Page 49 of The Long Way Home
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 ourtable, 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. Itisn’tlike 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 wordgirlfriendcreates 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.
