Page 49

Rhys

S omeone is knocking on the guesthouse door. I can’t get up, because I’m weighted to the bed. This is the second morning in a row I’ve felt like I had the flu. Yesterday I stayed in bed so I wouldn’t infect anyone else.

Today I’m pretty sure it’s not the flu. It’s just that my entire body has been turned to lead.

I pull the covers over my head and ignore the knocking. I can sleep through it.

“I’m coming in,” says a voice. Preston’s.

A moment later he’s standing in the door of my bedroom, scowling at me.

“Hanna says you missed a wedding-planning meeting today. Are you trying to kill us all? You know what’s at stake here.” He looks hard at the expression on my face. “Jesus, dude, what’s wrong with you?”

“Someone increased the gravity in my room to Jupiter levels, and I can’t move.”

He gives an experimental bounce on both feet. “I’m not feeling it,” he says.

“Lift a foot,” I say. “Does it feel like you’re wearing an iron boot?”

He experiments. I appreciate his willingness to take my diagnosis seriously. “No,” he says definitively. “Try again. What the fuck happened, Rhys? And don’t bullshit me. I’ve known you for three decades.”

I turn over and push my face into the pillow. I’m going back to sleep.

Except two strong hands flip me over and drag the pillow from under my head.

“Talk,” Preston says.

He lasers his eyes into mine.

“I told Eden I want to stay in Rush Creek,” I finally manage, unwillingly. “And she said she doesn’t want me to.”

Relief washes over his face. “Oh. Okay. We can fix that.”

“What? No, we can’t. She says she doesn’t think it can work between us.”

“Is she right?” he asks.

“No. But?—”

“Then dude, what is wrong with you?” He crosses the room with single stride, throws open the blinds. Light rushes in, piercing my brain, even though I only helped myself to two whiskeys last night.

The covers are next; he rips them back and scowls when he finds me fully dressed.

“Up,” he says, and then, when I don’t move right away, he roars it.

Just like he used to in high school when I didn’t get out of bed, and apparently my brain is still tuned to that frequency, because I’m on my feet.

He thrusts a finger toward my face. “What’s your name?”

I give him a confused look. “Rhys.”

“Rhys what?”

“Rhys Hott,” I say, still confused.

“That’s right,” he says. “Rhys Hott. And what do you do for a living?”

“Break up marriages.”

I’m still feeling extremely sorry for myself, thinking of the way Eden wouldn’t look at me as she got dressed and slipped out two nights ago.

He rolls his eyes. “No,” he says. “You convince people of things. People who don’t have any particular reason to want to be convinced. You make compelling arguments, and you convince them to do what they didn’t know they wanted to do.”

“I don’t want to convince her to do something she doesn’t want to do.”

“Something she doesn’t know she wants to do,” he corrects. “Did she tell you she doesn’t want it? Or did she just tell you she doesn’t think it will work? And did you believe her? Because you don’t trust that you can be what she needs?”

I can feel my mouth hanging open.

He rolls his eyes again. “What do you think I’ve been doing these last couple of months?”

“Playing Nerf battle and banging Natalie?” I hazard.

He rolls his eyes. “That’s insulting, dude,” he says.

“I’ve been working really fucking hard. And not only on inventing weird crap for resort visitors to do all day long, although that was a lot of work, too.

I’ve been actually figuring out my own shit.

Our upbringing did a number on all of us.

You know how you can tell? Because we all left town and decided never to come back .

That’s a pretty big sign. Let me guess—you don’t think you can be a good man, because none of the men in our lives were.

” He gives that a moment of thought. “Maybe Granddad, but only after he was dead, and I’m not sure that counts. ”

“You think he’s a good dead man?” I demand. “Because I think he’s a sadistic SOB.”

Preston considers this. “I think he tried to do right by us in the end in his own fucked-up way. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

But my point is I know a thing or two about not feeling like you know how to be a good person.

And when the woman you love tells you you’re not what she needs, it can be way too easy to believe it.

But she can be wrong, too. Especially if life has knocked her down a bunch recently.

” He gives me a sharp look. “Like, say, she’s been jilted at the fucking altar . ”

Oh, Jesus, I’m an idiot. I feel like smashing my forehead into my palm.

But also, for the first time since Eden walked out, I feel hopeful.

“Okay,” I say. “So what do I do?”

He gives me a dark look. “Well, first you take a hot shower and put on some less stinky clothes.”

“And then?”

He shrugs. “How should I know? I’m just the fun-and-finance guy. You’re the marriage expert. Figure it out.”

I flip him the bird, but we both know it’s Fuck you, I love you, dude .