I scoop a portion, careful with the layers, the savoiardi soaked exactly right, the mascarpone cream smooth and generous, the cocoa dusted on top the way my grandmother did it, never too much, just enough to sit on the tongue alongside the sweet.
I hold it out.
She opens her mouth and takes it and her eyes close for one full second.
I watch her face.
I love the way her expression goes completely honest when food is exactly right, all the armor down, just her responding to something real.
Her eyes open.
"Your grandmother," she says, "was a genius."
The saffron in my chest floods warm and open and I feel Matteo’s scent sharpens from across the room and Tomas's silver musk goes quietly certain beside her.
"She would have loved you," I say.
She looks at me.
"Genuinely," I say. "She would have loved you immediately and completely and she would have asked you for your tarragon recipe and then improved it without telling you and presented it as her own."
Jennifer laughs. My alpha responds to her happiness.
"I want to say something," Matteo says, from the armchair.
Jennifer looks at him.
He leans forward with his forearms on his knees, which is not Matteo's usual posture, which means he has decided something and is doing it without the armor, which from Matteo is the most significant thing in any room he is in.
"We owe you more than we've said," he says. "All of us. What we did was wrong. Not the night. The morning. The envelope. The way we left without a word and told ourselves it was the clean call." He holds her gaze with those pale blue eyes and does not look away from it. "It was a coward's call. And you deserved better than that in every possible way."
The room is very quiet.
Jennifer looks at him for a long moment.
"Thank you," she says. "I appreciate you saying it."
Tomas turns toward her on the sofa.
"I let it happen," he says. "I knew what Matteo was going to do and I let him do it because the alternative was admitting what that night had been, what you were, and I was not ready to admit it." He looks at her steadily. "That is also on me. All of it."
Jennifer presses her lips together.
"The tiramisu is excellent," she says.
"Yes," I say, and hold out another spoonful, and she takes it, and her eyes close again for one second and when they open they are warmer than they were and the rose in her trace is so soft it is barely there at all, just warmth underneath everything, the version of her that exists when she has decided a place is safe and has stopped pretending she hasn't decided.
I set the spoon down.
"Jennifer," I say.
She looks at me.
"I was an idiot," I say. "From the morning after until approximately now I have been a comprehensive and thoroughgoing idiot and I want you to know I am aware of the full scope of it." I hold her gaze.
She takes in all three of us, her green eyes moving between our faces, reading whatever she finds there.
Then she looks at me, and the strawberry in her trace opens fully in the warm afternoon air and my saffron responds to it immediately and entirely, and the rose goes from barely there to present and warm and soft, and I watch it happen on her face too, the slight flush of it, the way her hand comes up to her neck.