Page 76 of Her Ex-Husband's Brother

Jake glances back and finds her watching him over the top of the blanket, water bottle held in both hands.

Good.

Let her see him like this. Protective and reasonable. A man trying to hold a line while the world goes soft around him.

He’s midway into round two of the rental-neighbor thing when a gust carries his mother’s voice across the yard, pitched two octaves above the party the way it always gets once she has an audience.

“—and he just cried like a baby for a week, bless his heart, couldn’t hardly get himself out of bed for work?—”

One of the church women makes a soft, sympathetic sound. Brianna’s hand comes up to cover her mouth.

Jake turns before he means to.

His mother stands by the drink table with Brianna, two women he half-recognizes from church, and Emily tucked close under the blanket he gave her. All of them looking at his mother Kathy.

All of them picturing him in bed. Crying. Heat crawls up Jake’s neck before his brain even catches up to why.

He did not cry for a week.

Two days, maybe. And only at night. Just ’cause the house was too quiet in a way it had never been quiet before.

And here his mother is out telling his personal business to a circle of women holding paper plates of coleslaw?

It barely registers to him that it’s sympathy and not mockery, and frankly, when it does, it’s worse.

Sympathy means they have all quietly agreed he is the kind of man who can be pitied, and once a woman decides you are pitiable, she stops being able to see you as anything else. Husband. Provider. Man anyone would be lucky to land, much less fuck.

Reduced to poor Jake.

Poor Jake whose wife ran off to his brother.

Poor Jake who cried like a baby.

His smile stays up out of pure muscle memory.

He crosses the yard fast but not too fast. Never too fast. Fast is emotional and sloppy, and Jake is never, ever those things.

“Excuse us a second,” he says brightly when he reaches the circle.

His mother’s mouth is still open for the next sentence.

Jake takes her wrist. Not hard enough for anyone to notice. Just his fingers closing over the soft place above the bone, thumb finding the tendon with the accuracy of long practice.

Kathy’s mouth snaps shut and Jake kisses his mother’s cheek.

“A second, Mama,” he says warmly, and gives the women a look that saysmothers, what can you do, while his hand tightens just enough to get Kathy moving.

The women relax.

Of course they do.

He guides his mother toward the house with his hand at her back, smiling all the way. The kitchen door swings shut behind them, cutting the party down to a murmur.

“You’re hurting me, Jakey,” his mother whines.

“Then lower your voice.”

His mother’s eyes flash. “How dare you talk to your mama that way?”