Chapter Eleven
Riley sighed happily as he relaxed back into the warm water, smiling as his toes brushed against Brent’s leg.
Neither of them had felt the need to wear anything, which Riley was quietly excited about. He liked the idea that Brent was comfortable being naked around him.
It would all be over once they got home, but for now, Riley was happy to enjoy what they had. He was never going to get the chance to show Brent the love he had for him like this again.
Walking away from this without regrets was all Riley wanted right now.
He’d worry about the resulting broken heart later. He’d been through plenty of those, he knew how to handle them by now.
“This is the life,” Brent said, stretching his arms out along the sides of the tub. “I know you’re sick of me saying thank you, but thank you. Seriously.”
Riley chuckled. “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. All I want to do is help.”
“This is helping,” Brent said. “I… I’m starting to feel like everything worked out for the best, y’know? I wanted to settle down, maybe get a dog or something, but… I’m starting to think I was making a mistake, and I’d rather know that now than in six months or three years or whatever.”
“I know a dog guy, if you’re still interested in one,” Riley said automatically.
Scott’s habit of jumping in and offering a dog every time someone mentioned them was rubbing off on him.
“Dog guy?” Brent raised an eyebrow.
“Charlie’s boyfriend. No, Charlie’s fiancé. I’m still not used to that. Charlie’s twelve years old as far as I’m concerned.”
The passage of time had been strange since Riley left home to explore the world at eighteen. His siblings seemed to have grown up around him, but most of the time, he still felt like a kid.
He often wondered if that was a common experience.
“Do you feel thirty?” Riley asked, looking up at Brent.
“I’m twenty-nine for another couple of months.”
“Do you feel almost thirty, then?” Riley knew exactly when Brent’s birthday was—he made a point of at least mailing him a gift, if not showing up on his doorstep for it. He just didn’t necessarily know what today was.
Time was weird.
“Kinda?” Brent shrugged. “I dunno. Sometimes I feel ninety. Sometimes I feel twenty-one. Sometimes I feel twelve. And every now and then I feel like I’ve got everything under control, and that feels like almost thirty.”
Riley nodded thoughtfully, taking that in. “I feel like an eighteen-year-old no one ever cards. I feel like I’m wearing adulthood as a costume.”
“I feel like that sometimes, too,” Brent agreed. “Adulthood is hard. But I feel as though I’ve learned a lot. Or at least, maybe I’m old enough to look back and see how much I’ve learned.”
“I’m not sure I learned anything,” Riley said. “I keep making the same mistakes over and over.”
“What mistakes?” Brent asked, raising an eyebrow.
Riley’s heart leapt into his throat as he realized that he’d been talking about Brent. He was making the same mistake with Brent, again. Letting too much of his heart show, not protecting it well enough from the inevitable hurt when he realized, again, that Brent was better off without him.
No one needed an unreliable manchild in their life, least of all Brent. He had a sister to take care of. A family of his own to start.
As they got older, Riley was becoming more and more of a lodestone around his neck.
“Nothing major,” Riley responded. “Stupid stuff like screwing up my sleep patterns, drinking coffee too late in the day… that kind of thing. I never learn.” He smiled wryly, hoping Brent wouldn’t realize he’d been talking about anything else.
On the side of the tub, his phone vibrated in the zip lock bag he’d put it in, saving him from having to expand on his answer.
He’d been waiting to hear back from Jacinta after thanking her for the use of the cabin and updating her on their stay.
What he’d gotten instead was a text from Rose.
A text which contained a picture of her and Tom holding hands, wedding bands on both of their ring fingers.
Riley’s stomach turned over. He skimmed what she had to say for herself—which was long for a text, but not nearly enough explanation for what she’d done—and tried to figure out how to break this to Brent.
Just as he’d really started to seem happier, too.
Rose had married Tom. Instead of Brent.
Riley couldn’t see how anyone would make that choice.
“Anything important?” Brent asked.
“Uhh.” Riley looked up at him, panic making his throat close. He didn’t have time to come up with a convincing lie. “It’s, umm. It’s from Rose.”
He watched all of the progress they’d made over the last twenty-four hours drain out of Brent, leaving him tired and sad all over again.
A lie would have been kinder.
“What does it say?”
Riley swallowed. “Are you sure you wanna hear this?”
Brent sat up straight, giving a single, firm nod. “I’m sure.”
“Okay. Well… she got married to Tom. She says she’s sorry for leaving you and not telling you ahead of time, but she, umm… never really wanted to marry you in the first place, you just… seemed like a solid choice. She’s sorry. There’s a lot of sorry. Do you maybe want to read it?” Riley offered Brent the phone.
“No, I don’t… I believe what you’re telling me,” Brent said. “I’d rather hear it from you, if that makes sense?”
“I understand,” Riley said. He did understand. It had to be more comfortable to hear from a friend that your fiancée never loved you than it did to hear it from them directly.
Even if it was a text message.
Riley was mad about that. If ever anything warranted at least a phone call, this was it. No matter how much he hated taking calls, it seemed like the right thing to do.
Brent also didn’t hate taking calls as much as he did. The way he just answered the phone when he was at work, like it was no big deal, had always been a source of awe for Riley.
The point was, Rose should have called Brent to explain herself. Not texted Riley. Or any other third party.
It did make him feel a little better that at least someone thought he would have stayed with Brent, though. He was still thinking about Marcus’ assumption that he would have left.
“Be honest with me, here. Did you like Rose?” Brent asked.
Riley shrugged. “She seemed nice, but if I’m being totally honest, she didn’t seem very you. I dismissed that feeling as… hating change, I guess, but now I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have.”
“You don’t hate change,” Brent said. “I mean, everyone hates change, but of everyone I’ve ever met, you’re the most comfortable with it.”
Riley wet his lips. He couldn’t tell Brent the truth. Not now. Brent had enough to deal with, he didn’t need Riley’s jealousy on top of that.
“Some things in my life are fixed. Or at least feel fixed. You’re one of them. I was scared that you weren’t going to be anymore.”
“Hey, I could have a wife and six kids and ten assorted pets running around my feet, and you’d still be my best friend.”
“You’d have your wife running around your feet?” Riley raised an eyebrow, barely stopping himself from laughing at his own joke.
“You know what I mean. The point is… I’m not shutting you out of my life anytime soon. You mean too much to me for that.”
Riley set his phone aside, not wanting to dwell on Rose anymore.
“Thank you. And I’ll always be there for you, too. Promise,” Riley said. “Even after we go home, this… whatever we’re doing right now doesn’t mean that will change, okay? Your secret is safe with me, and I will always be your friend.”
Brent nodded, looking away from Riley and out into the woods beyond the bounds of the cabin grounds. This place might have been creepy alone, but with Brent, it felt tranquil. Riley couldn’t remember being this at peace in a long, long time, despite the reason they were here.
It was a shame they couldn’t just hide away like this forever.
“Can I tell you something?” Brent said after a few moments of silence.
“You can tell me anything,” Riley responded automatically.
Brent wet his lips, pausing for a moment before opening his mouth to speak again. “I was relieved. When she didn’t show up, I mean. I was… a lot of things, but one of them was relieved. I rushed into it. I just… couldn’t stop thinking about how Emily’s leaving for college soon, and how I’m gonna be all alone, and I didn’t… want that. But…”
“But some part of you knew that you weren’t standing there for the right reasons,” Riley said. “I’m glad it happened, then. I know it still hurts.”
“It does still hurt. But it hurts way more that she didn’t just tell me, even if it’d been two minutes before. It hurts that she ran instead of talking to me. I don’t… I’m not sure if I was in love with her, but I was pretty sure we were friends.”
“You know, I bet she was scared,” Riley said.
Hearing that Brent wasn’t in love with her had instantly improved his opinion of Rose.
He hated that. He hated the way jealousy felt, like grit in his mouth that he couldn’t spit out. He hated that he couldn’t be fair and honest about another person because he thought they had something he wanted, even if he knew that it wasn’t his to want.
“I thought you were on my side.”
“I am. I don’t think the way she handled things was right, but you know, none of us always make great decisions. And I’ve been known to run the hell away from a situation I didn’t want to deal with, so… I dunno. I think I’m starting to understand how all this happened.”
Rose was probably feeling pressure to get married, too. Riley didn’t know her well enough to be sure, but she was twenty-seven and single, from a reasonably traditional family. Her parents would want grandkids. More than that, they’d want to see her with a nice, stable husband.
Brent would have been the perfect choice. Brent did the taxes for the family horse agistment business. He was solid and reliable and had proven experience in being good with children.
It wasn’t impossible that Rose had been pressured into giving Brent a chance, at least, and then found herself trapped.
As much as Riley couldn’t imagine a better husband than Brent, he was aware that love was weird. Not everyone was going to fall in love with the same kind of person.
That was probably for the best.
“Me too,” Brent said after a long pause. “I get it. I’m coming to terms with it.”
“Good.” Riley relaxed, letting himself sink deeply into the warm water. “You’ll come out the other side of this stronger. Promise.”
Brent snorted, but Riley could see him relaxing, too.
He’d come out the other side of this, and he’d be fine. Brent was the most resilient person Riley had ever met.
“I’m not surprised it was Tom,” Brent said after a moment. “I don’t… for a while now, I’ve been getting weird vibes from him. I guess this was why.”
Riley made a sympathetic noise. Brent and Tom hadn’t exactly been best friends, but they’d gotten on well together, built their accounting business together. That had to sting as well.
“I always wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt,” Brent continued. “Because he seemed like such a nice guy, but… now I’m thinking he really only seemed that way. There was always something… off, y’know?”
Riley barely knew Tom, had only seen him on a few occasions, so he hadn’t had time to form a useful opinion. Whenever Brent was in the room, all Riley’s focus was on him. That meant he had trouble judging most of Brent’s friends.
“I know the kind of thing you mean, but I don’t know much about Tom at all,” Riley said.
“The thing is…” Brent took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Neither do I? I didn’t realize until now that I really don’t know the guy. I don’t just mean in terms of his character, I mean… I don’t know if he’s got siblings. I don’t know his parents’ names. I don’t even know what town he grew up in, just that it wasn’t Hope Springs.”
Riley had no idea what to say to that.
“You think I’m an idiot,” Brent said.
“I don’t think you’re an idiot.” Riley pushed off the side of the tub, moving to sit next to Brent instead of across from him. “I think it’s odd that he wouldn’t tell you those things. And I think you trust people too easily, but that’s not a flaw. You do that because you’re so kind, because you’ve never once wanted to hurt anyone.”
“Other people would think I was an idiot,” Brent said, sighing heavily.
“I’m not other people.” Riley shrugged, leaning his head against Brent’s shoulder. “And I promise you that everything will be okay in the end.”
“What if it isn’t?” Brent asked.
“Then it’s not the end.” Riley turned his head to kiss Brent’s shoulder, wishing there was more he could do for him.
“That’s the most you thing I’ve ever heard you say.”
“I’m going to choose to take that as a compliment.” Riley yawned, the warmth of the water and the comfort of being close to Brent making him sleepy.
Brent hummed softly. “You really think it’ll all be okay?”
“I’m sure of it. I’m not giving up until you’re happy,” Riley promised. He meant that. Brent deserved a happy ending, and whatever it took, Riley would find a way to give him one.
“Okay,” Brent murmured. “Thanks, Riley.”
“Always.” Riley let his eyes fall closed, satisfied that Brent was willing to take his help.
All he wanted was for Brent to be happy.