This was wrong.

Rhett knew he should have been packing to leave, but he couldn’t concentrate on the empty boxes before him. He kept glancing out of his bedroom window and down the street towards the last roof on their lane.

He knew she was home. Around this time, she’d be coming home from her part time job to either take a nap or fight Jeb for the remote and catch the latest nature documentary.

The thought was enough to make the corners of his mouth twitch for a moment before he remembered what he was supposed to be doing.

Packing to leave.

With a groan, he shoved aside the mess of clothes on his bed to collapse there, face down. What the hell was wrong with him? He should be happy. Ecstatic even. He was finally getting out of the hell hole he’d had the misfortune to call home for his entire life. If anything, he should be all but rushing to get out of his room - out of this tiny nowhere town and into the real world.

But he wasn’t.

There was something holding him back - making him wonder if, perhaps, Stanford wasn’t the best idea after all. There was no question that it was the best way out. The school was, without a doubt, a one-way ticket to changing his life.

But if it meant he had to leave her behind, was it really the best option?

Jesus, he was being stupid.

Rhett rolled onto his back to stare up at the same cracked, leaking ceiling he’d fallen asleep to for what seemed like an eternity and reminded himself how much he wanted to get out of here. Georgia held a wealth of bad memories for him. This was where he lost his family - where he lost everything.

Not that he’d ever really had anything. The only thing that had ever truly belonged to Rhett was...well.

Crap. This wasn’t how he’d planned to spend his last day here. He was supposed to be celebrating - sneaking the Carters’ wine from the porcelain cabinet downstairs without a care in the world. If he were any other seventeen-year-old boy in the entire world, he would be overjoyed at the life that awaited him!

Instead, he was pining over a girl.

That was all it was, Rhett reminded himself, if Cecily Warner was just an ordinary girl. He didn’t know how any ordinary girl could stand having someone like Jeb for a brother.

While he and the older boy had been close when they were kids, Jeb had grown spiteful and a bit too cruel for Rhett’s tastes as they grew older. As he and Jeb lost touch with one another, however, Rhett and Cece grew closer. Ultimately, he ended up using Jeb as an excuse to see her every time he made his way to the Warner household.

Cecily was everything her brother wasn’t - kind, patient, funny and bright. When she was knee-high, he’d been annoyed by the way she followed Jeb and him around like she was their shadow. He couldn’t count how many times he’d saved her from breaking her neck or drowning when her brother could have cared less.

But then, something profound happened: Cece grew into a woman. It was like Rhett just looked up one day, and there she was, all curves and dark brown hair framing that perfect, heart-shaped face. Sometime in the past decade she’d shed the glasses that made her look bug-eyed for contacts and started wearing clothing that drew the eye to certain...interesting places.

She was gorgeous, and her brother knew it. Jeb did everything in his power to keep any and every guy in the neighborhood away from Cece. It was one of the many ways he liked to lord his power over other people. Cece, however, refused to stay under her brother’s thumb and was constantly finding ways around him.

Gradually, they had come together.

Even if their relationship wasn’t quite as physical as Rhett wanted, he found himself content to simply be in her presence. When Cece smiled at him, he forgot about his shitty home life. He forgot his troubles, his woes and everything else in between because goddamn she was beautiful. Just being in the same room as her made the world a better place.

Or, at least, it had.

When he got accepted to Stanford, everything changed.

Of course, she was happy for him. Cece refused to let anyone see her upset. Even when she was mad at the world she still kept a smile firmly in place. The moment he told her he’d been accepted, she was over the moon. There was never a question of his not going. With a full scholarship and dreams of a better future, Stanford offered him everything he could ever need.

Everything, that was, except Cece.

She told him he was going - that there was no chance of her holding him back from his aspirations. Though Rhett had tried to come up with any other excuse than her for staying in the suburb where they’d grown up, in the end, all he could do was agree. The way she’d smiled - insisted that it would be the best for him...how could he say no?

He was supposed to be leaving tomorrow, and all their goodbyes had already been said. Nothing left to do but pack and go.

So why the hell was he leaving his room?

Rhett was up before he could stop himself, headed downstairs and out the front door before his foster parents could demand to know where he was going.

In the last few days of summer vacation every kid in the neighborhood was doing their best to enjoy the nice weather and relative freedom of the neighborhood. Someone had pried the cap off of a fire hydrant and at least ten munchkins were playing in it, leaving a harried trail of dark footprints across the pavement in their wake.

Parents too overheated to run after their kids lounged on lawns in need of watering, and the sun blared down from a cloudless sky. Typical Georgia summer weather - the kind he and Jeb used to love to make mischief in when they were young and fearless. Now, he had no idea how Jeb was staying in school. He skipped every other day, his aspirations swinging wildly back and forth between the unobtainable and the purely fantastic. Even Cece had to roll her eyes every time her brother came up with a new get-rich-quick scheme...but if there was anything Jeb hated, it was when he found them putting their heads together to talk about him.

The fact of the matter was that they both worried - no one more than Cece. She worried that he was going in a dangerous direction, and argued with him every time he tried to lord their three years’ age difference over her. Rhett could only hope he got his head on the right way soon...if for nothing else than to stop chasing guys away from Cece. She deserved to be happy - to have her chance at a summer fling or even a more serious romance.

Even if it wasn’t him.

That wasn’t to say the thought didn’t make Rhett’s gut churn with jealousy.

At the end of the block, Rhett stopped. Jeb and Cece lived in the last house on the left, and if the light in the living room window was any indication, they were watching TV. He knew it would be suicide to actually talk to her, but a last glimpse of Cece couldn’t hurt, could it?

Feeling a bit like a stalker, he crept past their front gate and around the side of the house. Less than ten seconds and he was right underneath the living room window.  Holding his breath, Rhett took a chance and popped his head up above the sill.

To his surprise, Jeb didn’t seem to be home. Cece lounged by herself on the couch, watching what looked like a nature documentary.

For a good five minutes, Rhett merely stared.

She was wearing a thin white camisole and the tiniest pair of shorts he’d ever seen. The entire expanse of her tanned, long runner’s legs was visible, along with an inch or two of her flat tummy. It was clear she didn’t expect a single person to see her this way - and that alone was enough to take his breath away.

He’d always remember her like this - engrossed in something that she loved, so effortlessly beautiful that she couldn’t have any idea what she did to him and his seventeen-year-old libido.

The first woman he’d ever loved.