AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Now you’re the one who sounds like my mom,” I mumbled a laugh. “She got me this stupid book for Christmas. It’s all about how I’m supposed to fix myself before a man will want me.”
His low chuckle rumbled against my body as he slid the tea light candle across the table toward me, whispering into my ear. “How soon can we burn that shit?”
On the third course, I almost forgot I’d been stood up and rescued. It was easier than I’d expected, dangerously so, to get lost in the stories between Rhys’s laughter, to let the stories of his photography and experiences fill the space between us, and leave my heart intrigued. I could forget he was Matthew’s brother, about to be family to my sister, only because his attention was on me, not Sadie.
“I’m sorry if I was too forward with you when we first met. You were right to push me away,” he confessed, his dark eyes wide. “I suppose I need reminders sometimes that I can’t have everything I want.”
Pushing down the rumbling nerves in my stomach, the kind that climbed incessantly along my throat, choking me into submission, I opened my mouth to reply and nothing came out. Rhys scratched his stubbled jaw and accepted the tab once the server returned, quick to reach into his wallet for payment.
“I can get it,” I objected, irritated that’s all I could say after his suggestive comment, the words that sent my heart into a tizzy.
“Perhaps I’m more traditional than you, but I do still believe in the man paying. Especially on a first date.” Rhys winked. “Do you live close to here?”
“A few blocks. This isn’t…” Who the heck was I kidding? It was. It was a date, one hundred percent so, and… I think I was okay with that. Lifting my napkin to the table, I gathered my purse and pushed out my chair. Rhys joined me, holding his hands out should I randomly fall… Or need him. We drank a lot of wine, but I knew I’d be able to manage the walk home in my heels, or at least the walk out to find a cab.
At his persistence and my indulgence, I let him walk me home. We could’ve taken a cab but, as each wintery blast of air threatened to snap off my bare legs, the walk together felt different. It wasn’t like London, when I couldn’t let myself enjoy his company because I was so annoyed with my sister. As much as Sadie and Matthew were my connection to Rhys, it really felt like it was just the two of us out there wandering the streets of Chelsea in the middle of winter.
We were within three blocks of my apartment when Rhys stopped our pace, reaching for my elbow. “What does your mom’s book say about moving on?”
Eyeing him curiously, I shrugged. “I haven’t read that far.”
“Maybe,” he paused, peering at me through the falling snow, “we could read it together sometime?”
I took a step toward him, my heels cracking some ice along the sidewalk. His brown eyes were empty in the darkness of night, but full of so much that he looked different from the time we spent together in England.
“Are you having trouble moving on from someone,” I questioned. “Or something?”
Heaven knew I was. At least I struggled with moving on from a life I dreamed about, what I thought should be, and ended up as easily erasable as graphite on paper. The chill swirling around Rhys and I didn’t faze me, but what did was my ability to fall completely into the hole of helping someone who, like the Sadie he described to me, I barely knew. The thing was, there was so much more to him and the feeling of that pulled me closer, forcing me to stand in the falling snow with Rhys.
Placing my hand on his chest, the rapid ache of his heart rippled through his layers and into my palm. “I didn’t know we’d have so much in common when I first met you,” I admitted, trying to smile at him.
It felt more intimate having him look at me so hopelessly on the sidewalk than over the candlelit dinner, our vulnerabilities more raw outside. Rhys’s skin was smooth and warm over mine as he covered my hand, flicking his gaze between my eyes.
“I haven’t been with a woman since my wife passed. There has been no one I’ve trusted, or connected with,” he confessed, taking a broken piece of my heart with his words. “I guess that’s where my rift with Matthew began, considering he wasn’t there for me then, but now I know it’s because he had the maturity of a rock when it all happened.”
His name fell from my lips in a whisper, clinging to the frozen air in a cloud of sympathy that swirled into the snowflakes grazing his shoulders.
“Yeah,” he murmured, looking at the sky. “I’m sorry I confessed that. You don’t want or need to hear that. It just slipped.”
“Don’t apologize,” I urged, reaching for his shoulders when his hand fell from mine. “That’s not everything, is it?”
He slowly shook his head, but I couldn’t ask for more because I’d stopped breathing when his warm fingers intertwined with mine in the dark. My nose tickled beneath melting snowflakes as I warmed in that moment, willing Rhys to confess more to me as I found myself desperate to know him. There was nothing about his wife when I fell into the internet hole recently, nothing about his personal life, or anything other than his professional and philanthropic efforts.
“It’s not,” he finally breathed, taking a few steps forward with me at his side, “but I’m not sure I have the words for the rest.”
Allowing the muffled soundtrack of the city to fill the silence between us, I guided Rhys toward my apartment. The iron gate outside the courtyard froze shut, something that would’ve taken me twenty minutes and only took Rhys one swift, powerful tug to loosen. Snow caked the concrete stairs leading up to the lobby door and, once we reached the panel, I wasn’t sure what was next.
Thankful for the dim exterior light posted in the courtyard, I turned to look at Rhys. His demeanor shifted, his arrogance washing away in the cold and exposition into who he really was. I wanted so badly to have the words to thank him for his honesty, but it wasn’t my story or my expectation that our night led to his confession, so I listened to my heart and turned to him on the bottom step.
“Would you like to come up?” I watched his gaze lift from the snow to my face, the slight glimmer in his eyes as he smiled at me. “I could use your help to hang up some artwork, and it doesn’t really seem appropriate to just say goodbye now. Does it?”
“No,” he agreed, shuffling his feet. “When you asked me in London if I was making light of Sadie’s pregnancy,” Rhys began, his voice barely audible in the muffled snow, “I assured you I wasn’t, and I’m not sure you trusted me then. We were trying when…” He bit his bottom lip and exhaled. “I assure you, I will always protect your sister and their baby.”
My gaping mouth froze in the cold, unable to speak of offer reassurance to him. I think part of me felt horrible for him, another part of me felt a tangible connection with his vulnerability. That might have been what made me lift to my toes and press my mouth against his, a warm connection beneath the falling snow and painful realities of life. The gentle pressure of his hands against my back, his fingers spread on my coat, pulling me closer to him, anchored our sadness and bodies in that moment.
All this time, grief over everything with Caleb blinded me and I selfishly thought I was alone experiencing pain. Somewhere between the falling snow and Rhys’s pounding heart, I realized just how much this stranger and I had in common, and exactly how eager I was to learn more.
