Page 96 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"You're smiling," she says, breathless, drawing back only enough to see my whole face.

"Hard not to."

"You used to look like this was a mission briefing. All focus, no fun."

"I was terrified of doing something wrong."

"And now?"

"Now I know you'll tell me." I catch her hand before it finishes untucking my shirt, press a kiss to her palm, feel her breath hitch under it. "That's the whole difference. I stopped guessing and started asking, and it turns out asking works a lot better."

"Radical concept."

"Revolutionary." I walk her backward, slow, laughing when she catches her heel on the rug and nearly takes us both down, both of us grabbing for the same doorframe at the same second, foreheads knocking together hard enough to sting.

"Ow."

"Sorry."

"You did that on purpose."

"I absolutely did not." I press my mouth to the spot on her forehead like that'll fix it, and she's laughing again, warm and unguarded, the exact sound I used to have to work for and now get just by being ridiculous in a doorway with her. "Are we blaming me for gravity now."

"I'm blaming you for everything tonight. Get used to it."

"I can live with that."

I remember the very first time we ended up in this loft together, both of us so careful we practically apologized our way through the whole evening, me asking three separate times if she was sure, her laughing at me for asking a fourth, neither one of us able to relax into it until the lights were off and the nerves finally had nowhere left to hide. There's none of that tonight. Neither of us hovers. Neither of us checks in every ten seconds like the ground might give out from under us. It's just the easy, certain rhythm of two people who've already survived the worst versions of themselves and came out the other side wanting exactly this.

The bedroom's dark except for the last of the evening light through the window, and neither of us bothers reaching for a switch, both of us apparently agreeing without saying so that we don't need to see everything to know exactly where we are. She pulls me down with her, laughing once more when my knee catches the nightstand and the lamp wobbles, and I catch it before it falls, and she calls me smooth, and I tell her I've got excellent reflexes for exactly this kind of emergency, and then the jokes run out entirely for a while, because there isn't room left for cleverness once her hands find my skin and mine find hers and every careful wall either of us used to keep standing between us finally, completely, comes down.

I take my time with her, more than I ever have, because for once there's nowhere else either of us needs to be and nothing waiting outside this room that can't hold until morning. I map her slow, deliberate, the curve of her shoulder and the soft skin below her ear and the spot low on her ribs that makes her breath catch and her fingers dig into my back, learning her all over again like she isn't already the most familiar thing in my life, and every gasp I pull out of her feels like its own small victory, hard won and worth savoring. She's not shy about telling me what she wants, never has been, not since she stopped being scared of wanting anything at all, and I like her best like this, bold and unhurried and utterly certain of me, her hands sliding under my shirt and dragging it up and off like she's done it a hundred times and still can't quite believe she gets to.

"You're overdressed," she says against my throat, and there's nothing shy left in her voice at all, just heat and certainty and a low laugh underneath it.

"Working on it."

"Work faster."

"Thought we weren't racing tonight."

"I changed my mind." She pulls me back down to her, and whatever answer I had ready dissolves somewhere against her mouth, and after that neither of us bothers with words for a long while, just heat and breath and skin, the slow drag of her hands and the low sounds she makes that I feel more than hear, every one of them stripping away another year I spent convincing myself I didn't deserve this.

It isn't rushed. It isn't careful either, not the old kind of careful, the kind built out of fear instead of tenderness. It's slower than that and more certain, her name the only word I manage for a long stretch, her hands fisting in the sheets and then curling tight around my forearm like she needs somewhere sturdy to hold on while all that heat burns through her, her breath catching against my ear every time I find a spot that used to make her laugh and now makes her arch and go quiet and still instead, both of us trading the last of our guardedness for something neither of us has any interest in taking back. She says my name again, rougher now, a low, ragged demand with nothing careful left in it, and I give her exactly what that tone's asking for, slow and thorough, until the sound she makes isn't a word at all anymore, just my name breaking apart into something wordless and low and entirely mine to hear. When she finally comes back to herself enough to say my name whole again, low and unraveled, her whole body still trembling under my hands, I finally get what people mean when they say someone can feel like home.

Afterward we lie tangled together, her head on my chest, my fingers moving slow through her hair, both of us quiet in the particular way that only comes after everything's finally been said and done and neither of us has to perform recovery for the other. The window's gone fully dark now, just the porch light bleeding faint gold along the far wall, and I can feel her heartbeat starting to slow back down under my palm, matching mine somewhere in the middle.

"You're thinking loud," she says, tracing a lazy line down my forearm.

"I'm always thinking loud. You just usually can't hear it over the twins."

"What's the thought."

I let the quiet stretch a second longer, easy between the two of us now, like we've finally found the right fit, and I think about how many nights it took to get here, how many versions of myself I had to burn down and rebuild before I could lie in this bed with a woman I love and not feel like I was one bad decision away from losing it all. Gunny always says a man only gets a handful of nights in his whole life worth remembering on purpose. I intend to remember this one for the rest of mine.

I almost let it wait. I've got a whole plan sitting in a drawer at the brewhouse, a ring I've kept tucked in my jacket, ready and waiting since the morning after the treehouse, like a coward, waiting for the right night, the right words, some version of perfect I keep talking myself out of trusting. This isn't that. I know it isn't that, and some old careful part of me wants to hold the real question back until I've got it dressed up properly. But there's a smaller question underneath it that's been sitting in my chest for weeks, one I don't have the patience left to keep quiet, not tonight, not with her curled against me like she belongs there because she does.

"Would you want to be mine," I say. "Officially. You and the twins both. Paperwork and all, my name next to yours on something that makes it permanent instead of just true."