Chapter 23 Serena
I surveyed my battlefield—formerly known as Brad's pristine kitchen—with growing horror.
Flour dusted every surface like crime scene evidence.
Something that was supposed to be béarnaise sauce had achieved sentience and was actively trying to escape the saucepan.
The smoke alarm shrieked its judgment while whatever was in the oven (Beef Wellington?
Beef Disaster?) filled the air with the distinct aroma of culinary failure.
"You have a master's degree," I muttered, frantically fanning smoke away from the detector with a dish towel. "You've talked down violent seven-year-olds. You've administered emergency medication in moving vehicles. You can make ONE. FANCY. DINNER."
The cookbook mocked me from its stand, its once-pristine pages now decorated with various splatters that looked like abstract art.
The renowned cookbook author had made Beef Wellington look like something you could whip up during a commercial break.
Video tutorials had promised me success in "just forty-five easy minutes!
" The food blogger who'd started this whole disaster had used words like "foolproof" and "beginner-friendly"—words I now recognized as outright lies.
The front door opened.
"Serena, why does it smell like someone cremated a— holy mother of God ."
Brad stood frozen in the doorway, gym bag sliding off his shoulder as he took in the destruction.
His eyes tracked from the flour-bombed counters to the smoking oven to me—covered in ingredients I couldn't even identify anymore, clutching a fire extinguisher I'd grabbed in panic but had no idea how to operate.
"Not. A. Word," I threatened, my voice wobbling dangerously. "Not one word, Wilder."
His mouth twitched, fighting back a smile. "Serena—"
"I SAID NO WORDS."
"The oven's actually on fire though."
I spun around to see flames flickering behind the glass door. "Oh my God!"
Brad moved like he was breaking toward the goal, smooth and automatic—shutting off the gas, grabbing the correct extinguisher (apparently there were different kinds, who knew?), and murdering the flames with practiced efficiency.
Meanwhile, I stood frozen, a flour-covered statue of failure, watching my Beef Wellington transform into Beef Armageddon.
The kitchen fell silent except for the accusatory beep of the dying smoke alarm and the sauce's continued attempts at evolution.
"So," he said carefully, "what exactly were we attempting here?"
"Beef Wellington," I admitted miserably. "With roasted vegetables and béarnaise sauce and homemade pasta because apparently I'm delusional. I wanted to do something nice. Something special. You cook for me all the time, and I thought..." I gestured helplessly. "I watched seventeen cooking videos."
"Seventeen?"
"I took notes." I showed him my flour-covered notebook, filled with meticulous observations that had proven utterly useless in practice.
That's when he started laughing. Not mean laughter, but deep, genuine, delighted laughter that transformed his whole face. He laughed until he had to lean against the counter, until tears streamed down his cheeks, until I couldn't help but join in.
"I'm sorry," he gasped. "It's just—seventeen videos. Notes. You approached cooking like a PhD dissertation."
"It's not funny! I almost burned down your house!"
"Our house," he corrected automatically, then we both froze at the slip.
"I mean—"
"Did you mean it?"
He stepped closer, eyes serious despite the laughter lingering there. "Yeah. I did."
The words hung there, massive and fragile, until the béarnaise chose violence and erupted like Mount Vesuvius.
"Right." Brad shifted into the same mode he used for critical game plays. "Triage first. The vegetables just need cosmetic surgery. This sauce needs an exorcism. But the meat..." He examined my Wellington's corpse with disturbing optimism. "We can Frankenstein this."
"Brad, nothing is salvageable. I've created culinary Chernobyl."
"That's not cooking, that's grave robbing."
"It's resourceful." He tossed me an apron. "Lesson one: knife skills that won't end in stitches."
He moved behind me, hands covering mine on the knife handle, and suddenly I forgot what vegetables were.
"You're not even pretending this is educational," I accused as his breath hit that spot behind my ear that short-circuited my brain.
"This is completely about proper technique." His lips brushed my neck, proving himself a liar.
"Brad—"
"What? See, the secret to good cooking is—" another kiss, this one at the junction of neck and shoulder, "—proper positioning." His hands found my hips. "And concentration." The third kiss murdered any pretense of vegetable preparation.
"Very professional," I managed, then his mouth was on mine and vegetables became conceptual at best.
When we broke apart, both oxygen-deprived and stupid with it, the produce sat abandoned and neither of us could muster a single fuck to give.
"New plan," Brad announced, voice rougher than it should've been for vegetable chopping. "Pizza."
"Pizza?"
"From scratch. Together. With toppings that would make actual Italians call for UN intervention."
We made the dough from scratch, Brad teaching me how to knead it properly, which led to a flour fight that left us both white as ghosts.
We created three pizzas, each more absurd than the last—one with mac and cheese as a topping ("Finn's secret favorite," Brad confided), one with Thai peanut sauce and chicken, and one with Nutella and marshmallows that we agreed never to speak of again.
While they baked—successfully this time—Brad pulled me onto the counter, standing between my knees.
"Tell me something," he said. "Why tonight? Why the dinner production that nearly required FEMA intervention?"
I fidgeted with his shirt. "Maria said something about how you do all the cooking. Made me realize I contribute nothing to the domestic stuff. I just... exist here."
"Stop." He caught my chin, forced me to look at him.
"You've taught my son that his inhaler isn't a weakness.
You've made him believe he can be anything, even with lungs that betray him.
You turned this museum of a house into something alive.
" His voice dropped. "You made me remember what hoping feels like. "
"That's not the same as contributing to—"
"I don't need you to cook. I like cooking. It relaxes me." His thumbs traced my cheekbones. "But I love that you tried. That you watched seventeen videos and took notes and nearly burned down the kitchen trying to do something nice for me."
"Really?"
"Except the almost burning down the kitchen part. Let's not repeat that."
We ate pizza on the living room floor, abandoning plates for paper towels, critiquing our creations with exaggerated seriousness.
"The mac and cheese pizza is actually genius," I admitted.
"Finn invented it during my bachelor disaster phase. Kid's a culinary prophet."
"Tell me about that phase."
Brad leaned back against the couch. "After Sarah died, I forgot how to do everything.
Cooking felt like betrayal—every recipe was something she'd taught me or we'd made together.
So Finn and I lived on cereal and takeout for three months.
Then one day he asked if Mommy took all the recipes to heaven with her, and I realized I had to pull it together. "
"Oh, Brad."
"Theo saved us. Showed up every night for two weeks with his Nonna's recipes and aggressive compassion. Taught me that feeding my kid wasn't betraying my wife's memory." He caught my hand. "Then you showed up and made cooking fun again instead of just functional."
"By nearly burning down your kitchen?"
"Our kitchen," he corrected. "And yes. Exactly that."
We migrated to the couch, my legs draped over his lap, sharing ice cream from the container while watching cooking shows with the sound off, making up dialogue.
"'What have you brought us today, Kevin?'" I narrated in a terrible British accent.
"'It's a deconstructed pizza with childhood trauma as garnish,'" Brad replied, somehow making his voice higher.
"'The trauma is undercooked.'"
"'Yes, Chef. Sorry, Chef. My father never loved me, Chef.'"
I laughed so hard I nearly dropped the ice cream. Brad caught it, then somehow we were kissing again, ice cream forgotten until it dripped on us both.
"We're a mess," I murmured against his lips, tasting vanilla and him.
"The best kind of mess," he said, pulling me closer as the cooking show continued in the background, judges critiquing disasters far less sweet than ours.