“This needs to be perfect,” he snaps. “If you can’t do it right, get out of the kitchen.”
“It’s fine,” I counter. “Nothing was in the pan yet.”
He opens his mouth to yell again when footsteps echo behind us. Emerson and Kimber slip into the kitchen, dropping onto the bar stools like they’re settling in for dinner and a show.
Kimber grins. “How’s everything coming along in here?”
Ronan inhales like he’s about to begin a full-scale rant, but I cut him off with fake cheer. “Great!”
Emerson chuckles. “Is Chef Ramsay cooking like a drill sergeant again?”
Kimber snorts and nearly chokes on her water. Ronan whips around and glares at both of them with the betrayed horror of a man whose own family questions his culinary authority.
“I’m not a drill sergeant,” he grumbles.
“Bro,” Emerson says, deadpan, “you yelled at a spatula yesterday.”
“It was warped!” Ronan fires back. “How am I supposed to cook with subpar utensils?”
I shake my head. “Next he’s going to start giving performance reviews to the silverware.”
Kimber laughs so hard she folds over the counter, wiping at her eyes. “God, I missed this,” she says, her voice softening—and a tight ache twists in my chest. Because missing it implies we ever had a stretch of normal to begin with.
We haven’t. Not really.
Not since Berk.
The kitchen goes quiet for a second. Just a heartbeat. Just long enough for the ache to slip through the cracks.
Ronan clears his throat and goes back to bossing us around, pretending we didn’t all feel the shift. “Okay, Rowan, flip the chicken. Emerson, chop the parsley. Kimber… please tell me you can monitor a timer without burning the house down.”
“Absolutely not,” she says immediately, grinning.
We all laugh, the tension breaking again as Emerson tosses her a tiny apron Ronan bought ironically, but she wears it proudly.
“Fine,” Ronan sighs. “Just… don’t touch anything.”
Kimber raises both hands like a criminal being arrested. “No promises.”
The mood settles into a quiet warmth. Nearly peaceful. Like the life we’ve been piecing together from what was left broken.
Which is why the next voice freezes all of us in place.
“What the hell is all the commotion in here?”
We spin toward the doorway as Berk steps inside, hair messy, wearing one of my shirts, looking alive. Breathing. Whole.
And every one of us stops breathing as the world tilts back into place.
“Baby.” The word leaves me on a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding, half scolding, half worshipping. “You’re supposed to be taking a nap. We were going to surprise you with dinner.”
She smiles at me, sweet and sleepy and still looking like a miracle every time I blink. I step toward her without thinking, like my body’s magnetized to hers, and wrap her carefully into my chest. Her bones feel smaller than they used to, but her warmth is the same. I lower my mouth to her ear.
“Especially after we dicked you down so well,” I murmur, voice low enough only she should hear. “I thought you’d be out for hours.”
She snorts a giggle against my shirt.
Kimber gags dramatically from the bar. “I can still hear you, you know! Don’t be gross before we eat.”