Page 94 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

It isn't fancy. That's the first thing I notice, and it's exactly right. There's no gingerbread trim, no elaborate turret, just clean lines and good lumber and a set of stairs instead of a rope ladder, because of course he thought about how an eight-year-old actually climbs something safely. A small window box under one window holds a scraggly row of marigolds that somebody clearly planted with more enthusiasm than skill. And over the door, painted in careful, blocky letters that match the handwriting I already know from a hand-labeled beer bottle sitting in my cabinet at home, a sign reads THE WALSH-MONTGOMERY OUTPOST.

Nobody says anything for a second. Then Eli's moving, taking the stairs two at a time, and Josie's right behind him shrieking something about calling dibs on the good corner, and I'm left standing in the grass beside Rafe, staring up at a structure that clearly took him weeks to build in secret while also somehow running a brewery and showing up for every single pickup ten minutes early.

"You built this."

"Every board of it. Took me most of the last month and a half, working after close, some early mornings before you'd notice the truck was gone." He ducks his head, a little sheepish, watching the twins' feet thunder across the little platform above us. "Gunny thinks I've lost my mind. He's not entirely wrong."

"When did you have time for this?"

"Same way I make room for everything that actually matters. I just don't sleep much." He says it simply, no weight behind it, like it's just a fact and not the whole philosophy he's spent the last seven weeks rebuilding his life around.

We climb up after them, Rafe steadying the stairs with one hand even though they don't need it, and the inside turns out to be even more him than the outside. A reading nook fills one corner, built around a cushion Maggie clearly had a hand in choosing. Two small desks sit twin-sized and facing each other instead of a wall, so neither kid has to work with their back turned to the other. A shelf holds exactly the right number of books for two eight-year-olds who fight over everything except which stories are worth keeping.

"There's two desks," Eli says, running a hand along the edge of his like he's checking the workmanship, already sounding grudgingly impressed. "So it's not just Josie's."

"It's everybody's. That was the whole point."

"Practical," Eli says, shooting his sister a look loaded with months of accumulated argument. Josie ignores him completely, too busy arranging herself in the reading nook like she's testing it for structural integrity, one leg thrown over the cushioned edge.

"I approve," she declares, arms crossed like a queen surveying new territory. "This is better than a puppy."

"I'll let the puppy know it lost," Rafe says, and Eli actually laughs, quick and surprised, like he wasn't expecting to.

Josie finds the bottle first, propped on the little shelf between the desks, plain glass except for a hand-lettered label taped around its middle.

"What's this one?"

Rafe crosses the small space and takes it from her gently, turning it so I can see the label properly. FAMILY RESERVE, it reads, in the same careful hand as the sign outside, and underneath it, smaller, four names: mine, his, Eli's, and Josie's.

"I brewed a batch and couldn't decide what to call it," he says, eyes down on the bottle like it might give him something to hold onto rather than meeting mine just yet. "Then I figured it out. It was never really about the beer."

"Rafe."

"I need to say this while I've got all three of you in one room, because I've spent too long saying important things to the wrong person or at the wrong time or not at all." He sets the bottle down, finally looks up, and there's nothing guarded left in his face, none of the old careful distance he used to keep even standing this close. "I love you, Jenna. Not the careful version I let myself feel for months while I was busy convincing myself it was safer not to say it. All of it. I love these two exactly as much, which I didn't think was possible until I met them, and I want to build an actual life with all three of you. Not slow. Not scared. Not one more day of me running numbers on whether I deserve to stay when I already know the answer."

"Rafe, I..."

"I'm not finished." He almost smiles, nerves and certainty tangled together in a way that undoes me faster than anything he's said yet. "I don't have a ring in my pocket. This isn't that, not yet, though it's coming, and you should probably start bracing for it. This is just me telling you, in front of the only two people whose vote actually outranks yours in this house, that I'm done being careful with something this good. I want all of it. The mess, the noise, the two kids who still haven't decided whether this is boring or practical, all of it, for as long as you'll let me."

"Yes."

The word's out of my mouth before he's even fully stopped talking, quick and certain, and it costs me less effort than it probably should, given seven weeks of proof stacked up behind it.

"You didn't let me finish the question."

"You didn't need to ask one. I already know what it was."

He laughs, low and disbelieving, like a man who built an entire treehouse and rehearsed a whole speech and still somehow underestimated how ready I already was, and then Eli and Josie are both talking at once, something about whether they get to help pick the ring, whether this means Rafe lives here now, whether Biscuit gets his own room, and none of it slows down long enough for anyone to actually answer.

Rafe pulls me in first, one arm circling my waist. Then the twins crash into us from both sides at once, four arms and two small bodies wedging themselves into a hug that has no business fitting on a treehouse ladder and somehow does anyway. We're all laughing and half falling, holding on tight enough that nobody actually tips over the edge. Below us, Biscuit barks once at the commotion and then gives up entirely, flopping down in the grass to wait us out, and above us the cottonwood leaves catch the afternoon light and throw moving shadows across a sign that already looks like it's been there for years instead of weeks.

It isn't the proposal. Not yet. But standing on that ladder with all four of us tangled together and a bottle with our four names on it waiting up on that shelf, I already know exactly what my answer's going to be when he finally asks the real question, and I don't need a ring to prove it.

48

RAFE

The twins have been campaigning for Dot's sugar cookies with the kind of coordinated persistence only two eight-year-olds working as a team can manage, and by the time Maggie's car rolls out of sight with both of them buckled in the back seat still arguing about frosting colors, Jenna's standing next to me looking like she doesn't quite know what to do with a whole night that isn't scheduled around somebody else's bedtime.