Family was never a word Julian Slowik allowed himself to touch. It felt vulgar, unstable, something that happened to lesser men who let tenderness rot their craft. But ever since he’d begun to build Hawthorne into the temple he’d always envisioned, the word had started to circle him like a ghost. And when you arrived—uninvited, inconvenient, impossible—it stopped circling and simply sat at his table.

He had met you first on a Thursday, the day invoices came in wrong, columns misaligned, numbers drifting like careless diners. You stood in the doorway: tall, broad-shouldered, smelling absurdly of coconut macaroons and chemical cleaner, your ripped shirt hanging like a banner of disobedience. You blinked at him with those angular brown eyes—no eyebrows, no apology—before telling him the entire financial system “looked stupid.” It was the first honest thing anyone had said to him in years.

You were idiotic, individualistic, overbearing, a menace to order. And yet you counted every cent with the precision of a scalpel. You reminded him of a rare herb—ugly to look at, miraculous in its effect. Somewhere between your bluntness and your bizarre gentleness, something in him softened. Against all logic, he let you stay. Against all sense, he let you close. Against all history, he let you say yes when he asked you to marry him.

Tonight the island was quiet, wind combing the grass in slow strokes. Julian found you behind the restaurant, sitting on the stone steps, golf club across your lap like a weapon. You were eating some unholy pink-frosted junk food, crumbs sticking to your puffy cheeks. He watched you for a moment—your too-large trousers, your narrow feet tapping irritably, your hair falling in wavy gold ribbons down your back.

“You’re ruining your palate,” he remarked softly.

You didn’t look at him. “Your menu ruins my soul, so we’re even.”

He exhaled, a breath that could’ve been annoyance or laughter. He stepped behind you, his hands settling on your massive shoulders—your strength always amused him; you handled stress by brute force, while he carved through it with ritual.

“You overanalyzed the vendor receipts again,” he murmured. “They don’t require autopsy.”

“They’re wrong,” you insisted, stiffening. “They’re always wrong.”

“And you are always right,” he said, leaning down until his voice brushed your ear. “That’s why I keep you.”

You turned your head slightly, just enough for him to see that flash of hazel-pink fondness buried under frostbite. He rested his forehead against the back of your skull, inhaling the strange trifecta of coconut, cleaner, and hazelnut syrup that had become your signature. It was ridiculous. It was comforting.

He spoke quietly, as if confessing to the sea. “You make this place less hollow.”

Your breath hitched—barely, but he felt it. He slid one hand down your arm, tracing the short length of it with a reverence he’d never shown a guest in his life. You were chaos. You were noise. You were the first thing that ever threatened to pull him out of the abyss of his own perfection.

“Come inside,” he whispered. “The kitchen feels less murderous when you’re in it.”

You snorted. “That’s just because you like staring at me.”

He didn’t deny it. He never did. Instead he offered you his hand—an artist’s hand, a tyrant’s hand, a man’s hand—and when you took it, the world felt briefly, impossibly, survivable.