Page 76 of Enchanted to Meet You

twenty-four

The cool air of the NICU faded behind us as the double doors hissed shut, cutting off the rhythmic beep-beep-beep of the monitors and the faint, sweet memory of tiny fingers wrapped around my pinky. Baby Maya—as we’d been told they’d decided to name her—was tiny and fragile. As one of the youngest in my family, I’d never met a baby before, but she was so much smaller than I ever could have imagine. Seeing her in the NICU had been painful, with all the tubes and the oxygen mask, but I was grateful to see what she was okay—and infinitely more happy that we had all agreed to be in life.

Maya was utterly innocent of the wrecking ball our father called a life. Seeing her had felt like a clean slate—a promise that no matter how broken the roots were, the new branches didn’t have to carry the rot.

We walked through the fifth-floor corridor in silence. The heavy, suffocating silence of an emotional crash after an adrenaline surge. Lavender had her arm hooked through Imogen’s, both of them staring at the floor, their faces pale, eyes swollen and bloodshot. My own limbs felt leaden, but inside my chest, the cold, hollow space where my anger used to live was strangely calm.

Rhys, who stood by the elevators, fell into step beside me, his thumb lightly brushing the back of my hand. He didn’t say a word, didn’t force a comforting smile, just offered his presence like an anchor in a churning sea. I let my fingers slip between his, squeezing tight.

Then, the elevator bell dinged. The doors slid open, revealing the reflective steel interior. Imogen and Lavender stepped in first. I took a step forward, but the hand in mine was suddenly yanked back.

Not by Rhys. By my brother.

Sebastian grabbed my wrist, pulling me out of the doorway. Before I could even ask what he was doing, he reached out, grabbed Rhys by the collar of his denim jacket, and pulled him back.

“Sebastian!” Imogen snapped from inside the elevator, her hand darting out to jam the Door Open button.

Sebastian ignored her, stepping directly into Rhys’s personal space until they were chest-to-chest. He didn’t lay a hand on him, but his tall frame towered over the space, his jaw clenched so tight the muscle in his cheek twitched.

“Why are you with her?” Sebastian asked. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was laced with a dangerous, razor-sharp edge. “I let it go downstairs because of the baby. I let you stand around while my family was bleeding out. But we’re done now. Why are you holding her hand like that?”

“Seb, stop,” I said, stepping between them and placing a hand against Sebastian’s chest, feeling the rigid, frantic pulse underneath. “Please. Not right now.”

“No, Ainsley,” Sebastian said, his eyes never leaving Rhys’s face. “I’ve let a lot of things slide today, but I’m not ignoring this.”

Rhys didn’t back down an inch. He held Sebastian’s furious glare with total, unwavering composure, keeping his hands loosely in his pockets. “I’m here because she wanted me here, Sebastian. It’s as simple as that.”

“It’s not simple,” Sebastian snapped, turning his glare onto me, his eyes bloodshot and raw with exhaustion. “Ainsley, you’re vulnerable right now. Our family is completely falling apart, Dad is acting like a psycho, and he’s taking advantage of the chaos—he’s bored, or he’s power-tripping, or he’s just using you to get under my skin.”

“I’s not like that,” Rhys said. He didn’t posture or raise his voice to match Sebastian’s volume. “I know you have no reason to trust me, Sebastian, but I need you to believe me when I say I love your sister.”

My breath caught in my throat as the words rattled around in my mind. Love. He loved me. Sebastian stared at him, emotions warring on his face. “Today is really not the day for your jokes, Montgomery.”

“I’m not joking,” Rhys said. His voice held none of the hostility it normally did when he and Sebastian were in the same room. He shifted his gaze to me. His eyes were burning with an intensity so fierce that it was like a physical weight settling onto my chest. Every mask he had ever worn—the confident charm, the easygoing smirk, the protective fake boyfriend—was gone. Stripped away completely, leaving behind a boy entirely open for me to see him.

“I’ve wanted her for years. But I knew I could never have her—not when she was your little sister.”

Sebastian looked between the two of us, likely trying to gauge Rhys’s words. My breath caught in my windpipe. The world narrowed down to the space between Rhys and me. The hospital hallway, my siblings, the fluorescent lights—everything bluffed out into a blur.

“What... what are you talking about?” I whispered, my voice barely a thread. My mind raced backward, tumbling through memories like loose papers in a storm. “You said there was a girl. Before Kelcey, there was a girl⁠—”

“Ainsley,” Rhys interrupted, a light disbelieving laugh leaving his lips.

“You told me...” My voice cracked, my mind reeled. “You told me there was someone else. Someone you loved for years but couldn’t touch.”

Rhys took another step, stepping right past Sebastian, who stood frozen between us like a ghost.

“Don’t you see, Ainsley?” Rhys whispered, his voice trembling with emotion. “That other girl was you.”

The quiet confession in his house weeks ago when he told me about the girl he had loved before Kelcey—the girl he said he couldn’t have, the girl who was completely off-limits, the girl who had broken his heart without ever even knowing she held it.

But it couldn’t have been. We didn’t even know each other, not really.

And yet… it wasn’t like he hadn’t been around. He’d been living down the street the whole time, watching with narrowed eyes as Sebastian yelled at those neighborhood bullies for picking on me. He’d been at the ballet studio picking up Leah the last few years, sometimes lingering in the hallway my class had just let out of. He’d looked up at the stands at every Parkhurst vs. Crofton game.

I was seeing all of these interactions with a brand new light. Seeing him happy the bullies were being reprimanded for bothering me. Waiting in the hall to maybe see or talk to me. Looking for me in the stands to see if I saw his goal.

And all this time, until I’d agreed to a fake relationship, I’d looked at him with that same disdain Sebastian has on his face now. But these last few weeks showed me a new side of Rhys, a compassionate one, a hurt one, a patient one—one I fell in love with.