Alex leans toward her, his arm stretching along the back of her chair. “You love it.”
Something flickers across Felicity’s face. Her eyes dartsideways, and her lips tighten, but then she covers it with a smirk and a hair flick.
I file this away and decide it’s none of my business. I have a kitchen to run.
“Ginny!” Alex spots me first and leaps from his chair, crossing the restaurant in three strides to sweep me into a hug that lifts me off my feet. “The woman of the hour! The culinary queen! The—”
“Alex, put me down.”
He does, grinning. “I’m so proud of you. I barely know you, but you’re hot, and you’re nice, and you’re also fucking my brother, which makes me feel a little incestuous for thinking you’re hot.”
“That’s…sweet?”
“I’m a sweet guy. The elite Calloway. But you’ll learn that in time.”
“He’s not,” Juliette calls from the table. “Don’t believe him.”
Lance walks in behind me from the kitchen, where he’s been sneaking tastes of the bone marrow when he thinks I’m not looking. He’s in a black button-down with the sleeves rolled up, and his hair is pushed back. The bruises are gone and the scars are fading, and he looks like a man who’s learning what it feels like to breathe without clocking the exits first.
He still checks. I’m sure he always will. His eyes scan the room when he enters, the way they always do, cataloguing doors and windows. But the tension in his shoulders is softer now. Dr. Chavez says it’ll take time. I believe her.
Alex releases me and turns to his brother. “Lance. You look almost human tonight.”
“Thanks, Alex.”
“I mean it. There’s color in your face. Is that what happens when you stop being a recluse?”
“It’s what happens when someone feeds you properly,” Lance says, nodding toward me. “You should try it.”
“I eat fine.”
“You eat gas station sushi.”
“And? Have you tried it? It’s phenomenal.”
Juliette groans. “Can we please sit down and eat actual food prepared by an actual chef?”
We sit. Lance pulls my chair out and settles beside me with his hand on my thigh under the table. His thumb traces slow circles on the inside of my knee, and I try to focus on anything other than the heat spreading up my leg.
“So,” Paxton says, lifting his glass. “To Genevieve DeGrance. Head chef of Dante’s. The best thing to happen to this restaurant since the plumbing upgrade.”
“Romantic,” Felicity deadpans. “Realcaptain of the people, this one.”
“I’m a businessman, not a poet.”
“Clearly,” Tiffany murmurs, and there’s something in the way she says it that makes the table go quiet for half a beat before Alex fills the silence.
“To Ginny!” He raises his glass. “Who is far too good for my brother, and who we’re all going to pretend deserves this because we’re polite.”
Lance kicks him under the table.
“Ow, dude. I’m justsaying.”
Glasses clink. The first course goes out. I watch from myseat for that perfect, terrifying moment when people take their bite and you hold your breath because your entire worth as a human being somehow hinges on whether the ratio is right.
Juliette moans. Actually moans.
“Oh my God,” she says. “Roman, taste this.”
