I stare at him, stunned. “You can cook?”
“I’ve been on my own for ten years and a man’s gotta eat so…yeah. I’ve picked up a few things,” he says with a wry half-smile. “And I won’t ask the basil to surrender this time.”
“I’ll help! Mom lets me help stir spaghetti all the time. She even lets me taste the sauce right out of the pan.”
Harrison gives Connor a fist bump. “You’re on, bud. We’ll team up and have dinner on the table in no time.”
Connor opens the first aid kit and removes the items Harrison asks for, repeating each one as he pulls them out like he’s handing over surgical tools in an operating room. Once he’s bandaged my finger, he pats my leg and tells me to sit tight while he and his sous chef finish dinner.
I silently mouth, “Thank you,” to which he nods before putting a hand on Connor’s shoulder and watching him stir the simmering sauce on the stove.
Despite the pain, despite the nerves, despite everything, I smile.
And God help me it feels dangerously easy.
Dinner is…well, a mess.
I mean, the spaghetti is fine. Surprisingly fine, considering I spent half the cooking time bleeding and sweating like I was on a cooking competition show where I did not outwit, outlast, or outplay the basil.
But the garlic bread?
The garlic bread is a tragedy.
A dark, crispy, borderline-inedible tragedy.
I want to sweep it into the trash and pretend it never existed, but Connor is already proudly setting the basket in the middle of the table like it’s a centerpiece.
“I don’t know, Coach,” he says with a cautious wince. “I think the garlic bread might be sick.”
Harrison smiles kindly. “Nah. It’s perfect. I love a good crunchy garlic bread. It’s my favorite.”
He’s lying.
I know he is.
But Connor doesn’t know that. “It is?” he asks, brows high, eyes wide.
I keep my eyes on my plate, cheeks burning as Harrison answers enthusiastically. “Heck yeah. The crunch is the best part.”
“You don’t have to be so kind, Harrison,” I tell him, frowning at the charred disaster on my plate. “It’s a little overdone.”
“A little?” Connor picks up a piece and knocks it against the table. It makes a hollowclackthat echoes like a tiny, judgmental drum.
I bury my face in my hands. “Okay. It’s ruined. I ruined it. You don’t have to eat it.”
When I peek through my fingers, Harrison is already reaching for a slice.
He bites into it.
Crunches into it, actually.
Like he’s eating a roof shingle.
My mouth drops open. “Harrison! You donothave to?—”
“No, it’s good,” he says with the straightest face I’ve ever seen. “Really good.”
Connor snorts. “Coach, you just lied. I saw it in your eyes.”
