28. Saint #2
The domesticity in her message makes my jaw lock. Like we’re some normal couple sharing inside jokes. Like she hasn’t just turned my life into content.
“Papa?” Ivy’s voice pulls me back. She’s sitting up on the bench, hair sticking in seventeen directions. “You look mad.”
She squints at me, much too perceptive for her age.
“Keep sleeping, mon trésor . Everything’s okay.”
I can’t stop fucking looking at the comments.
I used to stage at his restaurant in Paris. Absolute legend. If that’s him...
Falcon Haven.. Found it. It’s the only town within 50 miles with a restaurant called C’est Trois.
Someone needs to go there and confirm it’s him!!
I should’ve said no. I should’ve told Wrenley no cameras, no content, not even a blurry photo of the pasta we made. My face isn’t even in the frame, and still they’re building a fucking dossier on me.
Ivy’s already been through one public mess that cracked her world wide open. I won’t let her live through another. I’ll destroy the entire internet myself before that happens.
Yet Wrenley’s message is still open. My thumb hovers over the screen, the reply box waiting.
Don’t say anything you can’t walk back.
Randomly, I don’t hear Wrenley’s voice in my head after that thought. I hear her agent’s, that kind of PR-fueled, sharp-edged truth someone like her would throw at me if I texted my displeasure at this whole shit show .
I’m no publicity virgin. I’ve been in the media before and know how this works. But that doesn’t make this any less infuriating.
I back out of the message screen and open the video again, trying to figure out what, exactly, made this thing blow up. It’s not flashy. There are a thousand videos just like it. Hands chopping herbs. Hands stirring pasta. A few tattoos. A decent knife.
So why this one?
I watch it again, slower this time, and the answer slips in quietly.
It’s not the food, or the way the yolk breaks so cleanly in my hands.
It’s her . Wrenley.
She’s used a voice-over instead of our sexy banter while filming, but there’s a tone shift I didn’t notice the first time.
Wrenley isn’t teaching. She isn’t performing.
Even though I’m not on screen, even though she’s cut my voice entirely, the warmth in her voice as she discusses what I’m doing says everything.
One shot lingers on my hands, not with the clinical skill of a cooking tutorial, but with awe. She zooms in when I crush the herbs, catching the way my knuckles flex, holding the shot longer than necessary.
Her breath catches audibly in the voice-over. The microphone picks up the smallest inhale, a sound I recognize from when she watches me in the kitchen, from when I’m inside her.
And her laughter. She laughs at something she remembered I said, quiet and breathy, the sound you make when you truly like someone, and you can hear her smiling even though she’s just recording her voice.
That one-sided banter of hers that she keeps in, the way her voice tilts when she’s talking to me instead of her audience . .. it’s all there.
Goddammit. This isn’t curated content. This is a confession.
Which means the comments themselves aren’t the problem. The problem is that two million people can sense exactly how she feels about me. This video didn’t go viral because of my knife skills.
It’s because Wrenley is in love with me. This is a love letter she didn’t know she was writing.
That’s why people are responding the way they are. They feel it. The intimacy. The way she sees me. Not as some mysterious chef or potential brand partner, but as something real. Someone she wants.
And it scares the shit out of me because I want her, too, and I don’t know how to want her without ruining the life I built to protect Ivy.
Apparently summoned by my thoughts alone, Ivy pads over, dragging the blanket behind her, thumb stuck in the collar of her onesie.
“Papa, can I have your phone?”
She always says it like that. Can I have your phone. Never, can I play a game. Can I watch a show. Just the phone. Like it’s a portal to a grown-up world she’s desperate to be a part of.
I hesitate. “Not right now.”
She tilts her head. “I want to watch the egg video.”
I peel my gaze off the phone and stare down at her, my spine straightening. “Egg video?”
She shrugs. “The one where you break the yellow part. Auntie Noa was talking to Uncle Stone about it last night.”
Fuck.
Wrenley didn’t mean for this to happen. But she filmed it. Edited it. Posted it. And she knew what she was doing. Maybe not all the way, maybe not with malice, but enough.
And I let her.
Ivy stares up at me with big, innocent eyes, waiting for my answer. Her gaze is free from the multiple sucks this world has to offer her once she’s old enough.
“Not today, mon trésor ,” I say, keeping my voice even. “We’ll find something better to watch.”
She accepts it without question, running into the den where our television is, shouting, “With popcorn!” before she disappears around the corner.
I set the phone down and rinse my mug out at the sink, slow and methodical, the way I handle most breakable things.
Because dinner’s off.
And if Wrenley doesn’t know it yet, she will soon enough.