Page 124 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

I feel a bit like a villain, if I'm honest.

Some devil come slinking out of the woodwork to collect an old debt on behalf of a woman who deserved a great deal better than the hand she got dealt. I find I am not one bit sorry about it.

Let the three of them see the marks. Let them stand in that town hall and count every last one and understand, finally, in their own slow bones, exactly what they left sitting on the table five years back. I've planned enough weddings to know the precise look of a man realizing too late what he held in his hands. I fully intend to enjoy every second of theirs.

Amber, meanwhile, has been studying Marshall over her mug with the frank, unhurried curiosity of a woman who plans seating charts for a living and can therefore smell a social dynamic from three rooms off.

"Why," she says slowly, "do I get the distinct feeling you couldn't care less whether the two of you got up to some sweet Alabama shit back in the day?"

I turn my head, real slow, to look at Marshall.

He shrugs. One shoulder. Black-cat energy, my grandmother would have called that — the exact breed of composure that makes a person want to check their pockets.He reminds me of somebody. Takes me a second to land on who.August. He reminds me of August, of all people. I have not yet decided whether that's a good thing or a problem waiting to happen.

"You're a good reader of the room," Marshall tells her, and there's genuine approval under it. Then he slides his gaze over tome, and his mouth curves. "So. She's the Omega who's actually got your full attention."

It isn't a question. I take a slow drink of my coffee, and the two of us just look at each other across five years and one small kitchen table.

"You mad at that?" I ask.

He leans back in his chair until the front legs lift clean off the floor, entirely at home in a house he walked into twenty minutes ago.

"Mad?" He shakes his head. "No. I'm proud, if you want the honest truth of it. Proud you've still got the nerve to reach for the thing that makes you happy." His voice gentles, just a hair. "The Sawyer I knew five years back wasn't sure he was allowed to reach for anything. Wasn't even sure he'd recognize the feeling if it walked up and shook his hand. But that same man was willing to walk clean away from everything the five of us built — the pack, the whole life, all of it — for no reason grander than making his baby sister happy." He lifts his tea in a small salute. "I've always commended you for that. Always have. Then again—" the smirk sneaks back in "—I'm a touch biased where you're concerned."

"Biased my ass," I mutter.

That knocks a real laugh out of him, low and warm, and he turns it on Amber like he's passing her the good gossip across a fence.

"So. You're all right with him bending whichever way he pleases, are you?"

That is the precise moment I lose my second mouthful of coffee of the morning.

I'm coughing all over again, one hand flat to my sternum, and Amber pushes off the counter with a small, put-upon sigh and crosses the kitchen to me.

"You okay?" She sets her mug down on the table beside mine and lays one warm hand on my chest, patting twice — a good deal more amused than concerned.

Then she looks back at Marshall and lifts one shoulder in a shrug that mirrors his own to the letter.

"I don't really care," she says. "Long as it stays inside the pack, I couldn't tell you who he gets up to things with, and I don't much need to." She pauses. Her lips push out into a thoughtful little pout that I feel behind my back teeth. "Which, frankly — out of my three exes — the only one I'd put real money on actually having a thing for him is August."

I look up at her.

"Is it that obvious?"

She turns those eyes down on me, unhurried.

"It's not obvious, exactly. But last night…that whole standoff with the truck, the two of you circling each other on that road…there was a tension there. I notice tension. It's the job."

"And it doesn't turn you off," I say. "Even a little."

"No."

Another shrug, easy as breathing.

She reaches past me to reclaim her mug now that I've stopped actively dying at her table.

"Though I'll grant you, this is coming from a woman who reads a truly embarrassing amount of MM on the side of her regular cozy omegaverse. So it's possible I'm just well broken in for the idea."

"Books aren't real life," Marshall observes. There's no judgment in it — only that curious, cataloging tilt of his head, the one he gets when he's decided a thing is worth understanding.