Chapter 16
Jake
Iknow she saw it before she says a word.
She walks through the front door and sets her bag on the counter and says my name once. Flat. Quiet. Nothing like the way she usually says it.
“Jake.”
I close the laptop.
She crosses her arms. “The custody filing was open on your laptop. Four days old.”
I don’t say anything because there’s nothing to say that isn’t bullshit.
“Four days,” she says again. “And you said nothing.”
“I was going to tell you after the meeting with my attorney.”
“When is that scheduled?”
I don’t answer fast enough.
“Jake. When.”
“Next week.”
“You made a decision about what I was allowed to know. About something that affects Poppy. About something that affects me.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what? From the truth?”
“From carrying more than you already were.” I move around the counter. “The media situation was blowing up. Poppy had a hard week. You were already managing—”
“Don’t.” She goes still. “Don’t tell me what I can handle.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s exactly what you did.”
I stop moving. “I wasn’t shutting you out. I was trying to keep this from becoming your problem, too.”
She goes quiet. One second. Two. Then she says, “That’s the problem, Jake. I thought it already was my problem. I thought we were past you deciding alone what I get to know.”
That one hits deep.
“The filing came in the same week the media blew up.” I keep my voice steady.
“You were already fielding board calls. The fake engagement was supposed to show stability for Hale Futures, for the custody case, for Poppy. And then that old picture of me dropped and I watched you hold all of it together, and I didn’t want to hand you one more thing to carry. ”
“I needed you to trust me.” Her voice cracks. Just once. “That’s it. That’s all I needed.”
“I do trust you.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
The honest answer isn’t pretty, but I give it to her anyway.
“Because I’ve spent my whole life making mistakes that only hurt me. And now they can hurt her.” I exhale. “They can hurt you. And I didn’t know how to sit across from you and say that the thing I’m most afraid of just got filed in a goddamn legal document and I don’t know if I can stop it.”
The silence after that is different.
Emilia stares at me. “That’s the first honest thing you’ve said in four days.”
“Yeah.” I hold her stare. “I know.”
“You should have led with that.”
“I should have.”
She asks what the filing actually says. So I tell her all of it. The language about instability. The media coverage they cited. The concerns about Poppy’s emotional safety around my public history.
Emilia doesn’t panic. She asks questions and listens to every answer.
She runs toward the problem. She always has, which is exactly why I should have told her the second the custody case hit my inbox.
“Yuen thinks we can counter it,” I say. “Our engagement helps. Poppy’s preschool records are solid. She’s adjusting well.”
“She’s adjusting because she has people who show up for her consistently.” Emilia’s voice is tight. “That’s what stability actually looks like. Not a clean press photo.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” She crosses her arms. “Because going quiet and handling things alone isn’t showing up. That’s just you doing it your way and expecting everyone to be fine with the outcome.”
“You’re right.”
She blinks, like she was ready for a fight and doesn’t know what to do without one.
“I handled it wrong.” I hold her stare. “I’m not going to argue about that. I thought I was making the right call, but I wasn’t. I should have told you the same damn day it came in.”
She uncrosses her arms slowly.
For one second, I think we’re going to be okay.
Then Poppy appears in the hallway in her school uniform, one shoe on, sea turtle under her arm. She looks between us.
Kids always know when something is off. I have no idea how, but they always do.
“Are we doing breakfast?” she asks. “I want the triangle toast.” She’s not looking at me. She’s looking at Emilia.
“Yeah, bub.” I keep my voice easy. “Go find your other shoe.”
She doesn’t move right away. Her eyes go to Emilia, then back to me. Then she turns and disappears down the hall without another word.
Emilia watches the empty doorway. When she looks back at me, the fight has gone out of her expression.
What’s left is worse. She just looks tired.
“I need some space to think,” she says. “I can’t do that here.”
“Emilia—”
“I’m not ending anything.” She picks up her bag. “I just need to think.”
She moves through the penthouse, and I follow because standing still isn’t an option.
She grabs her phone charger from the counter by the coffeemaker. A cardigan from the hook by the door. The small notebook she uses for foundation prep sitting right next to my laptop, like it’s always lived there.
I follow her to the elevator. Poppy is in her room. The penthouse is too quiet already.
Emilia hits the elevator button.
“I wasn’t trying to cut you out.” My voice comes out low. “I need you to know that.”
“I know.” She doesn’t look at me. “That’s what makes it harder.”
The elevator arrives.
Every part of me wants to grab her hand and tell her she’s not leaving. That she can be pissed at me all night if she wants, but she’s staying.
But I don’t move.
She needs to trust me, and I haven’t earned that yet. No amount of charm or fast talking will get me there tonight.
So I stand there.
And I let her go.
The doors close.
I stare at them for a long time.
Poppy comes out of her room ten minutes later with both shoes on. “Where’d Emilia go?”
“She had some work stuff.” I crouch down and tighten her left laces. “She’ll be back.”
Poppy studies my face the way she does when she’s fact-checking me. “Are you sad?”
“I’m fine, bub.”
“Your face looks sad.”
I pull her into a hug before she can keep going. She lets me, which means she’s worried. Poppy does not submit to pre-breakfast hugs under normal circumstances.
“Come on,” I say. “I’ll make toast.”
“You always burn it.”
“I’ll burn it less today.”
That gets something out of her. Not quite a laugh, but close enough.
The day drags.
I take three foundation calls. I review the counter-filing strategy with Yuen. I handle two board callbacks and say exactly the right things while the part of my brain that usually makes me good at this stays somewhere else.
Emilia texts once in the afternoon. She’s reviewing the outreach numbers. She’ll send them tonight.
Professional. Careful.
I read it three times and put my phone face down on the desk.
Mom calls at four.
“Sunday dinner. Six.”
“Mom—”
“Six.”
She hangs up.
I sit there for a second. Then I go pick up Poppy from preschool.
Bedtime takes forty minutes longer than it should.
Poppy stalls through two books, a cup of water, a debate about whether sharks sleep standing up, a request for a third book, and a detailed investigation into whether her sea turtle needs its own blanket.
I move through all of it. Every stall. Every ridiculous question.
But she keeps looking at the doorway.
I know who she’s looking for.
Halfway through the third book, she asks it.
“Did Emilia leave because I did something bad?”
I put the book down and look at her straight on. She needs a real answer, not a smooth one.
“No.” I keep my voice steady. “None of this is your fault. Not any part of it.”
“She seemed sad.”
“She wasn’t sad at you.”
Poppy turns this over. “Was she sad at you?”
“A little bit, yeah.”
“Did you do something bad?”
I exhale. “I made a mistake. I’m going to fix it.”
“How?”
“By being honest.”
She stares at me for another few seconds. Then she slides back down under her blanket and hands me the book.
“Okay.” She holds her sea turtle tighter. “You skipped the part about the whale.”
She’s out in fifteen minutes.
I sit on the edge of her bed longer than I need to. Her hand is curled next to her face. Her sea turtle is tucked under her chin. She looks small and completely certain the world is fine, because I told her it was.
That trust is the most terrifying thing anyone has ever handed me.
I turn off the lamp and go back to the living room.
The penthouse is quiet. Not the good kind of quiet, the kind that reminds me what it felt like before either of them were here.
No music from the kitchen.
No second coffee mug on the counter.
No laughter cutting through a work call I’m trying to take seriously.
I sit on the couch.
Poppy asked if Emilia left because she did something wrong. Because even at four years old, she already assumes the people she loves leave and it’s her fault.
That’s not okay. None of this is okay.
The hook by the door is empty. Emilia’s notebook is gone from next to my laptop. I open the fridge and her creamer isn’t there anymore.
Six weeks ago, the thing that scared me most was being the wrong Hale brother. The one who doesn’t fit. The one people like but don’t depend on.
I don’t give a damn about that anymore.
The thing that scares the hell out of me now is losing the family I built before I understood it was mine.
The next morning, it gets worse.
Helen calls at seven, before I’ve finished the coffee I’m not tasting.
“Don’t look at it yet,” she says, which is how I know I’m about to look at it.
“Look at what?”
“Jake.”
I’m already pulling it up.
Fuck.
It’s a gossip piece, the kind that dresses speculation up as a question so nobody can sue.
Trouble in Paradise for Honolulu’s New Power Couple?
There’s a photo of me leaving the foundation alone two nights ago.
Another of Emilia getting into her car outside her building.
The angle is obvious before I finish the first paragraph.
Nobody’s seen them together in days. Sources say the whirlwind engagement may be cooling.
Is the Hale family fairy tale already cracking?
They don’t have anything. They never do. Two people photographed apart and a headline built out of nothing.
It doesn’t matter that it’s nothing. The grandparents will see it.
“How bad,” I say.
“It’s moving,” Helen says. “Three outlets so far. I’ve got the team on it, but we can’t kill a story that’s just two photographs and a question mark.”
“Get ahead of it.”
“I’m trying. Jake—” She stops. “There’s something else.”
I wait.
“Yuen called me before I called you. He wanted me to soften it.” A pause. “The grandparents’ attorney made a move this morning. There’s a hearing date now. Nine days out.”
A date. Not a filing sitting in a drawer somewhere I can pretend isn’t real.
A date on a calendar, a courtroom, a fucking judge who’s going to read a week of headlines about a playboy whose engagement is reportedly falling apart and decide whether my daughter is better off here or back in California.
“They saw the press,” I say. It isn’t a question.
“Yuen thinks it pushed them. The instability angle. A man whose public life keeps blowing up.” Helen’s voice is careful in a way it almost never is. “I’m sorry.”
I look at the empty hook by the door. The notebook gone from beside my laptop.
The thing that was supposed to prove I could give Poppy a stable home is the engagement everyone now thinks is ending.
And it’s ending because I shut Emilia out, because I decided alone, because I did the exact thing she told me would break us and then watched it break us right on schedule.
“Jake,” Helen says. “Are you there?”
“Yeah.” My voice comes out level. I don’t know how. “Nine days.”
“Nine days.”
I hang up.
Down the hall, Poppy’s awake. I can hear her telling the sea turtle something about breakfast.
Nine days to prove I can keep her.
And I let the one person who makes this look like a family walk out the door yesterday, because I was too proud to let her see me scared.
I set the phone down and go make the toast.
I’ll burn it. She’ll eat it anyway.
And somewhere in the next nine days I’m going to have to become a man who deserves the family he’s about to lose.