Justin O'Dwyer is 19. Four days ago, his mother died of a drug overdose, and now Justin is back in Enterprise, Oregon, trying to figure out how to raise the younger siblings he's afraid of losing to the foster system. Justin is completely out of his depth. Harper is six, and hates him. Wyatt is four and doesn't remember him. And baby Scarlett, at fourteen months, has never even met her big brother before. When Scarlett gets sick and won't stop screaming, and when Harper runs off in the middle of the night, Justin is at the end of his tether. In desperation, he knocks on a neighbor's door begging for help.<br><br>Del Abbot is 38, and living in his grandparents' old place in Enterprise after his marriage broke down and he lost his restaurant in the divorce. He's a chef, even had his own show on cable for a while, but now he's looking for a new start, if he could just figure out what exactly that entails. When the O'Dwyer family barrels into his life one night, Del can't refuse to help. What begins as a trip to the hospital becomes a regular child-minding gig while Justin struggles to find his feet. And the more time Del spends with Justin, the more they both want more than friendship. But small town life comes with its own bigotry, and, in Justin's case, that bigotry has always been close to home.<br><br>When an act of violence threatens to destroy the small family they've built, both Justin and Del need to put aside their pasts and reach for their future together.

Family Recipe

Del got up and left his cell behind. He sipped at his water as he meandered over to the kitchen. It was the only part of the old house he’d actually properly renovated when he moved about a year ago. There were all sorts of kitchen gadgets around, from a pressure cooker to a sous vide immersion circulator to a tabletop BBQ smoker in the corner of the counter.


There was a whole pantry full of other things, anything he could want while trying to write his fucking impossible cookbook.


That reminded him. “Shit, shit, shit, shit!” He went to the plate of sashimi and saw the cucumber in the salad had started to weep and now the tuna sat in a puddle. “For fuck’s sake!”


He grabbed the plate and scraped everything into the trash. Then he cleaned the counters, and took the most delicate items he needed to handwash to the sink.


Chapter 7