Page 74 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"You remember the outside influences conversation. Same worry, just closer now that there's an actual date on the calendar." She lets that sit a second. "I've been thinking about how that plays out for this stretch specifically, and I want to be straight with you. The safest version of this, legally, has you keeping a lower profile through the proceedings. Not gone. Not hiding. Just not the visible fixture you've become."

The words land somewhere under my ribs, quiet and precise, exactly where they're meant to.

"Define lower profile."

"No school pickups where you'd be seen and noted by staff who might end up on a witness list. No public events where you're photographed standing with all three of them like a family portrait. Nothing that reads, on paper, like you've already moved in before a judge has decided whether that's good for those kids or not." She says it plainly, no apology in it, the tone of someone who's delivered worse news to better people. "I know how that sounds."

"It sounds like you're asking me to disappear."

"It's not disappearing. It's being careful, for five weeks. There's a difference, even if it doesn't feel like one right now." She takes a breath, and it's the first real give I've heard in her voice this whole call. "You matter to this case, Rafe. Not because a judge is going to weigh your character against Derek's directly, but because everything about how this household reads on paper right now needs to say stable, established, and led by Jenna. Not led by you. Not yet. That's not a statement about what you are to her. It's a statement about what wins in front of a stranger in a robe who's going to make up his mind about your whole family in about forty minutes."

"I understand the strategy."

"I know you do. That's not the same as you liking it." She's quiet a second, and when she speaks again it's gentler, like she's talked to enough people in exactly this spot to know what comes next. "For what it's worth, this isn't forever. You disappear into the background until the hearing, we win, and you get every single day after that to be exactly as visible as you both want."

"And if we don't win?"

"Then we appeal, and we have a very different conversation. But we're not losing this one, Rafe. Not if we play it smart." She pauses again. "I need you to trust me on this."

"I trust you." It comes out before I've fully decided it's true, and once it's out I realize it is. "Doesn't make it sit any easier."

"Nobody expects you to." Something almost like warmth creeps into her voice now. "Talk to Jenna tonight. She needs to hear this from you, not from me in a client email."

"I will."

"Good. I'll send the hearing details in writing. Get some sleep if you can." She hangs up before I can answer, brisk and efficient, already moving on to whatever her evening actually looks like, and I stand there in my own empty taproom holding a phone that's gone quiet in my hand.

I don't move for a while.

Gunny left his jacket on the hook by the walk-in, forgotten in his hurry to get home and be sick in private, and I end up staring at it instead of doing anything useful, some dumb part of my brain deciding that's easier to look at than the actual problem. Not the visible fixture you've become, she told me, and she didn't say it to hurt me. She said it because it's true, and that doesn't stop it from sitting in my chest like something with teeth.

I've spent six years being careful about how much of myself I hand anyone, how much space I let myself take up in a life that isn't mine to hold. These last months I let that slide without deciding to, became the guy who does pickups and fixes woodstoves and gets asked by an eight-year-old if he's her mom's boyfriend in front of a whole gym. I got comfortable being necessary. Now the smartest person in this fight is telling me the safest thing I can do is become less necessary, starting now.

That's not a new lesson. That's the oldest one I've got.

Gunny comes back for his jacket ten minutes later, looking pale and irritated and entirely unwilling to discuss whatever's actually wrong with his stomach, and he takes one look at my face before he's even through the door.

"Who died?"

"Nobody. Court date's set."

"That's good, isn't it? Means this actually moves now instead of just sitting there making everybody sick." He grabs the jacket, pulls it on, watches me with the particular attention of a man who's known me long enough to see past whatever I think I'm hiding. "Why do you look like somebody just told you the whole thing's already decided against you?"

"Because Priya wants me scarce for the next five weeks. Low profile. No pickups, no photos, nothing that says I'm already living a life I haven't been given permission to live yet." There's no dressing it up, so I don't bother. I watch it land on him the way it landed on me.

"That's a hell of a thing to ask a man."

"It's smart."

"Didn't say it wasn't. Said it's a hell of a thing to ask." He crosses his arms, leans against the doorframe, and for once doesn't reach for a joke to soften it. "You've spent six months finally letting people count on you again. Now some lawyer, good as she is, is telling you to go back to being the guy nobody sees coming for dinner."

"That's the job right now."

"Sure." He says it quiet, none of his usual clipped certainty in it. "Doesn't mean it won't cost you something."

"It costs whatever it costs. Jenna wins her case either way." I straighten up, reach for something to do with my hands, and end up wiping down a bar that's already clean, because apparently that's where we both are tonight. "Five weeks. I've survived worse on less sleep."

"I know you can. I've watched you do worse for longer." Something softens in his face, just for a second. "Just don't disappear from yourself while you're at it. That's the part I've seen you get wrong before."