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I wanted to push. Every instinct in me was screaming to keep digging, to finally get to the bottom of whatever secret had been eating away at him for weeks now. But looking at him standing there in the lamplight, bruised and exhausted and clearly barely holding himself together, I didn’t have it in me to make him carry one more thing tonight. After all, he’d lost everything today too.

“Okay,” I said softly. “Okay, not tonight.”

He let out a breath, his shoulders sagging with relief, and pulled me back into another hug. We stood like that, just breathing, the warmth of him soaking through my shirt.

“You’re stayin’ here,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “Tonight and for however long you need. Dolly would be more than happy to have you. She’d never forgive me if you didn’t stay.”

“You sure? I don’t wanna be a burden⁠—”

“West.” He pulled back just enough to look me dead in the eye, and there was something fierce in his expression now, something that pushed back all that softness from a second ago. “You gave up everything today for my honor. The least I can do is give you a damn place to sleep. Don’t you dare apologize to me again.”

I nodded, throat too tight to say much else. He held onto my arm a moment longer before finally letting go, stepping back to give me room to breathe, though every part of me wanted to just hug him again.

“Bed’s yours,” he said, nodding toward the rumpled sheets. “I’ll take the chair.”

“Rhett, you’re bruised up somethin’ fierce. You need the bed more than I do.”

“It’s a full-size bed, West. It’s tiny.” A ghost of that easy grin flickered across his face, the first one I’d seen since I got there. “But I guess it wasn’t that bad when we stayed here over the weekend. Just try to be less of a blanket hog this time.”

Despite everything, despite the ache still sitting heavy in my chest where my father’s words had landed hours ago, I found myself huffing out something close to a laugh. “I was hoggin’ the blanket? What about you stealing all the pillows?”

“Only ‘cause you kept elbowin’ me in the ribs all night,” Rhett shot back, but the humor didn’t quite reach his eyes. He was still watching me carefully, like he thought I might shatter if he looked away. “I had to put something between us.”

I sat down on the edge of the bed, the springs creaking under my weight, and dragged a hand down my face. Now that the adrenaline had worn off, the exhaustion was setting in deep, pulling at every muscle in my body. My eyes felt gritty, my throat raw from all the shouting I’d done back at the house.

“I should go get my bag,” I said, too tired to move. “I think I have some shorts in there.”

“Just sleep in your underwear,” Rhett said, moving to grab a spare blanket from the linen closet. “It doesn’t bother me. We’ve been swimming down in the creek in our underwear since we were kids.”

“Yeah,” I grinned. “But I ain’t thirteen years old anymore, Buttercup.”

“Do you think your big man dick is gonna scare me or somethin’?” he retorted, tossing the blanket at me with a laugh.

I grinned up at him, but my stomach did this weird little flip I didn’t quite understand. We used to joke about stuff like that all the time as teenagers and I never thought twice about it. But now… it gave me a sort of jolt for some reason.

“It’s pretty scary,” I joked back, overcompensating for the thing my stomach was doing. “It’s like Night of the Living Dead down there.”

“Did you get that checked out?” Rhett grinned, dropping down on the bed next to me.

“Yeah. Doc said it was genetic.”

“Oh…” Rhett gave me a crooked smile. “Got that from your dad, huh?”

“Nope,” I shrugged. “Mom.”

That one got both of us. In a matter of seconds we had dissolved into a fit of laughter, the tension in the room finally breaking.

Rhett wiped at his eyes, still chuckling, and winced when the movement pulled at his split lip. “Ow, ow, okay, don’t make me laugh, it hurts too much.”

“Sorry,” I said, though I didn’t mean it, my chest still shaking with the last of it. It felt good, actually laughing about something, even for just a minute. Like maybe the world hadn’t completely ended tonight.

He settled back against the headboard with a groan, one hand pressed lightly to his ribs.

“You should take another one of those pills Doc gave you,” I said, nodding toward the bottle on the nightstand.

“Already took one before you got here.” He tipped his head back against the wall, eyes falling closed for a second. “Just gotta wait it out.”

I studied him for a moment, the shadows under his eyes, the way his jaw was starting to swell along one side where I hadn’t even noticed before. I felt the guilt well up inside me for not getting to him sooner, for letting those assholes beat him up.