20
BASTIAN
smoke point: /'smok ?point/: noun
1: the temperature at which heated oil begins to break down and produce visible smoke.
2: when you realize you've let things get too hot and now, you're desperately trying to back off before everything goes up in flames.
Back at my apartment, I strip off my running shorts and step into the shower. I crank the water as hot as it’ll go. Steam fills the glass enclosure, but it can’t wash away the image of Eliana standing on that sidewalk, drowning in oversized cotton and looking like everything I never knew I wanted.
Zeke’s words echo in my skull:Sometimes, people just want to bewithyou.
I press my forehead against the cool tile. The problem isn’t that I don’t understand the concept; the problem is that I understand it too well. Beingwithsomeone means letting them see the partsof you that aren’t carefully curated for public consumption. It meansrisk.
And I left risk behind the night I cradled my brother’s broken, bleeding body in the middle of an ocean of black ice as a mangled car burned behind us.
Once I step out of the shower, I sit down at my home office desk and try to work. I’ve got Project Olympus financials spread across my dining table—investor reports, permit applications, construction timelines, vendor contracts, blah blah fucking boring blah.
But I can’t focus on a goddamn word. Might as well be hieroglyphics for all the sense they’re making. Revenue projections blur into construction costs blur intoEliana’s messy bun cascading down the sides of her face.
I can’t stop thinking about that. Nor those goddamn sweatpants or that goddamn dimple in her cheek or, worse yet, the goddamn smell of her goddamn mother’s goddamn apartment.
That stench—stale boxed wine and Glade PlugIns and abject depression—is something I’ve spent fifteen years and several million dollars trying to forget.
Fuck, that smell. Might as well call itEau de Broken Dreams. It’s the olfactory equivalent of a time machine, shooting me back to our first apartment. To Mom trying to cover the scent of mold with those toxic air fresheners that gave Aleksei migraines.
She’d buy them in bulk from the dollar store, convinced that quantity could substitute for quality. As if enough “Mountain Breeze” could transform our roach-infested shithole into something respectable.
It couldn’t. Nothing could. Not the air fresheners, not Mom’s many jobs, not Aleksei’s increasingly dangerous “side hustles.” The issue is that the reek of poverty isn’t just physical—it’s existential, too. It seeps into your bones and your dreams, and nothing Glade has ever manufactured can get it out of you.
And Eliana… Christ, Eliana’s still trapped in it. Still dancing to her mother’s tune, hemorrhaging money into a black hole of need that will never be satisfied.
I recognize the pattern because I lived it—right up until I didn’t. I chose Sage over Mom and respectability over Aleksei.
All it cost me was the last of my soul.
That was a fine price to pay, in my eyes. I’d rather be the kind of cold that keeps you alive instead of the kind of warm that kills you slowly.
Eliana will learn that lesson. Eventually. Or she won’t, and she’ll go blind and broke trying to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.
Either way, it’s not my problem.
You know what? Fuck this. I can’t sit here and wallow in stupid, useless, circular thoughts. I grab my keys and head for the door. The Project Olympus site is a twenty-minute drive—far enough to clear my head and close enough that I can pretend this is a legitimate business need and not me running from the ghost of poverty and the specter of whatever the fuck Eliana Hunter is doing to my head.
The site sits on the corner of Randolph and Clinton. On weekends, it’s usually deserted, since union rules mean most ofthe crews are off. Today, though, there’s a pickup truck in the lot.Moretti Constructionstamped on the side. I frown.
I park and let myself in through the service entrance. The smell of sawdust and fresh paint hits me immediately. It’s a good smell. The smell of things being built, of vision becoming reality. A hell of a lot better than Mountain Breeze, that’s for fucking sure.
The dining rooms are taking shape beautifully. The main space has thirty-foot windows that’ll flood the room with natural light during lunch service, then transform into mirrors reflecting candlelight at dinner. The private rooms are intimate without feeling cramped. And the wine cellar is a work of art. Climate-controlled, naturally, with custom shelving that’ll hold ten thousand bottles and a tasting area that makes me want to quit the restaurant business and become a sommelier.
But the kitchen. The kitchen is why I’m here.
It’s the heart of the entire operation. Twenty thousand square feet of carefully planned workspace, from the garde manger station to the pastry kitchen to the main line where my chefs will perform their nightly ballet. I’ve spent three years designing this space, obsessing over every last detail.
I find Frank Moretti standing in the middle of it. He’s scowling up at the ductwork with the expression of a man who’s just discovered his dog ate his homework.
“Mr. Hale!” He startles when he sees me, which is interesting. Frank’s been in construction for thirty years. Not much rattles him. “Didn’t expect to see you here on a Saturday.”
