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Rhett’s jaw ticks, his hands clenching into fists at his side, but he doesn’t say a word.
“I didn’t know what to do.” I take a deep breath, remembering how bad it hurt to sit there, coming up with a lie significant enough to push Rhett away. “I wanted you with me, but she was right. You would’ve walked away from the tour to come home, and I couldn’t let you do that. I had to make sure one of us captured our dream, and I knew it wasn’t going to be me.”
The steady sound of the crickets chirping fills the silence while I gather my thoughts. “You called me the next morning. It was the first time we’d talked in a week—”
“Son of a bitch. She was screening all my calls.” Rhett pushes his fingers into his hair and turns away for a moment. He takes a few deep breaths and turns back. “Coop finally called the arena, demanded to talk to me, and told me about your dad. I ran straight to my truck, wondering why you hadn’t reached out to me, and when I called, you told me you couldn’t handle a long-distance relationship and you’d slept with Charlie Dixon,” Rhett says, his voice strained. “You said I needed to forget about you. Worst day of my life.”
I shudder at the memory, at the sound of his voice when he begged me to tell him it wasn’t true, and then again when he yelled out to me as I hung up the phone.
“After that call, I spent the
next hour throwing up in the bathroom. I hated myself for what I’d done. I picked up the phone a hundred times to call you back and tell you it was all a lie, but I couldn’t get myself to do it. And then after a while I realized it didn’t matter—”
Rhett takes a step forward, his face twisted in pain. “Come on, Mo, didn’t you know me at all? You weren’t thinking about me, about us, because if you had been, you would’ve known my future meant nothing to me if you weren’t a part of it.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice breaking. “I was just so confused…”
He pushes his fingers into his hair and turns away. “You lied to me.” He stops and turns back, the disappointment in his eyes hitting me square in the gut. “You didn’t sleep with Charlie Dixon.”
I shake my head and watch the look on his face transform into anger. “You took what we had, and you let someone manipulate it. You made a choice about what was best for me without consulting me, and then you lied about sleeping with another man!” he yells, his voice getting louder with each word.
“My father had just had a stroke!” I shout back. “I didn’t know what was going to happen to him, and I had no one. The life I’d planned for, yearned for, was gone. You were so far away—and then suddenly I had someone telling me what I needed to do. I know now I made a mistake, but I was drowning! I wanted you to be happy.”
“Happy? Do you know what that did to me?” In three giant steps, he has me backed against the side of my truck. “Do you know how bad that screwed with my head? It’s all I thought about. Every time I closed my eyes, I pictured Charlie Dixon sinking his dick inside of you. I saw him holding you and touching parts of your body only I had touched.”
“I’m sorry.” Tears flow down my cheeks. “I was wrong.”
“Finally, something we agree on.”
I flinch, wishing I could rewind time and take back my lies.
“You broke my heart, Monroe. I was in love with you. We may have been young, but we’d talked about our future, and I wanted that more than anything.”
“I did too.” I reach for him, but he takes a step back.
“Don’t,” he warns. “Don’t touch me.”
“It was a terrible time for me, Rhett. I made a mistake, and I’m sorry.”
“A mistake?” He rears back as though I’ve slapped him across the face. “You lied to me, and you call that a mistake? God, Mo, do you know how hard coming home has been for me? Since that day, I’ve dreaded every trip back to Heaven for fear that I’d see you with Charlie. I’ve avoided my family, I’ve secluded myself from my friends, I’ve fucked nameless, faceless women because I couldn’t fill the gaping, black hole you left in my goddamn heart.”
“You have to understand—I was trying to do what was best for you,” I cry, my words turning into sobs.
Rhett hangs his head. He takes a breath and blows it out slowly. “When I saw you the other day with my dogs, something sparked inside me—something I hadn’t felt since our last phone call—and I knew right then that no matter what I told myself, every attempt I’d made to put you in my past had failed. It’s felt so good to have a friendship with you again. I convinced myself I could look past what you’d done if it meant having you as part of my life, but I’m not sure I can get past this.”
“Yes,” I plead, stepping toward him. “Yes, you can, because there’s more, Rhett. God, there’s so much more you need to know.”
His eyes grow wide, his lips turning up in a sardonic smile. “How much more could there possibly be? I’m not sure I want to hear what else you have to say, Mo. I don’t know how much more I can take.”
My mouth drops open. He has to hear me out; he has to know I tried to fix us. “You have to try, Rhett. This matters. We matter.”
He shakes his head and gives me his back, walking toward the front of Dirty Dicks.
“Where are you going?”
“I need some space, Mo. I need to think, and I can’t do that here. I can’t do that when I’m around you.”
“You can’t leave,” I beg. “You can’t walk away without letting me finish.”
