#tim riggins

The paper was thin and county-issue, the kind that goes soft where you fold it, but it felt heavier than the table under my hand. His handwriting still slid downhill like it always had, that cocky slant that used to feel like a secret between us and now just looked careless.

I’m out next week. No placement cleared. They have Wade’s address. I know I don’t deserve it. I’m coming. I want to make it right.

The lamplight made a small circle on the rug. The fridge hummed. Somewhere down the hall, one of the girls turned over and the bedsprings answered. It was an ordinary house on an ordinary night, and that felt obscene.

“You’re doing the lip thing,” Wade said from the kitchen—water off, cabinet shut, his voice warm and cautious. He came to the doorway and stopped there, towel still in his hands. He always stops at the threshold when I’m like this, waits for me to decide.

“You gave them our address,” I said. It came out flat. I didn’t know what I wanted it to sound like—shock? Betrayal? It was just heavy.

“They called,” he said. “I had about thirty seconds.”

“And you used them to hand him our front door.”

“It’s my front door too.” He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t soften it either. “And he didn’t have anywhere else.”

The towel made a quiet thud on the counter. He took a few slow steps toward me, then another, keeping his hands in plain sight like he knew I might read everything into a gesture right now. “It’s supposed to be temporary.”

I laughed without humor. “He’s going to sleep under our roof, Wade. Your brother. My ex-husband. He’s going to be in our kitchen, in our bathroom, he’s going to see our life. The one we built without him. The one he made impossible.”

“I know.” He didn’t try to pat it away. He didn’t tell me to be reasonable. “I know exactly what that means.”

“Do you?” I looked up at him. His eyes had that tired steadiness I used to hate—like calm was a trick he was good at. “Because you sound like you’re explaining a guest room, and I feel like I’m about to throw up.”

He slid his thumbs into his front pockets, a little tell he has when he’s holding more than he’s saying. “I’m not explaining anything. I’m telling you what I did. I said yes to parole because the alternative was pretending I didn’t hear the phone ring. He’s my brother.”

“And I’m your wife,” I said, sharper than I meant to. “And he’s my ex-husband. There’s no clean way to stack those.”

“No,” he said, and his mouth twitched like he’d tried to smile and thought better of it. “There isn’t.”

Silence thinned the air between us. The clock kept steady time. Past the porch, frog song rose and fell like a bad joke.

“I hate that you did this without asking me,” I said. It wasn’t the only truth, but it was the one burning a hole through the others.

“I should have asked you,” he said, immediately. He didn’t defend himself. “I’m sorry I didn’t. I panicked.”

“About him,” I said, because I wanted it to sting.

“About all of it,” he said, and something unguarded slipped into his tone. He looked down the hall out of habit—checking for little feet—and then back at me. “About you walking into this with no control. About him walking out to nothing while I stood here and pretended I couldn’t do anything. About the fact that there wasn’t a right call.”

I pressed my thumb into the fold of the letter until the paper gave. Twelve years since I left him in that visiting room. Twelve years since I ran because staying would’ve ground me down to grit. Fifteen years and I was still this raw, this stupidly loyal to a version of him that didn’t exist anymore.

“He’s going to look at me like I owe him,” I said. “Like we pressed pause and he gets to hit play. And I don’t know what I’ll do if I see that face and my body remembers before my brain does.”

Wade took one more step and stopped, close enough that I could see the nick on his knuckle from a stubborn bolt and the white crescent scar at his hairline from the bike wreck when he was fourteen. I’ve known that scar most of my life. “If that happens, you look at me,” he said. “And I’ll remind you who you are.”

The words should have felt good. They hurt, because they were true.

“You say that like it’s easy,” I whispered.

“It isn’t.” He swallowed. “I don’t know how I’m going to feel when I see him either. I haven’t seen him outside of counted minutes and metal chairs in a long time.” He rubbed his thumb against his palm, a nervous habit he pretends nobody notices. “I hate what he did. I hate what it did to you. I hate that my first instinct is still to make sure he doesn’t drown.”

“You don’t have to pretend you don’t love him,” I said. It came out tired, not accusing. “Just don’t pretend it doesn’t touch me.”

He flinched, then nodded. “It touches everything,” he said quietly. “That’s why this is hard.”

I tipped my head back and looked at the ceiling because it was easier than looking at him and thinking about the kid he used to be—skinny with road rash on his knees, trailing after the older brother everyone watched—the man he is now—the one who fixes leaky sinks and remembers the teacher conference without being asked and buys the right cereal without texting a photo of the aisle. The one I married after swearing I’d never be any kind of Teller again.

“You’re sure this doesn’t change us?” I asked, and I hated how small I sounded.

“It changes the calendar and the shoes by the door,” he said. “It doesn’t change us unless we let it.”

“That sounds like a slogan,” I said, because I needed him to know I heard the difference between a promise and a wish.

He gave a small, pained huff. “It’s me trying to say the hard thing without dressing it up. I chose you. I choose you every morning. That doesn’t switch off because he needs a place to sleep. If I thought it would, I wouldn’t have said yes.”

“You already did say yes,” I said, and the old ache in me snapped at the words. “That’s the part that keeps catching.”

“I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry you’re carrying it because I didn’t pick up the phone first. That’s on me.”

I looked at the letter again. My thumb had left a faint smudge in the fold. The ink had bled a little where he must have paused too long on a word. I knew which word. I could hear the way he said it in my head, soft like a trick. Sorry.

“I don’t want you to hate yourself for not leaving him out there,” I said finally. “I want you to be honest about what it costs you to bring him in here.”

“It costs me sleep,” he said. “And pride. And the illusion that I can keep every part of my life in separate rooms with the doors shut. It costs me watching you brace.” He exhaled, rough. “It doesn’t cost me you. That’s not for sale.”

Something in me loosened and stung. I didn’t move. He didn’t reach. We stood in it—the mess that wasn’t going to get cleaner by being named, but still somehow felt less like it was going to swallow us whole.

“I’m not sorry about us,” I said. “I’m not sorry about Cam. I’m not sorry about the world we made in the middle of the wreckage. I am sorry it hurts you to carry both your brother and me in the same body.”

His eyes went shiny in the way only I ever see. He took the last half-step and touched the back of my neck with two fingers, the way he does when the room tilts. “I can be hurt and certain at the same time,” he said. “You don’t have to make it neat.”

I leaned forward until my forehead found his chest. He smelled like detergent and the cinnamon gum he keeps in the glove box and a day that had been too long. His heart thudded steady under my cheek.

“What do we tell the girls?” I asked into his shirt, voice small. “Not the details—just…anything.”

“We tell them the truth they can hold,” he said. “That someone from our past needs a place to stay for a bit. That we’re the adults and we’ve got it.”

I nodded against him. That felt like something I could do.

“We’ll take it day by day,” he said. No plan, no schedule, just the simplest path forward. “If it’s too much, we adjust. If you need space, you take it. If I get weird, you tell me.”

“You will get weird,” I said, and a rickety smile pulled at my mouth.

“I already am,” he said, and his laugh was a tired exhale that still managed to be warm...

We didn’t straighten a pillow. We didn’t put out a glass of water. We left the room as it was—the fox on the rug, the lamp throwing that small circle, the letter under my palm, the air thick with everything we hadn’t figured out yet.

Later, in the dark, he slid in behind me the way he does when my mind wants to run—arm heavy across my ribs, not holding me down, just holding me. He didn’t say it would be fine. He didn’t tell me to be brave. He breathed slow until my body remembered how.

The house was quiet in that way it gets when everyone you love is asleep and you’re the only one holding the noise. I lay there and tried to picture the shape of my life with Jax in it without letting him be the center of it. My brain kept circling the same two hard things: how to live next to him without losing myself, and how to tell Emersyn the truth without breaking what we’ve built.

I could feel Wade awake behind me even with his eyes closed, the way you can feel a storm even when the blinds are drawn.

“How do we do this with Em?” I asked into the dark. “Really do it.”

He was quiet so long I thought maybe he’d fallen asleep sitting up inside himself. Then: “We tell her the truth she can carry. We don’t make her hold ours.”

“What words?” I whispered, because words are where I’ve always bled out.

He shifted, his arm still heavy across my ribs, his voice low. “We say… ‘There’s something important we haven’t told you, and that was our mistake. When you were a baby, the man who helped make you—his name is Jax—couldn’t be here. I’ve been your dad every day since, and that doesn’t change. He needs a safe place for a little while, so he’ll be staying with us. You don’t have to decide anything about him today. You can have all the feelings you have, and you can ask all the questions when you’re ready.’”

I swallowed hard. “She’s going to look at me like I lied to her.”

“We both did,” he said. “So she can be mad at both of us. I’ll take my half.”

“She calls you Dad like it’s the truest word she knows.”

“It still is,” he said, no bravado, just bone-deep fact. “Me being her dad doesn’t get voted on. Biology doesn’t outrank breakfasts and bedtimes.”

I lay there and let the sentences line up in my head, all the wrong ones first: He’s your father and he’s staying here and I’m sorry and please don’t hate me. I kept stripping them down until only the parts that belonged to her were left. Don’t hand her the weight of my history. Don’t make her manage anyone’s shame. Don’t ask her to perform forgiveness to make our grown-up guilt quieter.

I saw the day in little pieces, because that’s the only way I know how to do hard things.

- We tell her at home, in daylight, when there’s time to sit. Kitchen table, not car ride. No phones, no TV, the doorbell ignored.

- Wade and I both there, both taking responsibility, no “your mom” or “your dad” blame games.

- Short sentences. Honest ones. No gory details. Jax made choices. Jax wasn’t safe. We kept you safe. Wade has been your dad. That doesn’t change.

- We name what she might feel so she doesn’t have to guess if it’s allowed: confused, mad, sad, relieved, curious, nothing at all.

- We tell her she gets to decide what to call him. She doesn’t have to call him anything today.

- We promise her schedule doesn’t change. School. Skateboard. Pancakes. Homework at the same table.

- We tell her she doesn’t have to be alone with him until she says it’s okay—and even then, we go slow.

- We tell her we’re right here if she wants to talk later, even if “later” is two months from now in the cereal aisle.

“What if she asks why we didn’t tell her sooner?” I asked.

“Because we were scared,” he said. “And because you deserved a childhood without our mess in it. That’s the truth. It isn’t pretty, but it’s not a lie.”

“And if she says I’m not who she thought I was?”

“Then you tell her you’re more,” he said, and I could hear the smile he didn’t want to make. “And I’ll remind her.”

I breathed, and it felt like dragging air through wire. “And me with him? Day to day?”

“Boundaries,” he said, simple as a tool list. “You don’t owe him history lessons or emotional CPR. You don’t let him draft behind old muscle memory. You set the house rules and expect him to follow them. You keep your routines on purpose. You take space when you need it. If he tries to turn a hallway into a confessional, you walk past him and go fold laundry.”

A laugh broke loose in my throat and surprised me. “Laundry as a survival strategy.”

“It’s worked before,” he said. “You want me to be the one to tell him the rules?”

I pictured Jax’s eyes when he thinks charm might work. The way the word sorry comes out of him like a soft knife. “Yes,” I said. “You can translate brother-to-brother better than I can.”

“I’ll make it simple,” Wade said. “Respect the house, respect you, respect the girls. He’s a guest, not a project.”

The word guest soothed and scraped me at the same time. I let it. Not everything had to heal tonight.

“What about me,” I asked, “the version of me that still lives in his shadow? The one who wants to light herself on fire to keep everyone warm?”

“You don’t owe that version anything,” he said. “But if she shows up, we won’t hate her. We’ll just not let her drive.”

“Say it again,” I said, because repetition is how I glue myself back together.

“You’re not alone in this,” he said. “You can fall apart. We don’t.”

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the faint square of streetlight on the ceiling. I rehearsed the conversation with Em under my breath, the way you practice saying a name you haven’t said out loud in years. I pictured telling her and her face pulling tight and then softening and then tightening again. I pictured her saying, Are you still my mom? like she did when Cam came home from the hospital, afraid love was a pie you could run out of. I pictured saying, Yes. Always. And Dad is still Dad. That part isn’t changing.

I pictured Jax in the periphery of the day like a piece of furniture you can’t move yet: present, unavoidable, not the point. I pictured him learning how our house worked instead of us learning how to work around him. Shoes off by the door. Dishes rinsed. Voices low after bedtime. No walking into a room like it owes him anything.

I pictured myself choosing dull, ordinary acts over dramatic ones—chopping onions, swapping the laundry, answering Em’s question with “I don’t know yet” when that’s the truth. I pictured texting a therapist, not because crisis makes me weak, but because prevention makes me smart.

“You’re thinking loud,” Wade murmured.

“I’m making a map,” I said. “So I don’t end up back where I started.”

He kissed the corner of my jaw, small and thoughtless, the kind of touch that says I’m here without making a speech. “Good. Draw the exits first.”