Chapter 17 #2
The ocean crashes against the rocks below us.
“He never said anything to me.”
“Jake doesn’t say things until he’s certain they won’t cost him the person he’s saying them to.” She glances at me. “But he shows up. Every time.”
The coffee creamer. The hair ties. Poppy’s bedtime routine that he learned in a week without complaint.
“Jake’s never been afraid of loving hard,” Maggie says. “He’s just afraid of failing the people he loves.”
She puts her hand over mine on the railing. Then she goes inside and leaves me with the ocean and everything I’ve been refusing to look at directly.
I drive home with the windows down and Maggie’s voice still in my head.
I don’t plan to call Diane.
I’m back at my apartment, and I have her number because I coordinated half the logistics the week Poppy arrived and gave them my number as a backup. I tell myself I’m checking on Poppy. That holds until she answers.
“Emilia.” Diane sounds surprised. “Is everything all right? Is Poppy—”
“She’s fine. She’s good.” I sit down on the couch. “I’m sorry to call out of nowhere. I wanted to talk to you about Jake.”
A pause. “All right.”
“I know what’s been in the news. The photos.” I keep my voice steady. “I know how it looks from California.”
“I’ll be honest with you.” Diane’s tone is careful, but there’s an edge to it. “I’m surprised you’re the one taking up for him. Those pictures don’t look innocent, Emilia. A man on a yacht with—”
“Those pictures are eighteen months old.” It comes out faster than I mean it to. “Somebody dug them up and put them out because it makes a better story than the truth. People would rather run an old photo than admit a man can change.”
Diane doesn’t say anything.
“I’m not telling you what some picture says.
I’m telling you what I’ve watched with my own eyes.
” I push on. “He shows up. Every morning. Drop-off, pickup, the Tuesday music circle he rearranged his schedule around. He learned how Poppy likes her toast cut. He reads the same book four times because she asks him to. He got none of it right at first but he kept doing it anyway.”
“He’s always been charming,” Diane says quietly. “That was never the worry.”
“This isn’t charm. Charm wears off.” I’m not controlled anymore and I can hear it. “He’s terrified of failing her, so he shows up for every small thing, the ones nobody would notice if he skipped. That’s what stability actually is. Not a clean photo. Someone who keeps showing up when it’s hard.”
My voice catches on the last word.
I stop. Press my fingers to my mouth and wait until I trust it again.
Diane stays quiet on the line.
“That’s all,” I say, steadier. “I just thought you should hear it from someone who’s there.”
The pause stretches.
“Thank you, Emilia,” Diane says. And then, softer: “Robert and I have some things to talk about.”
After we hang up, I sit there a while.
I just defended Jake to his daughter’s grandparents, and I couldn’t get through it without my voice going. I’m done pretending I don’t know what that means.
The apartment is too quiet. I grab my keys and go back out, and I end up at the harbor without deciding to.
I park and walk without direction. The city lights are catching the water, and I just keep moving.
I think about every fight.
Every sharp comment across boardroom tables that I told myself was professional distance.
Every time I defended him before I meant to.
Every night I stayed later than I planned and told myself it was about Poppy, about the foundation, about anything other than the fact that leaving his penthouse felt wrong.
Every morning I decided today was the day I put the walls back up, and then he’d say something or do something and I’d stay, because leaving felt like the worse choice.
He wasn’t slowly falling in love with me.
He was already there. I was just too busy building walls to see it.
The custody filing. Jake sat alone with that fear for four days because protecting me meant carrying it himself. Not because I didn’t matter. Because I mattered too much and he didn’t know what to do with that yet.
Poppy’s face the last time I saw her. The way she reached for me without thinking about it.
Hell.
I’m not afraid of getting hurt.
That’s not what this feeling is.
I’m afraid of losing him.
He’s probably in that penthouse right now thinking I confirmed every fear he’s ever had about people walking away. That Poppy will forget me. That I spent so long convincing myself to stay careful I almost walked away from the thing I wanted most.
Jake Hale isn’t the man I thought he was when this started.
He’s not the tabloid version. Not the agent of chaos. Not the reckless youngest Hale who can’t be trusted with anything real.
He’s the man who crouched on a community center floor for a seven-year-old’s Lego crisis and didn’t check his phone once.
Who learned six outreach site coordinators’ names and their kids’ names and remembers them all.
Who stood in his own penthouse doorway at midnight looking at his daughter like the sight of her physically overwhelmed him.
Who looked at me the same way.
I stop at the end of the pier.
Dark water. Bright city.
Jake burning toast and not noticing until the smoke alarm goes off. Reading legal documents out loud like arguing with them helps. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with Poppy for an hour because she wanted company, not because anyone asked him to.
The way he looks at her.
The way he looks at me.
Shit.
I already know.
I’ve known for a while. I just kept finding reasons not to say it out loud.
I’m in love with him.
I’m in love with the man who let me walk out the door because he understood that love isn’t something you force into staying.
I pull out my phone.
I don’t call. Not yet. There are things I need to say to his face.
But I stare at his name for a long moment.
And for the first time since I walked out of his penthouse, the distance doesn’t feel like safety.
It just feels like the opposite of where I need to be.