Page 58 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

Biscuit himself is stationed by the fireplace wearing a stocking around his neck like a collar, Josie's doing from an hour ago, and he's tolerating it with the weary patience of a dog who has decided, somewhere over the last few years, that whatever the Walsh children do to him is simply part of the arrangement now. He doesn't fight it. He just lies there blinking at the chaos with the stocking hanging off one ear, occasionally sighing in a way that sounds almost human.

Rafe's on the floor with his back against the couch, coffee going cold beside him, watching Eli's treasure hunt with the same focused attention he'd give an actual security sweep, and the way he fits so naturally into this specific mess catches me square in the chest the way it keeps doing lately, less like a surprise now and more like a fact I'm still getting used to knowing.

"Any luck?" he asks Eli.

"Not yet. But I found a bottle cap under the couch and a quarter, so technically it's already working."

"That's a solid return on investment for day one."

"What's a return on investment?"

"When you get more out of something than you put into it." Rafe reaches over and steals a piece of wrapping paper off Eli's head, where it's been sitting for the better part of twenty minutes. "You're getting there without even trying."

He didn't have to come this early. He didn't have to stay through the whole unwrapping, the cinnamon-roll breakfast that took twice as long as it should have because Josie insisted on decorating each one individually, the slow unraveling of a morning that has no actual schedule to it beyond whatever the twins want to do next. He just showed up at seven with a bag of gifts and a thermos of coffee he'd already made, and he's been here since, folded into the day like he's always belonged in it, and nobody's had to ask him to stay because leaving was never on the table to begin with.

By early afternoon Eli's moved on from treasure hunting to demanding, with the total confidence of a small general issuing orders, that somebody build him a blanket fort worthy of the occasion.

"Not a regular fort," he clarifies, standing in the middle of the living room with his hands on his hips. "A good one. With rooms."

"Rooms," Rafe repeats, already standing, already scanning the couch cushions like he's assessing terrain. "How many rooms are we talking?"

"At least two. One for sleeping and one for snacks."

"That's a reasonable request." He starts pulling cushions off the couch with the exact same focus he brings to everything else, stacking them into a rough perimeter while Eli directs from the sidelines with escalating enthusiasm, and Josie abandons her drawing long enough to contribute an opinion on load-bearing structure that she clearly picked up from watching him work on something else entirely.

"You need a support beam," she says, pointing at the coffee table. "Otherwise it'll fall on somebody's head."

"Good call." Rafe drags the coffee table into position without being asked twice, and for the next twenty minutes he's fully committed to the project, not a shred of showmanship in it, testing blanket tension, adjusting a corner that keeps sagging, crawling half inside the structure at one point to check the sightlines from what Eli's designated the snack room. He treats an eight-year-old's blanket fort with the exact seriousness he'd give an actual engineering problem, and Eli watches him work with the rapt, wide-eyed focus of a kid who's figured out, somewhere along the way, that Rafe doesn't do anything halfway, not even this.

I sit on the arm of the couch watching the two of them argue gently about whether a lamp counts as structural support, Josie narrating from the floor with her paints, Biscuit's stocking still hanging off one ear, and something settles in me that isn't just happiness. I could build a whole life around exactly this, I think, watching him back out of the fort to inspect his own work. It isn't the fireworks or the big declarations that get me. It's just a man on his knees on my living room floor taking a blanket fort more seriously than it deserves because it matters to somebody he loves.

"It's structurally sound," he finally announces, straightening up. "You could survive a minor earthquake in there."

"Can we sleep in it tonight?"

"Ask your mother. I'm just the contractor."

"Mom?"

"We'll see how tired everybody is after dinner," I tell him, which both kids correctly interpret as a yes with extra steps, and Eli disappears into the fort immediately to claim the sleeping room before Josie can stake her own territory.

Dinner's loud and easy, turkey and too many side dishes and a pie my mother sent home with strict instructions about reheating that I ignore entirely, and afterward the twins negotiate a full hour of movie time before bed, which stretches into ninety minutes because nobody has the heart to enforce the original number on a night like this one. By the time we finally get them settled, half asleep and stubbornly insisting they're not, the fort's been abandoned in favor of actual beds after all, and the house goes quiet in that particular way it only does at the end of a very long, very good day.

Rafe and I end up on the couch in front of the fire, the wreckage of wrapping paper mostly cleared into bags by the door, Biscuit finally free of his stocking and curled at our feet with a contented sigh that seems to speak for the whole house. I've got my legs pulled up under me, his arm around my shoulders, and for a while neither of us says much of anything, just watches the fire do what fire does, and it's the kind of silence that doesn't need filling.

"Best Christmas I've had in years," he says eventually, quiet.

"Mine too. And I don't hand out that title lightly."

"I keep thinking about this morning. Eli with that detector, dead serious about buried treasure under your living room." He shakes his head, something soft moving across his face. "I don't think I've ever watched a kid commit to a bit that hard."

"Must run in the family somewhere. Wherever that gene came from."

"I'll take partial credit." He goes quiet again, and this time it feels different, heavier somehow, like he's circling something rather than just resting in the moment. "Jenna."

"Yeah?"

He shifts to look at me properly, firelight catching the side of his face, and there's something in his eyes I recognize now, the same look that showed up right before he said Danny's name on that ranch overlook, the one that caught in his throat by this exact fire not that long ago. Whatever he's about to say has been sitting in him a while, gathering weight, and I go still, giving him the room to get there in his own time.