“What?” I murmured. “I got used to the Ricci staff making breakfast, I guess.”
Jace rolled his eyes—of course he did—but Rhett just smiled and pushed up from his seat. “I’ll grab you something. I would have cooked but didn’t want to interrupt anything.”
I cringed at the reminder that Rhett had known we were fucking, but Jace choked on his sip of coffee, which entertained me to no end.
“So, what do we do today?” I called out to Rhett as he ducked into the trailer to fetch food. “Just sit around and pick fights with Jace over his crappy tattoos or…?”
“Hey!” the abrasive wanker protested. “These were done by—”
“No one cares, Adams,” I drawled. “Literally no one. I was talking to Rhett.”
His glare was hot enough to power up the sun a few notches, and I found myself smiling in joy over the little things in life. Like ensuring that Jace Adams never got to exist in a pool of admiration, as per the last ten-ish years of his life.
“I don’t remember you being such a snarky bitch, Billie,” Jace snapped, leaning back in his chair.
“Your memory isn’t as great as you think it is,” I replied flatly. “Neither is your reasoning ability. Let’s take our breakup for example. I mean, fuck, a comatose person would have been able to read through the lines of my pathetic excuses that day, and yet you just flipped me off and walked away.”
I shrugged like it didn’t bother me any longer. More lies he wouldn’t see through, no doubt.
A cold gaze was leveled on me, and swear to the rock gods, he was trying to laser fucking fry my brain. “You could have reached into my chest and ripped out my heart, and I would have been in less pain than I was that day. Sorry I didn’t fucking stop to analyze every word while you were stabbing me over and over.”
There he was, my dramatic guy. Well, not mine any longer, which was kind of our point of argument here. “You’ve had eight—nearly nine—goddamn years to analyze the conversation. More than enough time to pull your head from your ass.”
I jumped to my feet, wincing a little at some aches and pains in my body. It had been banged up a little lately, from the attack at the farmhouse to the intense sex to the sharing of a bed not quite big enough for three. Not to mention the bareback horse ride.
My body was finally saying enough was enough and I needed to chill on the abuse.
Ignoring this warning, I glared down at Jace, which apparently didn’t bother him at all. He remained sprawled back in his chair, face now blank, as if he was waiting to see what I’d do or say next. The door to the Airstream banged open, and out Rhett strolled, carrying more bread and some cans that probably held spam. We weren’t big on options here, and my stomach growled once more to let me know it didn’t really care.
“Sit down, Rose,” Jace drawled. “We can continue our pointless fight once you’ve eaten.”
Wrinkling my nose at him, I took a few seconds to sit, just so he wouldn’t think I was obeying a command. “Don’t act like you give a shit if I starve. We’ve alread—”
Rhett cleared his throat, cutting me off, and I, for once, actually shut the hell up. Because the look on Jace’s face now told me he clearly wasn’t in the mental space to hear about me starving once more. I’d forgotten about him losing his shit yesterday, and with that, my anger dried up.
“Let’s eat,” Rhett said cheerfully. “I found this nifty wire rack that you can toast bread over the fire in. This camping shit is fun.”
Jace grunted, and I crossed my arms. Cheerful Rhett was my favorite, but I also hated knowing he was working so hard to compensate for the tension between Jace and me. Vowing to do better, I pasted a smile on my face and leaned out of my chair, closer to the fire. “Show me this toaster,” I said, and his return smile was warm and genuine.
For a beat, he just held me captive in his fucking presence. Somehow.
We hadn’t brushed our teeth, there was no real way to shower, and Rhett hadn’t had any hair products for days to spike up his blue hawk. Still, he’d never looked hotter than he did smiling at me in the early winter sun.
“If you keep looking at me like that, beautiful,” Rhett drawled when my gawking went on too long to be ignored, “you’re going to receive your meal in bed.”
“She’s already had breakfast in bed,” Jace cut in, but for once he sounded amused, rather than perpetually pissed off.
Rhett didn’t remove his gaze from me as his lips twitched. “That was such a small snack,” he replied. “She needs a proper meal.”
Well, fuck me twice in the morning. Like, literally. Because the tension up in here was starting to throb in my lower half. Fuck, even the fighting with Jace was stimulating, and I wasn’t sure how I’d survived so many years without this spark in my life.
“Just focus on the food, asshole,” Jace shot back.
Rhett winked at me and then went back to what he was doing, placing the bread between this wire contraption that closed in on either side of a piece, and then he held it over the top of the coals until it was lightly toasted. The spam went into the pot, still strung over the small flames, and in no time we had some hot food.
While we were eating, the campsite was peaceful, but as always, it didn’t last long.
“You sounded like you were having a nightmare last night, Billie,” Rhett said, the green in his eyes very clear as he stared into his toast, before he lifted his head to meet my gaze. “Anything you want to talk about.”
No, not really. But I was still going to reply, when Jace jumped in with his usual fucked up attitude. “Bro, you know Billie is the queen of secrets. As if she’d reveal her dream. What if we possibly inferred a truth from it? Something to explain her cagey actions in the past. Shit, I doubt Angelo even knows the reasons she fucked me over. Poor schmuck probably just fell for some bullshit sob story about me beating her or some other fabric—”
The scream ripped from me before I could stop it, and I actually scared myself with the intensity of that noise. It had been drawn up deep, from a place I’d locked away for years. A place where the pain was so intense that on the rare occasions I released my hold on it, I would end up hysterically crying and screaming for hours.
Looked like it was time for one of those events.
Jace fell silent at my outburst, and I found myself back on my feet without consciously knowing I’d jumped up. Rhett was at my side too, trying to hold me, but I brushed him off, unable to be touched at this moment.
“You are the worst fucking human, Jace,” I sobbed, my chest heaving. Weirdly, no tears were leaking yet; I was almost too worked up for them. “After everything I did. Every fucking sacrifice I made. Gods, I wished that day I’d just told you the truth. I wish I’d told you I was pregnant with your child, and it was time for you to accept that responsibility and not be a rock star. Nope, you’ve got to be a teen father, stuck in a dead-end job, watching your dreams slowly die.”
Neither of them said a damn word, both boys frozen on the spot. Rhett was at my side, and I couldn’t see his expression because all I saw was Jace. This moment had been a long time coming, and I, honestly, couldn’t take the secrets for one more second.