Chapter 11

ELEVEN

It was the worst weekend on record. Rhys spent the whole of it haunted by the way he’d lost control where the fundraiser was concerned. Even more than that, he was twisted up over the way he’d treated Early. Snapping at them because of a jumper was a definite low for him.

He didn’t get a chance to apologize by the end of Thursday. After classes, he’d retreated to his flat to make what amounted to a lavish, apology supper. But Early didn’t show up. Rhys had waited, letting the food get cold, then gone out in search of them.

“They’ve gone out with Rebecca,” Nally told him after a good fifteen minutes of searching, as his worry reached towering heights.

“Oh,” he said, shame and disappointment weighing heavily on him. “They didn’t say when they’d come back, did they?”

Nally stared flatly at him. He even crossed his arms. “You yell at Early in the hall, in front of people, because of a jumper, and now you expect them to come running back to you, all full of forgiveness and light? Why would that be, exactly?”

His little brother was right, but Rhys didn’t appreciate the sass at all. Even if he deserved it.

“Alright, I get it,” he said. “I was wrong and now I’m paying the price for it.”

The trouble was, Nally didn’t know how wrong he was. It wasn’t about a jumper at all. It was about the fact that he’d jumped Early without talking things through because he was horny. That was a far bigger sin than losing his temper in an emotional moment.

He went back up to his flat and ate a cold supper, then flopped around, watching stupid shows on the telly, staring at the door to his flat the entire time.

He’d finally given up and gone to bed after midnight, but he’d slept with one ear open, waiting for Early to return.

They never did. Not Friday night, not Saturday, and not Sunday. At least, they didn’t return to his flat.

“They and Rebecca got back late Saturday morning,” Robbie told him around lunchtime on Saturday. “My guess is that they’re both sleeping off a fun night.”

“Yeah, probably,” Rhys said.

He wanted to stick around to catch Early coming out of Rebecca’s flat, but something told him that loitering in the hallway and stalking his sister’s door wasn’t a good look for him. Besides, he’d already told a few of his friends he’d go on a bike ride with them that afternoon.

When he returned home, he’d found out that his dad had given Early the keys to Rafe’s flat, since Rafe wasn’t due back from the States for another few weeks. Rhys had spent all Sunday sulking about how badly he’d screwed up what he was starting to see was one of the best things that had ever happened to him.

“Who is this Early person Uncle Robert says you’ve been sulking about all weekend?” his cousin Blaine asked early on Monday morning, as the two of them, Nick, and Blaine’s twin brother, Baxter, stood in what had once been the dining hall when Hawthorne House had been a school, and which had been part of the immense ballroom when it was a grand Victorian estate.

“They’re the cute person that works in the office with Rebecca,” Baxter answered him. “You know, the one who said they liked your ridiculous shoes last time we were here?”

“Those shoes are not ridiculous,” Blaine said, standing taller with mock offense. “They are Gucci.”

“You and your Gucci,” Baxter laughed and shook his head.

Rhys glanced sideways at them. He wasn’t sure having his cousins on board to plan and execute the fundraiser was the best idea. Blaine was an interior designer of increasing renown, but also one of the more flamboyant of the extended Hawthorne family, which was saying something. Baxter was his identical twin, but that’s where the similarities ended. Bax was an accountant and financial planner, which made him the black sheep of their bohemian family.

The two of them together were sometimes more than Rhys could handle, since Blaine was over the top and Bax loved to egg him on. They were good people, though, and Rhys understood why his dad had brought them in to plan the fundraiser.

“This is the only space in the house big enough for the type of event we want to have,” Nick stepped in before the twins’ conversation could get out of hand. “If the weather were better, I would say we should have it outside, by the Renaissance faire stage.”

“Of course you would say that,” Blaine teased Nick with a sly grin.

Nick sighed and pushed a hand through his hair, like he wasn’t in the mood. Blaine had a point, though. Nick had been hired years ago to run the forge on the grounds of Hawthorn House. He was a master metalsmith, and even Rhys had to admit he was most in his element when he was outdoors, stripped to the waist, wearing his leather apron as he pounded away on some sort of intricate metalwork that he’d just taken from the blast furnace.

The forge was almost as old as Hawthorne House itself. It was a miracle it still existed and had been in almost constant use since the days when such a thing was necessary. It had come close to falling into disrepair and being demolished in the seventies, when Hawthorne House had been a boys’ school, but it had hung on until Nick was hired several years ago to bring it back to life.

That was when Nick had met Raina, a different sort of sparks flew, and the two of them got married and had Jordan and Macy. Almost the entirety of Nick and Raina’s courtship had happened outside, so it was no surprise to Rhys at all that Nick would want the tribute to her to happen out of doors as well.

“We’ll have to make do with this place,” Rhys said, not really happy with it either.

“There’s a lot to make do with,” Blaine said, glancing around the spacious room. “There’s plenty of space for tables, both for dining and to display the various items for sale in the silent auction. We can set up a multimedia display with a slideshow honoring Raina and Mariel Flint over there.”

Rhys sighed loudly, which was actually an effort to keep his feelings on the subject or Mariel Flint under control.

“What?” Nick snapped at him, proving he’d done a piss poor job of hiding his emotions once again.

The last thing Rhys wanted after a long and painful weekend was a confrontation with his brother-in-law. “You know how I feel about this whole thing,” he said in a low grumble.

“Yes, I know,” Nick kept at him, angrier than ever. “You don’t want it to happen.”

“I don’t,” Rhys admitted, his brow going up at the force of Nick’s irritation.

“You don’t want to have a tribute to your own sister, someone who all of us loved dearly, so that we can celebrate her memory and everything good she brought to this world,” Nick charged on.

Blaine and Bax stepped back slightly as Rhys rounded on Nick, his arms crossed tightly.

“I’m fine with celebrating Raina.” He raised his voice to match Nick’s level of frustration, even though a sensible voice in the back of his head told him he was losing control all over again. “It’s that other one, the murderer, that I don’t want to celebrate. Even her sister doesn’t want to do this.”

“So you’re going to try to sabotage everything that everyone does, things that will be beautiful and help the entire family find closure, because of one bad decision someone you don’t even know made on one night?” Nick demanded.

“That bad decision killed my sister and your wife,” Rhys argued.

“Like you’ve never made a bad decision before?” Nick kept at him.

Hot prickles broke out all over Rhys’s skin and his face heated. He’d made so many bad decisions. He’d spent the entire weekend gutting himself over one in particular. He knew full well that he was making an arse of himself and behaving like a child. But he loved Raina. He loved her so much, and he could have used her advice and guidance just then, but she was gone.

“Why don’t we take a walk around the room to see how we can use the space,” Blaine stepped in cautiously.

“Sure,” Nick said, still boiling, but doing a better job of keeping himself contained than Rhys was doing.

Grief was hard. That was the best excuse he could come up with for his terrible behavior and out-of-control emotions as he followed his cousins and Nick around the room. Blaine did most of the talking as they surveyed the space, and Rhys only partially listened.

Grief was hard, but love was harder. Instead of stewing about Raina as Blaine and Bax debated the number of tables that would be needed and the budget that Hawthorne House could afford, Rhys fell back into worrying about Early and the fact that he hadn’t seen them since Thursday morning. Of course, it helped nothing at all that his thoughts kept sliding back into thinking that he was to blame. He hurt everyone who liked him or cared about him.

He shouldn’t have taken Early to bed without talking things through first.

He shouldn’t have let Raina get behind the wheel of the car just because he’d had more to drink that night than he’d intended to.

“Okay, so we’re agreed?” Blaine’s question pulled Rhys out of his spiraling thoughts once they’d made their way around the dining hall. “Twelve tables that seat ten each, three rectangular tables along each of the long walls with auction items, and the tribute display at the far end, where we’ll put up a dais for speeches.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Rhys said without really understanding any of it.

He didn’t do the best job of hiding that he hadn’t been paying attention.

“Robert asked you to be a part of organizing this for a reason,” Nick took him aside and told him with a frown as Blaine and Bax bantered about costs.

“Fuck if I know why,” Rhys muttered, arms still crossed, no interest in facing Nick directly at all.

“This,” Nick said, gesturing to him. “This is exactly why.”

Rhys stopped his tight, restless movements and scowled at Nick.

“Mate, you’re a basket case these days,” Nick said. “Are you still going to therapy?”

“I’ve gone as far as I can go in therapy,” Rhys answered, his face heating even more.

“Fuck that,” Nick said. “Call your therapist and schedule an appointment like the rest of us.”

Rhys blinked at him. Nick was admitting he was still in therapy?

“Raina is gone,” Nick said, letting out a heavy breath and rubbing a hand over his face. “None of us can change that. But what’s the point in letting that loss infect the rest of your life? Do you think your sister would want your anger at someone you don’t even know ruin your relationships in the present?”

“Early and I aren’t in a relationship,” Rhys snapped back.

He immediately regretted it when Nick’s expression changed to surprise. “You and Early?”

Rhys cursed himself and shook his head. “Never mind. I didn’t say anything. There’s nothing between me and Early anyhow.”

“Now I know there’s something between the two of you,” Nick said. What he thought of that, Rhys couldn’t tell. His expression darkened slightly. “Why the hell did you snap at him about Raina’s jumper if the two of you have something going on?”

“Because we don’t have anything going on,” Rhys argued. “Because I screwed up anything we might have had by getting overexcited and letting my libido run away with me.”

Nick suddenly looked mutinous. “What did you do to them?”

“Nothing!” Rhys shouted. He immediately deflated and said, “Nothing, really. We…we spent the night together last Thursday.” And that was all the detail Nick was going to get. “I thought we were good at the time, but they weren’t there in the morning and I haven’t had a chance to talk to them since.”

“What the fuck, Rhys?” Nick gaped at him. “Thursday was four days ago. You should have been waiting outside the office or chasing them down to talk to them immediately. Christ! What is wrong with you these days?”

“I don’t know!” Rhys shouted, way more emotion than he’d intended in those few words. “I don’t know,” he repeated at half the volume, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Everything is bollocks at the moment, and I know it’s all my fault. But I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing anymore. Raina was always the one to talk me through messes like these.”

“That’s why you’re supposed to still be seeing a therapist, you nutter,” Nick said.

Rhys smiled. Nick wasn’t angry with him anymore. He could see the concern in his brother-in-law’s eyes, now that he wasn’t so blinded by the frustration he’d let build up inside him.

“Thanks, I know,” Rhys said, losing most of the tension from his body, now that the mood between him and Nick wasn’t confrontational anymore. “I still talk to her once a month.”

“Up that to twice,” Nick told him. “Or every week. I still talk to mine once a week.”

“Really?” Rhys blinked at him.

“Yeah.” Nick shrugged. “I consider it my own personal fight against the male stigma against taking care of our mental health.”

“You are a study in contradictions, my friend,” Rhys said with a weak smile.

“Why, because I’m six-foot-four and built like a tank, I work with fire and metal all day, and I care enough about my two babies to make certain I can be emotionally available to them at night?” Nick asked, a teasing glint in his eyes.

“You’re making the rest of us look bad,” Rhys said, smiling more.

“No, you’re making yourself look bad,” Nick said, getting serious again. “Go find Early, get on your knees, and apologize for whatever you did that’s sticking so hard in your conscience.”

Rhys lost his smile. “Yeah,” he gusted out, glancing at the dining hall’s door. “I’d better.”

“Go,” Nick said. “Do it. I’ll deal with your cousins.”

“You’ve never had to do that before,” Rhys said as he turned. Nick knew them, of course, but Rhys couldn’t remember him really interacting with them. “You don’t know what you’re in for. Good luck.”

He left Nick to deal with the twins and headed out of the dining hall with renewed confidence and a determination to find Early and make things right. As mad as being part of a massive, eccentric, complicated family was, it was wonderful to have so many people around him who he could talk to, and who could slap him upside the head now and then to set him straight.

That renewed confidence faltered as he reached the front hall and approached the office, only to spot Early through the office’s glass walls.

They were dressed like a boy. Instead of the elegant, flowing clothes they’d been wearing lately, they wore plain, stiff khaki trousers and a button-down shirt. The heels were gone. Instead, they wore scuffed trainers. Their hair was pulled back in a man-bun instead of a lively ponytail or loose-falling, silky curtain.

Worse than that, they weren’t smiling as they did their work, and when Rhys stepped gingerly into the office and they glanced up at them, their eyes held anxiety instead of their usual brightness.

“Hey,” Rhys said, as awkward as a pimply teen as he forced himself to keep going, all the way up to the desk.

“Hi,” Early answered. Their voice was still soft, even if the way they were dressed wasn’t. That gave Rhys some hope.

“Listen, I think we really need to talk about a few things,” he said, needing to get it all out before he lost his nerve. “We shouldn’t have let the whole weekend come between us and…everything. I’m sorry I didn’t make more of an effort to seek you out before now.”

In the back of his mind, Rhys thought Nick would be proud of him. Raina would be proud of him.

“Yeah, I…things got busy,” Early said. It looked like they were having a hard time holding eye contact. “I went back to my parents’ house on Thursday to get my things, and then I had to go back on Saturday after my dad put everything else out on the curb for the binman.”

Those words hit Rhys like a fist in the gut. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I should have been there for you.”

Early shrugged one arm. “It’s okay. Nally drove me over to get the things I wanted to keep. Most of the rest of it was rubbish anyhow.”

That explained why Nally had been so short with him the other day. But it didn’t excuse anything.

“I’ve been a mess myself lately, though that’s not an excuse,” he said, wanting desperately to reach out and take Early’s hands, since he was fidgeting like he was lost.

“Yeah, I know,” Early said, glancing down. “It’s okay. I get it.”

“It’s not okay,” Rhys said. “Nothing I’ve said or done is okay.”

He took a step toward Early, but before he could say anything more, Violet stepped into the office.

“There you are,” she said cheerfully, as if she hadn’t walked in on something incredibly important. “We’re all back in the classrooms, sitting at our easels, waiting. You’d better come or Jim will strip down and pose for us, and no one wants that.”

Rhys felt like someone had dumped ice water over him. He darted a glance to the office clock, only to find out he was fifteen minutes late to his live model class.

With a forced smile, he told Violet, “We’ll be right there.”

Violet must have sensed something was going on. She nodded and smiled at him and Early, but didn’t say anything else before quickly leaving.

“We’d better go,” Early said, stepping away from the desk and heading toward the door. “Rebecca just went to the loo. She’ll be back in a second.”

“Early,” Rhys made a halfhearted effort to stop them as they shot past and into the hall.

Except when Early turned back to him with a questioning look, Rhys didn’t know what to say.

He settled for, “We need to talk. About a lot of things. As soon as we can.”

Early sent him a tremulous smile. “Okay,” they said, but that was it.

Rhys sighed and shook his head, knowing that he was making an even bigger mess than he already had on his hands. There was nothing to it but to push himself forward so that he could walk by Early’s side in silence until they made it to his studio. The mess had to be cleaned up somehow, he just wasn’t sure how.