Dead.
My mother goes very, very still. Her face drains of color so quickly it’s almost frightening, as if someone pulled the plug on her. Her lips press together. Her spine straightens. Her eyes flick between us—once, twice—like she’s replaying the moment we walked in, recalculating everything she just saw.
Then she laughs again. Once. It’s sharp and disbelieving. “That’s not funny,” she says coldly.
I swallow hard. “We’re married,” I say.
The words land in the room like dropped glass. I barely recognize my own voice. It sounds distant, unreal, like it belongs to someone braver than I feel.
My mother stares at me. “What,” she says slowly, “did you just say?”
I can hear my own heartbeat, loud and erratic, as if my body is trying to run while my feet stay planted. “We’re married,” I repeat. “Rafe and I.” I shake my head faintly, like I can’t believe it either. “We have been. For a while.”
Rafe freezes beside me. I feel it more than I see it—the way his breath catches, the way his entire body goes taut, like he’s bracing for impact he didn’t know was coming yet.
My mother’s eyes slide to him, sharp and assessing, then back to me. “No,” she says flatly. “You’re not.”
“Yes,” I say. “We are.”
“That’s not possible,” she snaps. “You wouldn’t?—”
“I did,” I interrupt. “I chose him.”
The words are terrifying in their simplicity.
Her mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. Then she goes completely still.
No shouting. No sarcasm. No venom. She reaches into her purse with deliberate calm and pulls out her phone.
My stomach drops through the floor. “What are you doing?” I ask.
She doesn’t look at me as she taps the screen, her movements precise, controlled, lethal. “I’m calling your father,” she says evenly, “so he can get on the next flight out here and fix this.”
The wordfixmakes me feel physically ill.
“There’s nothing to fix,” I say, my voice hoarse now. “This isn’t a mistake.”
She lifts the phone to her ear. “Yes,” she says, ignoring me. “It’s me.”
Rafe is still beside me. He hasn’t moved toward the bedroom. He hasn’t left. He hasn’t let go. And I know—deep in my bones—that no matter what happens next, there’s no going back.
The truth is out, and the fallout is just beginning.
“You need to come to Los Angeles. Now.” She listens for a beat. “Yes. I’ll explain when you get here.” She ends the call.
My hands are shaking now. “You don’t get to do this,” I say. “You don’t get to summon him like I’m a problem to solve.”
“You are,” she replies coldly. “And you need to leave and let me speak to my son,” she says to Rafe.
He watches my mother with something like disbelief.
I turn to him instinctively. “You don’t have to?—”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says quietly.
That earns him a glare sharp enough to cut glass. She turns back to me. “This cannot go public.”
“I know,” I say. “It isn’t.”
