“I started it by trying to teach you a skill you’ve been failing to learn for eleven months.”
“I haven’t been failing. I’ve been... creatively interpreting.”
“You burned a croissant yesterday. It’s almost impossible to burn a croissant.”
“That was one time.”
“It was the fourth time this week.”
I sip my coffee and bask in the beautiful chaos. This is my circus, these are my rabid, sleep-deprived monkeys.
Three men, one kitchen, too much caffeine, and a mountain house that’s basically the Overlook Hotel with fewer axes and way more sexual tension.
The town calls us eccentric, like it’s a compliment, and doesn’t ask too many questions about why Zoey’s husband has two very attentive friends who visit constantly.
Well. One visits constantly. The other one lives here now.
Saul transferred to the regional office eight months ago. Said it was for work reasons, better oversight of his western territory cases. But the transfer meant he could live in Colorado full-time, and somehow his new apartment never got furnished. There’s just a bedframe, a plant he killed in a week, and a single, unwashed mug. He lives here. His toothbrush is with mine, his socks are everywhere, and his books multiply on the shelves like horny rabbits. He’s not on the deed, no one needs that paperwork headache, but he’s ours and he’s home.
Dario’s still got one foot in Mob Boss Land and one here, two weeks at a time, cycling between boardrooms, kitchen wars, and me. He’s got spreadsheets for days, and not one of them can account for how bad I want him home for good.
The dream is simple: all four of us under one roof, nobody missing, nobody halfway out the door.
Apparently my new kink is domestic bliss.
“Stevie.” Dario snaps. “Tell your husband his croissants are a goddamn crime.”
“My croissants are fine!” Enzo protests, scandalized.
“They’re croissant-shaped hockey pucks.”
“At least I’m trying. You want to see me not try?”
“Trying isn’t the same as succeeding. This is pastry, not hand grenades.”
I put my mug down and wade into the chaos, referee voice on. “All right, new rule, no slandering each other’s baked goods before seven AM or until someone gets stabbed with a pastry brush.”
“Lovely, as if Enzo needs weapon ideas,” Dario says.
Like this didn’t all start with cutlery murder.
“You’re both disasters. Give me the mutant dough. Dario, work your dough voodoo. Enzo, check the delivery schedule. Saul, if you file the wrong deduction I’ll tie you to the fridge.”
Saul gives me a lazy salute without looking up. I swear to god, I run a home for wayward men.
And now I can’t stop thinking about Saul tied to the fridge.
Dario rolls up his sleeves, flour up to his elbows, looking less like a mafia prince and more like the world’s sexiest Great British Bake-Off contestant.
I never saw that coming.
But it makes sense, when I think about it. He’s precise. Detail-oriented. Patient in ways that matter. The same qualities that made him terrifying in his old life make him devastating with laminated dough.
His croissants are better than mine.
I’ll never admit it out loud, but they are.
Enzo, on the other hand, is a baking menace. You could put Gordon Ramsay in the kitchen with him and in five minutes there’d be burnt offerings and a hostage situation.
