Page 133 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

Juniper's eyebrows climb toward her hairline.

"So how'd you get home?"

"August offered to drive Sawyer and me. And he gave the truck a jump on top of it." I let the small, disbelieving smile out at last. "August. Jump-started Sawyer's truck. With his own two hands. Voluntarily."

"No," Marlowe breathes, delighted.

"And here's the thing I keep chewing on." I sit back on my heels. "I'm fairly certain Marshall vanishedon purpose.Left specifically so the four of them would have no smooth-talking buffer left — so they'd have no choice but to figure out how to work together right there in a town hall parking lot, over a dead engine, like adults." I shrug. "I should be annoyed at being handled that neatly. I'm not. It was kind of brilliant."

"Okay, but the actual meeting." Juniper leans forward, chin dropping into her cupped hands. "How did the council thing go? I want all of it. Every horrible detail."

I blow out a long breath and sink down onto the floor beside my box, my spine against the couch.

"It was a nightmare, Junie. A slow, fluorescent, paper-cutnightmare." I press the heels of my hands into my eyes. "There was this pinched little councilman who clearly has not been hugged since the Ford administration, and he made me sit there and read my whole abandonment out loud like a bedtime story for the room. And the signatures. I have signed my own name so many times it stopped looking like a name and started looking like a bird a child drew. I was spiraling…this cold, quietyouare signing your entire life away on a dotted linespiral…and then?—"

I stop, because the next part does something complicated behind my ribs.

"Sawyer noticed. He saw I was going under, and he just stepped in. Bought me a chair so I wasn't bent over the desk. Went through every page with me like a tag team. It still sucked. But he made it survivable."

The two of them go very still and very alert, like a pair of cats who've spotted the identical bird. Marlowe pounces, because Marlowe always pounces.

"So." She draws the word out, sugar-sweet, examining her paint-stained nails with performed disinterest. "You and Sawyer. Official, then, huh?"

Heat rushes up my throat before I can slam a lid on it.

"N—no." I fumble the word, and it trips over itself on the way out. "N-not yet. We're just — trialing things. Feeling it out."

Junipercackles.

"Sure. Sure you are. 'Trialing things.'" She throws up air quotes big enough to be seen from orbit. "Says Miss Hickey Central over here. Amber, sweetheart, the two of us have been very graciously pretending we don't see your neck. Or your shoulders. Or — honestly, at this point I'm just assuming your knees and your toes and the backs of both your ears are in on it too." She tilts her head, wicked as a cat. "Did the man want the whole entire town to know you're his territory now? Did he stake his little flags all the way down your?—"

"Juniper."

"I'm merely observing! It's very thorough work. Very committed craftsmanship. A tradesman would be proud."

"Fuck," I groan, dropping my burning face into both hands, going molten to the very tips of my ears. "Do not…do not say it like that. It'smortifying."

They dissolve, the pair of them, howling and clutching at each other on my couch like this is the single funniest thing to happen in the history of the harbor.

For them, it might be.

"This is anovel," Marlowe wheezes, wiping at her eyes. "This is a whole omegaverse novel and you are themain character.The scorned Omega. The mysterious new Alpha who shows up out of the fog. The three exes crawling back on their knees?—"

"We'd call it—" Juniper can barely force it out, she's laughing so hard she's gone silent for a full second first "—we'd call itKnot in the Wedding Cards!"

"Ugh, stop!" I dig a rolled pair of socks out of the box and hurl them clean across the room.

They catch Juniper square in the forehead, which only makes the situation worse, both of them collapsing into a fresh heap of giggles while I try to recover a single shred of dignity from the floor of my own living room.

"Okay. Okay, but truly." Marlowe swipes under her eyes, sobering by careful degrees. "Sawyer might genuinely be the best thing to ever waltz into Honeybell Harbor."

I blink at her.

"...Why do you say that?"

The two of them trade a look.

This time it's Juniper who answers, the teasing all drained out of her voice, leaving it gentle.