Page 75 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

He doesn't wait for an answer to that, just claps me once on the shoulder and heads out into the cold, leaving me alone with a clean bar and a bad feeling I can't fully explain to anyone, not even to Gunny, not even when he's clearly asking.

The porch light's already on when I turn up the gravel drive, and I sit in the truck a minute longer than I need to before I go in, running through how I want to say this like it's a briefing instead of a conversation with the woman I love. The twins are already down by the time she opens the door, hair still damp from a bath, and something in my face must give me away because she doesn't ask how my day was. She just steps back and lets me in.

We settle at the kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a mug she's not drinking from, and I don't waste time getting to it. "Court date's set. Five weeks from today."

"Okay." Something careful comes into her voice, and she watches my face for the rest of it. "That's fast."

"Priya thinks it's good. Means this doesn't drag out all spring." I rub a thumb along the seam of the table, buying myself a second before I get to the rest of it. "There's more, though."

"I figured." She sets her mug down, folds her hands, braces the way she does before news she already suspects is coming. "Tell me."

"She wants me to keep a lower profile until it's over. No school pickups where I'd be seen. No public stuff that makes it look like I've already moved into your life before a judge decides that's good for the twins." I keep my voice steady, the flat, even register I fall into automatically whenever something actually matters. "Nothing that reads like outside influence."

Jenna's quiet for a second, and I watch her run the same math I ran an hour ago, watch her land somewhere close to where I landed.

"That's not fair to you."

"This isn't about what I deserve. It's about winning." I reach across and take her hand, because I need to be touching something steady while I say the rest of it. "Five weeks. Then it's over, and I get to be exactly as visible as I want to be for the rest of however long you'll have me."

"You make it sound simple."

"I know how it sounds. That doesn't make it wrong." My face stays calm, deliberate, giving away nothing of what's actually happening underneath it. "I'd rather be quiet for five weeks than be the reason this goes sideways for you and the twins. That's not a hard call."

"I hate that you have to make it at all."

"Me too." That's as close as I let myself get to the truth of it, and she doesn't push, just squeezes my hand once, firm, like she's trying to hand some of her own steadiness back across the table.

"The twins are going to ask why you're not around as much."

"Tell them whatever you think they can handle. I trust you with that." I mean it, even though the thought of Eli asking Josie why I stopped showing up puts something cold straight through my chest. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm just going to be careful about where anyone can see me not going anywhere."

"That's a strange kind of brave."

"It's the only kind I've got left for this particular fight."

We sit with it a while longer, her hand in mine, the kitchen settling into the particular hush that only shows up after both kids are asleep, and I don't tell her the rest of what's sitting under all of it, the old, familiar shape of being told the safest thing you can do for people you love is take up less room in their lives. I've heard some version of that lesson my whole life. I just never expected to hear it out of a lawyer's mouth, dressed up as strategy instead of what it actually is.

It's late when I finally head back, the brewery dark except for the one light I always leave burning over the tanks, and I sit down at my desk with a legal pad because that's what I do when something needs handling. Write it down. Break it into steps. Make it a problem instead of a feeling.

Step one, I write. Skip pickups.

I get that far and stop, pen hovering, because there isn't a step two that makes any of this easier to hold. There's no checklist for making yourself smaller on purpose. There's no inventory system for exactly how much of yourself you're allowed to hand two kids who've already started counting on you being there.

I sit with the pad a long time, the tanks humming their low steady hum behind me, and somewhere in the quiet an old voice finds its way back in, the one I thought I'd finally gotten some distance from these last few months. It doesn't sound like Priya. It doesn't even sound like Derek's lawyer, or the version of Derek I've built out of everything Jenna's told me.

It sounds like me, a long time ago, before any of this, telling myself the exact same thing I told myself the morning after that road. You were right not to trust yourself with people who need you. Look how easily they can be talked into being careful about you.

I close the notebook without writing a step two. Some problems don't get smaller just because you put them on a list.

37

JENNA

Eli announces Career Day at breakfast like it's already decided, syrup dripping off his fork, Josie nodding along beside him with the particular certainty of a kid who's already picked out what she's wearing.

"Ms. Palmer said we get to bring somebody who has an actual job. Not like, pretend. A real one." He points his fork at me for emphasis. "Rafe makes beer for a living. That's the best job anybody's ever had."

"It's a good job," I agree, already feeling the ground shift under the conversation before it fully arrives. "I don't think Rafe can make it this time, bug."