28. The Rally
The Rally
Cole had never spent so long staring at a shirt.
Not because he cared about the shirt, because he didn’t. It was navy. It was clean. It was fine.
But Emmie had told him to “wear something really nice if you’re going to be standing next to my aunt,” and now he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
About tonight. About all the people showing up.
About the woman he hoped would look at him the way she had in the dim light of his bedroom, head tucked against his shoulder, whispering things she probably shouldn’t have said out loud.
A rally shouldn’t have felt personal. But it did.
His reflection in the bathroom mirror looked more like a guy going to court than to a rally. Jaw tight. Eyes serious. He tried on a smile and managed something that was at least not actively terrifying.
He could still feel the heat of her pressed against his side from that night. The low hum of the box fan in his bedroom, the streetlight through the blinds, striping the sheets in pale orange.
They’d been lying there, her head on his shoulder, the afterglow of everything they shouldn’t be doing but absolutely were still rounded the edges. He’d thought she was asleep until she spoke.
“You lied to me,” she’d said quietly.
Cole had stiffened. “About what?”
“The rally,” she said. “The Secret Society. All of it. You and Emmie were planning this for days. You never said a word.”
He’d stared at the ceiling, searching for the least stupid answer. “I didn’t lie,” he said eventually. “I didn’t tell you. That’s different.”
She lifted her head to look at him, hair mussed, her blue eyes muted but unmistakable even in the dim room.
“‘Omissions are betrayals,’” she said. “I think I read that somewhere. Keeping information from someone who matters to you isn’t neutral. It’s a betrayal.”
“Okay, but whatever article you read was talking about people hiding affairs and bank accounts,” he said gently. “Not . . . surprise parties.”
“This isn’t a surprise party,” she shot back.
“It kind of is,” he said. “With more legal stakes.”
She did not smile.
He shifted onto his side, facing her fully, propping his head on his hand.
“Jenna,” he said. “We weren’t keeping this from you to avoid consequences. Or to make you look stupid. Or to . . . I don’t know, control anything. We were trying to take something off your plate. Give you a win you didn’t have to manage.”
Her throat worked. “I hate being the last to know.”
“I know,” he confessed. “And you’re right.
If we were hiding something that could hurt you?
Or something you needed to consent to? That would be a betrayal.
” He brushed his fingers lightly over her wrist. “But not every secret is that. Sometimes . . . secrets are gifts. A rally. A surprise party. A bunch of nosy people who love you planning something good.”
She stared at him for a long moment, searching his face like she’d find some hidden angle if she looked hard enough.
“How am I supposed to trust you if I don’t know what you’re not saying?” she whispered.
He swallowed. “By looking at the why. If I’m hiding something to save my own skin?
Walk. If I’m hiding something because it’s going to blow up your life?
Run. But if I’m hiding the fact that your niece is printing flyers to get you money and backup?
” He gave a tiny shrug. “That’s not betrayal, Jen.
Maybe it’s a bad strategy. But not a betrayal. ”
Her lips pressed together.
“You still should’ve told me,” she said, but there was less heat in it.
“Probably,” he admitted. “Next time, I will. Or I’ll at least leave more obvious clues so you can yell at me earlier.”
She huffed out something that was almost a laugh. “Next time,” she repeated. “God.”
“The fact that there might be a next time means we’re still in this,” he pointed out.
“That’s the problem,” she muttered into his chest a moment later, when she’d dropped her head back down. “You keep doing things that make me want to stay in this.”
He’d smoothed a hand down her back, heart doing something stupid and traitorous in his ribcage.
Now, standing in his bathroom, he took a breath and shoved the memory aside. No time to get lost in it. He had tables to set up and a very small town to charm into opening their wallets.
He finished buttoning his shirt, rolled up the sleeves, shoved his wallet and keys into his pockets, and headed out.
* * *
By Friday afternoon, Jenna had to admit it to herself: she’d been at Cole Bennett’s house every night this week, and sneaking back into the house on Athens at five-thirty every morning so Emmie wouldn’t notice.
Four weeks since she’d learned about the lawsuit, and somehow the person she kept running to wasn’t her attorney; it was him.
Technically, she went over there to “talk through updates” or “compare notes” or “go over invoices,” but that wasn’t the truth.
Not the whole truth, anyway.
Monday, she’d gone over with the file folder of court documents and sat at his kitchen table while he brewed coffee and helped her highlight the sections the attorney had flagged.
They’d worked for three hours, and then he’d noticed she was shaking again and pulled her into his arms until the buzzing in her veins faded.
Tuesday, she’d gone over “just to drop something off,” a permit he needed to sign, and somehow ended up on his couch with her feet in his lap, watching a show she barely remembered because his hand on her ankle had been the only thing keeping her tethered to the room.
Wednesday, she’d told herself she wasn’t going. She was going to stay home, review case law, and build a spreadsheet of renovation expenses.
She’d lasted until ten-thirty before she texted him:
JENNA: I can’t turn my brain off.
COLE: Come over. Porch light’s on.
By the time she pulled into his driveway, her whole body ached from holding it together. He’d opened the door, taken one look at her face, and said, “Come here,” in a voice that made everything inside her loosen at once.
And when she slipped under his sheets an hour later, the only thing that mattered was that, for a while, she didn’t have to be strong or strategic or anything, except a woman who wanted something good.
And now it was Friday.
She stood in front of the mirror in the house on Athens, smoothing her palms down the front of the plum dress Emmie had chosen, the one with the scandalously low draped neckline and those delicate beaded straps that caught the light when she moved.
The fabric skimmed her hips like it had been made for her.
The back dipped low, nothing but warm skin and two thin crisscrossed strands of garnet-colored beads holding the whole thing together.
She looked like a woman with a secret life—probably because she had one.
Not just the legal fight.
Not just the rally.
Him.
Cole, with his calloused hands, stupidly kind eyes, and infuriating patience.
Cole, who could talk about court precedent and building codes and also make her laugh when she was halfway to a panic attack.
Cole, whose bed had become, against all her better judgment, the one place she could fall apart without feeling like she was letting anyone down.
“Stop it,” she told her reflection. Her reflection did not obey.
She gathered her notes and touched the worn little pendant around her neck, the one Grace had given her on her twenty-first birthday. For the days when you forget who you are, her sister had said.
Jenna kissed it once, a habit so ingrained she didn’t even notice she was doing it, then stepped out the front door and crossed the short stretch of lawn that separated her house from the bakery.
* * *
By the time he got to The Blue Cypress, the place was already humming.
The front windows glowed in the early evening light. The parking lot was filling up faster than he’d expected. A banner stretched across the front awning—SAVE THE BLUE CYPRESS in big, loopy blue letters, with KEEP IT LOCAL / KEEP IT HERS stenciled underneath.
Emmie’s handiwork, obviously.
Inside, it was organized chaos.
Nicole and another kid from the high school softball team were dragging folding tables into place.
Steph stood behind the counter like a frosting general, directing sheet trays and pastry boxes with ruthless efficiency.
Mrs. Cartwright and half the women’s club were arranging silent auction baskets on a side table: spa days, golf rounds, hair appointments, free oil changes, everything under the Florida sun.
“Bennett!” someone yelled.
He turned to see Mr. Delaney from the historical society waving a tri-fold poster board in one hand and a level in the other.
“Where do you want the history display?” the older man asked. “We’ve got photos of the original storefront from 1947, and I’ll be damned if some absentee husband is going to get his hands on—”
“Right by the entrance,” Cole said. “Let everyone see it when they walk in.”
Delaney nodded, satisfied, and shuffled off to set up his shrine of zoning ordinances and black-and-white photos.
Cole rolled up his sleeves another notch and dove in, helping hoist the stage riser the Rotary club had “just happened” to have lying around, carrying coolers of ice to the back, checking the extension cords, so no one electrocuted themselves during “Save the Bakery” karaoke.
He was in the middle of wrestling a stubborn table leg into place when the whole room shifted.
It wasn’t anything dramatic. Just a subtle drawing of attention, like someone had opened a window and let a breeze in.
He didn’t have to look to know who it was, but he looked anyway.
Jenna stood just inside the front door, fingers curled around the strap of her dress, eyes a little wide at the sight of the crowd already forming.
He knew instantly the dress she wore was one of Emmie’s picks, not because Jenna didn’t know how to dress herself, but because this was definitely not a “tax audit” dress, as Emmie liked to accuse.