37. Jenna
JENNA
Eli announces Career Day at breakfast like it's already decided, syrup dripping off his fork, Josie nodding along beside him with the particular certainty of a kid who's already picked out what she's wearing.
"Ms. Palmer said we get to bring somebody who has an actual job. Not like, pretend. A real one." He points his fork at me for emphasis. "Rafe makes beer for a living. That's the best job anybody's ever had."
"It's a good job," I agree, already feeling the ground shift under the conversation before it fully arrives. "I don't think Rafe can make it this time, bug."
"Why not? He's not doing anything. He works right there."
"He's just really busy right now. The brewery's got a lot going on." The lie slides out so easily it scares me a little, built entirely out of true things, and I hate how naturally it lands, hate that I've gotten good enough at this that neither twin questions it.
Josie studies me a second too long, the same look she gets when she's decided the math doesn't add up but hasn't found the exact place it breaks. "He always has time for us."
"I know. This is different." I busy myself with the pan so I don't have to hold that look a second longer than I have to. "Eat your breakfast. You'll be late."
She lets it go, mostly, and I carry the rest of the morning around telling myself that's the same thing as believing me.
This is the fourth ask in the better part of five weeks.
First it was the town fundraiser, where I told him a crowded parking lot full of parents with phones felt like exactly the kind of photograph Priya warned us about.
Then it was the two of us skipping the diner on a night half the town eats there, because apparently a booth by the window reads differently to a judge than it does to anyone actually sitting in it.
Then it was picking the twins up myself from a birthday party three streets from the brewery, close enough that Rafe offered before I could even ask.
I said no before I could stop myself, quick and flat, and watched something in his face go still and careful in a way I recognized and didn't want to.
Now it's Career Day, and I haven't even asked yet, and I already know exactly how it's going to land.
I call him at lunch instead of waiting, because waiting only makes it worse.
"Hey." His voice does the thing it's been doing lately, warm on the surface and guarded underneath, like a door that still opens but doesn't swing all the way. "Everything okay?"
"We're okay. I need to ask you something, and I already know how it's going to sound."
"Go ahead."
"Eli wants you at Career Day. Every parent in that gym with a phone, every teacher who could end up testifying about what they saw, watching you walk in like you already belong there." I say it fast, all in one breath, like speed might make it hurt less. "I think you should sit this one out."
The pause on his end goes on a beat longer than it should.
"Copy that."
"Rafe."
"What do you want me to say, Jenna? You're right.
I know you're right. I've agreed with you every single time you've been right for three weeks running.
" Something in his voice has gone flat in a way I've only heard once or twice, the sound of a man holding a line by sheer force of will.
"It doesn't sit any easier just because I agree with it. "
"I don't like saying it either."
"I know." A breath, and when he speaks again some of the edge has gone out of it, replaced by something more tired than angry. "I've got to get back to the floor. I'll talk to you tonight."
He hangs up before I can find anything else to say that wouldn't just be another version of sorry, and I sit at my desk with the dial tone still ringing faintly in my ear, wondering how something so careful and so necessary keeps feeling like a door shutting a little further every time.
I call Maggie on my way to pick up dinner, mostly because I need to hear a voice that isn't asking me for anything.
"You sound wrung out," she says, no hello, straight to it, the particular skill of a woman who's poured coffee for half this town's secrets.
"I'm fine."
"You're the second worst liar I know, and Dot's home sick, so congratulations on the promotion." Something clatters on her end, a register drawer maybe. "Talk to me."
"I keep asking Rafe to disappear a little more every week, and I don't know how to make it feel like anything other than what it actually looks like."
"Does he understand why you're doing it?"
"He says he does. Saying it and actually feeling fine about it are two different things, though. I think we both know that."
"Give him room to be human about it. Understanding a thing and living inside it comfortably are two different animals." Maggie's voice softens, the noise behind her dropping away for a second. "You're both carrying something heavy right now. Doesn't mean you're carrying it the same way."
I hang up without feeling any lighter, which tells me everything I already suspected.
I don't see him again until after the brewery closes, twins fed and down at Maggie's for a sleepover Josie negotiated weeks ago, and I tell myself I'm driving over because I miss him, which is true, and not because some anxious, unsettled part of me needs to see his face and confirm we're still okay, which is also true.
The taproom's dark except for the light over the tanks, and I find him in the brewhouse doing inventory he clearly doesn't need to be doing at this hour, clipboard in hand, moving down a row of kegs with the kind of focus that isn't really about the kegs at all.
"Hey." I lean in the doorway, arms crossed against the chill that followed me in. "Thought I'd surprise you."
"Consider me surprised." He doesn't look up right away, finishes the count he's on, and when he finally does turn there's something guarded in his face that wasn't there three weeks ago, something careful in exactly the way I've been asking him to be careful.
"You didn't have to drive all the way out here. "
"I wanted to see you."
"Sure." He sets the clipboard down, and the single word lands harder than it should, and flatter, like he's decided not to spend the energy questioning whether that's true. "How was the rest of your day?"
"Rafe."
"What?"
"You've been like this for weeks. Polite.
Careful. Like you're talking to somebody you're not sure you're allowed to touch anymore.
" My voice wobbles right at the end, and I hate it, hate that this is happening in a cold brewhouse at nine at night instead of somewhere either of us chose.
"I need you to talk to me instead of just agreeing with everything I ask for and then going quiet. "
"You want to know what I'm actually thinking?"
"Yes."
"Fine." He crosses his arms, and three weeks of careful finally cracks right in front of me.
"I think you've spent a month making sure nobody in this town sees us together.
I think every time I offer to help with something normal, something any other man in my position would just do, you find a reason it's not safe.
And I think some part of you has started treating me like something dangerous, something that has to be managed and contained and kept away from the parts of your life that actually matter, and I honestly can't tell anymore whether that's Priya's advice talking or just the version of this you've decided is easier to believe. "
The words land like a slap, quick and stinging, and for a second I can't get anything out past the shock of it.
"That's not fair."
"Isn't it?"
"I am fighting for us. Every single ask, every single no, I'm doing it so a judge doesn't have a single reason to take those kids away from the life we're actually building.
That's not me hiding you. That's me protecting you, protecting all of us, and I don't have the luxury of getting to feel good about how it looks while I'm doing it.
" My voice is climbing now, and I can't seem to stop it.
"You want to know what I think? I think you've decided this is about you being some kind of liability, and instead of talking to me about it, you've spent three weeks quietly proving yourself right. "
"That's not what this is."
"Isn't it?"
He flinches at hearing his own words handed back to him, and something in his face goes rigid, jaw tight, and for one cold second I see a flicker of something that isn't him, something that lives in the back of my own chest whenever a man's voice climbs in a room I can't leave.
I know almost immediately it isn't that.
Rafe isn't Derek. He's not trying to shrink me down or win anything by going quiet, and every part of him right now is aimed at protecting the same three people I am.
But the old fear doesn't care about the difference in the moment it wakes up, and I hate that some reflex in me flinches anyway, hate that nine years with the wrong man taught my body habits I still haven't unlearned.
He sees it. Of course he sees it, he sees everything, and something in him breaks open different than the anger, worse than the anger.
"Jenna."
"I'm fine."
"You just looked at me like I was about to hurt you."
"I said I'm fine." I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, furious at myself, at him, at the whole exhausting shape of this week.
"I'm exhausted and I'm terrified and in three days a stranger in a robe decides whether Derek gets more time with my kids, and I don't have anything left tonight to manage your feelings on top of my own. "
"I'm not asking you to manage my feelings."
"Then what are you asking me for?"
"I don't know." He scrubs both hands over his face, and for the first time all night he sounds less angry than lost, a man standing in the wreckage of something he didn't mean to break.
"Maybe just to be told I'm not something you're ashamed of.
Maybe that's not fair to put on you right now. I don't know anymore."
"I have never once been ashamed of you."
"Could've fooled me."
That one lands somewhere low and mean, and I don't have anything left to answer it with that isn't just more of the same fight dressed up different, so I don't try.
We stand there in the cold brewhouse with six feet of concrete between us that feels like six miles, both of us breathing hard, both of us too raw to reach for the thing that would actually fix this.
"I should go," he says finally, quiet now, all the heat burned out of it.
"Rafe."
"I need some air, Jenna. I need to not say anything else I can't take back tonight." He grabs his jacket off the hook, and at the door he stops, doesn't turn around. "I'll see you before the hearing."
Then he's gone, boots on the gravel, the truck door, the engine, taillights swinging out onto the dark road, and I stand alone in a brewhouse that still smells like him, too tired and too scared to go after him.
Three days is what's left before the hearing.
I drive home on autopilot, hands doing their job on the wheel while the rest of me falls apart in slow motion, and I don't cry until I'm parked in my own driveway with the engine off, porch light burning for kids who aren't even home tonight, sitting alone with a fight neither of us has the strength left to fix and a hearing that isn't going to wait for either of us to be ready.