Page 38 of Rebel Moon

“Bored?” I said.

“You heard me.”

“Okay, fine. Let’s do this.” I set my coffee mug down so hard it slopped. “How about you, Rhett? What kind of game have you been playing with me?”

“Pardon me?”

“I spent ten years thinking Madeleine was a soulless shark who only cared about making us fit into whatever model Nashville thought we should be. Turns out, you lied to me. You’ve been lying to me for ten years. Blake told me yesterday during my interview that Madeleine put her whole career on the table to get us that tour. She risked her relationship with Wyatt Black to make sure it happened. As we were. No changes. She went to bat for the exact thing you all told me I was crazy to care about, and you never said a word. You let me look like the bad guy—coming after Madeleine—when you knew the truth all along. We owe it all to her. Why would you keep that from me?”

Rhett hung his head. “Not as simple as all that.”

“Seems pretty simple to me. You knew. All of it. And you sat next to me for ten years while I called that woman every ugly name in the book and you never—” My voice cracked. “You let me think the worst about her. Why? Why would you do that?”

“Because she made me promise never to tell you or the others.”

“That makes no sense.”

“I know it doesn’t!” Rhett sprang up out of the chair, dragging a hand down his face. “You think I don’t know that? You think I haven’t laid awake on a hundred tour buses listening to you tear into her and wanted to bash your teeth in?” He turned around. “She made me promise. And I may be a lot of things, but, when I make a promise to a woman, I keep it.”

My chest felt heavy, like an elephant’s foot was holding me down.

“Why didn’t she want us to know?” I asked, speaking through a clenched jaw.

“She didn’t want any of you to feel like you owed her anything.” Rhett’s voice was raw. “She told me it was important that Jack and the rest of you thought you did it on your own. She thought if you knew the truth, you’d start to doubt yourselves. Start thinking strings were pulled instead of earning it on their own. She thought it would break you—especially you—if you thought success had come because of what she did instead of your talent and hard work. She wanted you to walk out on that stage thinking you’d earned it—because you had. And she’d rather every one of you hate her than jeopardize what she believed to be your true destinies.” He shook his head slowly. “So I kept my promise to a woman who deserved my respect. Who had earned my respect.”

“Why did you tell the truth to Blake then?”

He didn’t say anything. Logs shifted in the grate, sending sparks up like a small fireworks show. My ankle throbbed.

“I thought it was time she got the credit for what she did,” Rhett said, finally. “That, at this point, you boys should know about the sacrifice—the risk—she took in the name of art. And it’s bigger than that. I want the world to know what she did for us and the documentary is the way to do it. You understand what I’m saying to you? Your fragile egos have been babied long enough. She deserves the credit. She believed in you guys and didn’t want anything to get in the way of your potential for greatness. Just like I believed in Jack when I sent his tape into the singing competition. Don’t you see? None of this would have happened had any of us been a little less kind. A little more selfish. Or played it safe. Or accepted an ordinary fate. What we’ve done together is nothing short of a miracle, and Madeleine’s part of it should be known.”

I couldn’t speak even if I’d wanted to.

“So now you know,” Rhett said, calmer. “And I’ll ask you one more time. What are you doing with her?”

I looked up at the man who had found me all those years ago in some seedy bar and heard something special. He was my friend and my brother. But I couldn’t talk about whatever this was between Madeleine and me. I didn’t know what it was exactly, only that something fundamental had shifted between us. The woman I thought she was all these years wasn’t who she was at all. Instead, I saw her for who she really was. For the first time, I understood her. And the fact that I hadn’t, filled me with shame so deep and ugly that it was impossible to know what to say to Rhett.

“I’m not ready to talk about it,” I said.

Rhett stared at me a long, long moment. “Oh, hell, Knox. You’re falling for her. For real.” It was no longer anger displayed in his eyes. Not disgust either. It was alarm. He was alarmed. As if I had nefarious intentions. Or worse, that he knew I wasn’t good enough for her and that eventually she would see that too, and then everything would blow up into the kind of quagmire none of us could untangle.

This is how bands broke up. There was always a woman behind it, one way or the other.

“It’s obvious how little you think of my character,” I said, shrugging as if it didn’t matter, when really it hurt so bad I could barely breathe. “So you can think whatever you want.”

“Let me be clear,” Rhett said. “Madeleine Price is one of the finest people I’ve ever known. She’s no man’s trifle or trinket. I really hope you understand that and do the right thing by her.”

There was a hard, cold kernel of anger in my stomach, growing larger and larger, choking out any compassion or love I felt for him. “Like I said earlier, it’s my business.”

“Yep, you sure did.” He grimaced as he raked a hand through his hair. “Ice your ankle.”

Then he walked to the door and left. Didn’t slam it shut but simply closed it, as if I were a naughty child who had disappointed his father. As if I had to answer to him.

But I did have to answer to him. He was my family. Right now, though? I was only barely holding it together, and that was all I could do in the moment.

With the use of the crutches, I’d managed to shower, which made me feel almost human. I’d taken off the elastic ACE wrap before I got under the water and now I was sitting in the chair trying to bandage it back up, but somehow it didn’t quite look like it had when Luci had done it.

A knock on the door drew me away from my task. It was Madeleine.