Page 17 of When You're Home for the Holidays
Fielding didn’t wind up to hit him right away. Instead, he bent low, allowing a few stray blond curls that peeked out from under his knit cap to brush against Rhett’s forehead. He hissed right in his face, making Rhett flinch in anticipation. Intense hatred crackled between them, and in that moment, Rhett knew his disdain was mutual. They could both put on their best behaviors for Tori, but there would never be anything but distrust and hostility between them.
Fielding leaned forward another inch, using his full weight to crush him. He smirked when Rhett shifted and turned his head away. “I’m still not going to hit you,” he mocked.
Rhett froze, his body rigid on the soaking wet, freezing cold ground. A combination of truth and turmoil coiled in the pit of his stomach—he felt like he was going to be sick. Fielding’s words prodded at some fuzzy, distant memory in his mind. He couldn’t place it, but there was so much familiarity in his words, in his tone. Rhett’s grasp on reality was just so blurry…
“Rhett! RHETT!”
He had tuned out everything when he tackled Haas, but Maddie’s voice drew him back to the moment. He snapped his head to the side in time to see his sister nearly fall in the snow as she frantically ran toward them.
“Penny! She’s in the cabin! She’s inside! I went down to the basement to look for a flashlight, and she was just lying in the middle of Fielding’s bed! She was panting, and she’s soaking wet, but otherwise she seems fine. There’s not a scratch on her.”
Tori let out a groan of relief, then turned to jog up toward the cabin with Jake and Maddie following close behind.
Fielding hopped to his feet, his movements lithe and nimble for someone so large. His impressive agility was just a reminder that he was a slippery fucker. How many times was Rhett going to have to learn the same lesson? He couldn’t ever let his guard down when it came to Fielding Haas.
Fielding extended a hand toward him. Rhett glared up, his eyes shifting from Haas’s face to his hand, then back again. Fielding raised one eyebrow but said nothing, breaking eye contact and glancing up toward the cabin to let him know he had another second or two before he rescinded his offer.
Rhett grunted and grabbed for his hand, letting him pull him to his feet and hold him steady as he gained his balance in the snow. The wind whipped against his soaking wet backside, inspiring a chill to jolt up his spine. He cracked the knuckles on both his hands before tilting his chin from side to side, releasing a satisfying crack. He stretched his bad arm across his chest, grimacing when he felt the unyielding pull through the shoulder he had injured in the car crash .Fuck. He was going to be sore tomorrow.
Fielding wordlessly started walking back toward the house. Rhett watched him walk away, watched him do what he wished he could do, too. What would it be like to just shake it off and head back inside? Why couldn’t that be his reality?
He laced his hands behind his neck and dropped his head back to look up at the sky. His breathing was still heavy from their altercation, each exhale transforming into a tiny cloud of hazy white angst as his breath froze on contact with the night air.
He inhaled for five counts, held his breath for five more, then exhaled for as long as his lungs would allow, trying to force out every prickle of irritation that lived inside him.
He needed to make sure Tori was okay. He wanted to check over Penny himself. And he needed to force Judy to leave so she could get home to her own family. It was Christmas Eve, after all.
But he couldn’t do any of that in his current state of mind. He couldn’t do any of that until he checked in with his sponsor.
He shot off a quick text to Tori and Jake, letting them know he was okay, but that he needed to stay outside for a few more minutes and that they should start eating without him. Then he scrolled through his contacts and found Will’s name. He began the cold, wet slog back to the cabin. The phone only rang once before his friend and mentor answered.
Chapter ten
Rhett
“Thereyouare,”Torigreeted him as she pulled open the door to the sauna in their master en suite. He’d been holed up here for almost an hour, letting the heat leech out his lingering anger and soothe his frayed nerves.
“Hey, beautiful.” He lifted his head from his hands and sat up straight. “Is everyone asleep?”
“Mhmm,” she confirmed, pulling her sweatshirt up and over her head and discarding her jeans outside the sauna so she was standing before him in just her lacy hipster panties and a matching navy blue bra. She made quick work of joining him on the wooden bench, straddling his lap but not lowering her body all the way down. “You’ve got me all to yourself now,” she murmured as she wrapped her arms around his sweat-slicked neck and dug her fingers into his hair. He groaned in appreciation of her touch, then spread his hands on her ass to pull her closer.
“Are you okay?” She scraped her nails up and down his scalp in the most soothing way. He was lost in the sensation of just holding her in his arms—their bare midsections pressed together, her arms around his neck in a possessive embrace. He was more than okay now that she was here.
“Ev, seriously. What can I do to help?” she urged when he didn’t respond to her first question.
“I’m fine,” he supplied quickly, eager to ease her worry. He pulled his head back to meet her gaze, to allow her to see the honesty in his eyes. “Really. I’m good now. I just wanted to give everyone a little space and take a minute to cool down myself.”
“You parked yourself in the sauna to cool down?”
He wanted to bury his feelings and flirt back with his wife, but he couldn’t. Not yet. He needed to make amends before his shame could fester and evolve into something dangerous. “I’m sorry I freaked out on Fielding. And I’m sorry I missed the first half of dinner. I know how important this holiday is to you…”
“Don’t.” She released one of her arms from around his neck and moved her hand to grip his jaw. “Don’t you dare apologize for putting on your own oxygen mask first. Not tonight. Not ever. I’m proud of you for staying outside and calling your sponsor. I’ll never be upset when you do what you have to do to be okay.”
Her words reached into the darkest parts of his mind—the place where that voice still taunted him about his drinking, about his choices, about all the devastation he had caused when he was at his lowest of lows—and smoothed out the wrinkles of his own destructive thoughts. He had done the work to get himself sober. And he’d be doing the work the rest of his life to stay sober. But it was her words that galvanized him when he mistrusted his own ability to stay strong.
“And Fielding?”
Tori rolled her eyes and released an exasperated sigh. “I mean, I don’t love that you tackled him,” she gave him a pointed look that bordered on amusement, “but he kind of deserved it. Fielding is one of my best friends, but he can also be an ass.”
