Page 68 of Fall is Brewing

She shakes her head. There are boots by the back door, a crossword I’ve been chipping away at folded beside the couch, and my half finished pot of coffee still sits on the counter, fully cold by now.

"It feels..." She searches for the word, her gaze lingering on the quilt folded over the arm of the couch. "...lived in."

I smile. "I'll take that as a compliment."

"I meant it to be. It’s unexpected from you. I pictured you more as a modern, sleek loft kind of guy.”

I shrug. “I don’t hate that aesthetic either. But when I saw this place, I knew I could be happy here. Evan would hate it. He has an apartment downtown on Main Street. And Jace… well, he’s happy just about anywhere. He converted the barn into his home.”

A loud crack of thunder rolls overhead and she jumps at the sudden noise.

"Bathroom's down the hall," I say. "Take a hot shower and get yourself warmed up.”

"Oh, Brooks, I couldn't⁠—"

"You can and you should. I’m not having you catch a cold the week of the Autumn Festival. I think Marcy might murder me.”

One corner of her mouth lifts. "So chivalry isn't dead, I guess." Then she gestures down at her dripping body. "I don't have anything to change into."

"I've got that covered." I disappear into my bedroom before she can argue, opening the top drawer of my dresser. Sweatshirts are easy enough. Sweatpants too. I settle on my softest charcoal sweatshirt, along with a pair of gray joggers I know she will drown in. Thick wool socks round out the pile.

When I step back into the living room, she's wringing water from the end of her braid into the sink.

"I promise they're clean."

When she laughs at that, something in my chest loosens. I hand her the pile of clothes, the soft weight of worn cotton and wool settling between us like something more deliberate than it should be.

When her fingers reach for it, they graze mine—just the lightest contact, skin against skin, warm despite the chill still clinging to her from the rain. It’s fleeting, barely there, but it lingers all the same, like the echo of a note after the music stops.

Neither of us pulls away immediately.

For a heartbeat, maybe two, we stay suspended in that small, quiet space, the world narrowing to the simple awareness of touch—of her, of me, of something unspoken threading between us.

"Thank you," she says, her voice softer now, like it’s been wrapped in the same warmth as the clothes in her hands.

"My dryer is in the mudroom," I tell her. "Leave your clothes outside the bathroom door when you're done. I'll throw them in."

She blinks. "You'll do my laundry?"

"I'm drying your laundry."

She studies me for a long second, like she's trying to decide whether I'm putting on an act. Finally she nods. "Okay."

She disappears down the hallway. A moment later I hear the bathroom door click shut. Then only a brief silence before the shower turns on.

I stand in the middle of the kitchen for a full five seconds before shaking myself back to reality.

Get it together.

She's taking a shower, not moving in.

I cross to my bedroom and change out of my wet clothes, tugging on some clean, dry jeans and another henley before grabbing her clothes from outside of the bathroom. I toss all of our wet clothing into the dryer together and hit the start button.

Then I busy myself with the kettle. Outside, rain drums steadily against the windows while I slice fresh apples into a saucepan, adding cinnamon sticks, cloves, star anise, orange peel, and enough of our Hearthline cider to perfume the whole cabin. As it warms on the stove, the kitchen fills with the kind of smell people spend hundreds of dollars trying to bottle every October.

The dryer hums from the mudroom, a steady backdrop to the quiet rhythm of the kitchen.

I lose myself in the sound. In the slow swirl of cider in the saucepan, in the curl of steam rising toward the ceiling, in the way the scent of cinnamon and clove settles into the walls. My mind drifts somewhere softer, somewhere quieter than it’s been all day.