Page 47 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"You said that yesterday."

"It's still true today."

She sets the book down, unconvinced, and studies me with the same focused attention she once turned on Rafe's shirt buttons, cataloguing something I'd rather she didn't catalogue. "Did you guys have a fight?"

"No, sweetheart. Nothing like that."

"Then why doesn't he come by?"

I don't have an honest answer that won't scare her, and I'm not willing to hand her a dishonest one either, so I split the difference the way I've learned to do with questions that don't have a clean response. "Sometimes grown-ups need a little space to sort their own heads out. It doesn't mean anything's wrong between us."

"That's what you said about Dad, before it turned out something was very wrong."

The comparison lands harder than she means it to, and I have to sit with it a second before I answer, because she's not wrong to make it. She's just working from the only pattern she's ever had, same as I am.

"This is different," I tell her, and I want it to be true so badly that I almost believe myself saying it. "Rafe's not your dad. He's never once made me feel the way your dad did."

"Then why do you look like you're waiting for something bad?"

There's nothing I can say to that would actually help, so I pull her in against my side instead, and she lets me, tucking herself under my arm the way she used to when she was smaller, and neither of us says anything else about it, though I can feel her still turning it over, still not quite convinced, and I can't really blame her for that.

Eli asks a version of the same question two nights later, blunter about it, less interested in cushioning the blow. "Is Rafe still our boyfriend guy or not?"

"Yeah. He's still with me."

"He hasn't been around. Josie thinks something's wrong. I think you're both being weird about it."

"Everybody's allowed to be a little weird sometimes."

"That's not an answer." He says it with the flat, exasperated logic of a kid who's spent a lot of time recently learning that math problems always have a real answer somewhere, even when they look impossible at first. "You're doing the thing where you say something true that doesn't actually tell me anything."

He's not wrong about that either, and I don't have a rebuttal ready, so I tell him the truest thing I've got. "I don't fully understand what's going on with him right now. I'm trying to figure it out same as you are. I promise I'll tell you both something real the second I actually know it."

That seems to satisfy him more than reassurance would have, mostly because it's honest, and he goes back to his homework without pressing further, though I catch him glancing toward the window twice over the next hour like he's checking for a truck that isn't coming.

I text Maggie the next morning before the shop opens, and by the time I get there she's already got two coffees poured, taking one look at my face and sliding into the booth across from me like she's been expecting this exact conversation for days.

"You look like you haven't slept," she says.

"I haven't, much."

"Rafe trouble."

"That obvious?" I wrap both hands around the mug, grateful for the heat of it. "He's canceled on me twice this week. He's short with the staff. He's working until midnight alone in the brewhouse doing inventory that doesn't take that long, and when I ask if he's okay he says fine like the word costs him something to hand over."

"And you've decided this means what, exactly?"

"I don't know what it means. That's the problem. My brain keeps handing me the worst version of the story because it's the only version I've got real experience with." I stare down into the coffee, watching the steam curl off it. "Derek used to disappear like this right before something got bad. I know Rafe isn't Derek. I know that with my whole chest. But some part of me that doesn't listen to reason keeps waiting for the other shoe."

Maggie doesn't rush to comfort me, which is one of the things I've always trusted about her. She just watches me for a second, weighing her next words the way she weighs a customer's order when they've clearly changed their mind twice already.

"Have you asked him?"

"About what?"

"What's going on. Directly. With actual words, instead of standing around reading his moods like tea leaves and hoping he volunteers it." She says it kindly, but there's no give in it. "You're a grown woman with a grown man's phone number. Call him. Ask him straight out what's happening and let him decide what he wants to tell you."

"What if he doesn't want to tell me anything?"