"The kitchen looks different," he says. To me, not to Gabriel.
"I bought groceries," I say.
The corner of his mouth moves. Not a smile. Logan Cruz doesn't seem like a man who smiles casually. Something drier.
"Keep buying them," he says. Then, softer, almost gentle: "He needs someone who isn't afraid of what he used to be."
And leaves.
The door closes. Gabriel stands in the hallway. The rectory is quiet again. Our bubble, which Logan punctured for forty-five minutes, is reforming. But the air inside it has changed. It's thicker now, charged with everything Logan revealed and everything I'm still processing.
Gabriel returns to the kitchen. Sits. He looks heavier. The weight of Logan's visit settling on him like sediment. Without thinking, I reach for his hand, not through the coffee cup this time, but directly, skin to skin. His fingers close around mineimmediately, desperately, like I'm the only thing keeping him anchored.
"Logan is our operations manager," he says. "He runs La Sirena, my sister's club. He's been running everything, really, since my father got sick."
The "our" lands. Not "their." Our. The family isn't something he left. It's something he's tethered to, and the rope has been there all along.
I squeeze his hand. Feel the weight of his guilt, his grief, all of it pouring through our joined fingers. Even with Logan's revelation about the Rosettis, even with my world tilting on its axis, all I want in this moment is to ease his pain.
He pulls me closer, and I go willingly, ending up in his lap, his arms around me, my face buried in his neck. I breathe him in: incense and soap and underneath it, him, just Gabriel. Not the priest, not the Delgado heir. The man who's holding me like I'm the only real thing in his world.
"The Rosettis," I whisper against his skin. "Your family knows the Rosettis."
His arms tighten. "Does that scare you?"
I pull back to look at him. His dark eyes search mine, and I see the fear there, that I'll run, that this is too much, that his world is too dangerous.
"Everything about you scares me," I tell him honestly. "And I can't seem to stay away."
13 - Gabriel
Monday evening, and she’s teaching me to make sofrito. I’m failing.
"Too big," she says, watching me mince garlic as though I’m disarming a bomb. "You're not building furniture. Just chop."
The kitchen smells foreign: onions, peppers, garlic sautéing in olive oil. She moves around me with easy authority, adjusting the flame, adding ingredients by feel rather than measurement. Every time she pivots from counter to stove, we nearly collide. The kitchen is too small for two people, or maybe I'm too aware of her proximity. Her hip brushes mine when she reaches past me, and my cock stirs at the contact, instant, undeniable, my body responding to hers like it's been programmed.
"Taste," she commands, holding out the wooden spoon.
I taste. The flavor explodes on my tongue: alive and complex. Heat and depth and pleasure I'd forgotten food could provide. My face must show the surprise because she laughs, genuine and unguarded, and the sound makes me want to press her against the counter and find out what other sounds she makes.
"That's what food is supposed to do," she says. "Make you feel something."
The spoon she's using is old, dark wood worn smooth. I've noticed it since she moved in, leaning against the wall like a silent witness.
"That spoon has stories," I say.
She stirs the sofrito, considering. The movement makes her breasts shift under her shirt. No bra, I can see her nipples through the thin cotton, and I have to look away before my cock gets harder. "It was my Abuela Rosa's. She taught me to cook with this spoon."
While she stirs, stories spill out like steam. Her voice softens when she mentions Hialeah.
"Abuela's kitchen was tiny. The walls turned yellow from decades of garlic and oregano."
She demonstrates how Rosa would stand behind her, arms wrapped around to guide her small hands.
"Like this," she says, and I feel her breath warm against my neck.
She rolls up her sleeve, revealing the silver-dollar sized patch of puckered skin on her forearm.
