Rend (Riven 2)

Rhys didn’t say anything. I could practically feel him thinking.

“Can I suggest—”

“Yes,” Rhys said immediately.

“Has Matty ever talked to someone? A therapist.”

“I . . . don’t think so.”

“Well . . . he should.”

“I don’t know if he’ll want to,” Rhys said slowly.

“Yeah, well I sure as fuck didn’t want to go to rehab either, bro, but that’s what had to happen.”

“I just don’t want him to think that I think there’s anything . . . wrong with him.”

“Well, there is something wrong with him. He was abandoned and traumatized as a kid and he’s fucking miserable,” Caleb snapped.

Rhys snarled, “That’s not his fault.”

“Of course it’s not, Rhys! See, this is what I’m talking about. This is your fucking blind spot. Things don’t have to be someone’s fault to be true. But you still have to deal with them.” He sighed. “Bro, he’s your husband. You have to help him do what’s best for him. And sometimes that might suck for you both. But that’s the promise you made—the promise you were desperate to make to him. Isn’t that what you told me?”

“Yeah,” Rhys choked.

“Well. So. Keep your damn vow.”

I was down the stairs before I even realized I’d moved. Rhys and Caleb sat on the couch, both looking straight ahead, and both their heads snapped to me.

“Matty . . .” Rhys said, blinking owlishly.

“I’ll g-go,” I said. Rhys’s brow furrowed, and I saw panic in his eyes. He reached out a hand to me. “No, I . . . I’ll go . . . talk to someone. I . . . I’ll do it.”

Something passed over Rhys’s face that I’d never seen before. He still had his hand held out to me. I took it, suddenly aware that I was only wearing a pair of cutoff sweatpants.

I let Rhys pull me into him, awkwardly trying to arrange myself in his lap. Caleb murmured his goodbyes, and I felt the briefest squeeze to my shoulder before the door shut.

“Will you really?” Rhys asked, voice full of fear and hope.

“Yeah,” I said, wrapping my shaking arms around his neck. “I’d do anything for you.”

“For us,” he said.

“For us.”

Chapter 15

I got home from walking Max on Thanksgiving morning to find Rhys on the phone, smiling.

“Hey, c’mere,” he said, covering the phone.

I narrowed my eyes at him suspiciously. “Why?”

He crowded me against the front door and planted his hands on either side of my head. I always got a little swoony when he did that and I automatically tipped my face up for a kiss. He kissed me, twining the hand that wasn’t holding the phone in my hair, and I slung my arms around his waist.

“Mm, ’kay, good reason,” I said.

Ever since our blowup the week before, things had felt . . . better. Not a surface calm. Not a patch job to hold us together for the moment. But a deeper, steadier solidity.

Rhys held me on the couch for all of five minutes the morning after Caleb left, before opening his laptop and searching for a therapist. I was happy to let him do the research and make the calls. Within an hour I had taken someone’s canceled appointment for three days later. It was fast and definitive and so very, very Rhys.

I was doing my best with Rhys’s call for honesty. When I’d told him that going to his family’s for Thanksgiving made my insides curl up and die (and yes, I would talk to my therapist about that) but that he should feel free to go, he’d been disappointed but said there was no way he was going without me. That maybe we’d think about it next year.

Next year.

Rhys was taking his promise to prove we had a future very seriously. So seriously that at first he’d driven me crazy, cornering me at random moments and telling me he loved me with such intensity that he looked like he was about to ax murder me. Finally, I’d snapped at him, “Oh my fucking God, I get it!”

Rhys had looked shocked, then hurt, but then he’d grinned, like me throwing his love in his face was exactly what he’d been hoping for.

“Good,” he said. “I’m so glad you get it.”

His tactics had gotten slightly more subtle since then, and I was a little bit mortified at how much I liked them. He got the idea after my first session with the therapist. She was named Susan, and every time Rhys uttered her name you’d think he was praying.

Our session was awkward and halting and I’d only given her the barest bones of my situation, but she had been calm and said that we’d get into particulars later, but for now, one thing I could try was simply telling Rhys in the moments when I was having doubts. She said it would help me feel less alone in our relationship. Less like I had secrets from Rhys.