Page 52 of Mending Hearts
Sometimes his gaze finds mine, and sometimes it doesn’t. When it does, it’s like touching a live wire.
After dessert, people stand. The band is pulled into small clusters—donors, friends, familiar faces wanting a moment. Music shifts to something softer and upbeat. A few people begin dancing in the cleared space near the stage.
It should feel normal.
It doesn’t.
I’m halfway through a conversation with some guy Marco knows—something about youth sports funding, I think—when I catch movement near Rafe. A man slides into his space with the ease of someone who belongs there.
Elliot Hale.
Fuck. My stomach drops hard. Elliot is handsome in that polished, effortless way. Too-white teeth. Too confident. Too comfortable. He laughs and throws an arm around Rafe’s shoulders like it’s natural, like it’s habitual.
Rafe’s posture stiffens for half a beat—then he adjusts, accepting it with the practiced calm of a public-facing person who knows how to handle affection without making it a headline.
My skin goes cold. I hate how quickly jealousy floods me, hot and ugly and irrational. Because it isn’t mine to feel, not since I forfeited the right. But Elliot’s friendship with Rafe always made something restless in my chest. Not because they ever did anything wrong. Because Elliot has always looked at Rafe like… like he wanted him.
And the sick part is, I can’t even pretend it’s impossible.
The media has never linked Rafe to anyone. But the media doesn’t know everything. They didn’t know about us. They didn’t know I married him or how I spent eight years watching him from the dark like a starving man.
What if Rafe finally met someone? What if this—this arm around him, this easy closeness—is the reason Rafe filed for divorce?
A lump rises in my throat.
Elliot leans in and kisses Rafe’s cheek.
Once. Then the other.
It’s practiced. Familiar. A greeting, maybe.
Or something else.
I can’t think. I can’t breathe.
Marco’s voice cuts through the static beside me. “That guy’s… comfortable.”
Lindy, sharp and quick, leans in from my other side. “It’s probably nothing,” she says immediately, as if she can see the way I’m unraveling. “It’s Elliot. From what I’ve read, he’s super friendly with everyone.”
Do I believe her? I don’t know. All I know is my body is already moving.
Not toward the exit. Toward him. Toward Rafe.
I hear my sister call my name—“Ollie?”—but it’s distant, like she’s shouting from underwater.
My heartbeat is too loud. My palms are damp. My vision narrows until all I can see is Elliot’s arm and Rafe’s face and the space between them.
I close the distance in seconds.
Rafe notices me when I’m a few feet away. His eyes widen—confusion, alarm, something sharp flickering through. Like he doesn’t know what I’m doing, but he can feel the energy of it.
Eli’s voice cracks through the air somewhere behind Elliot. “Holy fucking shit.”
And then Elliot is suddenly tugged backward—unceremonious, abrupt—Miles’s hand on his elbow with the kind of force that saysnot now.
Elliot stumbles, laughing like he thinks it’s a joke, but Miles’s expression is not joking.
The circle opens. And it’s just me and Rafe.
