Page 17

I tried counting cattle in my head, tried thinking about fence posts that needed mending and the busted water pump out by the south pasture that wasn’t my problem anymore, anything to get my mind off the way his body felt tucked against mine. It didn’t work worth a damn. My thoughts kept sliding right back to him, to the curve of his hip under my palm, to the little sigh he’d let out a second ago like he was content just being held.

I’d held him plenty of times before. Why did it feel so different now?

Careful as I could manage, I eased my hand away from his stomach, drawing my arm back like I was defusing a bomb. My cock ached with the movement, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek to keep from making a sound. Rhett shifted again when the warmth of my body pulled away, a small frown creasing between his brows even in sleep, but he didn’t wake.

I lay there on my back, staring up at that water stain shaped like Texas, my heart still going a mile a minute and my cock tenting up the sheet something fierce. I pressed the heel of my hand against my eyes and tried to breathe through it.

This didn’t mean anything. Couldn’t mean anything. Rhett was my best friend, had been since we were kids running barefoot through the pastures catching frogs down by the stock tank. There wasn’t a single thing romantic about that, not in any way that made sense to me anyway. Guys didn’t feel that way about their best friends. I sure as hell never heard anybody talk about wanting to kiss their fishing buddy.

But then I thought about last night, the way he’d asked me to hold him, and how right it had felt settling my arm around him. How I hadn’t thought twice about it, hadn’t questioned it even a little, the same way I never questioned running my fingers through his hair or letting him fall asleep with his head on my shoulder during a long drive.

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe I should’ve been questioning it a long damn time ago. Maybe that’s what other people had seen. Maybe that’s why they were beating the shit out of him for seemingly no reason.

I turned my head just enough to look at him in the gray morning light. His face was slack with sleep, bruises still dark along his cheekbone, his lips slightly parted. He looked younger like this, softer somehow, all that gruffness gone that he usually carried around like armor. My heart did another flip.

“What is wrong with me,” I muttered under my breath, so quiet even I could barely hear it. “Stop being weird. Rhett isn’t into this kind of shit. He’s not⁠—”

I froze, my pulse suddenly racing.

Did Rhett… did he like men?

I suddenly felt like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over my head. I ran back through everything I knew about Rhett, every conversation, every silence, every time he’d flinched away from talking about girls in town. He’d dated a couple times, sure, back in high school, but nothing had ever stuck. I’d never thought much of it. Figured he just hadn’t found the right one yet, same as me.

But now, lying here with my heart hammering and my cock still traitorously hard against nothing but thin sheets, I started remembering things differently. The way he never joined in when the other ranch hands talked about girls at the bar in town. The way his eyes had gone glassy and far away out at the creek when he said he felt like he was living someone else’s life. The way the ranch hands had ganged up on him without a second thought.

My stomach dropped clean through the mattress.

They’d been bullying him for a reason. Not just to get under his skin for sport, the way assholes like Chuck were always looking for a soft spot to dig their thumbs into. They’d seen something. Maybe they’d seen it a long time before I ever even let myself consider it.

I looked at him again, at the curve of his shoulder and the way his dark lashes rested against his bruised cheek, and my stomach twisted into a knot. If it was true, if Rhett really did feel something more than friendship for me, then all those weeks of him going quiet and distant, all those nights staring up at the stars like they held answers he was too scared to say out loud… All of it made a different kind of sense.

And if it was true, then what in the hell did that make me, lying here memorizing the way he breathed, wanting things I’d never even considered before?

If Rhett was gay… that explained everything.

But it also made everything suddenly so much more confusing.

I lay there a long while, chasing that thought around in circles until it wore a groove into my brain. And none of it made a lick of sense to me by the time the light through the curtains had gone from gray to the palest gold. I wasn’t any closer to figuring out what I felt, only that I felt something, and that scared me more than anything my daddy had said to me the night before.

Rhett shifted again, turning over in his sleep so he was facing me now, and I got a good look at him. He was close enough that I could see the little scar above his eyebrow from the time he fell off the hay loft when we were fourteen. His mouth was still swollen some from the split lip, and there was a fading bruise along his jaw that made fire erupt in my stomach all over again. I wanted to kill those guys for putting their hands on him.

I reached out before I knew what was happening, running my thumb over the bruise on his jaw. I was halfway through the motion before I stopped, realizing what I’d done. And then it seemed too late to take it back. I gave in for just a moment, since he was still asleep, and let my fingers splay over his cheek. For the first time, I realized something.

He was beautiful…

Something came over me, something I couldn’t force back down, and I leaned forward, pressing my lips softly to his. It was barely a whisper of a kiss, but the moment we touched, electricity shot through my entire body. I suddenly felt like everything clicked into place, like something woke up that I didn’t realize had been asleep.

My entire world turned on its head.

Yanking my hand back, I threw the covers off myself and was on my feet in an instant. I raced across the apartment toward the bathroom, terror filling me from head to toe as my mind reeled. I heard Rhett shift in the bed and mutter something, but I was already closing the bathroom door.

I needed a moment to myself, or ten, or maybe my whole fucking life because everything was different now. Everything had changed. Last night I’d lost my home and my father. And this morning, I felt like I was losing myself too.

Chapter 9

Rhett

Westley was in the bathroom when I woke up. There was already early morning light peeking in around the edges of the curtains. We were both used to being up with the sun on the ranch, so sleeping past dawn already felt like a huge luxury. He’d probably been up for a while.