Page 43

Again, no hesitation.

No self-pity.

Just fact.

“My father drank himself into a heart attack when I was twenty-six. Mom lasted another few years after that.” His jaw shifts slightly. “Think she was tired.”

The ache in those words almost undoes me.

Rhett pushes away from the counter and grabs two beers from the fridge before handing me one.

Our fingers brush.

Heat flashes up my arm instantly.

He notices.

“You left for the military after high school?” I ask quietly.

“No.” He twists the cap off his beer. “Waited.”

“For your sister.”

His gaze lifts to mine. “Yeah.”

That single word carries so much weight it almost steals my breath.

“I couldn’t leave her alone with him.” He leans back against the counter beside me, close enough that I feel the heat coming off his body. “I stayed until she graduated and went to college. Then I enlisted three weeks later.”

The image forms too easily in my head. Young Rhett carrying the weight of an entire household on his back before he was even old enough to legally drink.

“You were protecting her.”

“I tried.”

The answer comes rougher this time.

And there it is.

The guilt.

I study him carefully. “Something happened overseas.”

Not a question.

Rhett’s gaze goes distant for the first time since I met him.

“IED.”

The air in the room changes instantly.

“I was leading a recon team through a village outside Kandahar.” His fingers tighten slightly around the beer bottle. “We hit pressure plates buried under the road.”

My stomach twists.

“What happened?”

His eyes meet mine again.