The bakery erupts in applause. The scone woman is definitely filming. Someone wolf-whistles.
I don’t hear any of it. I just hear her. Laughing against my mouth. Saying yes. Saying my new name like it’s something precious.
Nate. Nate. Nate.
I slide the ring onto her finger.
It fits perfectly. Of course it does.
Saul probably measured her finger while she was sleeping. That’s exactly the kind of thing he would do.
“You’re here,” she says again. Like she can’t believe it. “You’re really staying.”
“I’m staying. Permanently.” I press my forehead to hers. “I live here now. Husband of a baker. Future disaster in the kitchen. Whatever you need me to be.”
“I need you to be you. Nate. Enzo. Whoever you are. I need all of it. The burnt eggs and the wall-punching and the part of you that looks at me like I’m the reason you learned to breathe.”
“That’s the plan.” I kiss her again. Soft this time. “Nate Carter. Husband. Lover of Zoey Carter who is too good for him.”
She laughs, pulls me closer, and stage-whispers, “Welcome home, disaster husband.”
And for the first time in my entire life, I feel like I’m home.
Not because of the place. Because of her.
Because of the ring on her finger and the name on my license and the future stretching out in front of us like a road I never thought I’d get to travel.
Enzo Mancini is gone.
Nate Carter is just beginning.
And whatever comes next, the hard conversations, the complicated relationships, the four of us figuring out how to love each other, I’m ready.
I’m finally ready.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
STEVIE
One year later and sometimes I have to pinch myself just to make sure I didn’t get murdered and sent to polyamorous suburban purgatory as some kind of cosmic joke.
I’m in the kitchen of a house that technically belongs to Dario, because obviously he has to throw a checkbook at every emotional problem, and I’m watching my three men attempt homicide with pastry dough at sunrise.
“The lamination is wrong.” Dario is frowning at the dough Enzo is holding. “You didn’t fold it enough times.”
“I folded it exactly as you said,” Enzo fires back, now performing croissant origami with all the grace of a drunken bear.
“Then you folded it wrong. That’s a choice, not a technique.”
“How do you even fuck up folding? You fold it, it’s folded.” Enzo waves the dough at Dario like he’s about to duel him for pastry honor.
Dario sighs. “Technique, Enzo. There’s technique.”
“There’s you, and your god complex, and this poor, abused dough.”
Saul, not looking up from the bakery’s tax spreadsheet, deadpans, “If you two start a flour fight before I finish this amortization table, I’m getting out the cuffs.”
“He started it,” Enzo says.
