Page 46 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

I look up, and I know my face isn't giving her much to work with, and for the first time since this whole thing started, I watch her clock it, really clock it, the shift in me she's never seen before and doesn't have a name for yet.

"Yeah," I say, and even I can hear how little that word is carrying. "Yeah, I'm fine."

She doesn't believe me. I can see that much clearly enough. But she doesn't push, not tonight, and I sit there with her hand still in mine and a date on a screen I can't stop looking at, counting down the only week of the year I never learned how to get through easily.

Seven days, and I've survived worse countdowns than this one, plenty of them. I tell myself that the way I tell myself the same thing every year around this time, quiet and automatic, a line I keep in reserve for exactly this purpose. It never quite lands the way I need it to. It doesn't land tonight either.

21

JENNA

Rafe cancels movie night with a text four words long, "Can't tonight, sorry, tired," and I stand in my own kitchen staring at my phone for longer than four words should require, waiting for a fifth one that never shows up. There's no explanation, no follow-up, just tired, like that single word covers whatever's actually going on, and I set the phone face down on the counter because staring at it isn't going to make the rest of the sentence appear.

Two days later he cancels again, this time in person, standing in the taproom doorway with his jacket already halfway on, mumbling something about inventory that needs doing tonight and can't wait until tomorrow. It's the kind of excuse that technically holds up and doesn't survive a second look, and I don't give it one, because pushing on a man already halfway out a door has never gotten me anywhere useful.

"Everything okay?" I ask anyway, because I can't quite stop myself.

"Fine. Just busy." He's already reaching for his keys, not quite meeting my eyes, and the whole exchange takes maybe fifteen seconds before he's out the door and across the lot toward the brewhouse, boots fast on the gravel like something's chasing him that I can't see.

By the third day I've stopped counting cancellations and started counting something worse: the days since he last laughed without meaning to, since he last showed up without me asking. It's been almost a week now, and I don't like the direction that number's headed.

I catch the staff picking up on it before I'm ready to admit I'm feeling it myself. Wren's at the register when I come in for my shift that afternoon, running the drawer with more concentration than it usually requires, and when Rafe walks through asking whether the delivery got logged right, his voice comes out clipped in a way I've genuinely never heard him use on an employee before.

"I logged it the way I always log it," Wren says, careful, hands going still over the drawer.

"Then check it again. Something's off by six cases and I don't have time to guess where it went."

"Okay." She doesn't argue, just nods and goes to recheck it, and once he's gone she looks over at me with her eyebrows up, silent question fully formed. I've got nothing solid to hand her, so I just shrug and start restocking glassware, and the two of us work the rest of the shift without either of us saying what we're both clearly thinking.

Gunny finds me in the walk-in an hour later, arms crossed, watching me organize kegs that don't strictly need organizing.

"You noticed," he says. It isn't a question.

"Hard not to."

"He gets like this sometimes. Not often. Not for years, actually, not since I've worked here." Gunny studies me for a second, weighing something. "This time of year does something to him. Always has, long as I've known him."

"What kind of something?"

"Not my story to tell." He says it gently, no edge in it, and I can tell he knows plenty and has already decided none of it is his to hand over. "Give him room. He'll come back around. He always has before."

"That's not exactly reassuring."

"It's honest, though." He picks up a crate and heads back out, leaving me standing there with a half-organized cooler and a knot in my stomach that doesn't loosen no matter how many kegs I line up.

I know what this looks like. I've seen it before, a man pulling inward, going quiet and short and hard to reach, and the old fear under my ribs wakes right up. Derek used to get close enough to matter and then turn into someone colder, someone I didn't recognize, and by the time I figured out which version was real it was already too late.

I tell myself it's not the same, standing in the walk-in with cold air raising the hair on my arms. Derek's silences were a weapon, sharpened on purpose, deployed exactly when I'd started to feel steady enough to push back on something. He'd go quiet for days, watch me scramble to fix whatever I couldn't even name, and only speak again once I'd apologized for something that was never actually mine to apologize for. It was control. It was never anything but control, dressed up as hurt feelings so I'd spend my energy managing his instead of noticing my own.

This doesn't feel like that, though. Rafe isn't punishing me with the silence. He looks like a man drowning, not a man trying to drown me, and I can feel the difference even if I can't explain it, something in the way his eyes skip past mine, something in the exhaustion sitting in his shoulders.

I don't have proof either way, and that's the part that wears on me most, more than the actual distance does. I've spent years training myself to read a room for danger before it arrives, and right now I just can't get a clear read no matter how hard I try.

Josie notices before Eli does, the way she notices everything that actually matters, curled up on the couch with a book she isn't really reading, watching me over the top of it.

"Rafe hasn't come by in forever," she says.

"He's been busy at the brewery."