14. Rafe
RAFE
I've got a rule, and it's a good one. Don't put anyone you might lose in the blast radius of your own life.
It's simple, and it's worked. It got me through deployments, discharge, and every version of grief that came after, and it held up fine until a woman with a coffee cup and a four-word note walked straight through it like it was never there at all.
It's been four days of successfully not looking at Jenna across the office, and spectacularly failing to stop thinking about her anyway, which are not the same skill no matter how hard I try to pretend they are.
"You're doing it again," Gunny says, leaning against the doorframe of the brewhouse with a clipboard he isn't using for anything except a prop.
"Doing what?"
"Staring at the wall like it insulted your mother. You've done it every day this week." He taps the clipboard against his palm. "Usually right around the time she walks past with the mail."
"I'm working."
"You're pretending to work. There's a difference, and I've watched you do actual work for six years, so don't try that on me."
I don't answer that, mostly because he's right, and answering would just confirm it faster than staying quiet will. I go back to the inventory sheet in front of me, numbers I've already counted twice, and Gunny doesn't leave, which means this isn't over.
"You survived combat," he says, conversationally, like he's discussing the weather.
"Actual gunfire. People shooting at you on purpose, with intent, and you came home and built a business out of nothing.
And you're telling me the thing that's got you rattled is a woman who alphabetizes your invoices. "
"That's not what's happening."
"That's exactly what's happening. I've got eyes, Rafe.
I've had them on you the whole time." He sets the clipboard down on the nearest barrel, which means he's settling in, never a good sign for me.
"You drove eleven miles at night to fix her woodstove.
You let her and two kids sleep in the one room in this building nobody's allowed in.
And now you can't manage fifteen feet across an office. "
"It's not the same thing."
"It's exactly the same thing. It's just got worse odds, because a woodstove can't turn you down.
" He crosses his arms, unbothered by my expression, which has stopped working on him sometime in the last three years.
"The guy who used to run toward the sound of gunfire for a living is currently getting outflanked by his own feelings.
That's the part I find funny, if you want to know. "
"I didn't ask."
"You never do. I tell you anyway. That's the whole arrangement.
" He picks the clipboard back up, then sets it down again like he's not quite finished.
"I buried a wife, Rafe. You know that. I know grief, and I know the particular flavor of stupid that comes right after it, the kind that convinces you staying alone is the same thing as staying safe. It isn't. It's just staying alone."
"That's not the same situation."
"It's the exact same situation. Different war, same cowardice.
" He says it without any heat in it, which somehow makes it land harder than if he'd shouted.
"For what it's worth, whatever you're protecting her from by staying over here instead of walking over there, it's probably smaller than whatever you're costing both of you by doing it. "
He's gone before I can figure out whether that's the smartest thing he's ever said to me or the most annoying, and I sit with the inventory sheet in front of me for another ten minutes without writing down a single number.
I spend the rest of the afternoon patching up what Gunny just knocked loose, telling myself there's a right way to handle this and a wrong way, and somehow I talk myself into believing the right way looks a lot like retreat.
By the time I've decided to actually do something about it, I've also picked the wrong thing to do, which tracks.
I cross the taproom floor out of old habit, and by the time I reach the office door I've got an apology already built and rehearsed, clean and sensible, the kind of speech meant to put a problem back in its box.
Jenna's at her desk, invoices stacked in three neat piles, and she looks up when I come in with an expression that's careful in a way I recognize because I've been wearing the same one since the storm.
"Got a minute?"
"Sure." She sets her pen down, gives me her full attention, which somehow makes the next part harder instead of easier.
"I want to talk about the storm. About what happened at the loft.
" I stay standing, hands loose at my sides, the way I'd brief a room that needed calm information delivered fast. "It shouldn't have happened.
It wasn't professional, and you work for me, and that puts you in a position I should have been more careful about.
I'd like to just move past it. Chalk it up to a stressful night and a lot of adrenaline, and go back to how things were before. "
I get exactly that far before she says one word.
"No."
"No?"
"No, I'm not going to sit here and let you call it a mistake.
" She stands up, and for a second the desk between us feels a lot smaller than it did a minute ago.
"You don't get to hand me a speech you clearly wrote in the shower and expect me to just take it because you used the word professional enough times. "
"I'm trying to do the responsible thing here."
"You're trying to hide behind a job title so you don't have to say the actual sentence.
" Her voice stays level, but there's an edge in it now, sharp enough that I feel it land somewhere under my ribs.
"Professional isn't a shield, Rafe. It's a word you're using so you don't have to tell me the truth. "
"And what do you think the truth is?"
"I think you're scared. I think that kiss meant exactly as much as it felt like it meant, and that terrifies you more than any nail gun ever could, so you built a speech about professionalism to avoid saying so." She crosses her arms, steady, unwilling to look away first. "Tell me I'm wrong."
I open my mouth to tell her she's wrong, and nothing comes out, because she isn't, and we both know it. Standing here trying to force out a lie feels suddenly like the stupidest tactical decision I've made in longer than I can count.
"You're not wrong," I say instead.
The room goes quiet in a way that feels different from every other silence we've built between us this week, less like a wall and more like a held breath.
"It wasn't a mistake," I say, and once I start I can't seem to stop, four days of pressure finding the crack all at once.
"The kiss. Any of it. I've been telling myself otherwise because the alternative means admitting I want something I don't know how to keep safe, and I'm better at fixing woodstoves and running numbers than I am at that particular problem. "
"What problem?"
"You. This. The fact that I've got a rule about not putting people I care about anywhere near the parts of my life that go wrong, and you and those two kids walked straight through it without even trying, and I don't have a system for that.
I've got systems for everything, Jenna. Combat, inventory, grief. I don't have one for this."
"You don't need a system. You need to stop running the numbers on it and just say what's true."
"I'm scared." It comes out rougher than I mean it to, but it's out now, plain, no cover left to retreat behind.
"Not of you. Of what happens if I let this be real and then lose it anyway, the way I've lost enough already that I built an entire life around never getting close enough to lose anything again.
That's my problem, not yours. It was never about whether the kiss was a mistake.
It was about whether I trust myself not to wreck something good once I let myself want it. "
Jenna's quiet for a long moment, studying me the way she studies invoices that don't add up, patient and thorough, refusing to accept the first easy answer.
"Those are two different problems," she finally says. "The one about the kiss, and the one about you being scared."
"I know that now."
"Only one of them is actually about me."
"I know that too."
"Good." Something in her shoulders loosens, and the careful distance we've both been keeping all week collapses down to almost nothing.
"Because I wasn't interested in being managed like an incident report.
If you're scared, be scared. Just don't hide it behind a word like professional and expect me not to notice the difference. "
"Understood."
"That's a very military answer."
"It's the one I've got."
She almost smiles at that, the first real crack in the wall between us all week, and something loosens in my own chest to match it.
"So what happens now?" I say, because somebody has to say it out loud, and it might as well be me, given I'm the one who spent days building walls instead of asking the question directly.
"Now we stop retreating. Both of us. No more speeches about professionalism, no more silences that stretch on for days, no more pretending the whole thing didn't happen.
" She holds my eyes, steady. "If you want this, you say so.
Out loud. Not in a checklist. Not in a rehearsed apology. Just say it."
"I want this. I want you, and I'm terrified of it, and I'd rather be terrified and honest than safe and lying to both of us."
"That's better."
"I've had practice failing at the first version."
"Noted." She picks her pen back up, but she's still watching me, and there's something new in the set of her mouth I haven't seen from her before, something that looks a lot like relief with the edges still rough.
I stand there a second longer, aware that I've got a business to run, inventory to finish, and about six things on today's list that aren't this. None of them feel like they matter as much as the next thing I'm about to say.
"Have dinner with me."
It comes out rougher than I plan, low, like the words cost more to produce than I expected them to, which they do. I haven't asked anyone to dinner in more years than I care to count, and every rehearsed version I ever built for this moment evaporated the second I actually needed it.
"Are you asking me on a date, Rafe Montgomery?"
"That's exactly what I'm doing."
"Took you long enough."
"I had a rule to break first."
"How's that going?"
"Better than expected." I glance toward the window, toward the lot where a truck's still parked crooked from the last time it got stuck, and something in my chest that's been braced since the storm finally lets go.
"I don't have a plan for what comes next.
Not a real one. First time in years I haven't had one, and I'm not hating it as much as I thought I would. "
"That's progress."
"Terrifying is more like it."
"Can be both." She stands, closes the gap between us, close enough that I catch the smell of coffee and printer ink and something warmer underneath both. "Pick me up at seven."
"Seven," I repeat, filing it away like an order I actually want to follow, and for the first time in four days, standing fifteen feet from where I started, it actually feels true.