28. Rafe
RAFE
Pinewood Ridge does New Year's Eve the way it does everything else, small and stubborn and entirely pleased with itself.
The town square's strung with lights that have survived four different administrations without ever being replaced, there's a bonfire going in the gravel lot behind the gazebo that Gunny helped build and refuses to take credit for, and somewhere near the courthouse steps Dot Higgins has set up a folding table with a hand-painted countdown clock that's been running four minutes fast every year since before I moved here, on principle, because she claims the real countdown is for people who don't know how to have fun on their own schedule.
"It's eleven fifty-six," Josie announces, squinting at Dot's clock from twenty feet away. "But it's actually eleven fifty-two."
"Dot doesn't care what time it actually is," I tell her. "That's the whole point."
"That seems like cheating."
"You'd think. Ask me again in four minutes."
I've got a cup of cider going cold in my hand and a mind that won't sit still, no matter how many times I try to bring it back to the bonfire in front of me.
The twins are darting between neighbors with sparklers Gunny definitely shouldn't have handed them, and Jenna's a few feet away laughing at something Maggie's saying.
Three days from now I'll be on a plane I haven't told anyone about, flying to a conversation I've been avoiding for six years, and no amount of hot cider is doing much to quiet the part of my head already rehearsing words I don't have yet.
"You're doing it again," Jenna says, appearing at my elbow with her own cup, steam curling up between us.
"Doing what?"
"Going somewhere else. You've done it three times since we got here." She bumps her shoulder against mine, gentle, no accusation in it. "Dot cornered you about the brewery's New Year specials for a full five minutes and I don't think you heard a word of it."
"I heard enough to nod at the right times."
"That's not the same as hearing it." She studies me for a second, the fire painting moving light across her face, and there's a question sitting behind her eyes that she's clearly deciding whether to ask outright. "Is everything okay?"
I could give her the easy answer. I've gotten good at the easy answer over the years, the one that closes a door without slamming it, and some old, practiced part of me reaches for it automatically.
But she's not just anyone standing here asking, and I owe her more than the reflex, even if I can't give her all of it yet.
"I've got an old obligation I need to take care of," I say slowly, picking each word like it might cost me something if I get it wrong. "Out of state. I'm flying out in a few days."
"Okay." She doesn't flinch, doesn't press, just waits with the same patient stillness she gave me the night on the ranch road, like she already knows there's more to it and has decided the more can wait until I'm ready to hand it over. "Work thing?"
"Not work. Older than work." I turn my cup once in my hands, watching steam rise off it into the cold. "It's something I should have dealt with a long time ago and kept finding reasons not to. I'm out of reasons."
"You don't have to tell me more than that if you're not ready."
"I know." And that's the strange part, something about myself I still don't fully understand.
She's not pushing, and I'm grateful for it, even while some contradictory corner of me wishes she would, wishes she'd ask the follow-up question and back me into finally saying the whole thing out loud.
"I'll tell you everything. Just not tonight. "
"Then not tonight." She says it easily, no weight added to it, and reaches over to steal a sip of my cider like the conversation's already settled itself. "For what it's worth, I trust you enough not to need the whole file right now."
"That's more trust than I've earned on this particular one."
"That's for me to decide, not you." She smiles at me over the rim of the cup, and something in my chest loosens a little, even though nothing's actually been resolved. Trust like that isn't easy to argue with. It just makes me want to earn it.
Eli skids to a stop in front of me before I can answer, Josie catching up a beat later, both of them buzzing with the particular chaos of kids who've been allowed sugar and sparklers on the same night.
"Gunny says the fireworks come from the fairgrounds and they shoot straight up over the square," Eli reports, breathless. "He says last year one went sideways and hit Dot's tent."
"That's not confirmed," I say. "That's a rumor Dot's been trying to kill for a year."
"Gunny says it's confirmed."
"Gunny also says a lot of things." I ruffle his hair, snow-damp and smelling like woodsmoke, and something about the easy weight of the gesture, how automatic it's gotten, catches me for half a second before I let it go.
"Go find him. Tell him I said no more sparklers within twenty feet of the cider stand. Dot will have my head."
They tear off toward the bonfire again, and Jenna watches them go with the soft, worn expression she wears most when she's not trying to perform anything for anyone.
"You're good with them," she says. "I don't think I tell you that enough."
"They make it easy."
"They don't, actually. Eli argues every instruction you give him on principle and Josie's been informally cataloguing your flaws since the leaves turned.
That's not easy. That's you being patient with two kids who test everyone who walks into their life, and you passing every single time without seeming to notice you're being tested.
" She says it plainly, not fishing for anything, just handing me the observation the way she'd hand me a tool she thinks I need. "I notice, even if you don't."
I don't have a ready answer for that, so I settle for wrapping my arm around her shoulders and drawing her in against me instead, and she leans into it without missing a beat, fitting there like the space was built to her exact size.
The bonfire cracks and throws sparks up into the dark, and somewhere behind us Gunny's arguing with Dot about whether the countdown clock counts as false advertising, and the air around us smells like woodsmoke and cider and cold, and for a few minutes I let myself just stand in it without running the numbers on what's coming in three days.
It doesn't last. It never does lately, not since I bought the ticket, not since I started keeping a mental list of everything I'll need to say once I'm standing in front of her, the list I've rewritten a dozen times because every version sounds wrong the second I say it out loud to an empty room.
Marisol deserves better than a version that sounds wrong.
She's waited six years for whatever version I finally bring her, and I owe her the one that's actually true, not the one that's easiest for me to get through.
"There you are." Maggie appears with a tray of something involving marshmallows, cutting straight through the thought before it can finish forming. "Gunny's telling Josie the fireworks story again. The sideways one. I give it ninety seconds before somebody official has to intervene."
"I already told Eli it's not confirmed."
"It's extremely confirmed. I was there. Dot's tent flap still has the scorch mark." Maggie grins, unrepentant, and holds out the tray. "Eat something. You've got the face of a man who forgot dinner exists."
"I had dinner."
"You had half a sandwich standing up at the brewery at four o'clock, which does not count, and Jenna already told me that, so don't bother arguing the point.
" She winks at Jenna, who doesn't even try to hide her laugh, and disappears back toward the fire with her tray, leaving the two of us alone again in the small pocket of quiet she'd interrupted.
"She's not wrong about the sandwich," Jenna says.
"She's rarely wrong about anything. It's genuinely unsettling."
Jenna drifts off toward the twins a few minutes later, called away by an argument over whose sparkler burned out first, and Gunny takes the opening the second she's out of earshot, sliding into the space she left with a mug of his own and an expression I recognize as trouble.
"You look like you're chewing on something you don't want to swallow," he says.
"I'm fine."
"You said that the same way six years ago, right before you signed the papers and didn't tell anyone until it was already done." He doesn't say it unkindly, just states it, flat and true and impossible to argue with. "Tell me it's not the fund."
"The fund's only part of it this time." I keep my eyes on the fire, on the twins arguing about sparkler physics twenty feet away, on anything that isn't Gunny's face reading mine like a manifest. "I'm flying out to see her. In person. Finally."
"About time." He says it quiet, no judgment in it, just relief worn smooth from years of waiting to hear it. "You tell Jenna?"
"Not the whole thing."
"You should."
"I know."
"Doesn't mean you're wrong to wait a few more days.
Just means you know it." He claps a hand on my shoulder, brief and heavy, the closest thing to reassurance Gunny generally allows himself, and heads back toward the bonfire without waiting for anything else, leaving me alone with the fire and the ticket in my pocket and eleven minutes left until the year turns over.
The crowd starts to thicken as the hour gets close, neighbors drifting in from the diner and the church hall and every side street feeding into the square, Dot's clock ticking down toward a midnight that isn't actually midnight yet, and somewhere in the shuffle Jenna's hand finds mine and stays there, easy and unhurried, like it's been doing it for years instead of months.
I hold on and try not to think about the version of tonight where I'm standing here with the whole truth already told instead of folded up small in my chest, waiting for a flight that hasn't happened yet.
"Thirty seconds," Josie shouts, materializing out of nowhere with Eli in tow, both of them vibrating with the specific energy only midnight and unsupervised sugar can produce.
Dot's already counting down through a bullhorn she absolutely should not have access to, the whole square picking up the count somewhere around fifteen, and Jenna turns to look at me with the firelight catching gold in her eyes, and for one clean second I stop thinking about Marisol entirely, stop thinking about the flight and the list and everything I still haven't said, and just look at her instead, memorizing this exact version of her face like it might matter more than anything I'm flying out to fix.
"Five," the square says, together, ragged and off-beat and entirely unbothered by it. "Four. Three. Two."
"One," Jenna says, quiet, just for me, and then the fireworks go up over the square in a rush of gold and white that lights the whole crowd from above, and I kiss her the way I've wanted to all night, slow and certain, one hand at the back of her neck and the other pulling her in against me like the noise and the light and the whole loud town around us have gone somewhere else entirely.
She kisses me back like she means it, like there's nowhere else she'd rather be standing at the exact center of a year turning over into another one, and for those few seconds none of the rest of it exists, not the ticket in my jacket pocket, not the six years I've spent avoiding this exact conversation, not the woman three states over who's been waiting longer than anyone should have to wait for the truth.
She still doesn't know where I'm flying in three days, or why it might change everything, or how long I've been carrying this weight.
She just knows I asked for a little more time, and she gave it to me without asking for anything back.
Standing here with fireworks falling gold and silver over the crowd, I let myself have this one more night before I find out whether that trust survives what I'm bringing home to her.