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He’s silent again as the road rolls under us, and I figure I’ve probably killed the conversation anyway, but then he says, “I took on Teller’s case because a colleague begged me to, and I made the mistake of thinking if Teller was Jacoby’s cousin, he had to be a good guy.

And even though I strongly suspected that he was full of shit in absolutely everything he said, and particularly what he said about you, I couldn’t prove it, so I didn’t have cause to fire him as a client.

But I fucking hated every minute of it. And—” He hesitates.

“I did everything I could to rein him in.”

Oh.

“I’m sorry about what I did to you,” he says, taking his eyes off the road again for a split second.

But it’s long enough for me to see his sincerity.

“If I could take it back, I absolutely, one hundred percent would.” He returns his gaze to the highway, jaw tight.

“I’m not supposed to say that. You could totally use this against me in a court of law. ”

Oh.

I’m suddenly remembering something.

“Sally got an anonymous email,” I say. “It said I should dig back through my emails and texts to see if maybe I’d talked about the quilt shop idea with someone else before I met Teller.

If maybe I’d taken a step or two to try to get the business started, like doing some informational interviews with other quilt shop owners.

Since that would mean that Teller’s claim on the business would be far looser.

” My face is on fire, my hands so hot I want to shake them. “You didn’t by any chance…?”

“Please don’t ask me whatever you’re about to ask me, Eden,” he breaks in. He’s staring straight ahead, through the windshield.

So I don’t.

It feels like I’ve been carved open, like my insides have tumbled out and been rearranged. I have to start over and make sense out of everything that happened all over again, from the beginning.

Rhys isn’t the guy who took my life apart. He’s the man who made sure I kept my business so I could rebuild my life when I moved to Rush Creek.

He sighs. “I’m especially sorry about Milo. So fucking sorry.”

Milo . He remembers my dog’s name.

“If it helps at all, I tried—everything. Teller was determined. He got his teeth into the idea of taking your dog, and nothing I could say made the slightest difference. I talked him down from trying for full custody. For what it’s worth.”

I’m not sure what to say. Or what to feel. “Oh,” I manage, out loud this time. Feebly.

We’re both quiet for a while. Then I say, “I—appreciate that.”

There’s an unfamiliar warmth in my stomach.

“Milo’s with Teller right now?”

“Yeah.”

“And you haven’t…” He hesitates. “Gotten another dog?”

“I’ve wanted to. But I worry it wouldn’t understand why Milo has to leave for six months a year. You can’t exactly say, ‘Your buddy is going to be with his daddy, but he’ll be back, so don’t be sad!’”

It’s the first time I’ve told anyone that, even Mari, and my eyes get damp.

“Shit,” Rhys says. Just that one word. But it’s loaded with so much misery and sympathy that it, oddly, makes me feel better. It makes me feel heard.

Now and again the headlights illuminate the land around us—an expanse of rolling swamp land, a river snaking through it, hills like mountains in training. A few minutes later, the scattered suggestion of a town and a casino. He passes a slow-moving truck, then clears his throat.

“You asked what got me into divorce law. It was more complicated than wanting to arm wrestle and get rich.”

Nothing he says to me now will surprise me. “I figured.”

“My mom’s first marriage was to a guy whose money and power she mistook for love, and she got completely screwed in the divorce.

My aunt Meryl’s first and only marriage was, if possible, even more of a disaster, and she ended up with basically nothing—and no skills, either.

By then I was old enough to actually see the whole thing play out, and I heard her and my mom talking a lot about it.

And in my head, I was like, that’s so fucking unfair.

So when Preston didn’t come back to run the ranch and it became clear that we weren’t going to stick to the oath, I knew what I wanted to do. ”

I still don’t understand, because representing guys with money and power while they screw over women with none doesn’t feel like fighting back for his mom and aunt. And he must sense that, because there’s a defensive edge in his voice when he speaks again.

“Fully ninety percent of my clients are women. You don’t get to be the most loathed divorce attorney in New York City by representing rich and powerful men.

You get there by sticking it to rich and powerful men.

” He sighs. “But then magazines like The Newer York and MANhattan want to do a profile, and they want to interview Teller Austin, who’s talking about how I’m ‘willing to do what has to be done.’”

And that makes a hell of a lot more sense. In fact, pretty much everything about Rhys suddenly makes a hell of a lot more sense.

Sharks don’t drop everything and take on roles they’re ill-suited for to make things right for their sisters.

They don’t drive six hours for a pile of someone else’s quilts.

They don’t dig around in cabinets to cook dinner for someone who’s had a shitty day.

And they don’t pull a second shift through the night to keep someone they barely know from doing something dangerous and impetuous on too little sleep.

Most of all, they don’t violate their own sense of honor and justice to save David from Goliath.

Rhys is wearing a shark suit, but he’s something else underneath.

I need to know what.