Page 93 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"Force of habit."

"Rafe."

"I'm not going to make you a spreadsheet, if that's what you're picturing." I reach for my coffee again, steadier now that the worst of it is finally said out loud between us instead of locked away where it could keep doing damage in the dark. "But yes. I'm going to work out what earning this actually looks like, and then I'm going to do it, one ordinary day at a time, for as long as it takes."

"That's a lot of ordinary days."

"I've got them. That's the one thing I actually have plenty of." Nothing I've said all morning feels truer than that, and I watch it land somewhere behind her eyes, not trust yet, but something adjacent to it, something with room to grow if I don't do anything stupid enough to kill it. Later, back at the brewhouse, I'll pull the legal pad out from under six years of inventory counts and start a different kind of list than the ones I'm used to writing, not reasons to leave, not threats to catalog, just small, ordinary, repeatable things a man does when he's finally decided staying is worth the risk. For now, standing in her kitchen with the coffee going cold between us, I just let the quiet hold, and for once it doesn't feel like something I need to run from.

47

JENNA

Seven weeks is long enough that I eventually stop counting them, and I notice the exact morning it happens, which feels like its own small proof of something.

It isn't one grand gesture that gets me there. It's smaller than that, and slower, and somehow more convincing because of it. Rafe shows up for every pickup ten minutes early instead of on time now, parked at the curb reading something on his phone like there's nowhere else he'd rather be. He texts before he's running late, not after, a habit so small I almost miss it the first few times, until I realize I've stopped bracing every time my phone buzzes with his name on it. He remembers that Eli needs the red water bottle, not the blue one, because the blue one leaks. He remembers Josie's allergy list without being handed it twice. They're small things, ordinary things, exactly the kind Derek never once bothered to hold onto, because he never had to prove anything to anyone who might actually leave.

One evening in the third week, my car won't start in the brewery lot, and instead of turning it into a production, Rafe just pops the hood, finds the loose connection in about ninety seconds, and hands me my keys back like it never happened. I stand there afterward longer than the moment requires, waiting for the catch, the favor he'll bring up later, the quiet tally I've learned to expect from men who do things for you. It doesn't come. He's already walking back toward the taproom, calling over his shoulder that Gunny burned the pretzels again and somebody needs to intervene before the whole batch is a loss.

There's a night in the fourth week that sticks with me more than the rest. A storm knocks the power out just after dinner, and before I've even found the flashlight, my phone lights up with a text asking if we're okay, followed twenty minutes later by his truck in the driveway anyway, because texting wasn't enough proof for either of us yet. He doesn't come in and make it a whole production. He just sits on the porch steps with me until the lights flicker back on, Josie curled against his side under a blanket, Eli narrating the storm's progress like a weatherman with a flashlight for a microphone, and then he drives home again once he's sure we're settled, no lingering, no asking for credit.

By the fifth week I stop waiting for the catch entirely. By the sixth, I notice I've started leaving my phone face up on the counter again, screen unlocked, the way I used to before I learned better with Derek. Small as they are, they add up slower than I expect and faster than I'm ready for.

So when Rafe calls one morning and asks if the three of us are free that afternoon, no real explanation attached beyond "I made something, come see it," I don't hesitate the way I might have two months ago. I just ask what time.

"Whenever works. No pressure. I just want you all to see it before I lose my nerve."

"That's not ominous at all."

"It's a good kind of nervous. I promise." Something in his voice sounds almost young, open in a way I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard it, and it settles the last of my hesitation before I've fully registered deciding anything.

The twins take the drive out to the ranch as an opportunity to interrogate me the entire way, Josie leading the charge from the back seat with the relentless focus of a prosecutor who already suspects the verdict and just wants it confirmed out loud.

"Is it a puppy?"

"Not that I know of."

"Is it a bigger puppy? Like a whole grown dog?"

"Josie."

"I'm just asking questions. That's allowed." She subsides for exactly four seconds before trying a different angle. "Eli thinks it's boring, like a new fence or something."

"I didn't say boring," Eli says, with the wounded dignity of a boy who has been badly misquoted. "I said practical. Practical isn't the same as boring."

"It's the same as boring."

"It's not."

I let them argue it out the rest of the way, mostly because it's easier than admitting I have no idea what we're driving toward either, and some part of me likes not knowing, likes the particular quality of surprise that comes from trusting somebody enough to let them have one.

Rafe's waiting by the barn when we pull in, hands shoved in his jacket pockets, looking about as nervous as I've ever seen a grown man look while standing perfectly still. Biscuit circles his legs twice before abandoning him entirely to come greet the twins, who abandon the car doors half open in their hurry to get their hands on him.

"You're not going to tell us what it is," I say, climbing out, reading the answer on his face before he gives it.

"Nope. Follow me."

He leads us past the brewhouse, past the row of hop bines just starting to climb their strings for the season, back toward the tree line where the ground slopes up gently into a stand of old cottonwoods I've walked past a dozen times without ever really looking at them. And there, tucked between two of the biggest trunks, built solid and square and clearly meant to last, sits a treehouse.