Page 77 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

"Consider me surprised." He doesn't look up right away, finishes the count he's on, and when he finally does turn there's something guarded in his face that wasn't there three weeks ago, something careful in exactly the way I've been asking him to be careful. "You didn't have to drive all the way out here."

"I wanted to see you."

"Sure." He sets the clipboard down, and the single word lands harder than it should, and flatter, like he's decided not to spend the energy questioning whether that's true. "How was the rest of your day?"

"Rafe."

"What?"

"You've been like this for weeks. Polite. Careful. Like you're talking to somebody you're not sure you're allowed to touch anymore." My voice wobbles right at the end, and I hate it, hate that this is happening in a cold brewhouse at nine at night instead of somewhere either of us chose. "I need you to talk to me instead of just agreeing with everything I ask for and then going quiet."

"You want to know what I'm actually thinking?"

"Yes."

"Fine." He crosses his arms, and three weeks of careful finally cracks right in front of me. "I think you've spent a month making sure nobody in this town sees us together. I think every time I offer to help with something normal, something any other man in my position would just do, you find a reason it's not safe. And I think some part of you has started treating me like something dangerous, something that has to be managed and contained and kept away from the parts of your life that actually matter, and I honestly can't tell anymore whether that's Priya's advice talking or just the version of this you've decided is easier to believe."

The words land like a slap, quick and stinging, and for a second I can't get anything out past the shock of it.

"That's not fair."

"Isn't it?"

"I am fighting for us. Every single ask, every single no, I'm doing it so a judge doesn't have a single reason to take those kids away from the life we're actually building. That's not me hiding you. That's me protecting you, protecting all of us, and I don't have the luxury of getting to feel good about how it looks while I'm doing it." My voice is climbing now, and I can't seem to stop it. "You want to know what I think? I think you've decided this is about you being some kind of liability, and instead of talking to me about it, you've spent three weeks quietly proving yourself right."

"That's not what this is."

"Isn't it?"

He flinches at hearing his own words handed back to him, and something in his face goes rigid, jaw tight, and for one cold second I see a flicker of something that isn't him, something that lives in the back of my own chest whenever a man's voice climbs in a room I can't leave. I know almost immediately it isn't that. Rafe isn't Derek. He's not trying to shrink me down or win anything by going quiet, and every part of him right now is aimed at protecting the same three people I am. But the old fear doesn't care about the difference in the moment it wakes up, and I hate that some reflex in me flinches anyway, hate that nine years with the wrong man taught my body habits I still haven't unlearned.

He sees it. Of course he sees it, he sees everything, and something in him breaks open different than the anger, worse than the anger.

"Jenna."

"I'm fine."

"You just looked at me like I was about to hurt you."

"I said I'm fine." I press the heels of my hands against my eyes, furious at myself, at him, at the whole exhausting shape of this week. "I'm exhausted and I'm terrified and in three days a stranger in a robe decides whether Derek gets more time with my kids, and I don't have anything left tonight to manage your feelings on top of my own."

"I'm not asking you to manage my feelings."

"Then what are you asking me for?"

"I don't know." He scrubs both hands over his face, and for the first time all night he sounds less angry than lost, a man standing in the wreckage of something he didn't mean to break. "Maybe just to be told I'm not something you're ashamed of. Maybe that's not fair to put on you right now. I don't know anymore."

"I have never once been ashamed of you."

"Could've fooled me."

That one lands somewhere low and mean, and I don't have anything left to answer it with that isn't just more of the same fight dressed up different, so I don't try. We stand there in the cold brewhouse with six feet of concrete between us that feels like six miles, both of us breathing hard, both of us too raw to reach for the thing that would actually fix this.

"I should go," he says finally, quiet now, all the heat burned out of it.

"Rafe."

"I need some air, Jenna. I need to not say anything else I can't take back tonight." He grabs his jacket off the hook, and at the door he stops, doesn't turn around. "I'll see you before the hearing."