Page 22 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"Thanks for the update."

"That's what friends are for." He says it so casually, so completely without weighing the word, that it lands somewhere in my chest I wasn't braced for, and I have to look away and pretend I'm checking on Josie instead of processing an eight-year-old calling me his friend like it's the most obvious fact in the world.

By evening the crowd thins into something quieter, string lights coming on overhead as the sky goes the color of a bruise healing, and I find Jenna near the hay bales at the edge of the fairground, laughing at something Maggie's saying, head tipped back, one hand pressed flat against her own chest like she's trying to keep the laugh from getting away from her entirely. The twins are draped against a hay bale a few feet off, Eli still holding Biscuit Junior even though he'd never admit he wanted a turn, both of them heavy-eyed and swaying on their feet the specific way kids do right before they go down hard.

I stand there longer than I mean to, just watching. It hits me somewhere around the fifth minute, quiet and strange, that I've spent an entire day surrounded by noise and crowds and strangers who all wanted a piece of my attention, and not once, not a single time since Dot's cider line this morning, have I wanted to disappear.

I don't know what to do with that, so I walk over instead.

"You survived," Jenna says, catching sight of me. "I wasn't sure lederhosen-adjacent crowds were your thing."

"They're not."

"And yet." She gestures at the general chaos of the fairground, string lights and stragglers and the last of the pretzel line. "You're still here."

"Ridgeline's name is on the banners."

"Sure. That's the reason." She says it lightly, but there's something underneath it, a question she's not quite asking out loud, and I don't have an answer ready that doesn't say more than I mean to.

Three days of festival prep swallowed whatever was supposed to happen after Gunny burst through that office door, one crisis stacked on the next until I never had five straight minutes alone with her. I haven't forgotten where we left off. Judging by the careful way she's not quite looking at me either, neither has she.

Maggie excuses herself toward the pie table with the transparent tact of a woman giving two people room she thinks they need, and Jenna and I end up standing there together, close enough that our shoulders nearly touch, watching the twins fight their own eyelids by the hay bale.

"They're not going to make it to the fireworks," she says.

"They'll wake up for the noise."

"That's either reassuring or terrifying, depending on how loud this town takes its fireworks."

I don't answer that one, because the honest answer involves things I'm not ready to explain, and a few minutes later the announcement crackles over the loudspeaker anyway, the crowd shifting and murmuring toward the open field at the edge of Main Street where the display's set to go off.

The first firework goes up with a low whistle, climbing slow, and I feel my whole body brace before it even bursts, shoulders locking, hands curling loosely at my sides. It's announced and expected, nothing like the flat crack of a nail gun with no warning behind it. My mind knows the difference. The rest of me takes a few seconds longer to catch up, muscle memory running its old program regardless of what my brain already understands.

I stay anyway.

Jenna's close enough beside me that our arms brush when the second firework goes up, gold sparks raining down over the ridge in a slow collapsing arc, and the twins startle awake against the hay bale just enough to watch with their mouths open, exactly the reaction she predicted. The noise keeps coming, steady, and every burst still costs me something small, a flinch I mostly manage to keep on the inside, but each one costs a little less than the one before it.

"Okay?" Jenna asks, quiet, not looking away from the sky.

"Getting there."

"You don't have to stay for all of it. Nobody's grading attendance."

"I know." I keep my eyes on the sky too, mostly because it's easier than looking at her while I say the next part. "I want to stay for it anyway."

She doesn't push past that, doesn't ask what getting there means or how far there actually is, and something about the fact that she just lets the answer stand loosens something in my chest that's been wound tight since the moment the loudspeaker crackled to life.

The finale comes in a rush, three fireworks at once, gold and red and white bursting together over the ridge until the whole sky looks like it's on fire in the best possible way, and right there in the thick of it, without deciding to, without planning it the way I plan everything else, my hand finds hers.

Neither of us says anything.

Neither of us moves away.

Her fingers curl into mine like it was only ever a matter of time, and we stand together at the edge of the fairground with the whole sky coming apart in light above us, her hand warm in mine, the twins half asleep against the hay bale.

Somewhere behind us Gunny is loudly explaining lederhosen etiquette to a tourist who never asked, and somewhere closer, Josie mumbles something to Biscuit Junior in her sleep, and none of it feels like noise I need to escape from. It just sounds like a life that's finally going somewhere good.

For the first time in longer than I can put a number to, I don't feel like a man bracing for the next hit. I just feel like a man standing in a field, holding somebody's hand, watching fireworks, and for once not counting the minutes until it's safe to leave.