Page 63 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

Josie doesn't say anything at all, just wraps her arms around his middle and holds on, face pressed into his jacket, and Rafe goes still for a long moment before he crouches down to her level too, one hand smoothing over her hair.

"Hey. I'll be back before you know it," he tells her, quiet, just for her. "You take care of your brother and your mom for me."

"Promise you won't forget us," she says, muffled against him.

"I couldn't forget you if I tried. Not even a little."

She nods against his shoulder, still not quite letting go, and it takes her a long moment to finally step back, wiping at her face with her sleeve like she's embarrassed by how much this is costing her after only four months of knowing him.

Rafe straightens and looks at me over their heads, and whatever's in his eyes right now is too big for a driveway goodbye with two kids watching, so neither of us tries to say it out loud. He kisses my forehead instead, lingering there longer than the moment strictly needs, like he's saving whatever he actually wants to say for somewhere more private than his own front yard.

"Call me when you land," I tell him, echoing Eli, because it's easier than anything else I might say right now.

"I will." He climbs into the truck, and for a second before he pulls the door shut he just looks at all three of us standing there in the cold morning light, like he's trying to hold onto the picture of it. "I love you. All of you. I'll see you soon."

The words catch me completely off guard, settling somewhere soft and unprotected under my ribs, the first time he's ever said them out loud, and I don't get the chance to say them back before the door's shut and the engine's turning over, and I stand there stunned for half a second too long, the moment already slipping past me the way important moments sometimes do.

The truck pulls out of the driveway slow, tires crunching over the frozen gravel, and I watch his taillights all the way down Larkspur Lane until they disappear around the bend toward the highway, the twins pressed against my sides, silent in a way they're almost never silent.

"He's really coming back, right?" Eli asks, small, watching the empty road.

"He is. I promise you that."

I stand there a while after the sound of the engine fades, the cold seeping into me a little deeper with every minute, an ache settling in my chest I can't fully name. It isn't fear exactly, and it isn't sadness, just some weight sitting where his goodbye used to be. I don't know yet that the thing I'm dreading might be exactly what sets us both free.

30

RAFE

It takes me four full minutes to stand on Marisol Alvarez's porch before I can make myself knock, my hand raised and lowered twice like I've forgotten how to do the one thing I came here to do. The house behind her fence is smaller than I pictured, pale blue siding gone gray at the edges, a wreath still hanging on the door from a holiday that's already weeks behind us, and somewhere down the street a dog barks twice and gives up. Norfolk in the dead of winter smells like salt and diesel and something colder underneath both, and I've run this exact thirty seconds so many times in my head over the last twelve days that standing here for real feels like walking into a rehearsal that forgot to end.

I knock before I can talk myself out of it a third time.

The door opens fast, faster than four minutes of hesitation should earn, like she'd been standing just on the other side of it waiting for the sound. Marisol Alvarez is shorter than I'd guessed and steadier than anyone has a right to be looking at the man responsible for her brother's death, dark hair pulled back, a dish towel slung over one shoulder, and she studies my face for a long moment without saying anything at all.

She doesn't look surprised. She looks like she's been waiting.

"You're taller than the voice," she says finally, and steps back from the door before I can figure out what that means. "Come in before you freeze on my porch. I've had six years to plan how this goes and none of the versions involved you catching pneumonia first."

I don't move right away, still catching up to the fact that she opened with something other than my name, something other than an accusation, something that sounds almost like she's been rehearsing this exact moment as long as I have.

"You knew," I say. It isn't a question.

"I've known for four years." She says it plainly, no drama in it, holding the door while I finally step through into a front hall that smells like garlic and something baking. "A lawyer's assistant copied me on paperwork by mistake back when the fund first got restructured, some filing that named the LLC's original signer. Took one phone call to a friend who does this for a living to confirm what I already suspected the second I saw your name on that document." She shuts the door behind me, cutting off the cold. "I never told you I knew. Figured you'd get there on your own eventually, or you wouldn't, and either way it wasn't mine to force."

"Four years." I say the number like it might rearrange itself into something easier to hold. "You've known for four years and you kept sending me those letters like I was still a stranger."

"You were still a stranger. Knowing your name isn't the same as knowing you." She leads me down the hall, glancing back once like she's checking I'm really here, not just a voice she finally put a face to. "I figured the day you finally showed up on my porch would tell me more about who you actually are than four more years of thank-you letters ever could."

The hall opens into a kitchen bright with overhead light, pots going on the stove, and a boy sitting at the table with a math workbook in front of him and a pencil he's chewing more than writing with, and I stop dead in the doorway because the resemblance hits me like a physical thing, a hand flat against my chest.

"Mateo, come say hello," Marisol says, easy, like this is any ordinary evening and not the day her brother's ghost walked into her kitchen wearing another man's face. "This is Rafe. He knew your dad."

Mateo looks up, and it's Danny's eyes doing the looking, sharp and quick and already cataloguing me the way his father used to catalogue a room before he'd said a single word in it. He's ten, all elbows and knees, a kid who hasn't grown into his own height yet, and something in the set of his jaw when he studies me is so exactly Danny that I have to lock my knees just to stay standing.

"You were in the Army with my dad?" he asks, no shyness in it at all, blunt the way only a kid can afford to be.

"I was." My voice comes out rougher than I mean it to. "Best guy I ever served with."