Page 35 of Against The Tide

The sun is rising from behind the hills when I look out of the back window from where I’m sitting on the couch with Jo. Rhett’s running along the edge of the lake at the back of the house. The three younger dogs are running with him, leaping in and out of the water to fetch the stick he’s throwing.

I find myself studying Rhett with my heart beating a hundred miles an hour in my chest. He’s tall and strong in a way that isn’t intimidating. On the contrary, everything about him screams safe. His broad shoulders are lean, and his muscular arms are defined but not exaggerated. His build is athletic but not bulky.

I know I shouldn’t be mesmerized by him the way I am. I know that it should be wrong to gravitate to him whenever he’s near—to miss him when he’s gone—but it doesn’t feel it. All noise fades when he’s here, and I swear I can breathe without my chest threatening to cave in on itself, even if every breath burns through me. Rhett makes me feel things I have never felt. When he’s around me, I feel safe and nothing like the person I got used to being.

Useless. Worthless. Plain Avery.

When he calls me sunshine, that’s exactly what I feel like on the inside.

“I like giving him shit,” Jo says, muting the television even though it’s low enough that I can hear without her raising her voice. “It keeps him on his toes. Truth is, he keeps me from going stir-crazy. I never got to have children—it wasn’t in the cards for me and Duke—but if we had been blessed…” She pauses with a low whistle as Breeze sneaks up behind Rhett and pounces on the back of his legs like she did to me the first time I came here.

He doesn’t budge, and she doesn’t stop until he takes a piece of carrot from his pocket and holds it high until she sits patiently. Looking straight at us, a grin spreads over his face when our eyes meet, and all I can do to hide the fact that I was ogling him is gulp down the coffee in my hand.

“You know,” Jo chuckles. “Duke came home one day and told me he was selling half of his practice to a down-in-the-dumps hotshot from Boston, and I laughed. Truth is, it was the best decision he ever made.”

If it wasn’t obvious that she cares for Rhett like a mother dotes on a much-loved son, the way she smiles while she watches him run back toward the stables says it better than anything she could tell me.

“I don’t want him making any more shitty choices he’ll regret. One bitter divorce is more than enough.” There’s one tick of a second where she looks as though she wants to take her words back, like she’s said something she shouldn’t. All the while my chest is constricting so tight that it’s a vise around my panicked heart.

Rhett’s words from the night by the pool murmur in my ears. Take it from a pro, Avery…

It doesn’t make sense that someone might want to give him up. Maybe she was awful. Maybe she was a Carl or a Kayla…

Diverting my gaze to the paddocks, I try to push down my confusion.

He could’ve told me, couldn’t he?

“He’s a good man,” Jo states, bringing me out of my thoughts. “But, Christ, does he have the worst taste in women.”

“Oh,” I murmur, diverting my stare down to my lap.

My cheeks heat when she tips my chin up, narrowing her wise eyes on me. It feels like she can see so much more than I want her to. She can see what Rhett makes me feel, and I want to hide it from her. I want to silence all the accusations whirling around my head—Worthless. Useless. Whore.

“Avery…”

“Hmm…”

“We all have pasts, you know that, don’t you?”

“Of course.” I nod, but disappointment stings at my insides.

I’ve trusted Rhett with more than I care to admit to myself or anyone. I’ve trusted him with my shame, my fear and my pain. Why can’t he trust me with his past?

“Rhett isn’t everything you see. There’s a lot more beneath the surface. Not all pretty, but then I don’t believe there is a single soul in the world that is all pretty.” Wrapping her arm around me, she pulls me into her side. “Duke used to say that the most precious souls were the ones with the deepest flaws and darkest shadows.”

I swallow at the memory of what my father used to tell me about everything having a flaw if we search for it hard enough.

“Was he right?”

“I always felt precious with him, even after spending most of my life being told otherwise. Any man can put you down, sugar,” she tells me, taking my empty cup from my hand and sitting closer. “But words…they don’t mean shit. Nothing. And a past is a past. We all have them. Crappy, shitty, and hellish.”

I’m not sure where mine falls. Some days it feels crappy and others it’s hellish, and others it doesn’t feel like a past at all. Maybe it’s because I’m still looking over my shoulder, anxiously waiting for the ground to crumble beneath me. Sleeping dogs don’t sleep forever, even if you let them lie. Eventually they wake up and they sniff you out.

“The water is probably going to be really cold this morning. It’ll be warmer after lunch,” Rhett tells Iris, and I can’t help notice the way the longer strands of his hair curl slightly at the ends as they fade into the shorter sides and back.

“Yeah.” She beams up at him with chocolate still smeared around her mouth from the pancakes we picked up at the waffle house. “That’s because the sun is so high in the sky that it’s like a heater to the water.”

“All right, smarty pants, stop showing off! You’re making me look bad!”