RHETT

          The words hang on the tip of my tongue, desperate to pour out, and I need them out of my system, nauseous thanks to the trail of poison they've left behind.

          It's been a long time coming and I'm well aware I can't hold this secret inside me any longer, not after everything that's happened tonight, not considering all the further heartache I'd be putting Brie through by assuming she'd be safer not knowing the truth. I know all of that, and I'm not stupid.

          However, taking that leap of faith between what's smart and right and what's comfortable has proven to be quite . . . difficult, for the lack of a better descriptor. All of it feels bitterly unnecessary, like I'm punishing her for the sake of protecting her, and, the longer I keep it up, the higher the likelihood of losing her for good.

          I've already lost her once and it was only thanks to the kindness of her heart that we've found our way back to each other (I'm not blaming fate for all of it, absolutely not). I can't risk making the same mistake twice.

          Breaking someone's heart once is bad enough. You don't get to do it twice and expect them to forgive you for it. No matter how many times I attempt to convince myself of this, somehow I always find myself back at the starting line, coming up with one excuse after another.

          I'm not sure which of us I've been trying to protect all this time. Wanting to protect my dad and my family's reputation is one thing, but they're not the reason I was ambushed at the party.

           Okay, fine, perhaps ambushed isn't the right or the fairest word to use. Perhaps Magnolia deserves some credit by taking the moral high road instead of blowing things out of proportion like I was terrified she would.

          There's some good in her, objectively speaking, and I want to believe her when she says she wants to wave the white flag, bury the hatchet, and allow us to return to our normal lives without fearing the moment we'll inevitably run into each other, but, at the same time . . .

          I've been wrong about people before. People have been wrong about me before, too.

          "I'm not sure where to start," I reveal, staring down at my hands and at the fingers Brie keeps curled around my wrist. She's steadying me, helping me relax, but she's also grounding herself through the physical contact. "Everything about this is a long story."

          "From the beginning," she suggests. "What happened between you and Magnolia? Were you two . . . together? I'm just asking because everyone who tries to talk to me about it mentions something happened between the two of you and, frankly, I'm inclined to believe it. Magnolia herself was pretty obvious about it. I want to hear it from you."

          My first instinct is to recoil, my self-preservation urges kicking in. They remind me of how terrible an idea all of this is, screaming bloody murder, but I force myself to consider they're actively working against my happiness this time.

          "We were," I confirm. Her lips purse into a thin line at this revelation and, though I'm guilt-ridden by the negative feelings I'm triggering, I can't go back now. She's the one who wanted to know, who preached about and pressed me for honesty, and I'm the one so willing to give her everything she wants—no matter the cost. "She was the only girl I've ever been serious with besides you. My track record isn't exactly the best when it comes to success rate."

          She chuckles. "Like mine is. I was dating Cole."

          I don't mean to sound conceited, but I'm well aware of the reputation I've built for myself around campus and even out of it, which is why I've been working so hard to rehabilitate myself, make people see I'm more than someone who dodges commitment like Keanu Reeves in the Matrix movies.

          To the greater majority of people, the easy, simple explanation is to blame it on my athlete status, as it makes sense to believe hockey is the only thing I live for and I have my sights set on a bright career, not having the emotional availability for a real relationship. To them, I go through women like clothes—like they're disposable and interchangeable.

          I'll be the first to admit I saw the appeal in casual hookups from the start, allowing me to enjoy the benefits of romantic and sexual attraction without having to dive headfirst into something serious, and it was fun.

          At first.

          Magnolia crept up on me from the start, back in freshman year, when I was still getting acquainted with the social expectations placed upon me by my status. Guided by guys who should know better than me—and somehow didn't—all I wanted to do was earn their respect, feel like I belonged, and prove to my parents I could make them proud. I could carry on the family legacy and be worthy of the Price name.

          Still reeling from the falling out I'd had with Brie and the utter collapse of our friendship thanks to my inability to love her like she deserved, I went to college friendless and confused. I quickly made friends, though, but was still quite unsure how to navigate this new world. I was still confused as to how I'd hurt Brie so deeply.

          Magnolia was in a similar situation.

          Our first meeting was as cliché as it gets: we met at a frat party neither of us had actually wanted to attend, dragged by our more socially active friends in an attempt to break us out of our shells.

          She was new in town, living with her mom post-divorce, and felt even more lost than I did. I had a team to fall back on, whereas she just had a fleeting, not tight friendship with some of the girls my guys had an eye on. Naturally, we were drawn to each other by process of elimination, with everyone else paired up.

          She wasn't like Brie, not in the way that she was a quiet wallflower, with a tendency to ignore the effect she had on people—the natural way she attracted them to her. Ever since I've known her, Magnolia Hawthorne has always been the life of the party, a living, walking magnet, and I was drawn to her thanks to my annoying curiosity to figure out why I couldn't get her out of my head.

          The cat and mouse game quickly became addictive.

          I'm competitive by nature and, though it makes me sound every bit like the jerk that I am and thought I wasn't, I enjoyed the thrill of the chase as much as she was amused by having someone pursue her. We entertained each other from a distance, using other people to get back at each other to see which of us would crack first, and that kept us busy enough. We made a silent promise to beat one another at our own game simply because we wanted to, because we could, and because there were no strings attached.

          She was funny, insanely attractive, and drove me out of my mind—the same way Brie does, but, at the same time, in an entirely different manner.

          We both needed a distraction from the world and our families—Magnolia couldn't bear to be her mom's sole confidant and go-to person without an outlet of her own, and I was still shouldering the responsibility of protecting my dad's name and reputation following his time in rehab. We needed something to do, someone to talk to, and started hanging out outside of those parties, growing closer with time.

          A friendship blossomed overtime, even though all we wanted to do was jump each other's bones and get it over and done with, weeks and months of sexual tension building up, and I didn't know what would be left of our relationship once that happened.

          I didn't want to lose her as a friend, but I also really really wanted to sleep with her; against my better judgment, growing that close to her and getting to know her at a deeper level actually made me consider I wanted more out of it, not just a one-night stand.

          I opened up to her in ways I hadn't done with anyone else at the time, not even Andy. She knew about my insecurities, my pathological need to prove my worth, and, most importantly, she knew about my dad.

          She listened. She understood. She made me trust her and, in a way, I supposed I really did trust her once. Things between us were fantastic until they weren't—until feelings got mixed, until they got complicated, until we started spending more time together and becoming romantically involved.

          "It was more of a long situationship than an actual relationship, looking back on it," I confess, attempting and failing to swallow the lump in my throat, "but it felt like the real thing. When it blew up on our faces, it certainly felt like the real thing. I know it sounds stupid, especially after what I did to you, but . . ."

          "It's not stupid," Brie reassures me. She has laced her fingers with each other, setting both hands on my shoulder and resting her chin on them. She's so close I can count the faint freckles speckled across her nose. "Those are valid feelings. It doesn't matter how long or how subjectively serious your relationship felt to other people. All that matters is that it was real and it hurt. Do I wish it hadn't shattered you? Of course, but it still did, and you lived to tell the tale. Maybe you don't care about resilience, at least not when it still feels like an open wound, but when you stop poking at it and let it heal, you'll see it for what it is. It's still a scar. It still hurt. You still survived."

          I did, but at what cost?

          So, I continue.

          Since we never really spoke about the nature of our relationship, it wasn't clear where the boundaries were, what we could or couldn't do, or what we expected from each other. To everyone—and to me—Magnolia and I were together and I'd introduced her as my girlfriend to my family, something she never corrected me on, and her mom also referred to me as her boyfriend. In my head, it was a definitive thing; it sure as hell felt real enough to make me willingly let her in on the family's secret—something I'm just now telling Brie, someone who has known my parents for much, much longer.

          And it angers me.

          It pisses me off that I let Magnolia in, trusted her with my deepest, darkest secrets, let her see the most vulnerable parts of me, and she went and wrecked them. I wanted to get her back, give her a piece of my mind, make her feel an inkling of the pain she'd caused me by using my secrets against me, but nothing ever worked out in my favor.

          She's a psychology major. She knows all about how to charm someone, sweet talk them into telling her everything she wants to know, and then she'll use that information to her advantage, often at your expense.

          So, when I saw my own words parroted back at me in an academic paper, featuring a John Doe that had kindly been interviewed about his experiences as an athlete with anxiety, familiar pressure, and the genetic predisposition to develop an addiction, I couldn't feel a thing.

          I wasn't surprised by the betrayal, which was what shocked me the most (after all, I trusted Magnolia; surely she could have found someone else going through the exact same thing as me). Then, as the numbness subsided, giving place to the brutal impact of everything I hadn't allowed myself to feel until that very moment—anger, disappointment, regret, guilt.

          I was blinded by emotion, suffocating under the heavy weight of it all, and didn't care about her apologies or explanations. I didn't care that she hadn't named me or my family and had left out any identifying information. All I saw was scarlet around me.

          I cared that I had trusted her with something so deeply personal, and she had fattened me up like a pig for slaughter just to prove a point. She had won.

          I promised myself I would never lose again. I launched myself into a smear campaign, ensuring she wouldn't be welcome at the games or at the parties, and made sure she knew I was done with her. I couldn't tell the truth to anyone without ruining my family, so I took the fall by dragging my reputation down with me—I broke her heart in front of my friends, in front of her friends, and Andy was the only one besides the two of us who knew the full truth. I eventually came clean to my family, explaining I'd done what I could to protect them, but it was too little too late.

          To everyone else on campus, I'd humiliated her. I was a terrible person, a terrible boyfriend, and a bully. At least my family was safe.

          After she'd done what she did, I hooked up with more girls than I can count now, but, once the school year was over, all I could do was wallow in my misery during the summer. I'd still told my family the truth, but I was terrified I'd broken their trust in me, which kept me trapped in that cycle.

          "I don't know how to trust people, and I can't help but feel like it's somewhat deserved," I whisper. Brie's tear-filled eyes look up at me, and all I want to do is bury my face in the crook of her neck, inhale the sweet scent of her, and fall asleep. I want my brain to quiet down. I want it all to go away. "Had she told me the truth right away, I would've understood. I would've helped her. Wasn't I supposed to be there for her?"

          "Hey, no." She cups my cheek with her hand to get me to stay put instead of looking away in shame. I feared I'd find judgment in her eyes, but all that stares back at me is understanding. "You might not have gone about it in the best way, but no one blames you for feeling hurt and betrayed. Anyone would if they felt like they had been used, especially when it comes to something so deeply personal. You reacted emotionally. It happens. No living person can be fully rational at all times, and sometimes we have to fail."

          "I can't afford to fail, Brie. Not now. Not when my family is involved."

          Brie sighs, then falls back on the bed, lying on her back. She pats the space next to her, beckoning me to join her. Although I don't want to, with exhaustion weighing down on my weary bones and muscles and sleep threatening to consume me the moment I allow myself to relax, I still do.

          "What happened was messed up," she continues, once I join her, and props herself up on an elbow to look down at me. Even from this angle, she's so unbelievably beautiful I have to lightly graze my fingers against her arm—just to make sure she's here and she's real.

          "That's putting it lightly," I whisper.

          "She shouldn't have done that, regardless of her intentions, even if she regretted it. Even if she still does, which I don't doubt. She could have talked to you first, and it's not your responsibility to guess what she's thinking or what she's planning to do, especially if it involves a huge breach of trust. I know you would've understood. No one loves helping girls out with their big academic projects as much as Rhett Price." I chuckle. She runs her fingers through my hair, which makes my already heavy eyelids almost triple in weight. "I'm really sorry this all happened to you. I'm even more sorry that you felt like you had to go through this and heal from what happened on your own."

          I exhale through my mouth. The room swirls around me. "I had Andy."

          "To an extent. You've never fully let him in, either, and I know you push him away almost as much as you've been pushing me away. I promise I won't tell anyone, not even Nancy or my brothers, but you shouldn't have to shoulder everything by yourself. We're here for you. Your family is here for you. Don't throw it all away because of how loud your pride gets."

          "My family—"

          "I know how hard you've worked all your life to make them proud. I know how much you value their approval. I also know how much you all love each other. However, there comes a time when you have to fight to love yourself. For your approval. You can do everything everyone else wants you to do, be perfect in their eyes, and it still won't feel enough. You'll get addicted to the praise, to the people pleasing, and it will ruin your life."

          The weight in my chest alleviates the pressure ever so slightly, but it doesn't disappear. It never does. "I'm trying, Brie. I'm trying so fucking hard."

          Brie lies back down, curling an arm around my chest, and snuggles close. "I know, baby. I know you are." She stifles a yawn. "Give yourself permission to fail sometimes. Give yourself permission to be silly, to relax. Give yourself permission to trust people. You can't carry all that baggage by yourself."

          My heart threatens to jump out of my chest when I press my lips to the crown of her head. "Little Brooke Sheridan. When did you become so wise?"

          She giggles. "Must be all the rom-coms."

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apologies for the delay. hopefully this makes up for the wait. mwah

please don't be too mean to magnolia ok thank u