“Okay, I’ll come now”
She stared out the window as they drove. The car slowed, then stopped.
"You're here," Liam said.
His hand lifted as the car stopped. He stepped out first, then turned back—hand extended into the interior. Palm up.
She took it.
He helped her onto the curb with careful attention. She turned into it and brushed his cheek. By the time she realized what she'd done, he was already stepping back into the car. The door shut with a soft, deliberate click, like punctuation on a sentence she was still trying to read.
Mateo
MATEO WIPED DOWN A COUNTER that did not need wiping.
The marble already gleamed. The copper pans hung in perfect descending sizes. If he ran his finger along any surface in his restaurant, it would come away clean.
He wiped it again.
Because tonight April was coming.
The staff moved around him with the careful ease of people who knew his moods. They were used to his standards, his rituals, his perfectionism. They werenotused to him hovering.
Mateo reached past his sous-chef to adjust a garnish that didn’t need adjusting. He moved a cutting board three inches to the left, then back again. He lifted a glass, inspected it, polished it anyway.
Nothing needed fixing.
He fixed it anyway.
Luca watched him from the pass, eyebrows lifted. “Chef.”
Mateo lifted a glass and held it up to the light. No spots. He polished it anyway, set it down, and went to the dining room.
Mateo stared at the tables.
April Feuller had eaten here at least once a week for two years. He served her himself whenever he could. She knew their names. Asked after Luca’s daughter, the dishwasher’s English classes, whether the new server was settling in. She never snapped her fingers, never treated anyone like they were invisible.
She had her own menu, one of the old ones from before everything changed; the first versions of the dishes, the way they were meant to be tasted. They kept it in the kitchen. Her dishes at her prices. The staff called it her legacy menu.
Mateo checked that a burner that was off stayed off.
He wiped the counter again. The day she'd walked in with Killian Blackwood surfaced without permission. The maître d’ had appeared in the kitchen with eyes the size of saucers and whispered, “Blackwood is here.”
April had stood beside him with that I belong anywhere composure she never seemed aware she carried. “Killian, this is Mateo. Mateo, this is Killian. You’re going to like him. He takes his food seriously.”
Two weeks later, a review had appeared in a place that mattered. After that, Mateo’s restaurant had stopped being a secret.
He wanted to take April in his hands and ask, very calmly, if she had any idea what she'd done to his restaurant. To his life.
To him.
He would have kept the place exactly as it was forever if she kept walking through that door.
His phone rang.
April’s name lit the screen, and his heart lurched.
He answered on the first ring. “April.”
