Page 83 of Honey Bee Hearts

Fuck. If anyone could patch us back together, it would be her. Fable Everhart. My very own Annie Oakley slinging bullets without even knowing it.

Rhett appears at the top of the staircase, his eyes taking in my stance and the closed door behind me. I straighten, not wanting to look needy and wanting in front of Rhett. I’ll never hear the end of it. Besides, bastard is still holding onto the idea that he could have gotten Fable out of his system with a single fuck. He deserves no clues.

“How was it?” Rhett asks, his throat thick, as if he’s been waiting for someone to leave the room.

What a fucking idiot. All of us know he’s being dense. Shit, I think Rhett even knows it, but ain’t a single one of us going to give him anything until he admits it.

I roll my eyes and move away from the door, so I don’t wake Fable. Trent is probably still awake, his eyes on the doorwatching for when my shadow moves. He’ll only fall asleep when he’s too exhausted to stay awake, just like he always does.

We all have our trauma. Trent’s runs a little deeper.

“Thought you got her out of your system?” I goad him as I pass by and descend the stairs. Gunnar is still sitting at the coffee table, a beer in his hand he takes a sip of as I come down the stairs. His eyes are heated, as if he’s been imagining what’s going on upstairs. Lucky me, I don’t have to imagine. The scenes are burned into my mind and I fucking love it.

“So, I can’t ask?” Rhett growls as I step out onto the porch. He follows, annoyed.

Jethro is sitting out here, and he peeks up at my exit. “It’s alright, boy,” I tell him. “She’s sleeping. You can come inside when I go back in.”

That dog don’t belong to me anymore. He doesn’t belong to Circle Bee. He belongs to Fable Everhart, her protector, and we’re gonna have to find a way to get him to her when she leaves. Unless we can convince her to stay of course.

“Not if you had your one-night stand and are done,” I tell him as I pop out a lighter and flick it on. I close it right after, then flick it on again. I used to smoke, but Rhett made me quit. He’d argued it fucked with his allergies, but I know it was his way of caring for me. I’d reluctantly given up the habit, if only because I care about this family more than I care about myself. I can’t go leaving them behind too soon, or worse, fuck with their health for my own selfish reasons.

“Maybe me asking is my way of tryin’ to get a fix,” Rhett argues.

“She’s not a fix,” I growl. “She’s not an itch. Fuck off.”

“Come on, man. Just tell me,” Rhett growls. “I’m fucking dying here?—”

“Then admit it,” I spit.

He freezes. “Admit what?”

I straighten and step up to him, bumping his chest with mine. “Admit she’s not out of your system,” I command. “Admit you want her for more than a quick fuck.”

“I don’t do commitments,” Rhett rasps.

I flick open the lighter again. “Keep lying to yourself, Rhett Thomas. It’s gonna make this all the more painful.”

His throat bobs before he scowls and turns away, looking out over the pastures. “You know, we’ve kept this place afloat,” he says as he studies all we’ve built.

Some things are the same as when his parents were here. The four of us, we were friends growing up, and when Trent came in, we adopted him into our group just as Rhett’s parents adopted him. Rhett hadn’t liked it at first, but he’d come around to the thought of a brother. It helped we were all practically brothers before that. I was older, but I worked at Circle Bee in the summers. Gunnar is the same age as Rhett, but the two of them were actually friends in high school, playing on the football team together. I was already out of high school by the time they were sophomores, but I never let our friendship fester. When the accident had happened, I’d worried about Rhett. He spent a lot of time lost, and really, I don’t know what actually brought him back. Gunnar thought he just realized how many were relying on him. I think it was something else.

Rhett was on a one-way path to death, whether by his own hand or someone else’s. I think, in the end, he got close, and realized he didn’t want to die. He won’t talk about it, but I saw the gun sitting out on his desk when he was seventeen. He’d passed out drunk, drooled all over it, and I’d picked up the gun his daddy used to keep in the desk drawer. It’d been loaded.

We never spoke about it. I never brought it up, but I took the bullets. He never asked who took them and no one has brought it up again, but it feels like I should now.

“Would you have done it?” I ask.

Rhett jerks and glances over at me. “Done what?”

“That night I came over and found you passed out at the desk. Would you have done it?” I ask, looking out over the yard. These kinds of conversations, sometimes no eye contact is best.

He hesitates. “I always suspected it was Trent.”

“It wasn’t,” I reply.

Rhett clears his throat. “I, uh, if I hadn’t of passed out, I might’ve. I don’t know.”

I turn from the yard and meet his gaze head on. He takes a step back, uncertain. “Would you do it now?”

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