Page 53 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

We get one more run in before the light starts going gray and flat, all four of us piled onto the big sled for a group attempt that ends, predictably, in a pile of limbs and laughter about two-thirds of the way down, nobody hurt, everybody soaked through to whatever layer was supposed to be waterproof and clearly wasn't. By the time we trudge back to the truck the sky's gone the color of a bruise and everyone's shivering despite the cocoa, boots heavy with wet snow, sleds dragging behind us like tired dogs.

"That was the best day," Josie announces, climbing into the back seat with the absolute conviction of someone who has personally ranked every day of her life and means it.

"Better than Oktoberfest?"

"Different category. Oktoberfest had funnel cake. This had aggressive steering." She says it like the two are equally valid metrics, and I decide not to argue the point.

Eli's loading the sleds into the truck bed, wrestling with a bungee cord that's clearly winning, and I go to help him, both of us cold enough that neither of us is talking much anymore, just working through the last logistics of getting everything secured before we all freeze solid standing in the driveway.

"Thanks for today, Rafe," he says, cinching the cord tight. "That was really fun. You're the best at planning stuff like this, even when the plan doesn't totally work."

"High praise, considering the plan resulted in two people in a snowbank."

"Yeah, but it was a fun snowbank." He grins up at me, snow melting in his hair, cheeks bright red from cold, and then something shifts in his face, some thought catching up to his mouth half a beat too late. "I'm glad you're my..."

He stops.

Just like that, mid-word, mid-breath, the sentence hanging open like a door he suddenly wasn't sure he was allowed to walk through, and his whole face goes red for reasons the cold can't take credit for, and he looks down at the bungee cord like it's suddenly the most important object in the state of Colorado.

"Glad I'm your what, bud?"

"Nothing. Never mind." He yanks the cord tighter than it needs to be, not looking at me, and climbs into the truck without finishing it, and I stand there in the driveway for a second with cold working its way into my boots and something considerably warmer working its way into my chest.

Nobody says anything about it. Jenna's face, when I glance over, tells me she heard it too, the same unfinished word landing somewhere behind her eyes that it landed in mine, and Josie's gone quiet in the back seat, which means she caught it too, even if she's smart enough not to say so out loud.

We drive home with the heater blasting and four wet, exhausted people not talking about the thing that just happened. It rides the whole way back with us anyway, like a fifth passenger nobody buckled in and nobody's willing to name.

25

JENNA

The twins pile into my mother's car with enough overnight bags to suggest a much longer trip than two days, Josie already narrating the weekend's planned activities before she's even buckled in, Eli clutching a chess set my mother bought him for exactly this purpose because she claims, with total confidence, that she's going to finally beat him.

"You're not going to beat him," I tell her through the open window. "Nobody's beaten him since the leaves turned."

"I taught myself chess from a library book in nineteen eighty-two. I have reserves he doesn't know about."

"Good luck with that."

"We don't need luck. We need a distracted eight-year-old and a plate of cookies at the right moment." She winks, entirely serious, and pulls away from the curb with both twins waving out the back window until the car turns the corner and disappears toward the highway.

And then it's quiet. Genuinely, thoroughly quiet, the kind of quiet the cabin hasn't held since before the divorce, and I stand in the driveway for a second just listening to it before Rafe's truck pulls in behind where my mother's car used to be.

"Two days," he says, leaning out the window like he still can't quite believe the math. "No twins. No schedule. Nothing on the calendar but whatever we decide to put there."

"Try not to sound too suspicious about it. It's supposed to be a good thing."

"I'm not suspicious. I'm recalibrating." He climbs out, and something in the easy way he crosses the driveway toward me, unhurried, no glance at his watch, no mental countdown running behind his eyes, tells me he means it. "First time since the fireworks we've had more than a few stolen hours."

"Don't waste it standing in my driveway, then."

We end up back at the loft because it's closer to the brewery and because some unspoken agreement decided a while ago that the loft is ours now, not just his, and the first thing we do with two entire unscheduled days is attempt to cook a meal neither of us actually knows how to make.

"The recipe says to fold in the egg whites," I tell him, staring at a bowl of egg whites that have gone from promising to deflated in the time it took me to read the next instruction.

"Fold how? Like laundry?"

"I don't know. Gently, I assume."