Chapter 2
MARISA
“Take it,” Cruz says, not a demand but an easy invitation.
The plate he holds out is heaped with food I didn’t have time to even glance at when it came out of the kitchen—roast lamb sliced paper thin, grilled vegetables glossy with olive oil, a tangle of fennel and orange salad, and a hunk of rosemary focaccia still warm enough to steam the air between us.
The other plate is already tucked into his own hand, balanced against his palm like he’s been carrying two on purpose.
My first instinct is to protest.
I have trays to manage, people circling, weather turning against me. But the smell of the food hits—savory, herbed, rich in the way only something cooked slowly can be—and my stomach answers before my pride.
“Where did you even—?”
“Trade secret,” Cruz says, and tips his head toward the far corner where Roman and Deacon are already waving us over.
We take the driest table under the tent, the one closest to the band, where the lighting is low enough to make the rain beyond the canvas look almost romantic.
Roman has a plate too, piled high with what looks like prosciutto and marinated artichokes.
Deacon’s is mostly cheeses and bread, methodically arranged like he’s conducting a private tasting.
“Eat.” Cruz passes me a fork.
I do.
The lamb is tender enough to fall apart with barely a touch, the vegetables smoky-sweet, the salad sharp and bright with citrus.
My eyes close without my permission. “Okay,” I admit. “This was worth sitting down for.”
Roman gestures at the salad with his fork. “Kitchen’s calling it a Sicilian thing. Fennel, orange, olive oil, a little mint. Don’t tell them I said so, but it’s better than it looked in the prep photos.”
Deacon adds, “And the focaccia is from some grandmother in the village. The chef swore on his mother’s life it had to be on the menu.”
“Noted,” I say, making a mental list of what to hunt down before the night’s over.
Cruz leans back in his chair, watching me finish the last of the lamb. “Now you can tell me if your biscotti stands up to the rest of it.”
He pulls a small plate closer, two golden biscotti resting against a napkin.
He breaks one in half and offers it across, his fingers brushing mine.
The almond hits first, then the orange peel, then the whisper of cinnamon I folded in at three in the morning.
Before I can swallow, Roman swipes the other half, and Deacon just shakes his head like he saw it coming.
“Save some for the other guests, Navarro,” someone calls from the smoking line. Cruz lifts his biscotti in a lazy salute, earning a wave of laughter from the group.
When the plates are cleared, I return to my station, pulling candied orange peels into neat curls for the next wave of guests.
The three of them peel away to their roles—Cruz to the bar where a keg needs swapping, Roman toward a pair of men in suits who look like trouble, Deacon into the rain with a phone pressed to his ear.
The storm is still talking to itself overhead, but the air feels steadier now, anchored by the warmth of a meal I didn’t know I needed.
The reception leans into the friendly chaos.
The bride dances on the deck with her veil draped around her like river foam.
Children in wool socks throw pinecones at the fence and keep score with the kind of seriousness that belongs to games invented on the spot.
A clutch of bikers lights cigars beneath the overhang, arguing about which brand is loyal and which brand is for men who lie about their fathers.
Laughter hooks onto the smoke and hangs there.
I adjust whipped cream trying to slide into a smaller version of itself. I re-pipe a rosette that drooped. I steal a glance.
Roman stands near the tent pole with the water marks that look like a map.
His eyes break from a conversation and find my mouth like a magnet finds north.
He does not move.
It feels like a hand at my lower back all the same.
The generator coughs and the lights flicker.
No one panics.
Deacon is already there with a toolbox.
He kneels and opens the panel.
He has rolled his sleeves, and he looks like a photograph from a manual about how men used to fix things before YouTube.
Soot smudges his forearms.
A pencil lives behind his ear.
He glances up at me for half a second, not to look, but to check. His eyes carry the weight of measurements.
He goes back to wires and does something exact.
The lights steady like a held breath finally released.
“Thank you,” I call, because gratitude is the one religion I never left. He lifts a hand without looking, a small curt wave that somehow feels like a hand against the back of my neck drawing a little heat down.
A troop of hens cluck along the edge of the deck, furious and determined and certain that this event should have been planned around them.
One pecks at a cigar stub and tries to pick a fight with a man who could lift a motorcycle and does not want to fight a bird. “Leave Cleopatra alone,” a woman scolds, swooping in with a cookie to bribe the offender away.
“She draws blood.” The hen eyes me like a rival chef. “Nice to meet you, Your Majesty,” I say under my breath, because I am not above politeness with creatures that have knives for faces.
“Conte,” someone says, and I turn to find the bride herself reaching for a lemon tart with a grin I like.
Her lipstick is the color of cherries left too long in the sun.
Water drips from the ends of her hair.
The diamond on her finger looks like a drop of sky.
“You saved the day,” she declares, and the way she says it makes me believe it for a second.
“The storm saved the day,” I say. “It hid the things that almost went wrong.”
“You are a poet in an apron.” She bites the tart, moans without apology, and drifts away.
Cruz cycles in and out of my vision like a warm tide.
He steals another biscotti and offers one back to me as if the ritual requires even counts.
He leans close to ask if the panna cotta set or if it is a saint walking on water.
He sneaks a candied orange peel, chews slow, and closes his eyes. “That,” he says, “tastes like a holiday I want to remember.”
He calls a little girl princess and ties her shoe with hands that have also patched bullet tears in leather.
He laughs with his whole face when a biker with a garland crown tries to reheat cider over the bonfire and almost sets his beard on fire.
I laugh too, and not the polite giggles for men who think they deserve them. I laugh with my belly and my teeth and my lungs because it is funny and because it feels good to let joy take up space.
The sound makes my chest loosen, and it earns me a look from Roman that is almost a touch.
I wonder, for one wild second, what I would do if he moved.
I find my hand smoothing the tablecloth because I am not brave enough yet to answer.
A hand slides a thermos beside my cutting board. The hand is gloved, which makes the gesture stranger and somehow more intimate. I do not see who leaves it.
I only hear a voice that is smoke and church and gravel.
“You have been on your feet too long.” The words drop like coins in a collection plate.
I look up and no one is there. The lid twists off with a hiss. Steam curls out with the scent of orange peel and I smile.
I wrap both hands around the thermos and drink.
The heat slides down my throat and lands in my stomach like mercy.
I look out over the party with the thermos against my lower lip and wonder which of them is responsible.
Cruz would have brought it and waited to watch me take the first sip.
Deacon would have placed it exactly where my hand would find it and walked away because the gesture is the point, not the gratitude.
Roman would have left it in silence because his attention feels like something private he prefers not to be accused of.
The mystery warms me almost as much as the coffee.
Pinecones bounce along the fence like small comets.
The deck shakes under a line dance that is more commitment than choreography.
The storm pinches itself into a mist that lifts and settles and lifts again, like the mountain taking long breaths.
The lodge stands with its broad shoulders and its history, and for a moment I love it in the way you love an old building that has kept secrets and will keep yours if you ask kindly.
“Try me,” Cruz says, sliding back into my orbit with the ease of someone who understands tides.
He takes two tarts and offers one back with exaggerated formality. His eyes laugh even before his mouth does.
I accept because I want to touch his fingers again and because the softness of the moment balances the steadiness I feel from the other two.
“You know you’re stealing,” I say.
“I am returning,” he answers. “You feed me. I feed you. This is the circle of life.”
“Very biblical,” I say, and he smiles with a tilt that tells me he knows exactly how my words are meant.
The band drops into a song that sounds like a night out that almost ruined you in a good way.
Roman shifts his stance at the edge of the tent and the air shifts with him.
A patch of clear sky opens above the ridgeline like a benediction.
Someone releases a handful of paper lanterns on the far side of the field.
They lift in low drift, their light a soft spine climbing the dark.
I wipe chocolate from a cake stand and try not to think about what it would feel like to lean back against a man like those who surround me.
The night slides along.
The tents drip in slow silver lines and the decks glow under slick boards.
The bride yells that the cake is cursed and then kisses the groom like a woman who enjoys cursing.
The ring bearer falls asleep in a pile of coats and is covered by three different vests like a quilt.
Cleopatra the hen stages a coup for a plate of coleslaw and must be bribed with a biscuit named after a woman Roman does not speak to anymore.
Someone sings a Christmas song off key.
Everyone joins to be kind.
I feel my shoulders settle away from my ears and realize I have been braced against my own expectations since noon.