Chapter 67

Chapter 67
Jackson

By April, I’ve got three separate calendars, two phones, a wedding folder thick enough to qualify as a blunt force weapon, and exactly zero good reasons to keep pretending I can hold every piece of my life in one set of hands without something slipping.
Still, old habits don’t die clean. They just get quieter and meaner. I’m at my desk at Special Crimes, staring down a stack of reports I could do in my sleep, a list of vendor calls I still haven’t returned, and a note Brooklyn tucked into my lunch that says eat the damn sandwich this time, when Nash drops into the chair across from me and looks at the mess like he’s evaluating a crime scene.
“You planning to explode,” he asks.
“No.”
He glances at my left phone. “That the work no?”
I glance at the other one, lighting up with a wedding planner email. “No.”
He leans back. “You look twitchy.”
“I’ve got a lot going on.”
“That’s the cleaned up version of what I asked.”
He’s not wrong, which pisses me off a little on principle.
The case fallout from Park Mews is mostly tied off now, but “mostly” in my job still means motion. Follow-up interviews. Asset tracing. Statements that have to be read three times because defense attorneys make a living off punctuation. My captain wants final summaries on his desk before month’s end. The wedding’s less than six weeks out. Lily has decided pants are a personal attack. The boys still wake in shifts like they’re trying to break us on purpose. Brooklyn’s doing more than she should because she hates sitting still while things need doing, which means I’m doing that thing where I watch her too closely and get mean with myself when I can’t be in four places at once.
Nash watches me go silent and says, “You know you can ask for help without the sky falling.”
I laugh once, dry and humorless. “You offering to review seating charts?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then mind your business.”
He grins. “See, there he is.”
The problem is he’s still right. That thought follows me through the rest of the morning, through a meeting with the captain, through two calls with the DA’s office, through a vendor voicemail from a woman who sounds aggressively cheerful about linen selections, and through the exact moment I realize I’ve missed a text from Brooklyn asking whether I can handle picking up the marriage license paperwork tomorrow or if she needs to drag two newborns and a toddler into a county office.
My gut goes hard, not because she asked, but because she asked like she expected the answer might be no.
I call her instead of texting back. She picks up on the second ring. There’s baby noise in the background and Lily saying something loud and unintelligible that ends with “Daddy” and sounds accusatory.
“Hey,” Brooklyn says, and she sounds more tired than she let on this morning.
“Why’d you ask it like that?”
There’s a pause. “Ask what like what?”
“Like you were trying not to inconvenience me.”
“Jackson.”
“No. Don’t smooth it over. Why?”
I hear her shift the phone. A bottle clinks against the counter. “Because you’ve got work, and because the wedding stuff keeps landing on top of everything else, and because I’m trying not to add one more thing to your plate.”
I close my eyes. That one goes in clean, right between the ribs.
“Baby, you’re not one more thing.”
“I know that.”
“Do you?”
Another pause. Softer this time. Then she sighs. “You’ve been carrying a lot.” That’s the issue.
Everybody around me’s been acting like I’m carrying a lot because I keep refusing to put any of it down.
I sit back in my chair and look at the mess on my desk again, only this time I see it for what it is.
Not proof that I’m strong enough to manage it all.
Proof that I’ve started isolating inside responsibility, which is a really ugly trick for a man with my wiring.
“I’ll get the paperwork,” I tell her.
“Okay.”
“And tonight at dinner I’m asking for help.”
Now she goes quiet for a different reason. “Are you okay?” she asks.
“Probably improving.”
That gets a small laugh. “I’d love to witness that.”
“That’s mean.”
“You love it.”
She’s right, which keeps happening and is getting old.
After we hang up, I finish what absolutely has to be finished at work, then I walk into the captain’s office and ask for the comp time Nash has been telling me to use for three straight weeks.
Captain Reeve looks up so fast you’d think I’d confessed to a murder.
“You asking me for time off?” he says.
“I’m getting married, and I’ve got twin newborns, a toddler, and enough paperwork at home to bury a horse.”
He studies me, then leans back. “You should’ve asked two weeks ago.”
“Probably.”
“Take Thursday afternoon and Friday. We’ll cover the rest.”
That should sting, but it doesn’t. Instead, it feels like air returning to a room.
Family dinner at Dad and Ashlynn’s is loud before we even get all the way inside. Sawyer’s got a toy truck and apparently no regard for shins. Maddison’s wearing fairy wings over regular clothes. Nora’s trying to mother Lily, who is refusing to be governed in any form. One of Raleigh and Lincoln’s babies is asleep in a swing by the fireplace. The other one’s on Raleigh’s chest. Bos is standing in the kitchen with Lydia tucked against one shoulder, Ollie against his chest, and Miles asleep in the carrier at his feet with a look on his face that says he hasn’t had an unbroken thought since October. Aspen’s laughing at him, which means she’s regained enough strength to be dangerous again. Dallas is opening a jar for Cheyenne while she slices strawberries and issues instructions like a queen who married beneath her station for fun.
This is what safety sounds like in my life. It isn’t quiet.
It’s everybody talking at once and still hearing you when it matters.
We get through dinner before I do it, mostly because I need a minute to get over myself.
Then everybody starts clearing plates, and I hear my own voice say, “I need help with some wedding stuff.”
The room changes.
Not dramatically or in a way that makes me want to bolt, but enough to tell me that everybody heard.
Dad looks up first. “What do you need?”
And that’s when I realize maybe this has all been simpler than I’ve been making it. I tell them.
“I need coverage Thursday so Brooklyn and I can handle the license and final venue walk without the boys turning it into a hostage event. I need someone other than Brooklyn taking planner calls for a couple of days, since she’s got enough on her plate. I need help locking down the guest list with security names, so Heather doesn’t find a back door through a vendor or a plus-one. I need the brothers to stop asking me what color tie I want and just coordinate with each other like grown men, and I need Ashlynn and Aspen to tell us if the seating chart actually makes sense or if we’ve accidentally declared war on half the room.” I say it all in one go, like ripping duct tape off skin.
Silence hangs for half a breath. Then everybody answers at once. “I’ll take planner calls,” Ashlynn says.
“I’ve already got notes on the seating chart,” Aspen adds.
Bos points at me with a baby bottle in one hand. “Ties are handled.”
Linc nods. “I’ll do security names with you tonight.”
Dal leans back in his chair. “I’ll take the vendor list and parking map if you want another set of eyes.”
Cheyenne wipes her hands and says, “Brooklyn’s not carrying a single extra thing Thursday.”
Dad just looks at me for a second, calm and steady as ever. “Next time ask sooner.” Simple as that, no speech or making a production out of my growth.
Everyone just immediately steps in and steps up, because this family’s best love language has always been action.
Across the table, Brooklyn’s watching me. There’s too much in her face for me to look at comfortably. Pride. Relief. Love. That soft ache I only ever put there when I stop making life harder than it has to be.
Later, while the kids tear through the den, the women compare dress notes, and the brothers argue over whether Dallas can be trusted with printed maps, Dad corners me by the sink.
“You okay?” he asks quietly.
“Yeah.”
He hands me a dish towel. “You don’t have to be the wall all the time.”
I dry a plate I didn’t wash. “I know.”
He lifts one shoulder. “Knowing and living aren’t the same thing.”
Apparently that’s tonight’s theme. I huff a laugh. “You all coordinate these lines or what?”
“Nope. You’re just finally listening.”
Maybe I am. Because on the drive home, with Lily asleep in her car seat and both boys dead to the world after exhausting themselves by existing, I don’t feel like I failed anything by asking.
I feel like I protected something. Brooklyn reaches over from the passenger seat and links our fingers across the console.
“You did good tonight,” she says softly.
“Feels weird that everybody’s acting like I climbed Everest because I admitted I can’t be in three places at once.”
“That’s because you didn’t just admit that.” She glances at me, then back at the road. “You let people show up for you.”
That one lands too. I squeeze her hand. “I’m trying.”
“I know.”
At home, I carry Lily upstairs while Brooklyn takes one twin and I come back for the other. We move through the routine in that half-asleep silence parents develop after enough midnight rounds. Diapers. Bottles. Burp cloth. Monitor. Night light. The ordinary holy stuff.
When we finally make it to our room, Brooklyn sits on the edge of the bed and starts unpinning her hair. I stand there watching her for a second, this woman who’s built a life with me through fear and work and old damage and babies and all the rest, and I know exactly what tonight changed. Not the logistics. Me.
Because I’m done acting like carrying everything alone proves I deserve what I’ve got.
What proves it is this.
Coming home.
Asking for help.
Staying and letting the people who love me do it out loud.