Page 34 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

Three weeks since the porch kiss, and I still catch myself checking the clock before she's due, same as I did before that first real date, except the nerves have quietly turned into something closer to impatience. There's been a diner dinner since then, an afternoon spent teaching Eli to fly a kite badly, a movie night that ended with both kids asleep on the couch and Jenna's head finding my shoulder like it had been looking for that exact spot the whole time. Tonight the twins are at Maggie's for the night, some sleepover involving a movie marathon and a promise of pancakes that Josie negotiated like a hostage situation, and that leaves me standing in my own kitchen at six in the evening trying to cook dinner for one person like it's a mission with a timeline and a failure state.

It isn't, obviously. Nobody's life depends on whether the chicken comes out right. I still check it twice.

"You're doing the thing," Gunny says from the doorway, watching me time a pan of roasted vegetables against a mental clock only I can hear.

"What thing?"

"The thing where you treat dinner like a supply drop." He leans against the frame, arms crossed, entirely too pleased with himself. "Relax. It's Jenna. She already likes you. You don't have to win her over with root vegetables."

"I like doing it right."

"Sure." He pushes off the frame, heading for the stairs. "I'm heading home. Lock up behind her whenever she leaves, or don't, none of my business either way." He's gone before I can decide how to respond to that, boots on the stairs and then the door below, and the loft goes quiet in a way that feels different tonight, charged instead of empty.

She knocks at seven, right on time, and when I open the door she's traded her usual brewery clothes for something softer, a sweater the color of the ridge at dusk, and for one second I forget every word I planned to say.

"Something smells good," she says, stepping past me into the loft, and I catch the scent of her, rain and something warm underneath it, before I remember to close the door.

"Chicken. Vegetables. Nothing that requires a compliment."

"I'll be the judge of that." She sets a bottle of wine on the counter, looks around at the room she last saw buried in a snowstorm and two sleeping kids, and something in her face softens at whatever she finds different about it now. "It looks bigger without an entire family camped on the floor."

"It's the same size. You're just used to seeing it full."

"Maybe I like it full."

Nothing ready comes to mind, so I busy myself pulling plates down instead, and if my hands aren't quite steady doing it, she's kind enough not to mention it.

Dinner goes easier than I braced for, conversation moving the way it did at the restaurant, no careful pauses, no rehearsed distance, just two people talking because they want to and not because either of us is managing something. She tells me about a customer who tried to return a growler because the beer inside it had gone flat after three weeks in his truck bed. I tell her about the time Gunny nearly set the smoker on fire trying to cold-smoke a brisket during the coldest week we'd had in years and blamed it on wind shear. She laughs loud enough that Biscuit lifts his head from the floor to check on us, decides we're fine, and goes back to sleep.

"How are the twins doing at Maggie's?" I ask, refilling her glass.

"Terrorizing her, probably. Eli was drafting a movie lineup on the drive over like it was a military campaign. Josie packed four different pairs of pajamas in case the first three didn't feel right for the occasion."

"Sounds like they'll survive without you for one night."

"They'll survive better than I will." She says it lightly, but something underneath it isn't entirely a joke, and I understand it without needing her to explain further, the particular strangeness of an evening with nobody small enough to need you every few minutes. "It's quiet in a way I'm not used to."

"Good quiet or bad quiet?"

"I haven't decided yet." She looks at me over her glass, steady, and something about the way she says it makes it clear she's not really talking about the twins anymore.

"You're different tonight," she says, somewhere past the second glass of wine, watching me over the rim of her glass.

"Different how?"

"Looser. Like you left the checklist downstairs."

"I didn't leave it. I just decided it could wait." I reach across the small table and take her hand, turning it over, tracing the lines of her palm with my thumb the way I've wanted to since she first walked through the door. "Some things don't need a plan."

"That sounds dangerously unlike you."

"I contain multitudes." She laughs again, softer this time, and the sound of it does something to my chest that no amount of tactical training ever prepared me for.

We clear the dishes together, standing shoulder to shoulder at the small sink, her hip bumping mine every time she reaches for another plate, and by the third bump neither of us pretends it's an accident anymore. She sets the last dish down and turns, and I'm already turning too, and there's no fireworks this time, no storm outside forcing the moment, just the two of us choosing it in an ordinary kitchen on an ordinary night, which somehow makes it feel like the most deliberate thing I've ever done.

The kiss starts slow and stays that way, unhurried in a manner I haven't let myself be with anyone in longer than I can measure, both of us learning the shape of this new quiet certainty instead of racing through it. Her hands find the collar of my shirt. Mine find her waist, then the small of her back, pulling her closer until there's no more room left between us for hesitation.

"Rafe." She says my name against my mouth, half question, half something else entirely.