Page 95 of Fall is Brewing

"Not at all. You also have about four things happening here at once." I gesture toward the half-labeled barrels, the clipboard he'd abandoned, and the fermenter quietly burbling in the corner. "Just tell me where it is."

Brooks drops the labels and crosses to me, cupping my jaw tenderly. “How’d I get so lucky?”

I shake my head, but also I can’t help the stupid grin that spreads along my face. “I’m grabbing you a notebook, not changing the world for you. Now where is it?”

"Upstairs. First door on the left. I left it on my mirrored dresser.”

I give him another quick kiss before he takes a few steps back. “I’ll be right back,” I say.

“Hey, Willa,” he calls out, stopping me as I pull the door open.

“Who says you’re not changing the world for me?”

We freeze, locked in our eye contact for a full three seconds before he jerks his chin toward the cabin with a quiet, “Go on, then.”

His house is quiet when I let myself inside, so different from the other night. The first time I'd crossed this threshold, I'd been soaked to the bone and trying very hard not to notice how handsome Brooks looked standing in his own kitchen.

Now...

It smells faintly of cedar and coffee, with a hint of cinnamon lingering somewhere in the air. His flannel from yesterday hangs neatly over the back of a chair. A muddy pair of work boots waits by the door beside an apple with two unmistakable little raccoon bite marks.

I smile. Scrumpy. Or maybe one of her babies.

I go into his bathroom and quickly use the facilities, wash my hands and clean myself up a little. Hopefully Patty won’t notice how disheveled I look when I get home.

Then, I make my way upstairs and find the notebook exactly where Brooks said it would be.

I reach for it—then stop.

A scrapbook lies open beside it, one faded photograph peeking out between the pages as though someone had been looking through it not long ago.

I shouldn't snoop. I know I shouldn't.

But the little girl in the picture immediately catches my eye…

Almost without thinking, I slide the photograph free. The caption beneath it is written in looping blue ink.

Orchard Falls Harvest Festival — Brooks and his future wife.

A skinny little boy with dark hair grins at the camera, a bandage stretched crookedly across the bridge of his swollen nose.

Beside him stands a little girl with two braids, clutching an apple nearly too big for her hands sticks her tongue out at the little boy.

My breath catches…

Because that little girl is me.

CHAPTER 20

Brooks

She’s been up at the house for a while, I tell myself that as I tighten the valve on the fermenter for the third time, the metal cool and slightly damp beneath my fingers, the faint hiss of pressure release the only sound in the room.

I check the gravity reading again, even though I already know it's steady, the numbers unmoving, the hydrometer bobbing lazily in the cylinder like it's mocking me for needing something to do.

I straighten a clipboard that doesn't need straightening, aligning the corners with unnecessary precision, smoothing down a page that's already flat… and still, she’s not back.

I pause, listening for footsteps that never come—no creak of the porch boards, no soft thud of boots on the warehouse floor, no rustle of movement from the cabin.