“How did you even get in?” I demand.
“Charles gave us a key,” Cal says cheerfully. “For emergencies.”
“This isn’t an emergency!”
“First day of school for two five-year-olds feels like an emergency,” Silas mutters, sliding three perfect pancakes onto a plate. “Also, you’re overthinking. Which syrup do the boys want?”
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again. “I—what?”
“Syrup.” He gestures to my pantry, where, sure enough, I have three different kinds because my children have opinions. “Maple, blueberry, or the organic agave stuff you probably bought because you felt guilty about sugar.”
“Maple,” I say automatically. Then catch myself. “Wait, no. I mean—you can’t just?—”
“Overthinking won’t kick us out,” Silas says, turning back to the stove. “And the pancakes are getting cold. So, unless you want to explain to our sons why they’re eating cold pancakes on their first day of school, I’d suggest you go get them, and we all move forward.”
The nerve. The utter disregard—but dammit, he’s right. I hate that he’s right.
I’m dressed to the nines—expensive suit, perfect hair, makeup that took thirty minutes—and now all I have to do is round up my children and...nothing. The lunches are being packed. Breakfast is being made. The chaos I was drowning in ten minutes ago has been managed by three men who apparently decided my first-day stress was their problem to solve.
“Liam!” I call up the stairs, voice slightly strangled. “Noah! Breakfast!”
Thunder of small feet. Both boys appear, Noah’s shirt already coming untucked again, Liam with his backpack already on, even though we’re not leaving for another fifteen minutes.
They freeze when they see the kitchen.
“Pancakes!” Noah shouts, launching himself toward the table. “Did you make Mickey Mouse ones?”
Silas pauses, spatula in hand, and glances at the perfectly round pancakes on the griddle. “Mickey Mouse, you say...” He turns to look at me, one eyebrow raised. “Parker. Where’s your cookie-cutter set?”
“My what?”
“Don’t try to tell us you don’t have a cookie-cutter set,” Cal snorts from his position at the island, not even looking up from the lunch assembly line.
I gesture helplessly toward a cabinet near the double ovens. “Bottom shelf. Behind the mixing bowls.”
Silas moves with purpose, crouching to rifle through the cabinet until he emerges with my rarely-used set of circle cutters in graduated sizes. He returns to the griddle, studies the pancakes with the same intensity he probably uses for surveillance, then gets to work.
One large circle. Two smaller circles positioned perfectly for the ears.
“Liam, you want Mickey, too?” Silas asks, not looking up.
“Yes, please,” Liam says, moving to the table with that careful politeness that’s pure him.
Silas plates both pancakes—geometric precision in breakfast form—then moves to my fridge. Opens it like he owns it. Pulls out my whipped cream dispenser that I definitely did not tell him I owned.
He draws perfect whipped cream outlines—circles for faces, dots for eyes, curves for smiles. Mickey Mouse appears on both plates like magic, and my sons’ faces light up like he just performed an actual miracle.
“That’s so cool!” Noah breathes.
“Can you make other shapes?” Liam asks, already analyzing the technique.
“Probably.” Silas sets both plates in front of them with the care of someone handling something precious. “But you’re eating these first before they get cold.”
“Thank you, Mr. Silas!” Both boys chorus already digging in.
I stand there in my kitchen—my sanctuary, my domain, the place I’ve controlled every detail for five years—watching a man I haven’t lived with in six years create Mickey Mouse pancakes for my children with my equipment like he’s done it a thousand times before.
“Coffee?” Silas appears at my elbow, pressing a mug into my hands before I can answer. “You look like you need it.”
