and settle down. To be a good Christian woman and raise my family with strong southern values.
My parents started setting me up with their friends’ sons as soon as I was old enough to start dating. I knew I would be roped into their version of an arranged marriage if I let them.
I had so little control in my life, but when it came to Rhett, I, for once, put my foot down. And even though my parents thought I could do better, they were relieved I had at least picked a man that appeared to go along with the plan they had carefully constructed for my future.
I thought he was everything I needed. Sweet. Smart. And he adored me. I felt like someone saw me for me and not just my family name.
I had never stood up to my parents. He was my one act of rebellion, and now I was paying for it.
His attention had clearly been fleeting.
I felt mortified every time I thought of him and Jenn together.
And now I was stuck with someone who was proving my parents right.
Yet I couldn’t admit I had been wrong. I couldn’t look my father in the eye and tell him that his disapproval was warranted.
Instead I stood firm in my resolve—for better or for worse.
“We wouldn’t be in this position if you were more in control of things,” I snapped, crossing my arms over my chest. “In control of yourself,” I added with enough bite for him to sense how furious I was.
That seemed to get a reaction. I had never been particularly angry with Rhett before—I never had a reason to be—until a few months ago, when he showed me the kind of person he really was.
Rhett rose to his feet, knocking a pillow to the floor.
“What is wrong with you? Is that all you care about? Jenn is dead, Lucinda. Dead!” His breathing was labored, his nostrils flared. “We need to talk about what happened—”
“Don’t, Rhett. Just don’t.” My plea sounded more like a command.
“Just don’t? Don’t what? Talk about the things we said? About where each of us were?” He glared at me. “About who Jenn was to me?”
Those words took the air out of my lungs. He wasn’t trying to protect my feelings at all—he was going straight for the jugular. At some point he had stopped caring about how I felt at all.
I wouldn’t let him see how much he hurt me. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. This man I had, until recently, trusted to put me first each and every time. He was a dirty, rotten liar.
“It’s done now. There’s no need to rehash it,” I told him firmly with a strength that wasn’t entirely genuine.
“Are you serious? You expect us to carry on as if the last week didn’t happen?
Things were said, Lucinda. Decisions were made.
And now I don’t know how to keep going after this.
” His eyes became wild. “This is my fault! She wouldn’t be dead if it weren’t for me!
” He closed his eyes and let out a guttural groan, pressing his fist to his mouth.
I had no sympathy for him. I felt his betrayal like a stab to the gut.
“You’re right, this wasn’t her fault. Not entirely.
Yes, she was definitely vying for the Miss Teen Homewrecker crown, but you allowed her to wreck it.
What happened to her …” My voice faltered.
I took a deep breath. “We have to move on from this, Rhett. You have to move on from this. The best thing to do is to press on with the plans we made.”
Rhett stared at me, his eyes filled with something inexplicable. “You think we’re still getting married and settling down? Have you lost your mind?”
“Rhett …”
He took a step toward me, and I felt intimidated. No, I felt scared.
“You’re telling me to just move on. As if the woman I love—” he faltered and my heart seized, “as if Jenn wasn’t dead.
” He squeezed his eyes shut and when he opened them again, they blazed with an anger that disturbed me.
I knew, in that moment, he wished I was the one on a mortuary slab.
“How can you be like this? How can you be so calm and unfazed? You’re acting psychotic. ”
I felt myself stiffen. “Psychotic? You mean like lying to your fiancée for months and messing up her whole life?” I challenged.
“Or how about what happened that night? You weren’t acting particularly sane yourself.
” I was rewarded when Rhett had the sense to look chastised.
“We have a future together, Rhett. A future you seem hellbent on destroying. If you would just pull yourself together, we could get things back to how they used to be.” I felt slightly panicked. I had to make him see reason.
What would become of me if this fell apart?
I didn’t know who I was without the wedding, the marriage, the plans for a picture- perfect life. My chest constricted with anxiety.
I felt my world begin to crumble around me, and I was trying to hold it together with Scotch tape.
“We have a future, Rhett. A good one too. I know you don’t want to be stuck in this tiny house with your mom forever.”
I hated saying that—Ms. Clarke was a good woman and a good mom, but I felt like my grip on him was slipping.
His eyes were haunted, and I noticed how he didn’t argue. He took a steadying breath and looked at me with a level of distrust—and disgust—I had never seen before. “Is there anything you need to tell me?”
I swallowed thickly. “Like what?”
Rhett stared at me for a moment longer before pressing the heels of his hands to his forehead like he did when he had a headache. “Maybe things are too messed up now. Maybe we shouldn’t go back to how they used to be.”
We stood facing each other. Both filled with our own versions of anguish. Both with our own versions of the truth. I wanted to shake him. I wanted to scream. He had come so close to ruining everything. And for what? For her?
I’d be damned if I’d let him burn down our white picket fence.
I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Neither of us would survive what lay ahead if we were at odds. We needed to put forward a united front. We loved each other. Everyone had to see it. They had to believe it.
I needed to believe it.
Because if not, things were going to get a whole lot worse.
I closed the distance between us and gently took his hands. “Rhett, you know what your mom said to me when I got here? She said she was worried about you, about us. She knows that our future is together, and without me, she doesn’t know what you will do. What she will do.”
I let that sink in for a moment.
He stared down at me for what felt like an uncomfortably long time. At some point in the last few months, I had lost my ability to read him. Or maybe he had written a whole new book in a language I didn’t understand.
There was a coldness in him now. A flatness to his eyes as if all the feeling had been sucked out of him. They were the eyes of someone capable of things that would terrify me. People saw him as a nice guy, but they hadn’t peeled back his layers like I had. They didn’t see who he really was.
My mouth went uncomfortably dry. “Rhett?” I said his name again, haltingly. “You love me, right? You never meant for it to go this far. You would never knowingly hurt me, would you?”
He blinked slowly as if coming back to himself from that far-off place he had been in for too long. “No, Lucinda, I never wanted to hurt you.” He sounded defeated. “I never meant for anyone to get hurt.”
I forced myself not to notice that he never once said he loved me.
I put my arms around his waist and pressed my cheek to his lean chest, feeling the steady thump thump of his heart beneath my ear. “And you will never hurt me again,” I said with total conviction.
I felt the deep rise and fall of his sigh. “No, I won’t.”
“This will all go away,” I promised him.
I promised myself.
Rhett pulled back, his hands shaking. “But what about Jenn—?”
“Don’t say her name,” I pleaded. I pressed my palm to his cheek. “It’s better that way.”
Rhett shuddered. “This is bad, Lucinda.”
“I know. But as long as we’re together, we’ll be okay.”
“We should talk about it, though. About what happened—” His eyes clouded over, his lips pressed together.
“No.” It was a whisper with all the force of a shout. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t need to, and I don’t think it would be good for either of us.”
“Things happened. Things we both regret—”
I put a finger over his mouth, silencing him.
“No.”
The word felt like a grenade ready to go off.
“We say nothing. You say nothing,” I told him before wrapping my arms around him again, squeezing him so tightly that it cut off any and all conversation. “We act like there’s nothing to say.”
After a few minutes, he lifted his arms and held me back. And we stayed that way for a long time as we tried to ignore the persistent phantom of the dead girl that lingered between us.