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

Abigail wanted to see what Del’s style was, and what she was working with, so last night Justin had filmed him as he made an omelet and described the process as if he had some YouTube subscribers watching.


“You know what?” Del said on the video, his voice sounding a little tinny since Justin didn’t have earbuds. “People are going to tell you not to buy shredded cheese because it costs more than it does to buy a block of cheese and a grater. But here’s the thing about shredded cheese. You can freeze it. So if you don’t use a lot of cheese, freezing the shredded stuff is going to work out to be more economical in the long run than if you have to throw out half a block when it goes bad. So you figure out what option works best for your household. I know not everyone’s got the same help in the kitchen I do, right, Wyatt?”


Chapter 51