Page 19 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

The office is small enough that I can hear him breathing, slow and deliberate, the kind of breath somebody counts on purpose. Josie's drawing watches us both from the corkboard, one crooked corner still curling away from its thumbtack. Outside the door, faint through the wall, I can hear Gunny keeping the twins occupied with something that involves a lot of dramatic sound effects, and I'm grateful for him in a way I don't have the words for yet.

The quiet stretches longer than any silence I've sat through with another adult in years, and I make myself stay inside it instead of reaching for something to fill it with. I've been on the other side of this exact moment before, the one where somebody's world tips sideways and every well-meaning question just makes the tipping worse. I know what it costs a person to be watched while they put themselves back together. I keep my hands folded in my lap and let him set the pace.

Rafe doesn't sit. He stays standing at the desk for a long time, long enough that I start to wonder if he wants me gone, and then, without turning around, he starts to talk.

"Loud noises." His voice comes out low, rough at the edges, like each word costs him something to produce. "Sudden ones. Sharp ones. They take me somewhere I can't always get back from fast."

"Okay."

"That's it. That's the whole mechanism. Something goes off, and for a while I'm not here anymore." He finally turns, and his face has none of its usual careful blankness, just something raw underneath it that he's clearly not used to anyone seeing. "I don't always come back fast. Sometimes it's seconds. Sometimes it's longer."

"How long was it today?"

"Under a minute." He says it like a confession. "Felt like an hour."

"Does it happen a lot?"

"Less than it used to. More than I let on." He says it flatly, like a fact he's stopped being ashamed of reporting. "A car backfiring. A door slamming somewhere I don't expect it. Sometimes nothing at all, and I still end up somewhere I didn't ask to go."

"That sounds like carrying a second job nobody else can see."

"It's just a normal day for me at this point." He catches himself the second it's out, something almost like a wince crossing his face, and I get the sense that's not a joke he makes out loud very often, if ever.

I don't ask him what he saw in that minute, or where exactly it took him, because I can tell by the careful way he's rationing his own words that specifics aren't something he's ready to hand over yet, maybe not to me, maybe not to anyone. I let the door on that stay shut and wait for whatever he actually wants to say next.

"I hate that they saw it." He drags a hand down his face, over stubble he clearly didn't get to this morning. "My employee's kids. Watching me come apart on the floor like that."

"They're not your employee's kids."

He blinks at me, thrown for half a second. "That's what I said."

"You said it like they belong to you somehow. Like it's your job to protect them from ever seeing anything hard." I keep my voice gentle, because this isn't a correction meant to wound, just one meant to land true. "They're not your anything, Rafe. They're just kids who like you. That's all it has to be."

Something moves across his face, fast, gone almost before I catch it, an expression I don't have a name for yet, somewhere between relief and something that looks almost like grief. He doesn't argue the point. He just looks at me like I've handed him something he didn't know he needed and isn't sure how to hold.

"They weren't scared of me." He says it slow, like he's still working out whether he believes it. "Josie brought me water. Eli stood guard at the door."

"That sounds like them."

"It undid me more than the actual thing did." He drops into the chair across from mine, finally, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped like he's trying to keep them still without making it obvious. "I don't know what to do with that."

"You don't have to do anything with it. You can just let it have happened."

He holds my gaze for a long moment, and something in how he's looking at me changes, less guarded than I've ever seen it. I feel the pull of it more than I expect to, and I have to remind myself that this isn't the moment to want anything for myself.

"I flinch at things too," I say, before I can talk myself out of it. "Not the same thing. Not even close. But I know what it's like to have your body remember something before your mind catches up."

"What things?"

I take a breath, because this is a door I don't open for just anyone, and I'm aware, even as I start talking, that I'm choosing to open it for him.

"Derek used to raise his voice as a weapon. Not randomly. Not because he lost control." I keep my hands still in my lap, deliberate, the way I've trained myself to stay steady when I say his name out loud. "He'd pick the exact moment it would do the most damage, and then he'd get loud, precise about it, like he'd rehearsed the whole thing. It wasn't about being angry. It was about making sure I knew who was in charge of the room."

Rafe doesn't say anything. He just watches me with a stillness that feels less like waiting and more like listening with his whole body.

"I still flinch at slammed car doors sometimes. In parking lots, at the grocery store, wherever. Some part of my brain hears that sound and goes on alert before the rest of me remembers it's just a car door and nothing's actually wrong." I shrug, a small, tired movement. "It's not the same wound as yours. I know that. But I think it might be the same species of scar."

"How long were you married to him?"