Chapter Thirteen Risotto and Revelations
Chapter Thirteen
Risotto and Revelations
Poppy
Mason’s text hits while I’m untangling myself from a vendor call about linens. Something about the wrong shade of ivory, which apparently matters more than world peace.
MASON: Dinner tonight? 7p.m.? Casual at the house.
MASON: Ivy demands your presence.
MASON: She insisted and she gets violent when people skip meals.
I stare at my disaster of a workspace — seating charts everywhere, three empty coffee cups forming a grief support group on the windowsill.
ME: I should work through dinner.
MASON: She will hunt you down.
MASON: Dean’s cooking too btw.
My stomach does this stupid flippy thing.
ME: Dean cooks?
MASON: Shockingly well.
MASON: See you at 7! :)
Great. Dinner with the happy couple and their brother who makes me forget basic motor functions whenever he does that thing with his sleeves. The thought alone short-circuits my focus.
I check the time. 5:47. Crap.
Not much time to make a dent in my to-do list, but still, I try my best.
An hour passes in what feels like the blink of an eye.
I grab the first clean thing I find—jeans with a hole in the knee and an oversized sweater that keeps falling off my shoulder. Hair goes up in a messy bun secured with the nearest writing implement (a pencil, because I’m classy like that).
The walk to the main house takes thirty seconds. Long enough to wonder what the hell I’m doing. Not long enough to come up with a good excuse to bail.
I knock once and walk in because apparently, we’re at that level of familiarity now.
“—just saying she’s nice,” Mason’s voice drifts from the kitchen.
“I hadn’t noticed.” Dean. Dry as dust.
“Bullshit. I saw you watching her during the tent setup.”
“I was watching my property value plummet.”
“Through her tank top?”
“Mason—”
“What? She’s hot. You’re single. Math isn’t your strong suit?”
I clear my throat, and both brothers freeze — Mason perched on the counter like an overgrown teenager, Dean at the stove with a wooden spoon and a murderous look.
“Hey.” I hold up the wine I grabbed from my emergency stash. “Brought the good stuff.”
Dean’s face does this thing, part embarrassment, part amusement.
“Where’s Ivy?” I ask, desperately needing another person in this room.
“Upstairs. Changing. She’ll be down soon.” Mason hops down, swipes the wine. “Come on, I’ll give you the tour while Dean has his control issues in private.”
“I don’t have—”
But we’re already leaving. I glance back to find Dean glaring at the risotto like it personally offended him.
The more I see of the house, the more I love. Mason narrates like a discount tour guide.
“Living room where Dean pretends to relax. Office where Dean actually lives. Piano nobody’s touched since 2019.”
“Why’d he stop?”
Mason’s quiet for a beat. “Same reason he stopped doing a lot of things.”
Before I can ask what that means, Ivy appears at the top of the stairs in a sundress that probably cost more than my rent.
“Poppy! You came!”
She hugs me like we’re old friends. She smells expensive. I probably smell like stress and dry shampoo.
“Thanks for having me.”
“Please. You’re doing us a favor. Dean needs more human interaction that doesn’t involve billable hours.”
We head back to the kitchen where Dean’s now plating risotto with the focus of a bomb technician.
Cool.
“Smells amazing,” I offer.
He glances up. Does this quick scan—sweater, jeans, pencil in hair—and something flickers across his face.
“It’s just risotto.”
“Just risotto,” Mason scoffs. “That he’s been stirring for forty minutes.”
“It requires constant attention.”
“So does therapy, but here we are.”
Ivy smacks Mason’s arm. “Be nice.”
“I am nice. Dean’s the mean one.”
“I’m not mean. I’m selective with my enthusiasm.”
“That’s literally the definition of mean.”
I bite back a laugh.
Dean catches it, eyes narrowing. “Something amusing?”
“Nope. Just… you two. It’s cute.” I gesture between the brothers who couldn’t be more opposite.
“We’re not cute,” they say in unison, which only proves my point.
We migrate to the dining room. Through some configuration I don’t fully track, I end up next to Dean. Our knees bump under the table. He shifts away. I pretend not to notice.
The risotto is, annoyingly, perfect. Creamy and comforting with a hint of tangy parmesan and plenty of buttery goodness.
“Okay, this is stupid good,” I admit after the first bite.
“It’s just arborio rice and—”
“Take the compliment.”
He pauses. “Thank you.”
“See? Was that so hard?”
“Excruciating, actually.” But he’s almost smiling. This lazy, tiny thing at the corner of his mouth that makes my chest do weird stuff.
“So Poppy,” Ivy says, pouring me a glass of white wine. “Tell us about Italy.”
Safe topic. I grab it with both hands.
“I fly out Sunday after the wedding. A week in Portofino. Just me and carbs.”
“Alone?” There’s something in the way she asks it.
“That’s the plan.”
“No… special someone to take?”
I laugh. “My special someone is my passport.”
“Relatable,” Dean mutters.
Mason and Ivy exchange a look I don’t like.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Ivy says too quickly. “Just thinking Dean could use a vacation.”
“I don’t do vacations.”
“You don’t do fun,” Mason corrects. “There’s a difference.”
Dinner continues. Stories get told. Ivy shares how they met (book club, his was the only male perspective, she was intrigued). Normal couple stuff that makes my chest tight with something I refuse to name.
“What about you?” Ivy asks. “Worst wedding disaster?”
This one?
I tell them about the beach officiant with food poisoning, the stoned maid of honor, writing her toast on her palm in Sharpie. Even Dean laughs—this low sound that does things to my spine.
“More wine?” he asks, already pouring.
Our fingers brush on the glass. Lightning shoots up my arm — quick, sharp, impossible to ignore. I swallow before I can embarrass myself and focus on my plate like it holds answers.
“So, Dean,” Ivy says, and her tone makes my stomach drop. “Still single?”
The temperature plummets. Even the air feels different, brittle somehow.
“Yes.” Dean doesn’t look up from his plate. His fork scrapes once against the porcelain, deliberate.
“Really? Mom mentioned that woman from your firm—” Mason cuts in.
“Is married,” he says flatly. “To her wife.”
“Oh.” Ivy deflates, shoulders slumping. “Well, there goes that.”
Dean finally sets his fork down. “What?”
“Nothing.” Ivy glances at Mason, then back at Dean. “Just thought maybe…”
His head tilts, just slightly. “Maybe what?”
“Maybe you’d finally let someone in?”
Dean goes still. Not frozen — still. Like something dangerous coiling up, waiting for the wrong move.
“I’m fine.”
“Nobody said you weren’t—”
“Then why the interrogation?”
His voice is quiet, but it lands heavy. Ivy winces. Mason opens his mouth, probably to defuse, but Dean’s stare cuts him off before he can.
“It’s not an interrogation,” Ivy says softly. “It’s concern.”
“It’s invasive.”
“When’s the last time you went on a date?” Mason tries, half teasing, half shielding.
“I date.”
“Depositions don’t count.”
Dean exhales through his nose. “March.”
Silence. The kind that hums. I feel the words like static in the room.
“March?” Ivy repeats, blinking. “It’s August.”
Dean’s knife tenses in his grip. “Your point?”
Ivy’s lips part, but nothing comes out.
“Dean—”
He stands abruptly. The chair legs scrape hard against the floor. “I should check on dessert.”
And he’s gone, the sound of retreating footsteps echoing down the hallway.
The table breathes again.
“Too far?” Ivy whispers.
“Little bit,” Mason confirms, dragging a hand over his face.
I’m already on my feet. “I’ll go.”
“Poppy—”
“It’s fine.” I force a small smile. “I speak emotionally constipated.”
The kitchen’s dim except for the under-cabinet lights. They cast a soft, yellow glow over stainless steel and tension. Dean’s at the counter, methodically slicing strawberries like they’ve wronged him.
“They mean well,” I say, leaning against the doorway.
“They always do.” He doesn’t look up. “You don’t have to—”
“I know.”
I move closer, close enough to smell sugar and heat and something faintly citrus on him. Not close enough to make him retreat. I fold my arms, watching him massacre fruit.
“Being single isn’t a disease,” I offer.
“Tell that to coupled people.”
“Fair point.” I steal a strawberry slice from the cutting board, mostly to have something to do with my hands. “Though March is kind of a long—”
“Don’t.”
The knife pauses mid-air.
“Right. Shutting up.”
More quiet slicing, aka fruit carnage. His jaw’s doing that clenched thing again.
Then, without looking up, he says, “Her name was Rebecca.”
I blink. “Okay…”
He sets the knife down, fingers braced on the counter. “She was an investment banker. We met at a conference. Dated for three months.”
I wait. “What happened?”
“She wanted more.”
“And you didn’t?”
He finally looks at me. His eyes are tired—not in the physical sense, but in the way someone looks when they’ve stopped expecting to be understood.
“I wanted to want it,” he says quietly. “Does that count?”
Something twists in my chest. The honest kind of ache.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “It counts.”
For a second, the air between us feels heavy, fragile. My chest squeezes. “Yeah. It counts.”
“Do you know what it’s like?” His voice drops. “To go through the motions? To sit across from someone beautiful and accomplished and feel… nothing?”
“Actually? Yeah.”
He blinks.
“His name was Mitchell,” I say. “He was a photographer. Sweet. Talented. Looked at me like I hung the moon.”
“And?”
“And I felt like I was suffocating.” I grab another strawberry. “Kept waiting to feel what everyone said I should feel. Never did.”
“How long?”
“Eight months.”
“Damn. I barely lasted three.”
“Yeah, well. I’m an overachiever.”
He huffs. Might be a laugh.
We stand there, surrounded by strawberry casualties and unspoken things.
“This is complicated,” he says.
“What is?”
He gestures vaguely between us.
Oh.
“Everything’s complicated,” I say carefully. “Doesn’t mean it’s not worth—”
“DESSERT?” Mason yells from the dining room. “You guys get lost?”
The moment breaks. Dean grabs plates. I grab spoons. We don’t talk about whatever just almost happened.
But back at the table, his thigh presses against mine.
And he doesn’t move away.