He gives me that look, chin dipped, brow raised, liketry me. “He chose better. You introduced him tobetter. That counts.”
“Doesn’t change that I let someone manipulate me.”
“But you have your grandmother’s recipes, right? You can still publish your cookbook.”
“I do,” I say. “But that’s not the point. He’s trying to pass them off as his. And then Lucas called, which you were privy to, and said Pierre landed a deal off them, and I just—” I break off, groaning, burying my face in my hands. “Some pivot, right? Straight into a cellar door.”
Dom pulls my hands away. “Do I need to hurt him? You know I don’t like physical violence, but I will.”
I blink fast, staring at the ceiling. “I’m so tired, Dom. Everything keeps falling apart.”
He hooks a finger under my chin. “Hey. Look at me.”
Through a blur of unshed tears, I do what he says.
“So you pivot again,” he says.
I huff a laugh. “You make it sound so easy.”
“Only because you made it look easy once already,” he counters. “You still cook incredible food. You’ve got Spencer backing you, giving you room to play. You’re not done.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I admit. “I don’t want some basic,soulless book. I want it personal. Heartfelt. Not a collection of stolen Betty Crocker recipes.”
“Can I ask you something?” he says.
I roll my eyes, but there’s a smile with it. “Yeah.”
“Why your grandmother’s recipes?”
I’m pretty sure my look right now is giving offwhat the fuckvibes. “What kind of question is that? Why the fuck do you think? She’s my grandmother, my family.”
“Exactly,” he says. “So you pivot from one kind of family to another. Look at who you’ve got now. What if the book is about that? The recipes you grew up with and the family you chose.”
I sit forward, elbows on my knees, mind already spinning. Recipes from Jaxon and Alex. Something from Finn. One of Olly’s cupcakes. Maybe Spencer’s first menu dish. A quilt of all of us.
I turn back to him, excitement pushing past the heaviness. “I could ask everyone for recipes. Stories. Make it… ours.”
“Yeah,” Dom says. His eyes are warm, proud in a way that makes my heart stutter. “That’s the one I’d buy.”
Something in me snaps loose. I climb onto his lap without thinking, knees bracketing his hips.
“I could just kiss you,” I breathe.
“Then do it,” he says.
So I do, my hands on his cheeks, mouth to his in a kiss that starts soft and grateful, but then, in the span of a heartbeat, turns into something deeper. His fingers press into my hips, anchoring me there like he plans to keep me.
And for the first time in a long time, crashing and burning doesn’t feel inevitable. It feels like flying on purpose.
Having a half-emo, half-fancy culinary menace launch himself into my lap and kiss all over my face is… not exactly standard operating procedure for me.
I know what I look like. Serious. Hard edges. Restingdo not approachface. People don’t usually climb me like a tree.
But Beckett does. And apparently, I laugh now. It feels… different. Good different. Dangerous different.
“I think I know what I want to do,” he says finally, breath warm against my jaw. He moves to slide off, but I hold his hips in place.
“What’s that?”
