#what is the difference between http and https

Still with me? OK, then.

In the Dark Tower novels, we crisscross a fallen world in which decay is all around us. The buildings are rotten, the machines have stopped working and no one knows how to fix them, babies and livestock alike are frequently born with deadly congenital defects. Much of the world has fallen into wasteland, cracked and barren. An army of wreckers, led by the demagogue John Farson (who styles himself "The Good Man") are slowly but surely conquering the land, laying waste to those few remaining outposts of civilization and conscripting the young men in the conquered lands to march on their neighbors.

It wasn't always this way. There was a time when the world was defined by hope and virtue and light, when the machines were fixed and the crops were harvested. Life wasn't golden – there were still squabbles and sorrows and even wars – but life was good.

And then the world moved on.

For reasons that no one truly understands, the normal push/pull of decay and renewal turned into a one-way, irreversible process in which everything that crumbled or snapped or burned up couldn't be repaired or replaced or recovered. Our mysterious ability to beat back the Second Law of Thermodynamics – an absurdity we probably should have always treated as an aberration – has collapsed. The world has moved on.

The Dark Tower series is a long, long, long Bildungsroman, with many detours through the life-stories of the characters in the ensemble cast, as well as the biographies of many of the figures they meet along the road. It's mostly an adventure novel, as road-trip tales tend to be, but those character studies and the lore that they surface – from our world and theirs – creates an overwhelming, many-layered, richly textured sense of loss and worse, of despair. For the world has moved on, and despite the love and care and bravery of many of the people in that world, the world cannot be redeemed. Each terrible day of those people's lives is the best day of the rest of their lives. From here on in, it only gets worse.

When Timmons' reader and their spouse greet every fresh depredation in modern life – hours on the phone with customer service to resolve a billing error that the company repeats every month, say – with "the world has moved on," they are invoking something heavy. This isn't just a rancid vibe, it's the fucking end-times.

For all that the Dark Tower novels are a series of cracking adventures and thoughtful character studies, they are also a mystery. Over and over again, we are made to ask ourselves, why has the world moved on? Was it John Farson and his army? Was it the Man in Black, the evil wizard whom the book's protagonist has pursued across time and space? Was it the Crimson King, the evil force whom the Man in Black serves?

Well, yes – and no.

Midway through the novels, we learn that the Crimson King and his evil minions have laid siege to "the beams," vast ley-lines that span the universe and provide the force that pushes away entropy, creating breathing room where repair and care can live. "All things serve the beams," we're told. The beams are the organizing force of the universe, the answer to the riddle of how such pitiful things as we could have fought back remorseless entropy for so long. By attacking the beams, the villains of the series have all but snuffed out that force, and so the world has moved on.

When I read that email and the invocation of the Dark Tower, I was immediately struck by how apt this comparison is. Because, as I've written many times, there were always enshittifiers who would have plundered your data and money and treated you with naked contempt:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/04/object-permanence/#picks-and-shovels

There were always enshittifiers, but those enshittifiers faced external forces that checked their wreckers' urge. They were held in check by competition, and regulation, and workers' sense of fairness and duty, and by the threat of new products and services that might pop up to correct the defects they deliberately introduced into their products by enshittifying them.

And the foundation – the Dark Tower upon which all the beams converged- was antitrust enforcement, grounded in the idea that we could not afford to let any company – not a "good" company, nor a "bad" company – get so large that it could no longer be regulated, lest its executives become "autocrats of trade":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/20/we-should-not-endure-a-king/

The same people who laid siege to antitrust law would later come after all forms of checks and balances. These are the people who gave us the "unitary executive" and Project 2025, and the collapse of accountability that has allowed the worst people to commit the gravest sins they could imagine and still reap vast fortunes. These beam-breakers wanted kings, and they got them.

I collect definitions of "conservatism," and one of my favorites comes from Corey Robin's book, The Reactionary Mind. Robins asks how it is that we can call so many disparate, irreconcilable ideologies – various ethno-nationalisms, imperialism, financialism, patriarchy, Christian nationalism, libertarianism, white supremacy, etc – "conservative"? What binds all these views together?

https://pluralistic.net/2025/07/22/all-day-suckers/#i-love-the-poorly-educated

Robin's answer: the foundation that all these otherwise disparate views share is that some people are born to rule, while others are born to be ruled over. When these lesser people are elevated to positions of power, their inferiority creates a system of misrule, by which we all suffer. The best outcome for everyone is for us all to know our place and defer to our social betters.

That's why conservatives are obsessed with affirmative action, DEI, and any form of anti-racism. For them, the discriminatory outcomes we see in the wild are natural, reflecting the in-born defects in the people at the bottom of the social order. That's why, after every plane crash, every collision between a cargo ship and a bridge, every spectacular corporate bankruptcy, conservatives race to uncover the race, gender, religion and sexual orientation of the captain, the pilot or the CEO.

If the person who oversaw the catastrophe has anything remotely resembling a marginalized identity, then this is loudly trumpeted as confirmation that "diversity hires," promoted above their station, are ruining our society and wrecking our bridges. Naturally, if the person in charge was a wealthy, well-born, straight white guy, that's just proof that shit happens – it definitely doesn't prove that white straight guys, as a class, should be removed from positions of power.

For conservatives, virtue is "whatever the people who are born to rule desire." Hence Frank Wilhoit's definition of conservativism, "exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." It's not a crime if the president does it. It's also not a crime if your boss does it, or if a monopolist does it, or if ICE does it. It's not a crime if the IDF do it, or if the Epstein Class do it. "Taxes are for the little people":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/15/guillotines-and-taxes/#carried-interest

The attack on antitrust law was part of the attack on the rule of law, the campaign to put everyone back in the their place. It's a piece of the effort to establish a new hereditary aristocracy, and every hereditary aristocracy requires heredity serfs (that would be us):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/06/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom/

The ideology of economism – which says that market outcomes are the only way to govern a society – cashes out to "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." If we interfere with mergers, or labor practices, or commercial conduct, we "distort the market," which is literally going against nature:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/27/economism/#what-would-i-do-if-i-were-a-horse

That's why Trump dismantled the consumer protection agencies, the antitrust agencies, the labor protection agencies, the environmental protection agencies. When someone in power cheats the system, that's not a crime, no matter how many people they rob, maim or kill. As Trump told us on the debate stage in 2016, that kind of cheating "makes me smart":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

That's why Elon Musk (almost) got to force every pension saver in America to bail out his money-incinerating AI business and his failed social media takeover – because the rules that protect everyday investors are "for the little people." Musk's mistake was trying to get a bunch of billionaires to hold the bag, too. The one form of systemic violence our society will not tolerate is trillionaire-on-billionaire violence:

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/05/spacex-blocked-from-early-us-benchmark-index-entry-as-sp-reaffirms-existing-rules.html

The world has moved on. 50 years of neoliberal rule has weakened and snapped the beams – the rule of law, consumer and labor rights, civil rights – that radiated from our Dark Tower – antitrust law, which blocked the emergence of the "autocrats of trade." The people who besieged these beams had the same motives as the Crimson King and John Farson and the Man in Black: they were willing to pay any price for a world free from consequences for people like them. They knew they were born to rule, and that the rules were "for the little people," that breaking those rules "made them smart."

They wanted "bossism." Or, as rendered in the original Afrikaans, "baasskap," which means, "the social, political and economic domination of South Africa by its minority white population":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baasskap

Not for nothing, baasskap is the foundation of Muskism, the ideology that Elon Musk epitomizes, even if he can't articulate it:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/21/torment-nexusism/#marching-to-pretoria

In "The Utopia of Rules," the late David Graeber described how neoliberal deregulation produced exactly the kind of state that we were warned we'd get under communism. Thanks to monopolies, all the stores were the same and they all sold the same goods. Thanks to the dismantling of labor protection and unions, no one had enough money to get by. Thanks to elite impunity, we were ruled by monsters who committed crimes in the open and thrived as a result. Thanks to unchecked greed, we paid everything we had for healthcare, only to be denied treatment when we needed it. Thanks to the dismantling of the welfare state, more and more of us had to wait in long lines to fill out absurdly long forms in triplicate. Thanks to the intrinsic instability of such a terrible system, more and more of us ended up in prison, and protest became more and more illegal:

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/02/02/david-graebers-the-utopia-of-rules-on-technology-stupidity-and-the-secret-joys-of-bureaucracy/

Graeber pointed out that the rise of the web made it seductively easy for people in authority to force us to fill in forms. When analog bureaucracies impose paperwork costs on us, they also impose paperwork costs on themselves, because processing and filing those forms requires substantial effort, even if filling in those forms requires even more effort from us.

When it comes to virtual paperwork, the asymmetry is even more pronounced. Sure, it takes some admin to set up an online form and write the scripts to process its outputs, but that's a one-off. The form-giver can perform a very little admin and still impose a giant, repeated admin burden on the rest of us.

AI has only made this worse. Now, thanks to vibe coding, everyone can produce a form and its associated processing and analytics back-end with prompts, which creates a grave moral hazard. The kinds of activities that I used to fill in a single short form to accomplish now requires ten lengthy forms, created by different people in the same organization, all asking for variations on the same information. Through AI, we have democratized bureaucracy. It's Kafka-as-a-service.

What's more, when you're dealing with a monopoly, you have no choice but to complete whatever paperwork they throw at you. And when the vibe-coded back-end scripts shit the bed and lose or misinterpret your data, you have no choice but to endure an infinite telephone hold queue (if you're lucky) or get shunted to a customer service bot (if you're unlucky):

https://pluralistic.net/2025/11/11/sorry-to-bother-you/#we-dont-care-we-dont-have-to

It's entirely possible to build webforms that are thoughtful, fast, respectful of our time, and well-processed. The problem is that fielding these forms requires that the form-giver undertake some intensive, moderately expensive work (once), while skipping this step merely requires that we all perform intensive, time-consuming work (over and over and over again):

https://mohkohn.co.uk/writing/html-first/

This is how we end up with government forms that require you to list every trip you have ever taken to the USA, since your infancy, with every flight number, which you can only get help with by talking to a chatbot that emails you an out-of-date PDF no matter what question you ask of it:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/06/doge-ball/#n-600

This is how we end up with massive customer service queues, long lines at tills, and no one at the gate to answer your questions when your flight is canceled. Understaffing is a form of enshittification, one that shifts value from shoppers to owners, and shifts consequences from owners to workers:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/22/nobodys-home/#squeeze-that-hog

This is how we end up with broken machines that no one can fix. Firing workers and replacing them with chatbots or contractors means incinerating their process knowledge – the precious, inchoate, unrecorded understanding that keeps everything working:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/08/process-knowledge-vs-bosses/#wash-dishes-cut-wood

This is how companies that make products we love suddenly decide to wreck those products: when the only consequences for shitty products is angry customers with nowhere to go and no one to vent their rage upon except workers who have no labor rights and can't afford to quit, why not do a mafia bust-out for every business?

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The world has moved on. Nothing works. Everything costs too much. No one can help. No one knows how to fix anything. The beams were broken by the Crimson King and his economism-crazed minions. The Dark Tower might fall.

So what consumer advice do I have for people who are angry about this? I don't have any consumer advice, I'm afraid. You can't shop your way out of a monopoly. Once again, shopping is not politics.

What I have for you is political advice. To restore the beams and beat back entropy again, we need a better system, not more virtuous individuals. If you feel – as I do – that "the world has moved on," then to wrench it back, you will have to join a polity. Support activist groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the digital rights group I've been at for the past 25 years:

https://supporters.eff.org/donate/join-eff

Join a union. If there's no union at your jobsite, start a union. If you work in tech, you start this process by talking to techsolidarity.org and the techworkerscoalition.org. In the UK, get in touch with United Tech and Allied Workers:

https://utaw.tech/

Get involved in party politics. Find a political party whose local organization supports your values (even if the national version of that party sucks) and then work with your fellow grassroots activists to drag or replace the party leaders. Get involved in local politics: if there's one thing Moms For Liberty has taught us, it's that unregarded, seemingly unimportant local offices have enormous potential to change facts on the ground for the people where you live. Those changes don't have to be change for the worse.

Parker has hockey practice twice a week and he finishes at 7 pm today, much to your despair. If it wasn't for it, you're day would be over at 4 pm after picking up Olivia from a little playdate with one of her friends. She's been... struggling for the past few months, so every chance she gets to do something different, you and Rafe always say yes to it, no matter how far is it, how late it can be, she's going.

So here you are now, with a sleepy Olivia on her side of the backseat and a grumpy Parker that was complaining about how one of the kids on the hockey team wouldn't pass him the puck right on time multiple times in just ten minutes. He reminds you of Rafe whenever he gets like this, he start puffing, he frowns and pulls that airy tone out of his lips when he's complaining, and he absolutely pouts. Something that Rafe always denied that he did.

The Outer Banks roads are mostly empty, it's a cold night despite the closeness of summer. The humidity is making everything ten times even harder, you feel heavier, everything's slower and the windshields aren't doing enough to keep you from going insane.

You stop at a red light, resting your arm in the window as you closed your eyes for a moment, thinking about how you have to defrost the steaks you'll have for dinner, how Parker has to be extra early at school on Friday and how Olivia enters at 9, the fact that you have to talk with Rafe about the next time you're leaving town and—

You feel a force pushing you forward, a sharp blow that definitely took the air out of your lungs, it's strong enough to feel like you almost broke your neck, your hands stopped you from face slamming the steering wheel. Then alarms, like a car has definitely been hit and it's definitely yours.

What the fuck?

The reactions are almost immediate, Olivia starts crying and Parker starts asking "Mom, mom?!" As he looks around, sounding desperate after the impact. You open your eyes widely, looking back to the rearview mirror next to you and the car behind that just fucking hit you at a red light like it was a free world.

You groan and touch your neck for the sudden impact and the way your head has been moved, especially since you were momentarily relaxed before it happened, you weren't prepared for it. You feel your chest tightening as your start hearing your kids mumbling in desperation.

"Hey, hey." You try to speak firmly around all the noise. "It's okay. Mom's okay," You took a moment to look at them and check for injuries before affirming. They have their hands against the seats, like they tried to stop themselves from hitting themselves with it. They look a little pale and shaken. "You're okay." You said to yourself more than to them before taking a big breath of air, trying to release the weight in your chest. "Wait here, guys." You came out of the car with your heart hammering.

"Hey!" You screamed, entitled to be the one under stress after your car just got hit. You can't even see the person driving the other car, they're front bumper was pretty much destroyed.

You have the chance to take a look to the back of your car, the rear bumper was almost destroyed, dented inwards and the back lights were cracked. The trunk lid had been affected as well. How did this car almost cracked the rear hatch glass?

"Holy shit." The other guy said, a few years younger than you, 25 and probably with his first real car. "What—" He said in shock as if he didn't drove his car into yours. "It was a greenlight!"

You scoffed, voice immediately going high with stress and frustration. "It was not a greenlight!" When he was about to interrupt again, you cut him off. "It wasn't." You said with that authority tone of your that you tend to use with your kids.

Your kids. Ugh, shit.

"Even if it was, why the fuck would you drive like that?! It's an empty road!" You dragged your hands down your

"It was a greenlight!"

“You hit us, that's the end of it. My kids are in the car—” You said, hand gripping your phone tightly with anxiety raising inside of you.

The man interrupts again, raising his hands on the air as a sign of innocence. “Don’t even try to pin this on me. You slammed on your brakes out of nowhere.”

"I was at a red light!" You screamed again, feeling how if this doesn't start to get into an actual logical conversation, you were about to rip your throat. "What was I supposed to do, huh?"

But the guy doesn’t let up. He looks like one of those frat boys that should have finished his major so long ago but he doesn't because he simply won't pass his finals and he wants to extend the experience of having a justification to not work. “Yeah, but you stopped too fast. You weren’t paying attention. You caused this.”

Is this guy for real or are you seriously going mental? "I was already stopped. What the fuck are you talking about? My kids watched it—"

"They're kids, they don't count for witnesses."

"Oh, my God—" You said in disbelief.

"I'm calling insurance. I'm not getting charged for this bullshit—" He said, hand already flying to his phone as if he was about to call daddy for the fifth time this month to get his mess fixed.

"Yeah, call them, please." You said sarcastically as you walked back to the your own car, breathing deeply.

"Mommy, what happened?" Parker said, peaking his head out the window.

"Just an accident, sweetie. Get inside." You said as you gently guided his head inside the car again.

"The police it's on its way—" You heard the guy say, bragging as if he already won this battle.

"Police?" You heard Olivia talking, she was already out of breath as she tried not to cry too much.

Opening the car door to talk to them, you kneeled so they could see your face better. "Everything's fine, nothing's gonna happen—"

"Moooom!" She cried.

"Olivia, everything's fine—" You said, but you knew no words would help right now.

You stood up again, throat closing as you tried to calm yourself. You watched the young man, so clearly in belief that he was entitled to do whatever the hell he wanted around the island. You know these kinds of guys, they believe they own half the island just because their dad is probably a lawyer. But they don't, Rafe probably does.

Rafe.

You looked down at your phone, and almost out of instinct your fingers were already moving to search for his contact. Chest going up and down like a wheel being inflated with how fast your nerves were raising.

You only waited one tone before he answered.

"Hey." You heard, voice husky and tired, he probably just got home. "What happened? You alright?" He immediately questioned, finding your call a little odd. You never call, not anymore.

"Rafe—" You panted, a hand going up to grab your temple. "I— A fucking car just hit us, I'm with the kids—"

"I'm on my way."

Immediate, instant, like lightning. He was already on his feet the moment you called him tho, sensing that you were calling for a reason and he was sadly right. Normally he would've been happy to hear your voice, he would've taken the chance to make you nervous or get a rinse out of you just to get the stimulation and motivation he needed for the rest of the week.

But not this. You sounded so nervous, so out of breath and like you definitely needed help.

"Send me your location. I'm on my way already." He said, sharp and steady, exactly what you needed right now in this moment of instability.

You only managed to whisper a little "Okay..." Closing your eyes again for a second.

"I'm on my way." He repeated again when he heard the tone in your voice, you could hear him grabbing his keys and walking around his own house. "Okay? I'll be there in five. Don't worry."

"Okay, okay." You nodded, breathing out slowly just to get your nerves on check. He hung up a moment later. With trembling fingers, you sent him your location. It wasn't far away from his house, probably twenty minutes; knowing Rafe, he will get there in less than ten.

And he did, right at the same time with the police. He slammed the door of his own car and sprinted outside to meet you. He still had a white shirt on, now tiredly opened on the top, like he clearly just got out of work and had two moments of peace before your call.

Olivia, who was waiting inside the car in anguish, gasped the moment she saw her dad. With an agility that should have you worried at a different time, she opened the door and got out of the car.

"Daddy!" She screamed, already running to him in desperation.

"Hey, hey." He grabbed her when she ran to him, climbing up to him the moment he kneeled down to pick her up. Her cheeks were red and wet with tears, the same way yours get whenever you used to cry. He hasn't seen that image in a long time (he's sort of grateful for it, usually when you used to cry it was because of him). "Hey, princess. You're okay?" He murmured while roughly kissing the top of her head, walking over to where you are as the little kid hid her face on his neck.

Almost barking to get your attention, he called out your name. "You're okay? What happened?" He carefully rested his arm around your frame to pull you closer, searching for your eyes that were on the ground.

You looked nervous, eyes wet with anxiety like they were glasses about to break. "Yeah, this dick hit us from behind—" You gestured to the guy a few feet away from you.

"I didn't hit you, you stopped too fast!" He had the nerve to interrupt.

"Rafe, I was at a red light—" You said, feeling the need to make him believe you. You weren't crazy but you needed his assurance, to make sure that it wasn't your fault you put your kids at such risk.

"I know, I believe you—" He shook his head, touching your face with his free big and rough hand. "Don't worry about it." He murmured only for you to hear, almost unconsciously turning his body just to push Olivia's little ears away from listening, trying to give you both some kind of intimacy. Something he craves to have in any kind of mundane moment.

"You're okay, right? Not a scratch?" He asked as he looked inside the car at the same, checking on Parker, who was sitting inside with a pout and his arms around himself. "Hey, bud. It's dad, you wanna come out?" He talked with the window down.

Parker shook his head, tightening his own grip around himself as he tried to make himself smaller and avoided Rafe's eyes. "P, everything's fine, bud. No one's hurt, it's just another car." He assured the young kid.

At his father's comfort, Parker bites the inside of his cheek before he finally nodded, deciding to come out after a second when Rafe opened the door for him. Showing just how scared he was when he wrapped his arms around his waist. "Relax, kid. You're okay." He said softly, cradling both of his kids.

You look at him, the way he immediately took the charge of the situation. The way he just has this protective side to him that starts working the moment a frown appears on any of your faces, the way he cares about your kids, how he still clearly cares about you and tries to handle the situation just so you don't have to.

The image gets your chest tightening, you place a hand on it, rubbing softly the way you always do when the heartache might just be a little too much.

Two officers got closer, coming out of they're patrolman, walking over with those heavy steps that made everyone nervous. "Mr. Cameron." One of them said, recognizing Rafe.

And of course that Rafe was going to use that to his advantage. Unwrapping his free arm out of Parker and securing his grip on Olivia, he shook the officer's hand when offered. "Sir."

"What do we have here, huh?" The man asked, already taking a look over the accident.

When the police got involved, you expressed you wanted to give a report just to have an official record of the accident, also claiming that you were in a red light, already stopped for a few seconds before your car got hit.

"That's not true!" The guy, that you now know his name Brad (of course he is). "She stopped out of nowhere, she just slammed the breaks."

"That literally makes no sense! You should've slowed down earlier anyways."

"I was doing totally fine." He assured, hands resting on his hips and those stupid ass khaki bermuda shorts that were making no one a favor. "Not my fault you don't know how to drive, sweetheart." He used that cocky tone that made your blood boil. Especially because it was you against him, and the way he was making you feel so small, a feeling you're not used to, is completely crushing you.

"Who are you talking to like that, huh?" Rafe rises to his full height, stepping forward without any kid on his arms now after Parker and Olivia completely secured on his car as the adults dealt with the mess. He means to intimidate, to scare the guy into saying something wrong again.

"Alright, let's all calm down." One of the officers intervened.

The night ended with just the same amount of frustrations. Everyone came to agree that the security cameras (if there was actually any on this side of the island) to check who provoked the accident, but they encouraged to call the insurance company already just get everything started.

You wanted to snap so badly as you saw the tow truck picking up your car to go get it fixed after this Brad guy absolutely destroyed it. You sighed, covering your face with your hands in exasperation. The day was already long enough as it is and now you feel like you have a hundred pounds over your shoulders.

"Rafe, I swear I was at a red light—" You said, throat closing with anguish as you now started to doubt your own narrative. "I mean, like, I closed my eyes for like, two seconds because my head was killing me—" You stuttered.

Rafe tsked, clenching his jaw as his tongue hit his teeth. He shook his head and looked down at you. "You don't gotta explain it to me, alright? I know you don't mess around." He knows how much of a careful driver you are. The time he had to teach you how to drive (so long ago) he was utterly exasperated at how carefully you drove around.

With one steady arm around your shoulders, gripping you like you're about to vanish, he made you get inside his own car. The whole thing had already being dragged out long enough and he hated the somber expression on your face, so he needed to get you out of there as soon as possible before he actually combusts.

After a very quiet ride back home, the kids went running back to their respective rooms once the door was opened. They were uncharacteristically silent during the whole ride, which made your heart break in half with guilt.

Rafe closed the door behind him, helping you to get the kids things inside. He left Parker's gym bag on the floor next to the entrance. "Thanks for coming." You said softly, all the usual annoyance and banter between had been erased by the exhaustion and the spook the accident had given you. "I'm sorry I called so late, I just didn't know who else to call—" Your voice broke with stress and pressure.

For someone who's such a careful and sometimes overprotective mother, this accident is definitely getting the worst reaction out of you. You were nervous, guilty, on edge and worried after everything that happened.

"Hey, no." He quickly cut you off and in two large strides he was in front of you, holding your arms. "It's fine, alright? Don't worry." He comforted you.

"You call me, do you hear me?" He put himself at your eye level, to make sure you were listening to him and actually getting the information inside that beautiful but so aggravating brain of yours, which usually doesn't hold onto the information he gives you. "You call me." He repeated again.

"I just—" You breathed out exhausted, tears willing up in your eyes. "I don't think it was my fault. I closed my eyes for two seconds, Rafe." You said, voice full of self doubt and insecurity. "What if—" you cleared your throat. "Maybe it was at a greenlight and it was my fault—"

"No, no." Rafe's reaction was immediate, purely out of instinct, the necessity to comfort you and to ease the ache in his own chest at seeing you under such stress. "I'm sure you're right. You did nothing wrong." He knows what you're talking about, the fear that this was all caused because of you and the irresponsibility you don't have. He knows you're already punishing yourself inside of your head.

"Parker wasn't wearing his belt, because—" Your voice gave out as a sob escaped out of your lips, complelr inevitable. "He was just throwing a fit and I was so tired so I let him..." You cried in his arms, hiding your face against his chest. "What if it was my fault and..." You breathed through your fast thinking. "It could've been much worse."

"It wasn't your fault. He crashed you, okay? Greenlight or not, he should've slowed down, gone to the other lean. He had space," He sighed at the way you looked and cradled your face. "C'mon, did you see him? He doesn't know shit. I'm sure his dad paid for his license." He smirked softly, trying to get your head out of the self punishment habit.

You shrugged, showing that you didn't care how stupid the other guy was, you just know that the accident had happened and it got the kids really scared and it got your blood pressure over the roof. For now, you just limit yourself to rest your forehead against his chest, allowing yourself to have this one thing. No matter how wrong it is, no matter how your heart was doing gymnastics tricks inside your chest at the feeling of being so close to Rafe all over again.

He let out a big breath again when nothing was working. So, for a few moments, he just rubbed your back, that space underneath your shoulders that he knows that always works with you. His palm was warm against the fabric of your clothes, it was safe and comfortable. And you almost hated (you really couldn't) that it felt like it was always meant to be there.

No one had touched you, comforted you like this in so long and you know no one else will because no one knows how to do it like this. It's a Rafe thing. Something that naturally comes to him after knowing each other for longer than fifteen years already, after an entire life together.

"You call me, alright?" He said again against your ear, voice low and velveted like always. "Whenever something happens, you need help, you call me." And when you moved like you were about to talk, he interrupted again, knowing what you were about to say. "With kids or not, if something happens you gotta call me. I'll go help you."

Because you would take a step back, placing the distance where it should be put. But no, he doesn't let it happen and takes one step further when he dares to say that it doesn't apply just to anything that revolves around the twins. It also applies to you.

"That's what I'm here for." He said now, more gruffly as if he's reprimanding himself. You look up, finally picking up your head from his chest and give him the honor of seeing your eyes. Still so beautiful and so red and tired from crying and worrying so much. "I want you to call me if something happens. Okay?" He asked, grabbing your cheeks with both of his hands now.

"We got a deal?" He asked carefully, softly touching your skin as he takes the liberty of cleaning the tears that stained your skin. So delicately that you almost don't recognize him. And you can't deny that you love it. He rubs his thumbs underneath your eyes, making sure not a single tear is left in there. Not a single drop of stress and pain has to be left, he doesn't want to see it anymore.

A pause settled between you, not heavy with old wounds or the sharp edges of what was left unsaid or with old unresolved resentments that made the feelings linger. For once, it wasn’t resentment that filled the silence, nor the ache of things that didn't work. It was softer than that.

It was just... tender.

"Yeah." You whispered.

And he knows he can't take it further. No matter how much he wants to, no matter how temptingly close you are, he will never do that now. Not when you always draw the line so clearly with a permanent marker, one that couldn't be erased. So, he wouldn't do it.

He contained a devastating sigh and took a step back, finalizing the moment with one last caress on your shoulder.

"I'll come early tomorrow and take them to school." He talked again, leaving no room for argument and you don't dare to do it either. "Rest and let me know what the insurance company says, alright?"

You're left a little bit speechless at what just happened. At what didn't. You don't even know what you were expecting either.

"Yeah, okay." You said softly, watching the way he walked back to the front door, taking the little piece of sanity you had with him.

"I'll see you tomorrow. Rest, don't worry about it." He opened the door and didn't give you much chance to say anything else, almost like he stopped himself from opening his mouth too much.

You didn't breathe after the door was closed, not after a few moments passed, you did it once you heard his car going out the driveway, as if you were scared that with the way he knows you, he might as well hear the way you sigh and you can't let that happen.

He can't be conscious of the way he still brings you up to the edge of the cliff, like he makes you want to jump into the absolute and intoxicating feeling of him.

Little did you know he's doing the same. He only finally lets out the biggest sigh ever after he turns around the first corner back to his own house. He wants to let you know, wants to make you snap and be aware of just how much you still have a grip on him. How he's the one at the edge of the cliff and how you're the one holding him back by grabbing his heart. You could squeeze hard enough or let go of it at any given point and destroy him. You don't even know the effect you have on people.

And you probably don't want to know either.

Your heart does warm up with tenderness the next day when he sends you a selfie of the kids in the backseat of his car, with bright smiles and clean school uniforms on them, just fifteen minutes later after he picked them up like he promised.

He does it to comfort you, because he knows you'll be worried.