Page 58 of Rhys: and the girl who was always his

Because I’ve spent so much time trying to be the strong one. The tough one. The independent, take-no-shit, I-don’t-need-help girl. But this diagnosis—it’s stripped all of that away. It’s made me feel small and fragile and suddenly terrified that loving someone means letting them watch me fall apart.

And Rhys…

He’s already seen too much.

Smalls stands and holds out his hand. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk before you overthink yourself into an existential coma.”

I roll my eyes but take his hand anyway.

Outside, the air is crisp and cool. Leaves skitter across the porch, and the sky’s beginning to blush with hints of gold and grey.

Smalls stuffs his hands into his hoodie pocket, walking beside me in companionable silence for a few minutes.

“Better already,” he says, breathing in deeply.

I nod, but my mind is still racing.

Because the thing is… I don’t want to be gone forever.

I don’t want this to be the end.

I just don’t know if I’m ready to walk back in and pick up the pieces.

But maybe, if I stop running?—

Maybe Rhys will still be there.

And maybe, just maybe…

That’s enough to try.

CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE

RHYS

Paintball was Chase’s idea.

“You need to let off some steam before you combust and take the house down with you,” he said. “And what better way than legally shooting your friends?”

That’s how I ended up in the middle of a muddy clearing just outside New Hope, crouched behind a half-rotted barricade while paintballs cracked against plywood, and someone (probably Logan) screamed like he was auditioning for a war movie.

The smell of earth and paint clings to everything. My chest heaves as I duck from a spray of neon orange, heart pounding more from adrenaline than cardio. We’d been playing for maybe thirty minutes, but my limbs already ached.

Probably because I hadn’t slept in days.

Arden pops his head up from a stack of tires and takes a hit to the face mask. “Goddammit, Logan! That was my ear!”

“War has no mercy!” Logan yells from behind a tree, absolutely thrilled with himself.

Chase belly-crawls toward me and slams his back against the barricade with a grunt. “Okay, this is officially the best bad idea I’ve ever had.”

“You say that every time we do something dumb,” I mutter, reloading my paintball gun.

“Yeah, but this time, it comes with bruises and a whole lot of laughs.”

Hayden runs past, yelling something unintelligible before tripping over his own feet and face-planting in a patch of mud. Paint explodes on his back. “I’m fine!” he shouts, which is the universal code for definitely not fine.

For a minute, the chaos is enough to distract me.

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