Page 145 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

Every soul in this room got to fall in love the ordinary way —the safe way— and here I stand with a contract, a deadline, and a woman who has every reason on God's earth to sit back and watch me burn.

I keep ordering myself to be excited about it.

This is the second chance, isn't it?

The exact thing I'd have sold a kidney for six months ago — a real, sanctioned shot at winning back the love I threw in the dirt. I should be hurling myself at it with both hands. Going allout. Instead there's this stubborn, cowardly knot lodged in my chest that won't let me commit — not all the way, not yet — not until I'm certain it'ssafe.Not until I know nothing's going to come crawling back out of the woodwork the way it did the first time, put a hand around my throat, and tell me to drop the entire world I've built or watch the people I love pay the bill for it.

Maybe that's selfish.

I build a gin and tonic without looking at my hands.

Maybe I'm not thinking straight.

Maybe a braver man just leaps and trusts the net's there.

But the last time I trusted the net, there wasn't one, and somebody I love damn near lost everything in the fall.

I think about Theo.

My little brother, twenty-two and furious about being twenty-two, sitting across from me at Tide Table last week with his jaw set at the exact angle our mother's gets.

"I don't need you to protect me, Cade,"he'd said, quiet and hard."I never once asked you to torch your own life for my scholarship. You keep acting like I'm some debt you have to pay off. I'm not. That was your call. Don't you dare hang it around my neck."

It gutted me, because the kid's right.

Theo was the reason.

The scholarship, the threat, the whole cold arithmetic five years back —protect Theo, protect Mom, protect the family, and the only cost is your own heart, so pay it and shut up about it.

Now Theo's grown and looking me dead in the eye and telling me he never wanted the price paid in the first place. That I've spent five years carrying a debt nobody handed me, using it as the reason behind every single thing I do.

Then there's my mother.

What she said to me last month, low, drying glasses behind her own bar, not even turning to look at me while she said it.

"You've got your father's feet, baby. Always halfway out the door. Always running toward the next thing like home is something behind you instead of something you stop and build."She'd set the glass down, careful."He ran because staying scared him worse than leaving ever could. Don't you dare do that to that girl a second time."

So which is it?

Am I a grown man of thirty-four, too scared to fight for the only woman I've ever loved because I'm standing here waiting for the universe to sign a form promising me it won't hurt?

Or —and here's the thought that curdles my stomach every time it surfaces— am I doing the precise thing my father did? Dressing cowardice up in a nicer coat and calling it caution.

Calling it protecting everyone when the truth is I'm protecting me, keeping one boot out the door so that if there's a leaving, the leaving belongs to me.

The thought lands like an open-handed slap.

My hand jerks.

I pour a triple shot of orange liqueur straight into a margarita that did not order one.

"Shit."

I dump it down the drain and start fresh, glancing up to see whether anyone caught the great Cade Mercer coming apart behind his own bar. Nobody did.

The place is too loud, too full, too busy chasing its own good time to notice mine slipping.Small mercies.I build the drink again, clean this time, four seconds of easy charm sliding back over my face like a coat I've worn so long it fits me better than my own skin.

The tips, at least, are obscene.