"You're staring at the water like it owes you money," Oscar says, dropping onto the riverbank beside me. "Should I be concerned? Did the river steal your identity too, or is this a new grudge?"
Jake and Konnor disappeared up the trail ten minutes ago, hauling coolers and fishing gear, their voices fading into the trees until the only sounds left are the river and Oscar's breathing beside me.
"I'm having a moment," I inform him. "A peaceful, contemplative moment where I reflect on nature and my place within it. You're interrupting."
"Your peaceful moment looks a lot like brooding." He stretches out beside me, close enough that his shoulder brushes mine. "I've seen enough brooding to recognize the symptoms. Furrowed brow, distant gaze, slight downturn of the mouth. Classic brooding presentation."
"I don't brood. I strategize internally."
"Is that what they taught you at Stanford? Rebranding sulking as strategic contemplation?" He grins, and the sunlight catches the water behind him, casting diamonds across its surface. "Because I have to say, the marketing department did excellent work."
I turn to face him properly, abandoning my contemplation of the river. "Tell me something about yourself that isn't related to cooking or terrible pickup lines."
The request catches him off guard. His eyebrows climb toward his hairline, and for a split second the performer disappears, leaving someone younger and less certain in his place.
"That's a dangerous question, Kelly Bird." He recovers quickly, but I saw the crack. "You sure you want to go there? Once you know my tragic backstory, you'll never be able to look at my risotto the same way again."
"I'll take my chances." I prop myself on my elbow, mirroring his position. "Come on, Oscar Grant. Three days of relentless flirtation and I still don't know anything real about you. What's your deal? What keeps you up at night? What made you decide that feeding people was your life's purpose?"
"Feeding people isn't my life's purpose." His voice shifts, the playfulness giving way to something more substantial. "Making people feel things through food—that's different. Anyone can fill a stomach. I want to create moments."
"That's surprisingly poetic for a man who compared fishing to seduction an hour ago."
"I contain multitudes." His honey-colored eyes hold mine, and the teasing warmth in them deepens. "My mother taught me to cook. She was terrible at it but she tried so hard. Every Sunday she'd attempt some elaborate dish from her grandmother's cookbook, and every Sunday we'd end up ordering pizza and laughing about the disaster."
"That sounds chaotic and wonderful."
"It was both." Oscar's smile turns soft, private. "She died when I was nineteen. Ovarian cancer, fast and brutal. One month she was burning pot roast, and the next she was gone."
The confession hangs between us, unexpected and raw. I reach for his hand without thinking, fingers intertwining with his in the grass.
"Oscar, I'm so sorry—"
"Don't." He squeezes my hand, but his expression stays open. "I didn't tell you that for sympathy. I told you because you asked what made me want to cook, and the answer is grief. I spent six months after her funeral teaching myself every recipe in that cookbook, perfecting the dishes she could never get right. Obsessive, probably. Definitely unhealthy. But by the time I finished, I could make her pot roast better than any restaurant, and that felt like keeping her alive somehow."
"That's not unhealthy," I say quietly. "That's love with nowhere else to go."
"Love with nowhere else to go." He repeats the phrase like he's tasting it. "Yeah. That's exactly what it was. Is. Cooking became the container for everything I couldn't say to her, all the conversations we'll never have, all the meals she'll never burn again."
The sunlight shifts, casting his face in gold, and I realize I've never seen him without the performance until now.
This Oscar is quieter, more dangerous.
"Why did you stay, Kelly Bird?" His voice drops, serious in a way that makes my breath catch. "After Konnor called you out, you could've left. Called a car, found a hotel, disappeared into whatever plan you had before you crashed into our lives."
I stare at the water because looking at him feels too much like admitting that I don't have answers for questions I've been asking myself for days.
"I don't know," I manage.
"Yes, you do." He shifts closer, and I feel the heat of him along my side. "You're too smart to not know your own motivations." Oscar's thumb traces circles on my palm. "What are you hoping to find here with us?"
The intimacy of his questions is terrifying. I've built walls out of wit and distance, and Oscar dismantles them like they're made of tissue paper.
"You already know why I came here," I hear myself say. "I came here to figure out who I am when I'm not someone's daughter or someone's scandal. I didn't expect to find three men who look at me like I'm a person instead of a problem to solve."
"You're definitely a problem to solve." Oscar's mouth curves, but his eyes stay serious. "An incredibly attractive, frustratingly guarded problem with excellent taste in fake surnames."
"Deflection is a highly underrated coping mechanism."
"I'm not asking you to apologize for it." He sits up, and suddenly his face is close to mine, close enough that I can see the gold flecks in his honey-colored eyes. "I'm asking you this—are you staying because you have nowhere else to go, or because you don't want to be anywhere else?"
The question hit somewhere deep and unprotected.
Yes, this—these men, this impossible situation—feels more real than anything since Mason's betrayal stripped away every illusion I'd built my life around.
But he is asking me to admit that I have feelings for three men I've known for a week while pregnant with another man's baby. Like that's not complicated at all.
Oscar reaches for my face, fingers brushing my jaw with a tenderness that undoes me.
"Kelly—"
"I should help the guys." The words tumble out before I can stop them, and I'm pulling away, scrambling to my feet. "They're probably struggling with those coolers, and I should—I need to—"
The excuse is pathetic. We both know it.
Oscar doesn't chase me. He stays where he is, watching me retreat with an expression I can't read in the fading light. He doesn't call after me or try to close the distance I'm frantically creating.
He just watches.
And that's somehow worse—the patience in his stillness, the way he lets me go without protest, like he knows I'll have to come back eventually.
My heart pounds as I walk away, feet carrying me toward the truck and the safety of distraction.
I know exactly what I just did.
I ran from something real—something that might have cracked me wide open—and Oscar saw exactly what I was doing.
The worst part is, I'm not sure I'm strong enough to stop running.
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