Chapter 37
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.
“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.
He can kill a man with a spatula but can’t make a goddamn cookie to save his life. The universe is a joke and I’m the punchline.
“It’s not my fault,” Enzo told me after the fourth tray of brownies became charcoal. “Baking is for witches. You and Dario are sorcerers and Saul’s a familiar. I’m the village idiot with a whisk.”
“Baking requires patience,” I told him.
“Baking requires a pentagram and an animal sacrifice,” he replied. “I don’t make the rules.”
He’s found his role in other ways. Deliveries. Heavy lifting. The early morning runs to the farmer’s market for fresh berries and eggs.
The customers adore Enzo, especially the local grandmas, who treat him like he’s the cover model for ‘Bakery Hunks Monthly.’
Martha calls him ‘that sexy husband of yours’ and tried to set him up with her granddaughter, until Enzo, deadpan as ever, said, “Sorry, I’m committed to Saul. We have a very complicated relationship.”
Saul nearly died on a mouthful of scone. Martha’s still not sure if he was joking.
Neither am I, honestly.
We don’t explain shit. We’re Zoey and Nate and their not-so-imaginary friends Dario and Saul, and the town lets us live because we bring pastries and drama to every community event.
As long as the cookies are chewy and we don’t burn down the school fundraiser, nobody cares what goes on behind our blue door.
Except when there’s a shirtless croissant fight at dawn. Then everyone wants front row seats.
The bakery opens at seven.
By six-thirty, we’re all there. Dario precision-crafting croissants like he’s defusing a bomb, I’m mainlining sugar and cursing at the cookie sheets, Enzo’s artfully stacking pastries in the display case, and Saul is at the register crunching numbers with that look that says “I’ve seen dead bodies, but bakery receipts are scarier. ”
It’s choreography, but with more profanity and accidental groping. We’ve nearly achieved collision-free living. Nearly.
The boys have mostly stopped threatening to kill each other over dough temperature. Mostly. Somewhere along the way, all that unresolved tension mutated into this weird, gruff brother-in-arms vibe.
Not quite friends, not quite rivals. Just three men co-parenting a bakery, a trauma history, and one deeply unstable wife.
Late nights, I’ll catch them in the kitchen: Dario pretending not to worry about Enzo’s nightmares, Enzo pretending not to care about Dario’s business drama, both of them low-key flexing their emotional growth like it’s an Olympic sport.
They never talk about bodies or guns or the shit that used to keep them up. It’s all “should we add another oven?” and “how many bathrooms does a murder mansion need?”
They don’t even bat a luscious eye when Saul starts researching school districts and leaves a toothbrush in every bathroom like a man marking his territory.
Sometimes I catch snippets, my name, soft-voiced, when they think I’m not listening. “What does she need? Are we fucking this up? Who bought decaf again?”
Every time, my chest does that embarrassing, wide-open, raw thing.
These idiots actually love me. And miracle of miracles, they’re starting to love each other, too.
It’s gross. I’m obsessed.
Martha arrives at 6:48, because she still hasn’t learned what opening hours means.
“Morning, Zoey. Scone and the filthiest gossip you can legally provide.”
I sigh. “No fresh dirt today, Martha. Try Saul, he’s the secret scandal.”
“There’s always something, honey. I know what goes on in this bakery.” She scopes out Dario, all forearms and bedroom eyes, and goes full cougar.
“So, is your boyfriend sticking around this time, or is he going to run off to Milan for a week and break your heart?”
“Few weeks, unless the croissants mutiny.”
She slurps her coffee, Saul has her order dialed in to the microgram, and eyes Dario like he’s on a dessert menu. She winks at Dario, who pretends not to notice. “You’re a lucky woman, Zoey. Very lucky.”
“I know.”
“Three attentive men. All of them handsome. All of them clearly devoted.” She shakes her head. “In my day, we were lucky to get one who remembered our birthday.”
“Times change.”
“They certainly do.” She bites into her scone and moans. “Jesus, who made this?”
“Dario.”
“Did he now.” She looks at him again, reassessing. “Honey, chain him to the stove and don’t let go.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
Enzo nearly snorts coffee out his nose. Saul’s shoulders are shaking. Dario’s giving them the Mobster Death Glare but I can see the dimple fighting to break through.
“If you’ll excuse me, I need to rescue the brioche before Martha proposes,” Dario says.
He stalks to the kitchen. I follow, because I know that look. He’s about to break into a fit of giggles and that’s basically the eighth wonder of the world.
The door swings closed and Dario finally cracks, real, full-belly laugh, the kind that makes his eyes crinkle.
“Chain him to a stove,” he mimics in Martha’s gravel voice, then grabs me and buries his face in my neck.
“She suspects I’m the leader of a sex cult in her town and she’s absolutely correct.”
He just snickers, mouth against my ear. “She’s going to have the whole senior center making bingo cards for who gets to touch my arms next.” He nuzzles my hair, voice all low and rough. “I’m not leaving. At least two months. Maybe more. I’m done pretending I’m bi-coastal.”
I grin. “We both know you’re bi, period.”
He chokes on a laugh. “Even Saul is starting to grow on me.”
“Like black mold.”
He shrugs. “Toxic, but weirdly comforting.”