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"They don't know me. You don't know me."

"I know enough," he declares as if it's law. Then reiterates, "We have to tell them tomorrow, Lainey."

I chew the inside of my cheek, weighing it, and eventually the exhaustion in me outweighs the fear. "Okay. Tomorrow."

"Thank you." Relief moves visibly through his shoulders, and the battlefield from earlier in the day vanishes.

We're just two exhausted people trying to build something out of the wreckage of a year neither one of us planned.

We sit in silence for a minute, Charlie's soft breathing the only sound in the room, and then Jagger clears his throat carefully. "I need to tell you what actually happened. That morning."

I take a deep breath, biting my lip hard.

He continues, "I wrote the note on a receipt because I didn't have anything else on hand. I didn't want you waking up to an empty bed with no explanation. And you were sleeping so peacefully, I didn't want to be selfish and wake you up. So, I set it on the pillow next to you, and I left to deal with the fence, thinking I'd be back before you even stirred."

"I believe you," I say with no hesitation.

A bit of relief pops into his expression. "When I got back, you were gone. I searched the whole apartment for some sign of where you'd gone, some explanation, and I found the note halfway under the bed, crumpled up like somebody'd tossed it there."

"I might have kicked it under the bed," I admit, wincing.

"Why?"

"You weren't there, so I was a little upset. It was on the floor, then Carla told me she found out from Troy you had just gotten engaged, so I kicked it under the bed."

He groans. "I should have guessed it came from Troy. He's worse than an old lady."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know it wasn't true."

He swallows hard. "I've kept that receipt in my glove box ever since. Eleven months, Lainey. I used to pull it out and read it on bad days, wondering what it was about those three sentences that made you decide leaving without a word back was better than staying long enough to read them."

My throat closes up entirely. "I never read it. I swear!"

"I know that now."

"I saw it on the floor, and I thought it was trash. I was so hurt and so embarrassed, I just kicked it under the bed without even looking twice." Tears blur my vision, and I don't bother wiping them away. "I didn't leave without reading it on purpose, Jagger. I didn't even know there was anything to read."

"I know." He reaches over, careful not to disturb Charlie, and brushes his thumb once against the back of my hand. It's the same unhurried, deliberate gesture I remember from a dance floor. "I spent so long being angry about it. Angry that you saw it and didn't care enough to reply. Finding out you never actually read it doesn't make the year hurt any less, but it changes something. It means you weren't choosing to hurt me. You just thought I was an ass who left and didn't think twice about our night together."

My voice cracks. "Carla picked me up at the apartment. She said you were newly engaged and everybody in town knew. She even said your mama was already telling people at the feed store."

His jaw tightens. "Why did she change her number and just leave town without telling me? Did I do something to her? Hell, I didn't even know she was moving."

I hesitate, because the honest answer involves a version of Carla's heartbreak that isn't mine to hand over, not even to the man sitting across from me holding our daughter

"She wanted a fresh start. Houston, new number, new everything. It wasn't really about you."

"A fresh start?" Hurt flickers behind his eyes. "So much of one that she couldn't tell me, or Mason, that she was leaving?"

I don't answer right away, and my hesitation apparently says more than I mean it to, because understanding dawns slow and certain across his face. He huffs. "Ah. She wanted to forget Mason, didn't she?"

I sigh, and I don't confirm it out loud, but I don't look away from him either, and I think that's answer enough.

He lets it go, mercifully, glancing back down at Charlie instead of pushing further. The quiet settles between us again, easier this time.

"Tell me about your work," he says after a while, shifting the subject somewhere safer. "Roy talked about you like you walked on water. I want to hear it from you."

"It's not walking on water. It's tendons and range of motion and a lot of patience."