Extended Epilogue Lance
Extended Epilogue
Lance
Three months after the warehouse
Genevieve is standing in my kitchen in nothing but my T-shirt and a pair of socks that don’t match, and she’s yelling at a pot of rice.
“Don’t you dare,” she says, pointing a wooden spoon at it. “Don’t you dare go gummy on me. I will throw you out. I will start over. I’ve done it before and I will do it again.”
The rice does not respond.
Cavall, who’s sitting at her feet with Virgil clamped in his mouth, tilts his head like he’s genuinely invested in the outcome.
I lean against the doorframe and watch, because this is the best part of my day, and I’m not about to interrupt it.
She’s been teaching me to cook. That’s what she calls it, anyway.
What it actually looks like is Genevieve moving through the kitchen like a conductor, narrating every step in real time while I stand next to her and try to absorb information that my brain immediately files under things I will never be as good at as she is.
Last week, she taught me how to make a proper roux.
I burned it twice. She didn’t even flinch.
Just scraped the pan, handed me a clean one, and said, “Again, Champ.”
I’ve never had someone be patient with me like that. Not about something that doesn’t involve violence.
“You’re staring again,” she says without turning around. “I can feel it.”
“You’re pretty to stare at. And I’m thinking.”
“About?”
“How you talk to food like it can hear you.”
“It can. Rice is sentient, Lance. If you don’t respect it, it punishes you.” She turns, and the hem of my shirt rides up past her thighs, and my train of thought derails spectacularly. “Also, our coffee maker’s broken.”
“It’s not broken. You just don’t like how it tastes.”
“Because it makes terrible coffee. You’ve been drinking terrible coffee for years, and you didn’t even know.”
“I knew. I just didn’t care.”
“That’s worse.” She turns back to the stove, adjusting the heat. “I live here now, so my standards apply. I ordered us a new one. French press. It arrives Thursday.”
She says it casually, like it’s nothing, but every time she uses the word us or we or our in the context of this cabin, something unlocks inside me that I didn’t know was still bolted.
Her moving back in wasn’t a conversation or a plan.
She just stopped leaving. Her toothbrush appeared next to mine.
Her books colonized the shelf by the fireplace.
Her coat took permanent residence on the hook by the door, and her shampoo invaded the shower, and one morning I opened the fridge and found it organized by protein, produce, and dairy, and I knew she’d annexed the territory.
Cavall was the first to surrender. He sleeps at her feet now, not mine. Virgil has migrated to her side of the bed. The betrayal is absolute, but I’m not even mad about it.
“Come here,” I say.
“I’m busy. The rice—”
“The rice is fine.”
“The rice is temperamental and requires supervision.”
“Half-Pint.”
She turns, spoon still raised like a weapon, and I cross the kitchen in three steps and take it from her hand and set it on the counter.
She opens her mouth to protest, and I cover it with mine.
She melts. It’s my favorite thing about kissing her—the way the fight goes out of her body and she softens against me, her hands finding my chest, fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt.
I back her against the counter and she makes a sound against my mouth that I feel in my spine.
“The rice,” she murmurs between kisses.
“Turn it off.”
“It needs three more minutes.”
“I’ll take three minutes.”
She laughs, and the sound vibrates against my lips, and I lift her onto the counter. Her legs wrap around my waist and her socks dig into the backs of my thighs and she pulls me closer by the waistband of my sweats.
“You’re going to ruin dinner,” she says.
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“With what? Your terrible coffee?”
I kiss the curve of her neck, right below her ear, in the spot that makes her breath catch every single time. She inhales sharply and her fingers tighten in my hair.
“That’s cheating,” she whispers.
“I learned from the best.”
Her head tips back, and I trail my mouth down her throat, over her collarbone, pressing my lips to the hollow where I can feel her pulse racing.
My hands slide under the hem of the T-shirt, and her skin is warm and smooth, and she isn’t wearing anything underneath it, which short-circuits my brain enough to make me groan against her.
“You planned this,” I say.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’re not wearing anything under my shirt.”
“It’s laundry day.”
She grins and pulls the shirt over her head.
The kitchen light catches her, and I forget about the rice and the coffee maker and anything else that isn’t the way she looks right now, bare from the waist up and sitting on my counter with her hair falling around her shoulders.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi.”
“You’re staring again.”
“Counting.”
Her eyes soften the way they always do when I say that. She cups my face with both hands and kisses me, and when she pulls back, she presses her forehead to mine.
“I love you,” she says. “Even though you burn roux and snore.”
“And I love you.” I kiss the corner of her mouth. “Even though you stole my dog’s loyalty.”
“It’s not my fault Cav has good taste.”
“The rice is done, by the way.”
“What?”
“It’s been three minutes.”
She shoves me back and lunges for the stove, and I watch her rescue the pot with the focus and urgency of a surgeon, and something that used to be a fist inside my sternum opens its fingers and lets go.
Percy comes by on Saturdays.
Not for training—not yet, anyway. Percy’s therapist is a guy named Dr. Waitz who specializes in adolescent trauma, and from what Percy tells me, he’s good. Direct. Doesn’t let Percy deflect with humor.
But Saturdays aren’t about therapy. Saturdays are about something else entirely, something I didn’t plan and wouldn’t have known how to ask for.
Percy shows up around noon, usually with a backpack full of textbooks and a bag of gas station chips that Genevieve confiscates on sight and replaces with whatever she’s been experimenting on for the restaurant.
He does homework at the kitchen table from the courses he enrolled in at VU while Genevieve cooks and I pretend to read.
But mostly, I watch the two of them talk.
He asks her about food the way he used to ask me about fighting.
Rapid-fire questions like he’s genuinely curious, like the world just split open and there’s a whole landscape inside it he didn’t know existed.
She answers everything with the patience of a woman who was born to teach, and sometimes she pulls him off his chair to show him something on the stove, and he hunches over the pan with wide eyes and says, “Wait, that’s it? ”
“That’s all it is,” she says. “Butter and flour and patience. Lance burns it because he has none.”
“Every time?”
“Without fail.”
“I’m right here,” I say from the couch.
Percy grins at me and goes back to stirring whatever Genevieve has him working on.
This is what I wanted to build. Not just the training program, which Paxton and I are still putting together, but this. A kitchen table where a kid can sit and do college homework without being afraid. A place where the only thing anyone asks of him is whether he wants seconds.
Cavall drops Virgil at Percy’s feet and sits down, tail wagging. Percy scratches behind his ears without looking up from the pan.
“I think your dog wants a taste,” he says.
“That’s because Genevieve taught him bad manners.”
Genevieve throws a dish towel at my head. I catch it, and she narrows her eyes, and Percy laughs so hard he almost drops the pan.
That night, after Percy has left and the dishes are done and Cavall is asleep in his bed with Virgil tucked under his chin, I find Genevieve on the porch.
She’s wrapped in a blanket, her legs tucked beneath her on the Adirondack chair, a glass of wine balanced on the armrest. The sky over Verona County Park is clear and wide, and the stars are out in a way they often are here. Thick and clustered.
I sit down beside her and take the wine from her hand and drink from it.
“Percy looked happy today,” she says.
“Yeah.” I hand the glass back. “He’s getting there.”
“He asked me if he could come on Wednesdays, too.”
My throat tightens. “What’d you say?”
“I said he could come whenever he wants. And that I’d teach him my dad’s cassoulet recipe if he promised to stop bringing gas station chips into my kitchen.”
“Did he agree?”
“Immediately.” She smiles. “He said, and I quote, ‘Miss D, I would sell my soul for that cassoulet.’”
“Miss D.”
“I know. He’s very polite for someone who once held a knife to your chest.”
“He didn’t hold it to my chest. He held it near my chest. There’s a distinction.”
“There really isn’t.”
I snort. She leans into me, her head finding the space between my shoulder and my jaw that she’s claimed as hers. I press my nose into her hair and breathe her in.
“My dad called today,” she says.
“How is he?”
“Good. Busy. The case is moving, but he can’t say much. He did say to tell you that the prosecutors are pleased with your testimony.”
“That’s code for ‘they haven’t decided to arrest me yet.’”
“It’s code for ‘you’re not getting arrested, and Leo DeGrance will personally destroy anyone who tries.’” She tilts her face up toward me. “He also said he’s coming to visit next month.”
“Here? To the cabin?”
“He wants to see the restaurant. And meet Cavall, apparently. I made the mistake of sending him pictures.”
“Which ones?”
“The one where Cav is wearing the chef’s hat.”
“You put a chef’s hat on my dog?”
“He looked distinguished.”
I tighten my arm around her. “Your father’s going to hate the cabin.”
“He’s going to love the cabin.”
“It’s small.”
“It’s rustic.”
“It’s intimate.” She tips her wineglass toward me. “Besides, he’s staying at a hotel. I already booked it. He doesn’t need to know you only own four plates.”