Soft jazz music played through the speaker on the mantel, as Peyton exited the kitchen holding two more mugs. She gave Remy one, then sat in the chair across from them, facing the fire. “Feeling a little bit better?” she asked Kinsley.
“Much. Thanks for letting me come back here,” Kinsley said. “Hospitals have got to be the worst place to be ever.”
Peyton gave a solemn nod. “They’re definitely cold, but I swear it’s to motivate people into wanting to get better and leave.” And she should know. Before moving to Stoney Creek, she’d worked as an emergency room nurse in Seattle.
“Well, they succeeded,” said Kinsley, who then yawned. The day, the emotions, it was all slowly coming down on her like a heavy weighted blanket. She snuggled into the couch and took a tiny sip of her drink, the heat instantly hitting her tongue, and the sweetness following soon after. The warmth of the mug bled into her hands, and she wanted it all. It didn’t matter that she had fleece pajamas on, or fuzzy slippers, or the blanket, the coldness that hit her the moment she woke up in the ambulance with a very worried Benji at her side wouldn’t quit.
“So…” Remy said, blowing on her drink. “Can we talk about Rhett and who the hell he became today?”
Kinsley smiled softly. There was one thing she needed more than sleep, and that was not to think about the danger she’d been in today. How scary that moment was, and how afraid she was that her attacker might come back. Remy must’ve known that. “You mean, how sweet he was?”
“Yes.” Remy nodded firmly, taking a fast sip then bringing her mug back down to her lap. “I’ve never in my life seen him like that.”
“Definitely attentive,” Peyton added. “Even Boone looked a bit shocked by his reaction to seeing you in the hospital bed.”
Kinsley gave a little shrug. “He’s changing. Little by little. And yes, it surprises me, too, but then it also doesn’t. He’s always been a good guy. He’s just had a hard time readjusting to life here again.”
Remy cringed. “Which makes me feel like total shit.”
“Why, because you yelled at him at Merlots?” Kinsley asked with a smirk.
Remy’s brows rose. “He told you I yelled at him?”
“I saw you drag him away. It’s not that hard to put two and two together.”
Remy set her mug down, obviously not as desperate for warmth as Kinsley. “Well, first, I didn’t exactly yell at him. I simply reminded him that I have hexing abilities, and if he hurt you, I’d hex him so he couldn’t get a hard-on.”
Peyton burst out laughing. “You did not!”
“Of course I did,” Remy said seriously. “I had no idea he was being this sweet, caring guy. I thought I was dealing with tough, emotionally closed off, looking for his next lay Rhett.” She hesitated and shrugged. “I thought he was being all for show or something, but today…well, that was different.”
Kinsley sipped her hot chocolate, taking in a marshmallow. She didn’t really have a response, and she knew Remy was just being a good friend. Kinsley probably would’ve done far worse by now if the roles had been reversed.
“Wait,” Peyton said slowly, her eyes narrowing on Remy. “You can’t really hex people, can you?”
Remy rolled her eyes. “I don’t know why everyone doubts me all the time.”
Kinsley chuckled. She didn’t believe in everything Remy believed in, but she’d seen some of her spells literally work magic. Once as a child, Kinsley had poison ivy so bad that nothing would help it. Remy’s grandmother whipped up some cream, and within twenty-four hours the poison ivy was gone. When Remy’s grandmother passed, she left her Book of Spells to Remy, and those spells were what Remy sold at her shop. “You should have seen him later that night after their talk at the bar,” Kinsley said to Peyton. “He looked so pale.”
Remy’s smiled beamed. “Good. I’m glad he took me seriously, but honestly, I didn’t know…” Genuine curiosity in her bright eyes. “So this is really how he’s been with you?”
Kinsley nodded. “Rhett’s wanted everyone for so long to believe that he’s this ruthless bastard. But…I don’t know…I see him through a different lens. Maybe that’s stupid of me and will inevitably get me hurt, but he doesn’t scare me.”
Peyton picked a marshmallow out of her mug. She blew on it, then tossed it into her mouth. “Maybe all this time he just needed someone who understands him like you do, and maybe that’s what you are for him. Maybe he’s coming out of his shell.”
Kinsley laughed softly. “That’s a lot of ‘maybes.’”
“It is.” Peyton shrugged. “But it also could be true.”
Remy watched Kinsley intensely. “I know that look,” she said. “You’re waiting for the bomb to drop and for this to all fall apart.”
“I’m putting all my hopes into that not happening,” Kinsley responded. “But it would be stupid of me not to see that Rhett’s got a lot of shit to deal with. He’s been through a lot, and there is…this part of him that’s trying to fit into this world he wasn’t expecting to fit into. He saw himself as a soldier. A warrior. He didn’t want a wife, a kid, this nine-to-five kind of life. He wanted to protect his country. He picked that as his path. And while there is this huge part of me that wants to believe that this is actually happening, that we can have something beyond sex, there’s another part of me that is well aware that no one can change like”—she snapped her fingers—“that.”
Peyton frowned. “But you do think it’s possible, right?”
“I think he’s trying really hard,” Kinsley said honestly amid the comfort of the two women she loved and trusted immensely. “But no one can change that drastically, and that’s just the reality I’m left with. That one day, while this is going okay right now, I’m going to wake up and want more than he can give me.”
Awareness drifted into Remy’s eyes, and her voice softened. “That’s why you’ve been okay with this arrangement with him?”