Page 20 of Her Rival

"And not say anything."

"And not say anything. Not to Brynn, not to Coach, not to anybody. She does her piece, she leaves, the kid stays buried."

"How many more sessions."

"I don't know. Three, four. Maybe five, depending how she structures it."

Rhett took another sip. Put the bottle down. Turned and looked at me for the first time, that flat dark gaze on full, and I let him look. No point trying to dodge Rhett when Rhett actually wanted to see you.

"Jett."

"Yeah."

"Are you going to be all right."

I almost laughed. I think I made a small noise on the way to a laugh that didn't make it.

"I don't know," I said. It came out flatter than I meant. More honest. "I haven't been all right since she walked into the room. I keep thinking I should be over it by now. I should've shaken it. This was a teenage girl nine years ago. I'm a grown man, I'm a champion, I have everything that woman never gave me a chance to want, and I cannot stop running it on a loop, Stone. I cannot make my head let it go."

"Okay."

"Okay what."

"Okay, you're not over it. That's an answer. We work from there."

"What does that mean."

"It means you keep doing the interviews. You give her nothing. You come over here on the bad nights. You don't drive past your own turn for the third night in a row trying to figure out what to do with your hands, which you've done twice already this week by my count."

"You watched my Maps."

"I watched the Pontiac. From the deck. You came past once Sunday night, once last night. You didn't see me. I didn't say anything because you weren't ready to." He paused. "You're ready now."

"Yeah."

"You don't have to do this alone. That's the whole point, Jett. That's all I'm telling you. You don't have to do this alone."

I sat with that. The fire popped. The coyote called again, further down.

"I haven't been alone in this room in eight years," I said. "I don't know how to be not-alone in it. I don't know how to do this with somebody else in the room."

"You're doing it right now."

"I know. I just don't know how to do it after tonight."

"You don't have to figure that out tonight. You showed up. You said it. The next thing you do is the next thing."

I looked at him. He was looking at the fire again. The smallest curve of mouth that meant he wasn't about to do anything performative about what I'd just told him. No hug. No speech. No Big Captain Moment. Just this. A man on a deck. An offer to keep being the man on the deck.

"Don't tell Brynn," I said. "Or Victoria. Or anybody."

"I wasn't going to."

"I'm serious, Stone."

"So am I."

I believed him. That was the strangest part, sitting in the firelight with all of it spilled and somebody else's eyes on it now. I believed him. Rhett did not lie. Rhett did not embroider. He'd carried his own things in silence for so many years that he had no instinct toward telling someone else's. He'd said I wasn't going to, and that was that.