Page 48 of Dirty Puck

“Love you, Ma. Keep Claudia company.” He followed me into the kitchen. Once we were alone, he said, “Right. Now how in the hell do we make cabbage rolls?”

“Let’s get the dessert going first because we’ll have to preheat the oven and it’ll make it harder to whip the cream.”

With the two of us working side by side, along with his mom’s legendary KitchenAid mixer doing half the work, it didn’t take long to get the tiramisu layered, smoothed, and chilling in the fridge.

Then it was on to dinner.

We peeled and chopped the potatoes and got them boiling while we blanched the cabbage leaves and simmered the barley until tender. The filling came together fast: ground beef, pork, thyme, marjoram, grated parmesan, diced onion, and the cooled barley. I gave it a gentle mix and set it aside while we moved on to the sauce.

A cup of beef broth, a can of crushed tomatoes, and a good dollop of tomato paste went into the pot. Once it thickened and started to bubble, I stirred in a couple teaspoons of paprika and seasoned it with salt and pepper to taste. The smell alone was enough to make my stomach growl.

Back to the filling—I cracked in an egg to bind it all together, then started forming spoonfuls of the meat and tucking them into the center of each cabbage leaf, folding them up like neat little egg rolls. One by one, I nestled them into a baking dish and poured the warm sauce over top, the rich red coating every seam.

Dinner was officially in the oven. And honestly? We made a pretty damn good team.

While the cabbage rolls baked, we had about an hour of downtime—just enough to whip up something special for the dinner rolls. I took the room-temperature butter and stirred in a quarter teaspoon of vanilla, a quarter cup of brown sugar, and a pinch of cinnamon until it turned into the dreamiest, most decadent compound butter.

Sweet, creamy, and just a little spiced. It was the kind of thing that made plain dinner rolls taste like dessert. I planned to pop the rolls into the oven about twenty minutes before thecabbage rolls finished, just enough time for them to get golden and warm, ready to slather.

I set a timer on my phone which gave us time to talk. Reece leaned with his hands resting to the sides of him over the edge of the counter, but there was a heaviness in his eyes he hadn’t masked fast enough. I drained the potatoes and tossed them with butter and parsley, glancing over at him.

“You okay?” I asked gently, stirring.

He shrugged one shoulder, staring off out the window over the sink. “Yeah. I mean… mostly.”

“Baker,” I said, and when he drifted his gaze back to me, I gave him a look. I mean, if he couldn’t talk to me, then who did he open himself up to? Not the team. They were good men and I believed soul deep that if he opened up to Bishop or Jones, they’d become some of his best friends. But he kept himself so closed off. Fake or not, he needed to unload, he needed a Bree enema and was about to get one.

He sighed. “It’s good to be home. Familiar. Comfortable. But seeing Ma...” His voice dropped. “She’s lost some weight. Her color’s off. She tries to play it down, but I see it.”

It was hard to miss, but saying that wouldn’t help the situation. I set the spoon aside and moved closer, resting my hip against the counter beside him. “I noticed too.”

“She was always so... solid. Tough as nails. Seeing her like that? It’s hard not to feel like I’m just waiting for something to break.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I don’t know how to sit still and not fix it.”

I reached for his hand, threading my fingers through his. “You don’t have to fix it, Reece. Just being here, beingwithher, is enough. She knows you’re here now.”

His jaw tightened for a moment, then softened. “It means everything that you’re here too. You, Benny, Miss Claudia… you brought life back into this house. I don’t think I realized how quiet it had gotten until I brought you here.”

My heart tugged, warm and aching all at once. “We’re notgoing anywhere.” Those were the words I let flow. The ones I held back went something like: “until you’re done with us.” We both knew this thing had a shelf life. And it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t like talking with him so damn much. And the sex. Good God, the sex. I’d mourn losing his cock for years to come.

He looked at me then, eyes searching mine, voice quieter. “Good. Because I can’t do this without you.” And for the briefest moment I thought we’d made some sort of breakthrough. BFFs and all that, until he finished, “Because she likes you. It’d be impossible to bring a new woman in now.”

That stung. Stung hardcore. Still, I smiled. “You’re not going to have to.”

The house smelled amazing, thus signaling that the dinner was done even before the timer went off. A perfect excuse to move on from this sinking conversation.

Before I brought the baking dish to the table, I mixed sour cream and cream together to thin it out a bit and drizzled it over the top of the cabbage rolls in a pretty zigzag pattern.

Char stood from her spot at the table, lifting her glass of iced tea that Reece brought to her. He even sliced a wedge of lemon, securing it to the rim of the glass. “I couldn’t have asked for more than you, Benny, and Claudia coming to spend the weekend with me, but then to have you openly embrace a tradition that Baker and I have held so dear his entire life, and to prepare us this beautiful meal…” Her words trailed off as the emotion of the moment got to her. She shook her head as if to clear it and finished, “Thank you!”

“Thank you for opening your home to us, Char. We’ve loved being here.” And I meant that, at least for me. Claudia looked to be having a good time, as did Benny, so I was pretty confident with my statement as a whole.

With the ‘thank you’s out of the way, the five of us dug into the meal with fervor. Reece placed four cabbage rollsonto his plate, cutting off a big bite with his fork before even spooning potatoes onto his plate or taking a dinner roll.

“Shit,” he said. “I’ve never had anything like it—it’s incredible. Feel free to make this anytime the spirit moves you.”

I smiled at him. “Try it with the potatoes. And get that butter spread on your dinner roll while the roll is still hot. It’s life-changing.”

The augmented tiramisu still wowed the table and I felt pretty proud of myself that I’d not only pulled off such an amazing spread, but that I’d given Reece and Char a dish they’d never tried before. Although, she’d only managed to get down a quarter of her plate.

---