Page 24

Chapter twenty-four

Evie

My heart is pounding. I hate confrontation. I don’t want to be a pushover, or a doormat, but I also hate the feeling I get when I have to stand up to someone.

The thing is, I hate being lied to even more.

And Rhett might not be lying, but he is keeping something from me.

There’s no denying that when I walked in tonight, both my brother and Rhett looked incredibly guilty.

I know I was early getting home, what with Carlee canceling our tentative plans. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that they clearly had something to hide. Did Rhett think I didn’t notice him fussing around with that stack of papers or see him shove them under a throw pillow?

He’s still standing at the kitchen sink with a strange defensiveness to his posture. His jaw is clenched, his arms are folded across his chest, and he’s looking everywhere but at me.

I’ve never seen him look like this, at least, not toward me. It’s unsettling in a way because I don’t know what I did wrong. Wait, no. I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not the one keeping secrets. He is .

I decide to just wait, hoping he’ll answer me and tell me what is going on. But after several minutes of silence, he still doesn’t say a word.

I nod. “Okay.” I turn to walk away, planning to go to my bedroom and try to figure out what to do. I can’t stand liars, which is ironic given the situation I’m currently in and the things I’m hiding from my brother. But Rhett hiding things from me feels even worse.

I only get two steps down the hallway when he finally says something.

“Wait. Fuck, Evie, this isn’t easy.”

I slowly turn around and face him. He’s staring at the floor, his hand gripping the back of his neck. I wait until his gaze finally lifts to meet mine.

“I’m sure it isn’t. But it’s not easy for me, either, realizing that you’re hiding something from me. I know what we have is nothing serious, that we’re just friends hooking up and you don’t owe me anything.” I breathe in and out, long and slow, centering myself. “If you really don’t want to tell me what’s going on, I’m not going to force you. I’ve got no right to.”

I’m about to turn and leave again when Rhett takes his turn to slowly exhale as his head falls forward, his chin hitting his chest.

“I can’t read,” he mumbles under his breath.

“What?” I say, trying to make sense of what I think I just heard.

He lifts his head, and embarrassment, anger, defeat, all of it is written across his handsome face, etching it with misery.

“I. Can’t. Read.” This time, there’s no mistaking the anger in his voice. “Okay? That’s the big secret. Sin’s five-year-old can probably read better than me. I have dyslexia. Real bad. Tennessee didn’t have people like you to help kids like me, so I never learned how to fuckin’ read.”

“But you graduated from high school,” I say like an idiot, still dumbfounded by what he’s revealed. My mind is battling between jumping to solutions, ways I could help him, and absolute shock that after all this time of knowing Rhett, I never knew this .

Rhett’s oblivious to my spinning thoughts and lets out a harsh laugh. “Sure, I did. You know those southern charms you like to tease me about? Turns out, they’re helpful when it comes to convincing teachers to let me graduate.”

“So tonight, what was Kai doing here?”

Rhett moves to the living room and sits down on the armchair. It’s not lost on me that he doesn’t sit on the couch where I could maybe sit next to him. He chooses to sit by himself in the chair.

So I choose to go over and lean against the arm of the couch facing him.

“Because Yami is the only guy on the team who knows how bad it is. The others know I have a learning disability, and that I don’t do well with stuff that’s written out, but only Yami, Coach Stirling, and my agent know exactly how fuckin’ stupid I am. That I can’t read worth shit.”

“You’re not stupid, Rhett.” I reach a hand out but snatch it back at his scoff.

“Sure. Just not smart enough to learn to read.”

“It’s not about being smart enough, it’s about being taught the right way.”

Rhett stands up and starts pacing. “I don’t need you to fix me. I’m fine. I’ve managed this long.”

I stand up, too, my hands out. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to imply that you need to be fixed. I’m just surprised, is all. I never suspected this. I mean, I’ve heard you and Kai talk about books. You and my dad used to talk about that old sci-fi series you both love. But there’s no actual books here.” I’m rambling, processing my thoughts out loud, I suppose. All it earns me is another harsh laugh.

“Yeah, I love science fiction. And autobiographies and history books. I just listen to them all on audio.”

“That makes sense.” I start to nod, but Rhett’s already shaking his head.

“Sure, except it’s not actually reading, now, is it? It’s cheating. I listen to the words. I don’t read them.”

My mouth falls open in outrage. “Okay, now you’re being stupid. Audiobooks are not cheating. They count. They’re just as much a way of reading as e-books or paperbacks. You’re consuming literature. It doesn’t matter how you do it.” I fold my arms across my chest, narrowing my gaze at Rhett in defense of not only him, but all the kids I want to help in the future. All the kids who I know struggle with the narrow-viewed teaching styles prevalent in many schools.

He drops back down into the chair, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his head hang low. Dejection is clear in his voice. “Tell that to all of my teachers. Tell that to a younger me who didn’t have even audiobooks to help get through. I had to flirt, charm, and cheat my way through school. Evie, I barely graduated. Scraped by, passing only thanks to my high school baseball coach who begged the teachers to let me. He knew my future was on the field, not in a classroom. Thank fuck I had baseball. You know how rare it is to go straight from high school into the minors without playin’ on a college team?” Rhett lifts his head, only to shake it slowly from side to side. “It doesn’t happen. I was the youngest kid drafted into the minors. I was fucking terrified, I didn’t feel ready at all, but I had to make it work. Because my only fallback was to work on my grandparents’ farm. If it weren’t for Coach back then, pushing for me to graduate somehow, I wouldn’t be here. I’d be back in Tennessee, shoveling cow shit.”

He falls silent, and I take a second to think over everything he’s just shared. It’s all starting to make sense, and a part of me is surprised I didn’t see it sooner.

The lack of books in his apartment, the way his text messages don’t always make sense.

When Rhett speaks again, he sounds tired, but the anger is gone from his tone. Resignation is in its place. “Tonight, your brother was here to help me go through some paperwork that arrived. Stuff for my mom. Stuff I have to deal with quickly. But stuff that I can’t make sense of. There’s not a chance in hell of me bein’ able to read it and understand it.”

“It’s never too late to learn,” I say cautiously. Rhett stands up abruptly with a snort and I instantly regret it.

“What did I say about tryin’ to fix me. I’ve managed for almost thirty years by myself, and I’ll keep managing.”

I hold my hands up. “You’ve done incredibly well for yourself. I’m not trying to argue that. All I’m saying is that if you wanted, I could maybe suggest some resources or tools to help.” His glare softens, not all the way, but closer to the sweet man I know him to be. So I take a chance and continue. “For the record, I don’t think dyslexia is necessarily a bad thing. Your brain is wired a little bit differently, and you need to learn things in a different style from most other people. But it’s also what makes you creative and kind and caring and empathetic. It’s what makes you, you.”

He stares at me, almost in disbelief. Has he never had anyone tell him that? “Christ. Evie, you don’t know what I would have done to have someone like you tell me that when I was growing up.”

I take a chance that he won’t push me away and move to kneel on the floor in front of him, my hands going to his knees. “You didn’t have me then, but you have me now.”

There’s a moment of silence. And I wait to see if I’ve crossed a line that I shouldn’t have ever crossed. If I’ve pushed him too far and he’s going to push me away. But when he finally lifts his head and looks at me, all the tension bleeds from me.

That anger, that defeat that was written all over his face before, it’s all gone now. And something indescribable is shining back at me from his big brown eyes. Something that makes my heart skip a beat and my stomach fill with butterflies.

“I don’t deserve you, Evangeline,” he says in a low rumble.

I rise up, my hands moving to cup his face as I pull him in for a kiss. “Yes, you do,” I whisper against his lips. “Yes, you do.”