Page 98 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"It usually does."

"Not this time. Just bring the twins, wear something you don't mind getting a little dusty, and trust me." A pause, and I can hear him almost laughing on the other end, nerves dressed up as calm the exact way they were the day he showed me that treehouse. "I promise it's worth the drive."

"That's not ominous at all."

"You said that last time too."

"It was ominous last time too."

"Fair." He laughs, actually laughs, and something in the sound settles whatever nerves I've been quietly carrying for a week straight. "Tomorrow. Early afternoon. I'll text you where."

The twins are unbearable the whole next morning, practically vibrating through breakfast, Eli checking his phone every four minutes like he's running an actual operation and Josie humming something tuneless under her breath that she clearly thinks passes for casual. When Rafe's text finally comes through with directions up the ranch road instead of to the brewery, I don't ask questions. I just drive, both twins strapped in and exchanging a look in the rearview mirror that they both think I can't see.

"You two are terrible at secrets."

"We're excellent at secrets," Josie says. "You just haven't figured this one out yet."

"I have several theories."

"They're wrong," Eli says, too quickly, and Josie kicks the back of his seat hard enough that he yelps.

The road climbs steadily through the north pasture, fence posts giving way to open grass and then to the tree line. I recognize the turn before I've fully placed why, something from a story Rafe told me once, about a ridge, a bottle he never finishes, and a set of dog tags he carries every year on a day he's never once named out loud to me. I keep that guess to myself. Some things a person shares because the moment finally asks for them, not because you go looking.

"Almost there," Eli announces, grave and certain, like someone who has personally scouted the route.

"How do you know? You've never been up here."

"I know things." He says it with such total conviction that I decide not to argue, mostly because arguing with an eight-year-old running an active mission feels like exactly the kind of fight I'm not going to win.

Rafe's truck is already parked at the top when we crest the hill, and he's standing beside it rocking slightly on his heels, more unsettled than I've seen him since a night on a treehouse ladder that ended with a bottle bearing all our names on it. The twins are out of the car before I've fully put it in park, sprinting toward a spot just past his truck where something's propped against a fence post, angled so I can't quite make out what it says from here.

"Stay there a second," Rafe calls to them, and they freeze mid-run with the exaggerated stillness of children who take orders very seriously when the mission finally matters.

"Rafe. What is this?"

"Come find out." He holds a hand out, and I take it, and he walks me the last stretch up toward the fence post slow enough that I have time to notice everything. The whole valley spreads out gold and green below us, the light doing that late-afternoon thing where everything looks a little more honest than it does at noon. The twins stand at attention like they've been drilled for this exact moment, which, knowing Rafe, they probably have. And the sign, finally close enough to read, reads APPROVED BY MANAGEMENT, painted in the same careful, blocky letters I recognize from a beer label and a treehouse door.

"Eli helped with the letters," Josie announces, unable to hold it in one second longer. "I helped with the paint. Rafe wasn't allowed to say anything until now, and it was really, really hard."

"It was the hardest week of my whole life," Eli says solemnly, standing sentry beside the sign with both hands clasped behind his back like a soldier at ease, and I laugh, half startled, half already undone, because I know exactly what's happening and I still can't quite believe it's actually happening.

"You two knew about this for a week?"

"We had jobs," Eli says. "I did perimeter. Josie had the box."

"I still have the box," Josie says, holding up the small paper-towel bundle like evidence in a trial only she understands the stakes of. "Do you want it now?"

"Not yet, Josie." Rafe's voice is steady, but I can feel his hand tighten slightly around mine, and when I look at him he's not looking at the twins anymore. He's looking at me, and whatever nerves were driving the last hour of secrecy have settled into something quieter and more certain, the same stillness I've watched steady him through worse things than this.

I glance back once at the twins, both still holding their careful poses beside the sign, Josie visibly fighting the urge to say something and losing, and something about the sight of them guarding this moment so fiercely undoes the last of my composure before Rafe's even said a word.

"You brought me to the place you come to grieve," I say, quiet, not quite a question.

"I used to only come up here for that." He glances once at the valley, gold and endless below us, and then back at me, like the view isn't the point anymore and never really was. "I've spent six years using this ridge for exactly one thing. I wanted it to mean something else too. Something that isn't just about what I lost."

"Rafe."

"Let me get through this. I've been rehearsing it for a week, and Eli's timed me twice, so I know exactly how long you have to wait." A small, unsteady laugh, and he sinks down onto one knee right there in the grass, the twins going utterly silent behind him for possibly the first time in their lives, and my whole chest goes tight and warm at once. "I never wanted this. Any of it. Not a family, not a house full of noise, not two kids who argue about frosting and puppies and whether practical counts as boring. I spent a long time convinced I didn't get to want things like that, that wanting them was its own kind of risk I had no business taking. And then you drove up a gravel road with a resume and two skeptical kids in the back seat, and I didn't want any of this right up until the exact day I got it, and now I can't imagine wanting anything else for the rest of my life."