“But—”
“You living your dream was the most positive thing in her life at that time.” He smiled a lopsided smile. “Mine, too, if I’m being honest. I’m not saying it was right, Jay. I’m not justifying her choice. Or my choice. I’m explaining it. Okay?”
I nodded again.
“Okay. So. By the time she got to the island, she’d quit her job on her new doctor’s advice. She was penniless, avoiding your parents like the plague, and sick as a dog. I was worried about her. I told her I’d help her. And she suggested—” He licked his lips, and I waited with bated breath.
Was he gonna say “sex”? He was totally gonna say sex. I locked down all my muscles…
“—that we get married so she could be on my health insurance. A marriage of convenience, she called it.”
“Does that mean you and she…? Did you…?” I cleared my throat, trying to find a euphemistic way to ask a question I was 90 percent sure I didn’t want the answer to. In the end, I gave up and blurted, “What’s a marriage of convenience?”
Rafe shrugged. “I have no idea why they call it that, ’cause it was anything but convenient. It just means we got married at a justice of the peace, and she moved her stuff into the spare room at my house—which is to say, my dad’s house, where Beale lived and Gage lived, too, part of the time—and we just… existed?”
He frowned. “I mean… it was nice. She watchedWheel of Fortunewith my dad every night, which you might recall is the most popular show on the Key. I couldn’t do it—drives me batshit when he yells at the contestants like they can hear him—but she found it funny. Oh, and she took turns cooking meals, like the rest of us. Sometimes I’d take her to her appointments. We tried to spend a lot of time hanging out in the same room, especially at first, to keep up appearances, and we talked about you a lot. Where you were on your tour, what you might be doing… why you were probably too busy to call.”
I squeezed my eyes shut against the guilt.
“Remember when I told you I thought Aimee was happy until she left? I mean, she never told me she wasn’t, so I figured she was. But also… she was probably pretty lonely. She was like a very sweet, unassuming roommate.”
“So…” I blinked more. “So you’re saying younever… You and she didn’t…”
“Didn’t…?Oh! Oh, no.Nooooo. Nope. Never,” he confirmed. “We never consummated the marriage. We never did more than peck each other on the cheek, even at the wedding. I was never tempted to.”
“But you thought she was pretty. You told me! With her green eyes and her hair, and—”
“I meantyou, Jay.” He shook his head. “I always meantyou.”
“Oh myGod,” I groaned, cradling my head in my hands as relief rushed through me, followed quickly by anger. “This is even worse than I thought!”
Rafe pulled my hands away from my face. “Worse? How? I thought you’d be glad, sort of. I mean, to know Aimee and I never…”
“Because I’ve beentorturingmyself thinking of the two of you!” I exploded. “Can you even imagine what it was like for me, thinking you and Aimee were…?God. Even if you were gonna do something as stupid and shortsighted as getting married for health insurance, why wouldn’t you let me in on the secret?”
Rafe huffed out a breath. “I already told you part of the reason. Aimee didn’t want you to know. She didn’t want you to cancel your tour to come sit and stare at her—”
“I wouldn’t!”
He lifted one eyebrow.
“Fine, I might have. But it would have been my choice!”
“But she would’ve felt guilty over it.”
“And nowIfeel guilty that I didn’t know!” I very badly wanted to scream. “What was the other part of the reason? Go on. Tell me everything.”
Rafe rubbed his palms along his hairy thighs. “The other reason is… I wanted to take care of this for you.Me.” He shrugged sheepishly. “I felt like we were drifting apart. You were going on that first tour, and you weren’t gonna have time to come back to the Key that summer, not really—which made sense because the place was so run-down, and you were meant for bigger things—but I… I panicked, I guess. I was jealous of your new life and your new friends. I figured you’d find some woman and fall in love eventually, even though she’d never love you as much as I did. Marrying Aimee meant I’d get to keep you in my life. Which, ah…” He cleared his throat. “Worked well. Clearly.”
“I want to hit you again,” I bit out. “You wanna talk about jealousy? This whole thing isgross. You lied and lied…”
“I know.” Rafe grabbed my face in both his hands, cradling my jaw. ”I’m truly sorry I hurt you, Jay,” he said softly. “That was the very last thing I wanted. But I didn’t think itcouldhurt you. I never dreamed there could be a you and me. You were straight, right?” He smiled wryly. “And also… I dunno. I guess I can’t be sorry for everything, even if I should be. Because if you’d known about Aimee, you wouldn’t have realized your dream. There’d be noConstellationsout in the world. And like Chet said, you always would have wondered.”
Ugh. Part of me—the part that wanted to protect myself from getting hurt again—was fighting to stay angry, but Rafe’s voice rang with sincerity and affection that made anger really fucking slippery.
He’d been utterly, completely wrong, but his intentions had been good, and thatmattered, especially considering how my own jealousy and insecurity had made me push him away.
It was at least as much my fault as his… and I kinda felt like we’d both been punished enough for being idiots.
