by Sara Summers
“What did he used to be like?” Isla asked, and I could hear the curiosity in her voice.
“Oh, he was easily the craziest of the Roran boys. He was always up for a good time, planning bonfires and dragging me across every inch of Mount Edge and every lake and ocean we could drive too. He was brilliant, getting good grades without studying and talking all of his brothers into thinking about college and degrees and careers. Stetson was the nice one, but Rhett… Rhett was the bright one. He was the one everyone knew and either loved or hated.”
I bit my lip when I finished talking, realizing I’d said more than I planned.
“Wow. He’s changed a lot.” Isla said.
I looked down at my feet, my chest feeling tight all the sudden. I needed to get off my feet, to sit down and shut my eyes. Letting go of Isla’s hand, I rushed to the bench a few feet away and dropped down, covering my eyes with the palms of my hands. A panic attack was coming, just as fast and strong as always, and I could avoid taking my meds if I could get myself back under control before it got too bad.
“Hey, it’s not a bad thing.” Isla’s arms wrapped around me and she held on tight. I leaned into her, focusing on my breathing and trying to keep my body calm and relaxed. “People change. That’s part of life, and maybe Rhett’s changes were for the better. Maybe now he’s the man you need him to be.”
“He was always the man I needed, until he walked away.” My emotions were too far out of control—there was no going back from where I was without my meds. “Can you call and tell him to bring my purse?”
“Of course.” Isla let go with one hand and pulled her phone out, tucking it between her shoulder and ear so she could hug me tight again.
She spoke rapidly into the phone, but the sound my heartbeat overwhelmed me too much to listen in. There weren’t any walls near me, but they closed around me anyway. Breathing took more effort than it should’ve, my entire body reacting like I was being chased by a bear. I knew I was safe, but that didn’t matter to my anxiety.
“Hey, baby.” Rhett’s arms replaced Isla’s, his breath brushing over my ear and neck. I leaned into him, and he held me tighter.
“There’s medicine in my bag. Benadryl.” I choked out the word.
His arms never left me, stroking my hair and back and holding me tightly. Isla put a pill in my hand a few seconds later, and I swallowed it quickly. Rhett pulled me closer, so my head pressed into the space between his head and shoulder where I’d always fit so perfectly.
Tears streamed down my face, but a few minutes later the panic started to subside. It would be thirty minutes before the meds kicked in, making me sleepy. My tendency toward addiction meant I had to stay away from the really powerful anxiety meds, so I took Benadryl. It wasn’t technically made for anxiety, but it made me sleepy which helped kill the anxiety just a little. A friendly doctor suggested it after my heroin overdose, and it had been a lifesaver.
“Can you take me home?” I whispered into Rhett’s shoulder.
“Sure, baby. Just hold onto me, alright?”
I nodded, my arms tightening around his neck. No way could I look at Isla or Zane again. Not only was I embarrassed about my panic attack, but that would probably trigger another one.
“Thanks for the cookies, Isla. I’ll see you guys on Wednesday.” Rhett sent them home. He stopped walking a second later, and Isla wrapped her arms around me. Well, me and Rhett since he was holding me so close.
“We’re still going to be best friends. Anxiety won’t sway me, you know. I’m too perky.” She whispered. “I’ll text you tomorrow to see if you’re still up for lunch, but don’t feel like you have to. Thanks for the chat.”
Her arms left me, and I didn’t hear anything from her or Zane while Rhett carried me the rest of the way home. He sang to me softly, a song I hadn’t heard before. I wasn’t really listening to the words, but it calmed me a little.
When we were back in my apartment, he carried me to the bed and slipped me under the blankets. His hands slid inside the back of my sweater and unhooked my bra.
“Hey.” I protested weakly.
“I’m making you comfortable, not trying to grab your boobs. Unless you want me to, of course. Then I’m definitely grabbing your boobs.”
I snorted, shutting my eyes and letting him pull my bra out through one of my sweater’s sleeves.
“You make this look way easier than it is.” He muttered, as he finally pulled it out and tossed it to the floor. “Though you know I’m always up for stripping off your clothes. Or mine. Just for the record.”
I swatted his face with my hand, a smile tugging at my lips. I resisted, of course, but Rhett knew how to make me laugh like no one else.
“Alright, pants next. You hate pants.” He said, his hands slipping under the waistband of the leggings I’d pulled on earlier. “What’s the verdict? She’s even perkier than you realized, isn’t she?”
I smiled.
“No, she’s actually less perky than I realized. She’s lonely, like me.”
After I said it, I knew I shouldn’t have added the last part.
“I’m sorry that you’ve been lonely. I’m a crappy soulmate.” Rhett sighed, tossing my leggings to the floor. “Do you want me to go to the couch?”
I didn’t answer his question, instead grabbing one of his hands. Dragging it from my hip to my collarbone, I rested his hand over my heart and shut my eyes as his emotions rushed through me.
Emotion caught in my throat and tears stung my eyes at his pain. No wonder he was so different—he’d been hurting so, so much. Had Rhett ever even talked to anyone about what happened between us? Isla didn’t seem to know much, and Beck definitely would’ve told her anything he knew.
“What did you tell your brothers when you left me?” I asked, my voice soft and unsteady.
Pain flared, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“The truth. That I screwed things up with you and you never wanted to see me again.”
“You didn’t tell them about the baby?” I whispered.
The pain hit me so intensely I couldn’t breathe, and I pushed his hand away from me. He didn’t voice an answer, but I knew.
“It wasn’t their business.” Rhett finally said, his voice as wracked with pain as the rest of him. He was hurting so much—even more than me. I’d spent three years accepting what had happened, learning to cope with my emotions and my issues. The pain he was feeling told me that he’d spent all that time avoiding it and blaming himself.
The way he was hurting hurt me, and I knew in that moment that I’d never stopped loving him. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I ever could. And since I loved him, I needed to help him.
I rolled in his arms so my eyes could meet his.
“Let’s make a deal.” I said, pushing his shoulder to the bed and lifting myself up on his chest. “You want us to get back together, right?”
“More than anything.”
“If you agree to go to counseling, I’ll let you sleep in my bed. It will be our bed, and I won’t be allowed to boot you to the couch or tell you to leave. You go to counseling, and I’ll let you in like that.”
Rhett’s face twisted in a grimace.
“Counseling?”
“Counseling.” I nodded. “Therapy. Whatever you want to call it. You need to talk to someone about what happened, and I have a feeling you’re too proud to talk to anyone you know so you’ll go to a professional.”
“I’ll win you back without therapy.” Rhett said, still grimacing.
“No you won’t.” I said, matter-of-factly. “I’m not giving you a chance unless you talk to someone, and that someone can’t be me. Either go sleep on the couch or agree to see a therapist. It’s your choice.”
I rolled back to my side. Rhett’s arms tightened around me. He wouldn’t appreciate me drawing a line like that, but if he didn’t deal with his emotions then they’d eventually come back to bite us both. We both had baggage, but baggage he hadn’t learned to accept would just divide
us further.
Rhett pulled his arms off of me slowly, getting out of the bed.
“I don’t need therapy, Kina. I’m not going.”
“Then it looks like all we’re going to be is roommates until you walk out on me again. Turn off the light and close the door on your way out.” I told him, keeping the emotions out of my voice.
He left the room without another word, leaving me feeling empty and sad but somehow still hopeful. Rhett would come around; he would go to therapy, and we would work things out. I just had to hold out for a while.
RHETT
Three weeks passed, and Kina was true to her word. We were nothing but roommates. She didn’t have any more panic attacks, so I didn’t have any more excuses to hold her, and she stayed so busy that we never spent more than ten minutes together.
I almost wished I hadn’t moved back in with her so I could keep meeting up with her on our video games, but since I’d moved in she hadn’t played while I was home.
It was driving me crazy. Absolutely crazy. I thought it had been bad living away from her, seeing through her eyes when I shut mine, not sleeping because she was awake. But since I was close to her again my Kina-finder didn’t stop me from sleeping.
Somehow, being able to sleep when she was gone was worse. Smelling her scent on everything like some kind of frickin forbidden fruit was too.
A million times worse.
I was starting to understand why she’d turned to drugs. There was no way I would’ve stayed sane living in our apartment after she left me either.
Three Mondays after Josh injected her, I was pacing the apartment. It was 11 PM and she still wasn’t home. When I closed my eyes earlier, I’d seen her eating ice cream and laughing with Cameron, and I hadn’t let them shut for more than a few seconds in the hour since then.
Her car was outside, which meant Cameron had driven her there. Was it a date? Was Kina actually out on a date?
The idea had me somewhere between murderous and crying like a baby.
I paced a few more times before grabbing my phone and calling her. She answered on the third ring, her voice heavy with annoyance.
“What do you want?”
My stomach clenched.
“Are you on a date?” I growled, the animal in me roaring to take over.
“So what if I am? I told you the requirement if you want me to give you a chance and you refused. I’m single and ready to mingle.”
My free hand tightened into a fist, and my eyes shut.
“Therapy has nothing to do with us being together.” I struggled to keep my breathing even.
“Your mental health has everything to do with us being together.” She corrected. “I’m not going to jump back into a relationship with you when you haven’t even worked through what made you leave me the first time.”
“Fine. I’ll give you the apartment in case you want to bring him home.” I snarled, hanging up and throwing my phone against the wall.
I stormed outside, slamming the door behind me. Rather than bothering with my car, I took off at a run toward the nearest lake. It was a five minute drive thanks to the stoplights, or a twenty minute walk. At a run, I’d get there in ten.
Ten minutes later, I was swimming. I’d only shifted when I had to in the years I’d been away from Kina. When I was in otter form, I saw things differently.
Differently, as in, when I was in otter form I didn’t see a single reason to do anything that would keep me away from Kina. As an otter, there was no logic to staying away from her for her own good or not begging her to take me back or not getting therapy if that was what she wanted.
When I was an otter, Kina was the only thing that mattered in my world. Without fail, every time I shifted I’d end up standing outside her apartment, warring with myself.
Maybe she was right and I needed counseling.
By the time I was thinking logically, dressed, and jogging back to Kina’s apartment, I felt like crap. Why had I said that to her? Had I seriously told her to bring another guy back home? What was wrong with me?
When I walked back through the door, Kina was sitting on the couch with her arms folded over her chest. She jumped to her feet, her eyes blazing with anger. Her hands fisted at her sides, and she glared at me while I closed the door.
Neither of us spoke first, the tension building between us. It wasn’t the kind of tension I wanted, and I knew I needed to diffuse it.
I opened my mouth and said,
“I’m sorry.”
At the same time she said,
“What the crap, Rhett?!”
And then we both waited for the other person to respond. Kina took over, stepping up to me with those clenched fists. She was slim and tiny, but she was pissed and I knew how much damage she could do with those little hands.
“Saying you’re sorry isn’t enough. You have to be different, you have to change! I don’t care how sorry you are, Rhett. I don’t. You just keep hurting me. I’m done, okay? I’m done. I can’t sleep in the same apartment as you, knowing how much pain you’re in, wanting you but knowing that the more I let you in the more you’ll hurt me. Pack your stuff and go.” She pointed to the door behind me. Her hand shook, and her eyes were filled with furious tears.
I covered the distance between us and pulled her into my arms. Our lips crashed together, mouths meeting and tongues tangling in an instant. Kina melted into me and I pulled her closer, always closer.
A few seconds later, she was shoving me away.
“I’ll get the counseling, baby. I’ll go tomorrow—I’ll go every day, if you want me to. I was coming back to tell you that.”
“It’s too late. I can’t do this anymore. All we do is cause each other pain. We hurt each other again and again and again, and I’m done. It’s too much.”
“I can’t accept that. We’re good together, we always were. I screwed things up, but I’ll fix this. I’ll do anything you want, okay? But I need you.” I grabbed her hands, and she pulled them out of my grip.
“You don’t get to need me!” She shrieked, stepping back. “You had everything. You had the perfect family, the perfect house, the perfect grandparents, the perfect friends, and the perfect life. For a little while, I had all of that stuff too. And then you left me, and I had nothing. Our friends picked you, because you were born a shifter. Your family picked you, because duh. I was alone in a crappy apartment with drugs and pain and anxiety and depression.
“You left me and I lost everything, and then you come back and you’re in all this pain and I want to help you because I love you, but this is wrong. You don’t get to come back and need me after you left me when I needed you. This relationship is toxic, and I can’t do it. I’m not strong enough to do it again, okay? I’m not.” She rushed toward the bedroom, and I grabbed her hand.
“BS.” I growled.
She spun around, fury in her eyes.
“Excuse me?”
“I’m calling BS.” I glared right back at her. “Sure, we’ve got issues, but that’s not why you’re walking away from me. You’re walking away because you’re scared.”
“Of course I’m scared, Rhett. I tried to kill myself the last time you left me!” she threw her hands out in front of her. “If your mom hadn’t happened to come by at the right second, I would’ve succeeded. If she hadn’t dragged my butt to the hospital, I would be dead right now.”
Her words knocked the air right out of my chest.
“You didn’t know that?” Her eyebrows lifted. “What, did you think when we said suicide I just considered it but decided against it? I’m stable right now, but my mental health is a rollercoaster. There’s no way to predict when I’ll get triggered by some random nothing. I fell apart last week when someone mentioned Disneyland because we were supposed to go there together before I got pregnant.
“I was with Cameron today because I was triggered and I knew that if I was alone, I’d go and ask Josh for more drugs. I wanted to be here, with you, but you’re a freaking wild ca
rd, Rhett. You say you want to be with me but you refuse to do something as simple as therapy, and then you refuse to move back out too. Your stuff is in a duffel bag because you haven’t asked for a drawer or some hangers, but you insist on paying for all of rent even though you’re still sending me money every single month.”
“Nothing was perfect for me either, okay?” I raked a hand through my hair. “My ‘perfect’ family hated me for letting you go. Every single one of my brothers tried to convince me to go get you back, and my parents? They obviously chose you. My mom has barely looked at me since that day. My ‘perfect’ grandparents sit me down and lecture me about how soulmates should be together no matter what every time I see them.
“My ‘perfect’ house was filled with reminders of you, and I’ve made it a point to avoid it. My ‘perfect’ friends didn’t know what to say to me, so I lost them along with you. Nothing about my life is perfect except you, and I don’t even really have you.”
She shut her eyes and took a few long breaths in.
“Let’s go swimming.” She finally said, breaking the silence and opening her eyes. I’d just come from the lake, but there was no way I’d deny her request to spend time with me.
We were together as otters that night, and our animal sides didn’t have the same issues as us. We swam and cuddled without worrying about our human lives, and it was bliss. I hadn’t felt so alive in years.
KINA
As we swam together, I felt myself softening toward him. I’d been trying to forgive him for leaving me since I started counseling. It hadn’t happened while he was away from me, but with him at my side, I was letting go of the past.
I’d always held grudges—it was one of my greatest talents and worst tendencies. I held onto things and I stewed and I hated. It was a defense mechanism, and it worked well. But for once, I didn’t want to hate Rhett.
I wanted to hold on to him.
But I still couldn’t just jump back in. Like I’d told him, I was fragile. I broke easily, and I wasn’t going to risk that until I knew he was well and truly in for good. Him going to therapy would be a solid step toward that confidence. The Rhett I knew would’ve laughed if someone suggested therapy, but the new Rhett had agreed.