Page 66 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"I am. Long one." He doesn't elaborate, and I don't push, the same unspoken deal we've kept since he left, a door he asked me to trust him to open himself when he's ready. "How are my two favorite menaces?"

"Currently debating who called the good couch cushion first. High stakes stuff over here."

He lets out a short laugh, worn thin but real. "Tell them I said the good cushion belongs to whoever didn't start the argument."

"That'll solve nothing and you know it."

"Worth a shot." A pause opens up on his end, longer than usual, and I can hear him breathing through it, the particular exhaustion of a man who's spent the whole day carrying something he hasn't set down yet. "You okay? You sound like you've got something on your mind."

I open my mouth. I get as far as drawing the breath I'd need to actually say it, the envelope still sitting on my kitchen table three feet away, Derek's attorney's careful language still looping through my head on a track I can't shut off. I could tell him right now. I could hand him half of what I'm carrying and let him help me carry the rest, the way he's let me help carry his own worst nights more than once.

Then I hear it again underneath his voice, the flatness he's not quite hiding, whatever this trip actually is wearing him down to a version of himself thinner than I've ever heard, and I decide, in the space of that one held breath, that tonight isn't the night to add more weight to a man who's already running low.

"I'm fine," I say instead. "Just tired. Twin logistics take it out of a person."

"Copy that." He doesn't sound entirely convinced, but he doesn't push either, the same patience he's given me since the very beginning, trusting me to open my own doors on my own schedule. "I'll be home soon. Couple more days."

"Fly safe."

"Always do." Another pause, softer this time. "I miss you. More than makes sense for three days."

"Three days is plenty of time to miss somebody." My throat goes tight around the words, half from him and half from everything I'm not saying alongside them. "Come home soon."

"Working on it."

We talk another few minutes about nothing that matters, things like the twins' narwhal debate and a diner special Gunny's been raving about, and then his flight starts boarding and he has to go, his voice already pulling toward the noise behind him, promising he'll call again once he lands.

I stay at the kitchen table a long while after we hang up, the phone face down beside the envelope like the two of them might have something to say to each other if I leave them close enough.

Derek's letter is still sitting there when I finally reach for it again, the paper gone slightly soft at the corners from how many times I've picked it up and set it back down tonight, reading the same paragraph over and over until the words stop meaning anything new. I fold it back along its original creases, careful, like precision might undo some of what it says, and slide it into its envelope, and tuck it into the drawer where I keep things I'm not ready to look at every single day.

I'll tell Rafe. Not tonight, not over a phone line with him running on fumes in some airport three states away, but soon, once he's home and steady and not carrying whatever he's carrying right now on top of it. That's the plan I make myself believe as I turn off the kitchen light and head down the hall to check on two kids who have no idea their world just shifted slightly under their feet.

It feels like the right call standing here tonight, small and reasonable, one more day before I have to say the hard thing out loud. I don't know yet what one more day is going to cost either of us. I just know I'm not ready to find out tonight.

32

RAFE

Jenna's porch light is on when I pull up, same as always, and I'm out of the truck before the engine's fully quiet, a stretch of airports and rental cars and a guest bed that never once let me sleep past four still clinging to me like a second layer of clothes. She opens the door before I make it up the steps, and whatever she sees in my face stops her halfway through whatever greeting she'd planned.

"You look different," she says, reading my face like she's already three questions ahead of whatever I'm about to say. "Tired. But different tired."

"Long few days."

"The twins are down. Maggie kept them an extra hour so I could actually hear myself think, and then I put them to bed the second they got home." She steps back to let me in, and I catch the second she clocks the duffel bag still hanging off my shoulder, catch the question forming behind her eyes before she decides not to ask it yet. "You want coffee? Food? You look like you haven't eaten today."

I haven't, not really, a bag of pretzels somewhere over Kansas the closest thing to a meal in the last twelve hours, but food isn't what's pulling at me right now. I set the duffel down by the door instead of carrying it further in, some part of me needing both hands free for what's coming, and glance down the hall toward the twins' room, both doors cracked the exact same two inches Jenna always leaves them.

"I want to sit down and tell you something. All of it, this time."

Something shifts in her face, careful and quick, and she doesn't ask what I mean by that. She just nods once, the same steady nod she gave me the night I told her about Danny on the tailgate, and leads me to the kitchen table like she already knows this is going to take a while.

I sit across from her, hands flat on the wood, and I don't spend even a second deciding how much of the truth to hand her, not this time, not one piece of it held back for later. I just start.

"You know about Danny. The road, the call I made, the twelve minutes." My voice holds together, steadier than it should for what's coming, the practiced calm I usually save for delivering bad news instead of confessing one. "What you don't know is what happened after. What I did with it for six years instead of actually dealing with it."

"Okay."