Rejecting His Regret

I took my last breath with nobody in the room. Just a machine, screaming that I was gone.

My husband was across town that night, making a whole production out of planning his wedding. The bride was the girl he'd wanted for thirty years.

The two boys running his errands and hauling his chairs were the sons I raised. Stage four. The end of it. And not one of them turned around.

Then I opened my eyes and a laptop screen was burning into them. He'd put down The Citadel. I changed mine to a school eight hundred miles north, in New York.

I didn't stop to think about it. Then I unplugged the router and cut every line back to him. This time I was putting the whole rotten thing out with the trash.

On my eighteenth birthday, in front of a room full of guests. The gown his mother picked out for her future daughterinlaw.

I was going to put it in the hands of the one that got away. Opposite ends of the country. Never speaking again. Chapter 1 Nobody knew I'd already lived this.

I hit submit on the new application and my whole body let go. No more Rhett Hale. Not ever again. The earlyadmission portal closed at noon tomorrow.

I wasn't gambling thirty years on a spinning wheel. So I did it at two in the morning. Last time, I chased him my whole life. And blamed him my whole life.

All it got me was dying angry. This time I wanted nothing from him. I wanted him on the far end of the country and I wanted to never see his face again.

July thirteenth is my eighteenth birthday. That day, in front of every guest in the room, I was going to say it to his face. I'm not getting engaged to you. You're free.

Fifteen days. I'd barely closed the laptop when his text came in. Him: [Out with some friends. Might be late. Cover for me? Thanks] Me: [k] Rhett and I grew up next door.

Our fathers served together. Our mothers were best friends and taught at the same school. I'd been living in the Hale house for three years.

I called his mother Mama Lee the whole time. She treated me better than she treated her own son. Everybody said so. I was in love with him. He was in love with Sasha Pruitt.

I'd planned to sit on that for the rest of my life and be his little sister until we were both old.

Then came the day we finished our last final, and Rhett took me to a bar downtown on fake IDs. I was drunk. Two men followed me toward the restrooms and put their hands on me.

If he hadn't noticed I'd been gone too long and come looking, I don't know how far it would have gone. For three days after, I didn't eat and I didn't sleep.

I came close to killing myself. Mama Lee decided it was Rhett's fault for not protecting me. She pushed until he agreed to get engaged. Out of guilt, he said yes.

The party would be the day our acceptance letters came. Sasha couldn't take it. She made scenes. Rhett found every excuse on earth to go comfort her. He loved her. Really loved her.

He'd have given up anything for her. His principles. His future. His conscience. The tighter I held on, the more I lost. The more I lost, the less I could let go.

I used everything I had against the two of them. I wanted them to hurt the way I hurt. By the end, Mama Lee wouldn't stay in a room I was in.

The woman who used to call me her daughter. The two boys I raised couldn't stand the sight of me. I heard them say it.

I was standing right there in the hallway. "Honestly, if Mom's this miserable she should just go ahead and die." "Then Dad and Sasha could finally have it. Thirty years, man.

They've been through hell." Neither of them bothered to lower his voice. So this time I wasn't going to be the villain standing between them.

And I wasn't keeping those two ingrates either. Let them have each other. Let me have myself. Changing that application was step one in getting away from Rhett Hale.

It was also step one in living for me. Last time, to stay with him, I gave up John Jay. The only school I'd ever wanted. I followed him to The Citadel instead.

John Jay would have been nothing like this. The Corps ran longer days, more drills, less air. It wore me down to nothing.

What actually killed me was watching him and Sasha make eyes at each other three feet from my face. It made me insane. I never said a word about it. Because I was the other woman.

Then Sasha got expelled. Out of nowhere. Rhett decided I'd done it. He never looked at me the same way again. This time I wasn't going to The Citadel.

So would she still get expelled? And if she did, who was he going to blame for it? Chapter 2 After college, Rhett was in no hurry to keep his promise.

Not until Sasha's wedding invitation showed up in the mail. She'd married some useless trustfund kid in a hurry, to make Rhett give up on her. Rhett went cold all the way through.

He walked through our wedding like a dead man. After that he avoided me. Years went by where he didn't come home once. I drove out to his post to see him.

He picked up another man's duty shift rather than spend the night with me. Mama Lee called every single day to ask if I was pregnant yet. Then she mailed me lingerie. To please him.

To give her the grandbaby she kept asking about. I put it on. Couldn't look at myself in the mirror. Climbed onto the cot in his duty office anyway.

He pointed a finger in my face and called me a slut. I was still wearing it when I drove home that night. I told him I wanted a divorce. I meant it. He came back and apologized.

Said all the soft things. Made up for a wedding night three years late. One night. That's all it took. Twins.

I thought one baby would make him a husband and two would make him a father. It turned out children only tie down the person who wanted them.

The only thing that ever held Rhett in place was Sasha Pruitt. He knew she'd come at me and put me into a labor that went wrong. He knew I almost died and took both babies with me.

He defended her anyway. To make me forgive her, he got down on his knees in front of me and put a knife in his own side. Twice. To settle her debt. He did it where I could see.

I was still in a hospital bed. Both babies were still in the NICU. He never asked about them. He never once went down the hall to look at them.

I'd just gotten in the door when Sasha sent me a video. The two of them pressed together, dancing the kind of dance that gets your blood up.

Mama Lee came in late from school, saw me staring at my phone, and leaned over my shoulder.

It took her about two seconds. "That boy," she said. "He leaves his own fiancée sitting at home to go entertain some outsider?

I'll skin him alive." "And that homewrecker has no shame. He's about to be engaged and she's still hanging off him like that.

I'm going to see her parents first thing tomorrow." Sasha's father was security at our school. Her mother pushed a mop there. Mama Lee was the assistant principal.

She'd never given either of them a day of trouble. Not until she found out her son was seeing their daughter behind her back. Mama Lee cared about pedigree. Sasha didn't have any.

She wanted Rhett with me. My father is a Major. My uncle on my dad's side runs the best public high school in the state. My uncle on my mom's side runs SLED.

His wife puts people away for a living. Marry me and every door in South Carolina swings open for Rhett Hale.

So she picked at Sasha's parents every chance she got, waiting for the girl to take the hint. Sasha and her parents held on with both hands.

Last time, the two of us together couldn't pry her loose. We ran out first. I burned all the way down. Mama Lee got old. And Sasha married him.

And got my two good sons in the bargain. This time I wasn't going to stand in their way. But I wasn't going to stand in Mama Lee's way either.

If Sasha wanted to be a Hale, she had to get past Mama Lee first. And Mama Lee does not say things she doesn't mean.

First thing in the morning, she'd be standing in front of Sasha's parents. To have a word. Chapter 3 Mama Lee only ever punished Rhett one way. The belt.

Every swing left a line on him. She never went easy. I figured he'd blame me for ratting him out and give me the silent treatment. Instead he came to me. "I'm sorry.

You got the wrong idea," he said. "Sash and I danced. That's it. Nothing else happened. I know where I stand, Ro.

I'm not going to do anything out of line." He sounded like he meant every word of it. There was a hickey under his collar. I might have bought it otherwise. He'd always been a liar.

When we were kids it was little tricks. He could make me cry, make me laugh, make me throw a fit, whatever he needed that day. I never held it against him. He spoiled me.

After the twins were born he told me he'd cut Sasha off completely. I drove both boys out to his post for his birthday. Sasha and her mother were sitting in his quarters.

There was a bathroom's worth of women's things on his shelf. Later, when I was dying, I asked him to come see me at the hospital. He said he'd hurt his leg and couldn't get around.

He was busy planning his wedding. He lied to me for thirty years. This time I wasn't believing a single thing that came out of his mouth.

Nobody can lie to you if you never believe them. I waved it off, easy as anything. "You don't owe me an explanation. I've got no say over what you do.

Your mom happened to be standing next to me when Sasha sent the video. "I didn't tell on anybody. She just has bad luck." Flex the relationship, watch it fold.

If she hadn't gone out of her way to plant a flag in front of me, Mama Lee would never have laid eyes on that video. Rhett smiled, and it came out bitter. "How do you have no say?

The second our letters come, we're engaged. Then I belong to you. You point, I go. At your service till the day I die." No. No letter from The Citadel was coming.

No engagement either. He could stop making himself miserable.

He could stop saying things he didn't mean. "Fourteen more days," I said. "You can hold out that long." "Fourteen days until what?" Oh. He'd forgotten my birthday.

I pushed him out of my room. "Until you get your life back.

I'm going to give it to you." With the application in, it was time to get ready for the fitness assessment and the medical. Mama Lee had Rhett on a short leash.

He didn't sneak off to see Sasha once. His body was in that house. His head was somewhere else. He lived on his phone, talking for hours or staring into a video call.

Every time she caught him, she took the belt to him. Then she held the belt out to me and told me to get a few in myself.

It wasn't worth the calories. "That's all right." He thought I couldn't bring myself to hurt him. It moved him. "Don't worry," he said. "We talk about normal stuff. Friend stuff.

I know I'm engaged. I'm not going to mess around." An engagement. Sure. A marriage license hadn't stopped him.

It was just a piece of paper, and the two of them carried on underneath it for thirty years. I made a noise that could have meant anything. The sprints, the long jump, the situps.

They wrung me out every day. On top of that I was drilling practice questions for the psych eval. I didn't have the energy left to care who he was texting.

That belt of hers was never going to work. She was watching Rhett. But the one who was going to call off the engagement was me.

Chapter 4 Rhett was worried Sasha wouldn't get her nomination. He asked if I knew anybody who could pull strings. I did, if I felt like it.

But why would I spend my own family's favors on somebody I couldn't stand? "No," I said. "You're the one who's always going on about fairness.

You want to make an exception for Sasha?" He didn't like that. He didn't argue either. He just stopped speaking to me first. Thirty years of being looked past.

It didn't land the way it used to. Mama Lee figured we were stressed and quiet, and didn't think twice about it.

She just cooked us something different and wonderful every single day.

The morning we left for the fitness assessment, Rhett went out to the garden early and picked a rose. "Would you look at that," Mama Lee laughed. "The boy finally figured out how to give a girl flowers." I didn't tell her that Sasha is the one who likes roses.

The rose wasn't for me. Sasha slapped me across the face the second she saw me. "You're evil," she said. "You take Rhett and that's still not enough for you? You had Ms.

Lee fire my parents." Her parents got fired? Mama Lee had really gone after them this time. What did that have to do with me?

She didn't have the nerve to swing at her future motherinlaw, so she came at me instead. She thought I was a pushover. I brought my hand up.

Rhett caught my wrist. "Her parents are out of work. Things are hard for them right now. Let it go. If you're that angry, hit me instead.

Hit me as many times as you want." I laughed at him. There was nothing funny in it. Her family's having a hard time, so she gets to slap me?

Am I the punching bag? "What are you to her?" I asked him. "You get to apologize for her? Take her hits for her?" That was when he remembered we were engaged.

That a fiancé is supposed to stand behind his own. He didn't let go of my wrist. "If that thing hadn't happened to you, we wouldn't even be engaged.

My mom wouldn't be going after her parents. Ro, Sash is already hurting.

Can't you cut her some slack?" Last time, at The Citadel, every time Sasha and I got into it, he reached for that exact sentence to make me back down.

He knew what that thing was to me. It was the one thing you never bring up. He brought it up again. And again.

To protect Sasha he'd put it in me one more time, and one more time, and never once hesitate. Like I couldn't feel it. He was doing it again. I wasn't backing down again.

I kept my face flat and pried his fingers off my wrist, one at a time. He was scared I'd make a scene and it would land on her.

His voice dropped, low and soft. "Ro, she didn't mean to hit you. She's just upset.

She's not thinking—" I took a breath and cut him off. "Should I call the police right now?" He knew what that meant. One call and Sasha would never sit for her nomination interview.

He hesitated. Then he stepped aside. I swung at Sasha. At the last second he couldn't do it. He couldn't let her take it.

He shoved her out of the way and put his own face where hers had been. I'd put everything I had into that swing. It left a red handprint across his cheek. Sasha shrieked. "Rhetty?

Why would you do that? Who is she to hit you? I'm going to make her pay." Rhett held her back. His eyes were red. "Is that enough for you?" Chapter 5