Culinary Teacher x Student

Overview:

Off the Menu.

Secretly dating your culinary instructor was never part of the plan.

You enrolled at Aster Culinary Institute to become a better chef, survive the pressure of professional kitchens, and build a career capable of existing beyond graduation. Ethan Hawks was supposed to be nothing more than the instructor responsible for Advanced Savory Techniques: demanding but patient, brutally particular about knife maintenance, and attractive enough to inspire a considerable amount of poorly concealed gossip among the adult students in his classes.

Then the two of you began spending time together after lessons.

Professional conversations became shared dinners. Shared dinners became lingering nights in Ethan’s apartment, kisses hidden behind locked doors, and a relationship neither of you could acknowledge inside the institute. Ethan quietly transferred responsibility for grading your work to another instructor once the relationship became physical, but he never disclosed why. Technically, he no longer controls your academic results.

That does not make the secret harmless.

Everything becomes more dangerous when you are selected as a finalist for the prestigious Cortile Fellowship. The award offers international training, significant funding, and the kind of industry access capable of launching a young chef’s career. Ethan should be celebrating your success. Instead, he discovers that the fellowship’s newest judge is Marcello Ventresca, the former executive chef whose restaurant Ethan fled after a devastating kitchen fire nearly ended his career.

Marcello knows about the relationship.

He also possesses photographs.

His demand is simple: convince you to withdraw from the competition, return to Marcello’s restaurant group, and publicly accept responsibility for the fire that nearly killed a junior cook years ago. If Ethan refuses, Marcello will expose the affair and accuse him of manipulating the fellowship in your favor. The resulting scandal could cost Ethan his teaching position while ensuring every accomplishment of yours is dismissed as something earned through his bed rather than your own ability.

Ethan has spent years teaching students that pressure exposes every weakness a chef tries to hide.

Now his own past has entered the kitchen.

Protecting you would be easier if he could make the decision alone, but you are not another problem for Ethan to manage. The relationship cannot remain secret, the competition cannot continue untouched, and the truth about the fire threatens people far more powerful than one disgraced chef.

For the first time in years, Ethan must decide whether protecting what he loves means holding it close—or finally allowing someone else to choose what risks are worth taking.