Page 131 of Mending Hearts
Eric lifts his brows at me. “Did they say anything else beyond the statement?” he asks. “Private messages? Calls? Any attempt to contact you?”
“No,” I say, and the word comes out sharp. “They haven’t spoken to me in years. I don’t even know if theyhavemy number.”
“That’s important,” Eric murmurs. “It reinforces the point that this wasn’t concern. It was control.”
I glance at Rafe, expecting him to be angrier, but what I see in his face is… something worse than anger. A kind of contained violence, like he’s holding himself still by sheer force because if he moves too quickly, he might break something.
“Rafe?” I ask quietly.
He blinks, focusing back in. “Yeah.”
Rachael watches him. “You okay?”
He exhales through his nose. “I’m fine.”
Rachael doesn’t call him on the lie. She just nods like she’s banking it for later.
Miles calls from the kitchen, “Pasta or rice? I’m making executive decisions in a house that isn’t mine.”
Eric turns his head, startled, like he forgot there was dinner happening.
Rafe’s mouth twitches. “Pasta.”
“Pasta,” I echo, grateful for the normalcy.
Miles points a wooden spoon at me without looking. “You don’t get a vote. You’re in crisis mode. Crisis mode eats carbs.”
Rachael gives a small, surprised laugh.
Eric’s expression flickers in a way that makes me think he’s trying not to smile too broadly. Like he’s recalibrating his assessment of Miles as more than “helpful bandmate.”
Okay. Noted.
Rachael taps her finger lightly on the table. “All right. Here’s the bigger question,” she says, shifting gears. “What are we doing about your relationship publicly?”
Rafe’s hand tightens around mine, and I hold my breath. Because this is the part that feels like standing at the edge of a cliff.
Eric’s gaze stays on me, steady. “The marriage is public now,” he says. “At least as a fact. The timeline is the part that’s making the media feral.”
Rachael nods. “They’re already building a story: secret marriage, hidden relationship, betrayal of fans, betrayal of team culture, deception. If we don’t respond at all, that story calcifies.”
Rafe leans back slightly, eyes narrowing. “You want us to correct the details.”
“I want you to control what you can,” Rachael says. “You don’t need to overexplain. You don’t need to justify why privacy mattered. But you do need to draw a clean line between what’s public and what’s none of anyone’s business.”
Eric folds his hands. “We can release a joint statement that confirms you’re married and asks for privacy. We can say you separated for a period of time and have reconnected recently, without giving dates. We can say you won’t be doing interviews.”
My stomach twists. “If we say we separated, won’t they… dig? Ask why? Ask who did what?”
“They’ll ask anyway,” Rachael says. “But acknowledging a separation can actually blunt the sensationalism. Otherwise, they’ll frame it as an ongoing lie for all these years. A separation introduces nuance. It’s a pressure valve.”
Rafe’s gaze snaps to her. “And it also implies there was a reason.”
Rachael holds his stare. “Therewasa reason, Rafe.”
He goes still, and my heart stutters.
Rachael’s voice remains calm, not cruel. “If you want the story to be ‘they protected their private life,’ then we need to show it was complicated, not deceitful. Privacy isn’t a crime.”
