29. Jenna
JENNA
Rafe shows up after the twins are already down, later than usual, his bag packed and sitting by the door of his truck where I can see it through the window every time I glance outside, like it might disappear if I stop checking.
Neither of us mentions it. He walks in smelling like cold air and the brewery, kisses me hello like it's any other night, and helps me finish the dishes, tomorrow sitting between us the whole time and neither of us naming it once.
"Eli fell asleep mid-sentence again," I tell him, drying a mug and setting it in the cabinet. "Something about aggressive steering strategies. I don't think he even finished the thought."
"He'll pick it back up in the morning. He always does."
"Josie made you a card. It's on the counter. Don't open it until you're actually gone. She made me promise to make you promise."
He picks it up, turns it over once without opening it, and sets it carefully back down exactly where it was, like even that small act of respecting her instructions matters to him more than I'd expect. "I won't."
"I'm not going to push for the rest of it tonight," I say, because I can feel the question sitting in my own chest, the one I've been swallowing for days now, and I want him to know that much at least. "I just want you to know that."
"I know." He sets the last plate in the rack and dries his hands on the towel hanging from the oven door, slow, like he's giving himself a second to find the next thing to say. "It's not that I don't trust you with it."
"I didn't think it was."
"It's that not all of it is mine to tell yet.
There's someone else who gets to hear it first." He says it carefully, watching my face for whatever reaction might cross it, and I keep my expression as steady as I can manage, because whatever that means, I don't want him thinking he has to manage my feelings about it on top of everything else he's carrying.
"I promise you'll have the whole thing when I'm back. "
"I believe you." And I do, mostly, the kind of trust I've built slowly for people who've never given me a reason to doubt them. The part of me that still flinches at unexplained absences stays quiet tonight, because Rafe has earned more patience than my old fears want to give him.
He doesn't say anything else about it, and neither do I, and the silence that settles over the kitchen isn't the bad kind, the kind Derek used to manufacture and leave me stranded inside of.
This is just two people standing in a quiet room together, both of us carrying something we're not ready to set down yet, and somehow that feels like enough for tonight.
"Come here," he says, and I do, crossing the few feet of kitchen floor between us and stepping into arms that close around me like they've been waiting all evening for permission.
He holds on longer than a normal hello-goodbye hug would call for, his chin resting on top of my head, and I feel something in him that isn't quite steady tonight, a current running just under his skin that wasn't there yesterday.
"You're wound tight," I say against his chest.
"A little."
"Want to talk about it?"
"Not with words." His voice has gone rough and low, and he draws back just far enough to catch my eyes, something raw sitting there tonight that goes deeper than tomorrow's flight. "I want tonight to be about you. About us. I don't want to think about anything else for a few hours."
"Okay," I tell him, and I mean it completely, because I want that too, want to give him one uncomplicated thing before whatever's out there takes the rest of him for a while.
He kisses me then, slow at first and then not slow at all, like whatever leash he's been straining against all evening finally snaps.
I feel the difference immediately, the usual patience replaced by a hunger that's rawer, more urgent, his hands finding my waist and pulling me flush against him like the space between us has become unbearable.
I kiss him back just as hard, matching that same urgency because I feel it too, some instinct telling me to hold on tighter tonight than I ever have before, even though I can't fully explain why.
We make it to the bedroom without either of us quite remembering the walk there, clothes falling away between kisses that don't stop long enough for either of us to catch a full breath.
He backs me toward the bed slow, in no hurry now that we're finally alone, and every step forward comes with another kiss, jaw, throat, the line of my neck, like he's decided to take the scenic route through every stretch of skin he can reach before we even get horizontal.
By the time the backs of my knees hit the mattress I'm breathless, and it isn't the short walk from the kitchen that did it.
"Rafe." It comes out half laugh, half plea, and he goes still, something wicked and warm both at once flickering across his face.
"Something funny?"
"You're stalling."
"I'm savoring." He says it low, dead serious, and lowers me back onto the bed with a care that undoes me more than urgency would, following me down until his weight settles over me and every last bit of space between us disappears. "There's a difference."
I never manage the comeback, because he kisses me again before I can find one, and whatever I had to say dissolves somewhere between one kiss and the next.
His hands move over me slow in some places and almost desperate in others, and every time his mouth finds new skin I feel that same restless need in it.
I arch into him, chasing more of whatever this is, and he laughs low against my throat, a rough, private sound I feel more than hear.
"Patience," he murmurs.
"You first."
That gets an actual laugh out of him, short and surprised, and just for a moment the tension in his shoulders eases into the easier warmth of the man I know in daylight, before it tips right back into the same hunger from a minute ago, deeper this time, like the laugh only cleared the way for more of it.
"Rafe." It's barely a whisper, more air than word, and his head comes up to search my face, something stripped bare in his expression that I've only glimpsed in pieces before tonight.
"I need you," he says, low and rough. "Don't know how else to put it."
"Then stop trying to put it into words."
He makes a sound against my throat that isn't quite words either, something caught between wanting and grief, and I know exactly what it means without him having to spell it out, because the same feeling is climbing up through my own chest. Whatever's pulling him three states away, whatever's costing him this much to carry by himself, I can't fix it tonight.
But I can give him this much, everything I've got, for as long as he needs to hold onto it before he goes.
When he finally settles fully into me, none of it moves the way our first nights together did, careful and unhurried and full of question.
Tonight there's a hunger underneath it instead, close to desperate, both of us grabbing for each other like proximity is the only thing that might actually help.
I hook my legs around him, pulling him closer still, and he groans my name into my collarbone, rough and low, like it's the one steady thing left in his hands.
The pace we settle into catches fast and never really slows, both of us reaching for something too big to put a name to, every ragged breath he lets out against my skin winding the same tightness higher in my chest.
"Don't look away," he murmurs, forehead pressed to mine, and I don't know if he's talking about tonight or something bigger than tonight, so I just answer the only way that means anything, keeping my eyes locked on his through all of it, even when everything in me wants to shut them against how much it's asking of me.
"Not going anywhere," I tell him. "Not tonight. Not ever, if I get any say in it."
His hands tighten at my hips like the words landed somewhere he wasn't braced for, and whatever restraint he'd been holding onto slips looser after that, faster, less measured, both of us racing toward release with none of the caution that opened the night.
My name breaks out of him again, rougher this time, and I hold on through it, matching him for every second of it, until there's nothing careful left in either of us at all.
We come apart together within a breath of each other, his voice breaking around my name the same instant mine breaks around his, both of us shaking through what's left of it, and once it finally quiets he doesn't loosen his hold, doesn't shift away, just pulls me in tighter against his chest like letting go might cost him more than he's ready to give up tonight.
Afterward we lie tangled together in the dark for a long while, in no hurry to move, his arms banded around me tighter than usual, one hand moving slow and unhurried over my hip like he's cataloguing every curve of me by touch instead of sight.
I press my palm flat against the old scar riding his ribs, a habit my hand's picked up on its own by now, and he covers it with his own and holds it there against his heartbeat, like the proof of it matters to him every bit as much as it matters to me.
We don't say much for a while, just breathing each other in, his pulse easing bit by bit beneath my palm until it settles into something steady and familiar.
"Whatever happens out there," he says quietly, into the dark, "just know tonight was real. All of it."
"I know it was." I press my lips to his shoulder, tasting salt and warmth. "You don't have to say goodbye like this is the last time, Rafe. You're coming back."
"I am." He tightens his arms around me anyway, like some part of him needs the reassurance more than the words do. "Doesn't mean part of me isn't scared."
I don't ask what he's scared of. I just hold on, matching my breathing to his until both of us finally go quiet, and somewhere in that quiet, wrapped up in him with the ache of tomorrow already sitting in my chest, I fall asleep before I mean to.
Morning comes too fast and too gray, and by the time I get the twins up and dressed, Rafe's already loaded his bag into the truck and is standing in the driveway in the thin early light, looking like a man bracing for something bigger than a flight.
"You'll call when you land?" Eli asks, uncharacteristically quiet, standing close enough to Rafe that their shoulders almost touch.
"First thing. I promise."
"And you'll be back before the weekend?"
"You'll have me back before you've even started missing me." Rafe crouches down to Eli's height, steady despite whatever's clearly sitting behind his eyes this morning. "You're in charge of the second first aid kit while I'm gone. Big responsibility."
"I can handle it." Eli says it with such total seriousness that Rafe's mouth twitches toward something almost like a smile, and for a second the tightness around his eyes eases.
Josie doesn't say anything at all, just wraps her arms around his middle and holds on, face pressed into his jacket, and Rafe goes still for a long moment before he crouches down to her level too, one hand smoothing over her hair.
"Hey. I'll be back before you know it," he tells her, quiet, just for her. "You take care of your brother and your mom for me."
"Promise you won't forget us," she says, muffled against him.
"I couldn't forget you if I tried. Not even a little."
She nods against his shoulder, still not quite letting go, and it takes her a long moment to finally step back, wiping at her face with her sleeve like she's embarrassed by how much this is costing her after only four months of knowing him.
Rafe straightens and looks at me over their heads, and whatever's in his eyes right now is too big for a driveway goodbye with two kids watching, so neither of us tries to say it out loud.
He kisses my forehead instead, lingering there longer than the moment strictly needs, like he's saving whatever he actually wants to say for somewhere more private than his own front yard.
"Call me when you land," I tell him, echoing Eli, because it's easier than anything else I might say right now.
"I will." He climbs into the truck, and for a second before he pulls the door shut he just looks at all three of us standing there in the cold morning light, like he's trying to hold onto the picture of it. "I love you. All of you. I'll see you soon."
The words catch me completely off guard, settling somewhere soft and unprotected under my ribs, the first time he's ever said them out loud, and I don't get the chance to say them back before the door's shut and the engine's turning over, and I stand there stunned for half a second too long, the moment already slipping past me the way important moments sometimes do.
The truck pulls out of the driveway slow, tires crunching over the frozen gravel, and I watch his taillights all the way down Larkspur Lane until they disappear around the bend toward the highway, the twins pressed against my sides, silent in a way they're almost never silent.
"He's really coming back, right?" Eli asks, small, watching the empty road.
"He is. I promise you that."
I stand there a while after the sound of the engine fades, the cold seeping into me a little deeper with every minute, an ache settling in my chest I can't fully name.
It isn't fear exactly, and it isn't sadness, just some weight sitting where his goodbye used to be.
I don't know yet that the thing I'm dreading might be exactly what sets us both free.