AllFreeNovel
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I’d thought at first that it was some kind of elaborate attempt at romance, but Rhys just liked to do things. He liked to learn things and see things, touch them and try them. And whenever he was around, I had fun. It was a foreign concept at the time. Even now, he sometimes had to drag me places, reminding me that I never wanted to go but I was always happy I’d gone. He had faith that things would be enjoyable. I had faith in him.
“Yeah. I wanna go.”
There was that grin.
We drove with the windows down, the early October air drowsy with autumn. Rhys pulled into a dirt lot packed with cars parked every which way. The farm grew things besides apples, and there was an open-air market selling fruits, vegetables, and flowers. The smell of cinnamon doughnuts perfumed the air and made my stomach growl. While Rhys got a basket weighed, I bought a bag of the freshly made cider doughnuts, oil instantly spotting the paper. I held them up to Rhys across the room, and he nodded enthusiastically.
He looked absurdly hot holding the basket under one arm, in his worn jeans and orange and brown flannel shirt. Rugged and outdoorsy. He looked like he’d smell of cinnamon and cut grass and sweat. We walked down the lane to see a field of apple trees sprawling before us.
“Wow,” Rhys said. It was beautiful. The green grass and brown dirt. The green trees and red apples. It looked like something out of a children’s book.
“This is super what normal people do,” I said.
Rhys looked so fucking happy. I closed my eyes for a moment and let it wash over me. This was what I had trained myself to do, back when I started working at Mariposa and Imari pointed out to me in no uncertain terms that I had things to live for and be happy about, and if I chose not to notice them then that was my fucking problem.
I’d close my eyes for a few breaths and notice how, in that moment, something nice was happening. Or something interesting. Something exciting.
Rhys’s arm came around my shoulders, and I leaned into him. Then his hand rustled the doughnut bag, and I laughed and shoved him away. I found a big tree, and we sat underneath it. I opened the bag to the smell of fried dough and cinnamon and sugar, and Rhys grabbed one and ate it in two bites. Then he leaned in, gave me a sugary kiss, and tried to take a bite out of mine.
“There are two more in the bag!” I said, shoving it at him.
“But yours tastes better,” he said, giving me big puppy dog eyes.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Mm,” he agreed and sprawled out on the ground, putting his head in my lap. I rested my hand gently on his chest, feeling its easy rise and fall with his breath. I held my doughnut to his mouth, and he smiled and took a small bite. Sugar fell on his shirt and clung to his lips, and when I bent to kiss it off Rhys sighed, hand coming up to my hair. It was a perfect moment.
“Are you—” I shook my head. “Never mind.”
Way to ruin it.
“What?”
“Are you still mad at me?”
Rhys sighed and looked up at me. “I don’t feel mad at you in this moment. But I’m still upset, yeah. It hurts a lot to know that you didn’t feel like you could tell me these things.” He had his hand over mine on his chest so I couldn’t pull away.
“It wasn’t because you did anything wrong,” I said quickly.
Rhys sat up and brushed the sugar off.
“Maybe,” he said. His eyes looked haunted. “But, baby, all this time that we’ve been married, I thought that I knew you. And I . . . I didn’t. I didn’t know the most basic things about your childhood. And I know you have more to tell me.”
I looked at the ground, ants and other small things soldiering through grass so much taller than themselves.
“All this time I was telling you everything about myself. And I thought we were sharing things. And you were keeping all these things hidden. All this time you’ve had these secrets. That’s—” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “Things I thought about you—reasons I told myself for things that upset you. They’re not true. I—fuck.”
Rhys clutched at the grass and then visibly made himself breathe deeper.
You’re awful. You betrayed his trust. You took the most beautiful thing in your life and tore it in half like a piece of worthless paper.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out. “Hiding things—not thinking about things—it was part of how I . . . sometimes I had to. It made stuff easier.”
He took another deep breath and stroked my hair. “No, I’m sorry. You asked for a break. We don’t have to talk about this now. You wanna pick some apples?”
