I roll my lips together, grateful that I don’t have to face anyone right now. “Probably not.” My voice cracks when I confess it.
“Then why do you do it? Why keep up the charade?”
I exhale. “It’s not...it’s not a charade. It’s just, I enjoy seeing my dad happy. I know how proud he is of me. I know he likes having me at the office with him even though he acts like a psycho prick sometimes. He fractured his family to keep me. He gave up so much, and when I got sick, he dropped everything to be with me every day. I just feel like living up to some of those things for him is the least I can do, you know? I just feel like...God, this sounds terrible to say, but I feel like if it wasn’t for me, his life would be so much easier. And if I can help him by being a part of the business he’s spent his life building, if I can carry that on for him, well, that’s the least I can do to repay him.”
Rhett doesn’t respond. He just keeps stroking my arm. “I can’t speak for Kip, only the way he’s talked about you and your sister over the years in passing. And he may be a psycho prick, but he doesn’t strike me as the type of man who expects repayment for time spent with his daughter.”
My eyes sting, and I nod. There’s a little voice at the back of my people-pleasing head that’s screaming yes! I think I know deep down that Rhett is right, but facing that also means facing that I’ve spent the last several years of my life relentlessly chasing a dream that isn’t actually my own.
A breath whooshes out of me and I drop my chin to my chest, squeezing my eyes together tight, wanting to put that wall back up in my mind that Rhett just came crashing through.
This time, he kisses the back of my neck, lips moving against my wet skin as he whispers, “Let’s go to bed.”
He stands behind me, gathering our towels, while I sit in the draining tub, watching the water swirl in a cyclone. A perfect reflection of how I’m currently feeling inside.
Shaken up. Spinning. Thoroughly not myself and yet, more myself than I’ve ever felt.
“Summer?”
When I glance up at Rhett, in all his rugged glory, the tips of his long hair wet and dripping over his toned shoulders, a shiver runs down my spine. He’s holding a towel open for me, and all I want to do is go to him.
So, I do. I stand, feeling the water slip off me like a skin I’ve shed. Like Rhett somehow scrubbed loose memories and hang-ups with that washcloth. When I step out of the tub, I expect him to drop his gaze over my body, but he takes a deep dive into my eyes.
I don’t know why I didn’t expect him to do that. He’s been nothing short of respectful. Is it the reputation? His look? The toe-curling things he says?
It seems unfair of me to think he’d be anything short of a gentleman. Small-town cowboy, rough around the edges, with a womanizing reputation, and he treats me better than any man ever has. Than any person has.
I sigh sleepily when he wraps the towel around my shoulders. But he doesn’t leave it at that. He gently dries me. My hair, my neck, my back. He kneels beside me and dries my legs with so much care. I think he dries me better than I usually dry myself.
But he does place a gentle nip on the cheek of my ass before he stands back up, a boyish grin on his face and a devilish glint in his eye. “Go lie down.” He points at the bed, and where I’d usually give him lip, I just go.
Because I want to. Because I don’t have to fight him anymore. Because I don’t want to fight him anymore.
When I get to the bed, I flop face down, feeling like I could fall asleep in place, on top of the bed, wrapped in a towel. I let my eyes shut, but after a few beats, they flutter open.
The towel is pulled off me. I hear the squeeze of lotion and the rasp of Rhett’s palms rubbing together.
Those warm, calloused hands slide up over my bare back, and I moan because it feels good, but mostly because I can’t get enough of Rhett touching me the way he does.
“I feel like I should be the one massaging you.”
“I feel like you’re wrong,” he husks. And I melt into the bed, soaking up this side of him I didn’t even know existed. Sweet, and tender, and swoony.
Somehow, the fact he looks so rough and tumble makes the swoon more intense. He doesn’t look like a soft man, one to pull out pretty words or take you on lavish dates.
He is nothing like any man I’ve been with.
And that’s a blessing.
“I love your freckles,” he murmurs from behind me, the pad of his finger tracing lines across the expanse of my back. “They remind me of all the constellations. Like I could draw lines between them, and pictures would appear.”
It’s such an oddly worshipful thing to say. I wiggle my toes, hum softly, and tip my cheek against the bed to gaze back at him.
“Right here, there are two so close together they almost look like one.”
“Like binary stars,” I murmur.
“What are binary stars?” His finger tenderly swipes across the spot he’s talking about.