Page 82 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

I don't answer right away, and that's answer enough for both of us.

"A lawyer stood up in front of a judge and made a case for exactly what I've always been afraid I am," I say finally, coiling the hose slower than it needs. "Unstable. A liability. The kind of variable you contain and account for so it doesn't hurt the people standing too close to it. And the worst part is he wasn't lying. He was just saying it out loud in a room where it counted."

"You won, Rafe. The judge didn't believe a word of it."

"The judge doesn't have to raise those kids. I do, or I would, if I stay in this long enough to actually become their problem instead of just their mother's."

"Listen to yourself." Gunny's voice sharpens, the patience finally running out. "You're describing a man who fixes woodstoves and drives eleven miles at midnight and got up in that courtroom's gallery every single day even after his own lawyer told him to disappear. That's not a liability. That's the opposite of one."

"That's not what a stranger in a robe sees on paper."

"Then stop building your whole life around what looks good on paper and start building it around what's actually true." He steps closer, and for once there's no joke waiting behind his eyes. "I've watched you do this twice before. Different reasons, same ending. You decide you're the danger, and you remove yourself before anybody can prove you wrong. It's not caution. It's cowardice, and you don't get to call it duty anymore."

The word lands harder than he probably means it to, or exactly as hard as he means it to. I can't tell which anymore.

"I'm trying to protect them."

"You're trying to protect yourself from finding out what happens if you stay and it still goes wrong. There's a difference, and some part of you knows it." He straightens up, done for tonight, already reaching for his jacket. "Whatever you're about to do, don't do it tonight. Sleep on it first. Just once, do the smart thing instead of the fast one."

I don't answer that either, and he doesn't wait around for me to.

I stay in the brewhouse another hour after he leaves, running the same argument in circles until it stops sounding like fear and starts sounding, in my own head, like sense. Jenna and the twins have a real shot now, a clean shot, custody settled and Derek boxed into a corner he has to behave inside of. The one variable left in that equation that isn't settled, that isn't safe, that could still blow the whole thing back open with one bad night or one wrong headline, is me. It's not dramatic to remove a variable like that. It's just math, the kind I've been running my whole life, the kind that's kept people alive when I trusted it and gotten someone hurt the one time I didn't.

By the time I get in the truck, I've stopped calling it fear at all. I've dressed it up as responsibility, the same uniform Gunny just told me I don't get to wear anymore, and it fits so well I don't notice I'm wearing it until I'm already turning up her gravel drive.

Her porch light is already burning when I turn up the drive, same as it's been every night I've come here, and I stay behind the wheel a while before I make myself climb out, running through a version of this conversation that sounds clean and reasonable in my head and already knowing it won't sound like either one out loud.

Jenna opens the door before I knock, relief still fresh on her face from four days of finally being able to breathe, and something in my chest cracks at the sight of it, the specific unguarded happiness of a woman who has no idea what's about to happen on her own porch.

"Hey." She reaches for my hand, and I let her take it, because I haven't fully committed to not being touched yet. "I wasn't expecting you tonight."

"I know. I should've called."

"You're here now. That's better." She studies my face, and whatever she finds there makes her smile falter by degrees. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I've just been thinking."

"That's usually when something's wrong." She doesn't let go of my hand yet, like she can keep whatever this is from happening as long as she's still holding on. "Thinking about what?"

"About us. About what happens next, now that the case is over."

"I thought what happens next is the good part." Her voice stays light, but there's an edge underneath it now, the same instinct that's kept her alive around men who talk in circles before they say the actual thing. "Rafe, whatever this is, just say it."

"I think we should slow down."

The words come out flatter than I mean them to, stripped of everything that got me here, all the math and the fear and Bennett's voice and Gunny's warning, none of it making the trip from my head to my mouth, just five words delivered like an order I've already decided isn't up for negotiation.

"Slow down." She repeats it like she's checking the translation, like the words might mean something different the second time. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"It means I've had a lot of time to think since the hearing, and I don't think it's fair to you or the twins for me to keep being a variable in a case that's finally settled."

"A variable." Something in her face goes very still, very careful, the exact expression she wore the first few weeks I knew her, before she let herself trust any of this. "That's what I am to you right now."

"That's not what I meant."

"Then tell me what you meant, because from where I'm standing it sounds like a man who just won everything deciding the smartest move is to walk away from the one thing that isn't legally required to keep."

She isn't wrong, and I don't have anything true to say that contradicts her, so I don't say anything at all.