Page 129 of Only Mine
I just became Saint, the grumpy chef with the spirited daughter who runs that French place on Main.
All of it unraveling because I let someone in.
My phone buzzes with a text.
Wrenley: Thinking about you. Brenda’s dragging me through meetings, but I really need to talk to you. Are we still on for dinner tonight?
I said yes to being filmed. She asked, and I agreed.
But I didn’t expect the video to look like that. I didn’t expect people to start pulling it apart.
Wrenley knew. She must have known what she was doing. The angles, the lighting, the way she made everything I did look like sexual foreplay. The careful framing showed just enough ink and just enough technique to make her followers curious. She’s too skilled not to have calculated this.
Fuck, I’m an idiot. She used the perfect recipe for viral content: seduction, skill, and the hint of something forbidden.
My phone buzzes again.
Wrenley: You ok? Brenda’s pitching a beauty brand collab but I’d rather be making that risotto with you again...
The domesticity in her message makes my jaw lock. Like we’re some normal couple sharing inside jokes. Like she hasn’t just turned my life into content.
“Papa?” Ivy’s voice pulls me back. She’s sitting up on the bench, hair sticking in seventeen directions. “You look mad.”
She squints at me, much too perceptive for her age.
“Keep sleeping,mon trésor. Everything’s okay.”
I can’t stop fucking looking at the comments.
I used to stage at his restaurant in Paris. Absolute legend. If that’s him...
Falcon Haven.. Found it. It’s the only town within 50 miles with a restaurant called C’est Trois.
Someone needs to go there and confirm it’s him!!
I should’ve said no. I should’ve told Wrenley no cameras, no content, not even a blurry photo of the pasta we made. My face isn’t even in the frame, and still they’re building a fucking dossier on me.
Ivy’s already been through one public mess that cracked her world wide open. I won’t let her live through another. I’ll destroy the entire internet myself before that happens.
Yet Wrenley’s message is still open. My thumb hovers over the screen, the reply box waiting.
Don’t say anything you can’t walk back.
Randomly, I don’t hear Wrenley’s voice in my head after that thought. I hear her agent’s, that kind of PR-fueled, sharp-edged truth someone like her would throw at me if I texted my displeasure at this whole shit show.
I’m no publicity virgin. I’ve been in the media before and know how this works. But that doesn’t make this any less infuriating.
I back out of the message screen and open the video again, trying to figure out what, exactly, made this thing blow up. It’s not flashy. There are a thousand videos just like it. Hands chopping herbs. Hands stirring pasta. A few tattoos. A decent knife.
So why this one?
I watch it again, slower this time, and the answer slips in quietly.
It’s not the food, or the way the yolk breaks so cleanly in my hands.
It’sher. Wrenley.
She’s used a voice-over instead of our sexy banter while filming, but there’s a tone shift I didn’t notice the first time. Wrenley isn’t teaching. She isn’t performing. Even though I’m not on screen, even though she’s cut my voice entirely, the warmth in her voice as she discusses what I’m doing says everything.
