Chapter 2 — Outside, Now

Sable’s POV

He dragged me outside.

No one saw us. The pool lights lived on the other side of the house, yellow on water, Corin’s laugh carrying like the night was easy. Dad said something I did not catch.

The kitchen door clicked shut behind my back and then there was only gravel under my socks and Rhett’s hand locked around my wrist.

I ripped free.

“What are you doing?”

He looked at me sharp enough to cut. The same mouth that had moaned my name like it tasted good.

“You shouldn’t have been there.”

“That’s my bathroom.” My voice came out hotter than I wanted. “It wasn’t my fault I saw what you—what you did in there.”

He stepped closer.

I stepped back.

My shoulders found the garage wall. The wood was rough through the ugly hoodie I had put on so I would look like Corin’s little sister and not like the girl he had just used in his head.

“What did you see?” he said.

I wanted to lie. My mouth would not do it.

“Everything.” I swallowed. My pulse was stupid in my throat. “You called my name like I was your fantasy. You called my name like you were already—”

“Fuck. No.” His hands went to his head.

He paced one step, then another, like the strip of yard was too small to hold what I had walked in on. “You shouldn’t have seen that, Sable.”

“You never saw me before.” The words came fast now, weeks and years of being furniture in my own hallway.

“All those days in this house I was invisible. You looked through me. You talked to Corin. You called my father sir. You didn’t even say my name unless someone put it in the sentence for you. And today you moaned it, Rhett. You moaned it like it belonged to you.”

He stopped.

He looked at me.

For a second he was the man from upstairs again. “You can’t say that to me.” His voice dropped. “It was a mistake. Forget it.”

“Why?” I did not step back this time. The wall was already behind me. I had nowhere left to perform shy. “What if I don’t want to?”

He came closer again. I stayed. I lifted my chin and held his eyes even though my hands were shaking inside the hoodie sleeves.

“You should forget it, Sable.”

“No.” I tipped my head up. “I remember everything. The door. Your voice. My name in your mouth. Don’t be a coward. You can hide this fucking fantasy from anyone else. Not from me. I already heard it. I already saw it.”

“Fuck.” The word tore out of him.

He laughed once, ugly and quiet, no humor in it. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what this starts. I can’t. It was a mistake.”

“What can’t you?”

“You.” He gestured between us, frustrated, wrecked, the same hand I had watched wrapped around himself.

“This. This fucking thing. We can’t. You’re nineteen, Sable. You’re my best friend’s sister. Corin is on the other side of that house pouring me a drink like I am still the man he trusts, so we—”

“So you just see me as a little girl?” I cut in.

Heat crawled up my throat and I let it turn into a knife. “Did you see me as a little girl when you stroked your cock in my bathroom and moaned my name?”

He didn't say anything while I waited for his answer. He just stared at me sharply, I just wanted to open my mouth again but he kissed me.

Just like that. No warning. No soft start. His mouth hit mine like he had run out of arguments and this was the only one left in his body.

I made a sound I did not plan and kissed him back because I had already told the truth in the yard and I was not going to pretend I did not want the rest of it.

His hand caught the back of my neck. The other flattened at my waist and pulled me off the wall. I fisted his shirt.

He tasted like dinner and bad decisions and the leftover rasp of my name. When I opened for him he groaned into my mouth, quieter than upstairs, still filthy, and my knees went useless.

“Rhett—”

“Don’t,” he muttered against my lips. “Do not say my name like that out here.”

“You said mine first.”

He cursed and kissed me harder. His thigh slotted between mine. The hoodie rode up under his palm. Bare skin.

He hissed like that strip of my stomach was the problem he had been trying not to touch for years. I bit his lower lip because I wanted him to feel it too. He made a broken sound and pressed me back into the wood.

It was not a sweet kiss. It was the bathroom door all over again, only this time I was allowed to answer.

When he finally tore his mouth away, he left his forehead on mine, breathing hard. His hand was still on my waist.

His thumb sat on my pulse like he wanted proof I was as wrecked as he was.

“No.” He shook his head against me. “No. We can’t do this. I can’t do this.”

I looked up into his eyes. Not a guest. Not my brother’s friend. Just a man who had already crossed the line and was trying to walk it back with his mouth still wet from mine.

“I’m not your little girl, Rhett. I’m nineteen. I’m a girl.”

“No, Sable.” His voice was rough.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. This is not easy. If I didn’t think like that, I wouldn’t be holding myself back. I would have had you against this wall already.”

The honesty landed hotter than the kiss.

“Then don’t hold back anymore.” I did not look away. “Stop thinking like that.”

“You’re going to regret it.” His thumb brushed my jaw like he hated himself for touching me and could not stop. “Trust me.”

“I don’t think so. What if..what if I want that too?”

I kept my eyes on his. Pool light moved across the side of his face. Inside the house a chair scraped. Nobody came. Not yet.

“Rhett?” Corin’s voice came around the corner, easy, too close, the kind of close that would have seen my mouth if the garage wall had been two feet shorter. “Are you there?”

Rhett’s body went still. He did not jump away from me fast enough for my heart. One hand stayed at my hip like a secret. The other fell off my neck like it had been burned.

“Yeah,” he called. Almost normal. Almost. “Just calling someone. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Don’t vanish,” Corin said. “Dad already asked if you drowned in the deep end.”

“One minute.”

Corin’s footsteps faded toward the pool.

Rhett looked back at me.

We were still too close. My mouth still stung. His chest still moved like he had been running.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Just don’t be a coward, Rhett.”

“Fuck, Sable.” His jaw clenched. “Don’t call me that. You know I hate it.”

“Then prove you’re not.”

I turned toward the kitchen door. My legs were not as steady as my mouth. I wanted the light. I wanted a locked room. I wanted him to stop me so I would not have to be the only one who had said yes out loud.

He did.

“Midnight,” he said. “When everyone is asleep. Your room.”

Heat slammed through me. Panic right behind it.

I did not answer.

I went inside with my pulse in my throat and my lips still stinging.

I did not look back, because if I looked back I was going to drag him in with me before midnight and the whole house would hear it.