Chapter 21

Danica

 

As I lay in my bed, my mind was buzzing with a wide range of emotions, meaning that it was very unlikely I’d get any sleep. I felt guilty for giving into temptation yet again, oddly excited by how much fun it had been, and full of rage for how things had turned out in the end. It was extremely confusing, and I wasn’t entirely sure which emotion was more powerful.

It was clear that Rhett felt bad for having sex with me knowing that we were about to become stepbrother and sister, but why didn’t he just talk to me about it? Why did he shut down and give me the cold shoulder, instead? It was so annoying, and it would end up killing us before we could even get started.

If we could get started…

Did I even really want us to get started?

Oh God, my head was a mess.

On the one hand, I really wanted to be with Rhett, I wanted to give us a go. I wanted to just be able to tell him about the baby and have his input on what happened next. No one had ever made me feel as special and amazing as he did, and I didn’t think that they ever would. It felt like he was literally perfect for me, and if our situation had been different, it was likely that we would already be together.

But on the other, it was going to be far too complex for it to just happen. It was wrong, and I really could do with remembering that. It would cause our family to implode from the inside out, probably ruining all of our relationships.

There was only one thing for it; I was going to have to get him alone to sort things out. A big part of me was tempted to creep into his room tonight, to air out all of our problems–well, almost all of them, as I certainly wasn’t ready to bring up the unborn baby yet–and then to have a snuggle under the sheets, but in the end, I thought better of it. I didn’t want to risk getting caught, and I also wasn’t sure if Rhett needed some alone time.

I didn’t want to blow things already. If he needed space, then I would give him space. I could do that.

So I slid under my own bed sheets, with only his face on my mind. Tomorrow, I would speak to him, and I would make everything better. No matter what.

 

***

 

The positivity and the smile were still spread across my cheeks the next morning, and I walked down the stairs with that buzzing, secretive feel to me. It was kind of nice to have this one thing that was just for me in among all of this wedding madness. I couldn’t wait to see where the day would take us. I was certain that Rhett would have gotten over his little mood by now and that we would be able to sort things out.

But I was very, very wrong.

As I got into the kitchen, I didn’t get the smile that I expected to from him at all. In fact, the way he was acting was still positively cold. I could only assume that it was because our parents were sitting at the dining table, eating breakfast. Maybe he felt too weird around them now to act normal. Maybe he didn’t even know how to behave anymore. I certainly didn’t.

I tried not to let myself get too disheartened, I tried to just tell myself that we would speak whenever possible. But the way that he was completely avoiding my eyes really did hurt.

“Morning,” Mom called out in a tone that was too enthusiastic for my liking. “How are you feeling? Did you enjoy your day yesterday?”

I managed to avoid the questioning when we got home–which was a good thing considering the foul mood I was in–so I figured that I better answer them now, before things became too weird and suspicious.

“Yeah, it was good,” I said distractedly. “And I feel much better; thanks.”

“What are you up to today?” Her eyes were flickering between me and Rhett, which wasn’t good news. It meant that she suspected something. My face flamed as I realized what this could mean for us both.

“Nothing,” I jumped in quickly, wanting her to only look at me. “Do you have anything that you need me to do?”

“Well, I have to meet Victoria this morning.”

“Okay, that’s great; I’ll come with you,” I grinned, needing the distraction. Sure, it meant that I wouldn’t get the time I needed with Rhett until later, but that was a sacrifice that I was willing to make.

“No, that’s okay,” she stood up from the table, and Brad copied her. “I want you to take the day off. You’ve done enough to help, and to be honest, it’s only finalizing details, anyway. I need to do this alone, really, so I can focus better.”

“Right, okay,” I replied dejectedly, annoyed that she was finally starting to take a real interest in her special day when I no longer wanted her to. “That’s fine.”

As Mom and Brad walked from the room, talking only about themselves, I shot my eyes nervously back to Rhett once more. This was it, the moment where I would be able to determine if his weirdness was only to do with our parents.

But nothing. His eyes remained only on his feet.

This wasn’t good.

“Morning?” I said shyly. “Are you okay?” I knew that I should be still furious with him for his behavior, but I couldn’t be because I understood it. I knew that our only problem was communication, and I was ready to rectify that. I was ready to get over the rest of it for the sake of us.

“Mmmm,” he replied distractedly. “Sure.”

I flicked my eyes around, but Mom and Brad were nowhere to be seen. We both knew that, so why was he still being so off?

“Are you…up to much today?” I asked lamely. “Got any interesting plans?”

“Nope,” he snapped back, popping the p. “Just stuck here for another day in this hell.”

Hell?

What was that supposed to mean? Sure this wasn’t the nicest situation, but things hadn't all been bad had they? Yesterday was fu…wasn’t it?

Oh God, was it only fun for me? I tried to think back but was drawing a frustrating blank. I’d certainly thought that Rhett was having a great time with me.

“Okay,” I practically whispered. Silence resumed, and it was so painful that in the end I felt like I needed to speak out again. “Are you being weird with me to pay me back for how I treated you when you first got here?”

It was a possibility, and we needed to start opening up to one another somehow. Our communication needed to start somewhere. He didn’t answer, which bristled my defences even further. “Okay, look, I’m sorry about that, I really am, but it was all really strange. I didn’t know how the hell we were supposed to act around one another, you must understand that.”

“Look, it is weird,” he snapped. “You know it is. We’re family, so we can’t really be any more, can we?”

What the hell? Did he not think that was a decision he should have made before we slept together again? I couldn’t help but feel a little used–how dare he make his choice like that? Did he think that he was in control, and that I didn’t get a say? He hadn't even asked what I thought about it all. That was an arrogance that I’d never noticed in Rhett before. Maybe I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did.

“We need to accept that we can’t be together and be a family, too, and since our parents are getting married, we don’t exactly have any choice, do we?”

I knew that his words were right, but that sure as hell didn’t make me feel any better. I knew that he was being logical and smart, but that didn’t make it any less painful to hear. I hung my head, trying to disguise the tears that were pricking in my eyes. I didn’t want him to see how hurt I was because I knew it wouldn’t do anything to change his mind. He’d obviously made that decision yesterday as soon as we’d slept together, and even having the night away from me hadn't managed to make any difference.

He didn’t want me. Maybe he never had.

“Right.” For a moment, the baby filled my mind all over again. To be honest, our unborn child was on my mind all the time, but at moments like this, it came to the forefront of my thoughts. How was I supposed to raise a child with a man that didn’t even want to know me?

Maybe the best thing to do would be to pretend that the father was someone else, just to save the family. Sure, that would be wrong, but at the same time it would help prevent the constant arguments. Rhett would look at me in a very different way–he would probably wrongly assume that I gave it away easily to any boy that looked my way, but that was a side effect that I was just going to have to face.

Just to make things easier for everyone else.

“Right, fine,” I held my head high with a determined look in my eyes. “If that’s how you feel, then we won’t talk anymore.”

“No,” he whined as I turned my back on him. “I don’t mean don’t talk anymore.”

“So, what do you mean?” I snapped, spinning back to stare right at him. There was a deep anger burning inside of me now, and that showed across my face. “We can’t be family; we’ve proven that we can’t be friends. Civil? You want to be fake in front of our parents? Fine. You’ll be gone soon enough, anyway.”

And then I spun on my heel and stalked from the room before he could get another word in edgeways. As I got back into the privacy of my own room, I felt my world fall apart. This had been hard enough before, but now I felt so much worse about myself. I’d succumbed to Rhett knowing deep down that it was going to end this way. What did that say about me?

Nothing good, that was for sure.

I remembered Rhett’s final parting words as we left Camp Woodtree, and I wished that I could transform back into that moment, just for a few moments. As we’d stood in the parking lot, just before his mom turned up in the car not long before mine, he held onto my hands and looked deeply into my eyes. Then he said:

“Thank you for a wonderful week. I’ll never forget you and what this means to me–it’s been an experience like I never imagined. When I see you again, I hope it’s just like this.”

Those words had been etched into my memory, and I wept for the fact that it had gone the complete opposite direction. It was so unfair that I was left with all of that from nothing.

How could he just decide to turn his feelings off and be done? Unless he didn’t feel as deeply as I did? Maybe his words just didn’t really mean anything–maybe I’d been reading things into emotions that just weren’t there. Maybe this had all only been about sex for him, even from the very beginning.

My mind spun violently round and round in circles, making me dizzy with it all, until eventually, I had to run to the bathroom to be sick all over again in what was slowly becoming a never ending, unbearable cycle.