Turned into your worst fears, Crossing out the good years
Pairing: Rhett Abbot x Fem!Reader
Synopsis: After years of sneaking around with your neighbor, Rhett, you ask him to leave Wabang. He turns you down. It doesn't end well for either of you.
Warnings: Angst, Swearing, Lots of implications of a relationship that isn't actually labeled but exists and is a secret, Reader and Rhett are both assholes, my horrific grammar needs a warning in itself, this is 100% unedited
Word Count: 929
There are few things that hurt like the sting of something so familiar being the very thing to strip you of all sense of belonging. But tonight, under the same star-studded sky she’d laid beneath a million times with the same rough around the edges cowboy she’d spent the last four years of her life chasing, disappointment and regret were the only familiarities and a bone deep ache had long since settled over her entire body until she somehow felt less than hollow.
When she’d asked Rhett to leave with her, she thought he’d jump at the chance. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t talked about it before- skipping town for somewhere new where the people were none the wiser to the triviality of their relationship and the mess it left in its wake. In her mind, they’d run away together a thousand times over, each time better- more fulfilling than the last.
There was nothing fulfilling about those thoughts now.
“People like us- what makes you think we’re ever gonna leave this? I mean, c’mon girl. There’s not a damn place out there for you or me. Much fuckin’ less us together,” Rhett said, trying every bit to keep his anger in check as she questioned him.
He drug a hand over his mouth and let out a deep exhale as he tore his gaze from her for just a moment. If there was a time to start a fight, it definitely wasn’t now. But starting a fight was the one thing Rhett was best at. He just had always done a shit job at finishing them.
“And there’s a place here?” She asked, words biting and sharp. The hurt dripped off her tongue like venom, giving way to the severity of his rejection.
If he couldn’t get a read on her expressions or get a good look in her eyes, he could always figure out exactly how she felt by the way her words spilled from her lips. Tonight, though, he was privy to all three reactions, and it only proved to push his own feelings up into his throat until he felt like he was choking on them.
“What? Gonna start taking me on dates around town? Dedicate your rides to me? You could’ve been doing that for years, but you haven’t and you won’t,” she sneered in a way that made his body grow even more rigid than it already had been. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could even get a syllable out, she was starting again. “You think you’re gonna take over the ranch? Cause it’s pretty clear to everyone in town that no matter how much of a piece of shit Perry is, the ranch, the land, every last damn bit of the Abbott name is going to him. It doesn’t matter how hard they work you, doesn’t matter how many wins you get under your belt at rodeos, and it sure as hell don’t matter how many times you come runnin’ to help them- you aren’t their first choice-”
He cut her off, anger boiling over like a pot of water forgotten on the stove. His eyes had never looked darker- never looked more cloudy.
“Was I ever anyone’s? At least here I can pretend I’m doin’ somethin’. You can’t even say that much. You’re just runnin’ away from one shit life to another.”
She could see how tightly his jaw clenched, teeth gritted in a way that couldn’t be anything short of painful. She only ever saw this sort of anger directed at his family. Now on the receiving end, with her own emotions running rampant, it felt like every single good moment they’d ever shared had been stripped bare and left broken on the ground at their feet. It was like watching a fire engulf the last remnants of anything tying her to Wabang.
“At least it's my choice! I’m not being complacent in my own fucking misery!” Her voice was higher now, more desperate to watch him burn to ash alongside her.
He took a step closer to her and leaned down enough to fully meet her eye in the moonlight. The last time he’d been this close, he’d been kissing her. Now, that felt like a distant memory.
“Then go,” he said, tone deadly even for the first time in their entire exchange. “Don’t know why you had to come here and make it my problem you’re leaving. Just fuckin’ do it.”
She took a step back and then another, steadily growing the distance between them until just a few feet felt cavernous. “I will.”
She paused for a moment, eyes darting to the fence line separating their properties. Careful to avoid the barbs still sticking out, she slipped through the large gap in the barbed wire and stood back up on her family’s own land. With one last look at Rhett, she delivered the killing blow in this verbal warfare before leaving him standing alone in the dark.
“For what it’s worth, I would’ve picked you. Every god damn time.”
She was gone by the next morning when the regret had finally settled in. Even then, he didn’t bother trying to get in touch with her. She was never coming back, and that was that. A clean break- though there was really nothing clean about them in any capacity- was necessary to forget any of it ever happened. And forget her is exactly what he planned to do.
He pretended like he kept to that plan until he saw her again three years later.