I grin. “It’s meant to make you feel.”
His eyes crinkle. “Let’s make the audience feel too.”
The filming starts. It’s chaos. Controlled, flashing, fragrant chaos. I narrate the dish in clipped, precise Vakutan while my human sous translates. The cameras pan in on meat blistering under open flame, on sauces poured with practiced flourish, on steam rising like prayers.
And the whole time, I feel that pull.
Toward the door.
Toward her.
I don’t look. Not really. But every second she doesn’t walk in feels like another notch scraped into my nerves. I’m ridiculous. I know it. But knowing doesn’t slow the beat thudding in my chest like war drums from a memory I can’t forget.
“It’s the human, this ghost of yours?” my father murmurs when the cameras swing toward the sizzling ribs.
I don’t answer.
He huffs. “Careful, son. Even steel burns when held too close to flame.”
I want to laugh. But I don’t.
Because I know exactly what he means.
The second Kristi crosses the threshold, I feel it. The energy shifts. Even the heat from the broilers seems to warp toward her like metal pulled to magnet. Dood Radman doesn’t miss it either. His camera crew tracks her entrance like it's scripted. But it’s not. Not for her. And sure as hell not for me.
Still, I don’t hesitate.
“Perfect timing!” I shout over the sizzle of flame and the whir of hover-cams. “You’re just in time to help plate the legacy roast.”
Kristi freezes. I see it—the micro-tension in her shoulders, the flash of wariness behind her eyes. But she doesn’t bolt.
Yet.
I grab a spare apron and slap it into her hands. “You’re my surprise sous-chef now.”
“What? No.” She looks from the apron to me, incredulous. “Kenron, I don’t cook. I barely boil.”
I step in close enough to keep her from escaping. “It’s fine. You just need to look pretty and not set anything on fire.”
She glares. “Sexist much?”
“Accurate,” I say with a grin, “and I meant the food.”
Dood claps his hands, delighted. “Oh, this is gold! Keep it rolling! Chef Kenron’s mystery human—what a twist!”
Kristi mutters something under her breath, but the apron’s already over her head. I guide her to the prep station with one hand at her back—light, but steady. Her hair smells like citrus and stubbornness.
“Here,” I say, putting a bowl of spiced seed-pods in front of her. “Sprinkle these over the ribs. Just don’t clump. Delicate touch.”
“I have delicate touch,” she snaps.
I chuckle. “Sure you do, soldier.”
“I’m not a—ugh, give me that.”
We work side-by-side, hip to hip, hands brushing and shoulders bumping. The cameras soak it in like it’s nectar. And maybe it is. She tries to pretend she’s annoyed, but I see the corner of her mouth twitching up more than once.
“You’re doing it wrong,” she says when I sprinkle crushed redleaf over the flatbread with too much flair.
