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

In that kiss, Del felt all that pent-up need Justin had for someone to just take care of him, for once. Frankly, Del wasn’t sure how much of it was actually desire for Del and how much was situational and the fact that he was so young.


Then he managed to fuck up by calling Justin “kid.” While he was young—around the same age as Abigail, for fuck’s sake—he wasn’t a kid. The way Del felt him pull away mentally and physically felt horrible.


When Justin couldn’t seem to look him in the eye, Del did the only thing that seemed right; he kissed Justin again. The almost-startled little noise that Justin let out somehow went straight into the pit of Del’s stomach, and he made a hasty exit.


He couldn’t tell his sister about what had just happened. Yet she’d somehow, most likely, dig out the information from him anyway. If he just managed not to video call her, maybe she wouldn’t read him like an open book then? Ugh.


Chapter 21