Page 153 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

"People change," I tell him, sweet as pie.

"Clearly." Sawyer's looking at me like I'm the single most interesting thing in three counties. "They do."

Beckett just narrows his eyes at me, suspicious as a hound, like he can smell a plan coming off my skin. He can. He's got the best nose of the three of them, and he's known me the longest.

"Is that so hard to believe?" I lift my chin at him. "None of us have work in the morning. Correct?"

They exchange a look over the top of my head — that silent Alpha conferring I have never once managed to crack the code of — and I decide, right there, that I am done waiting around for the three of them to grant me permission for my own night.

So I take it.

I slide down off my stool, spin on the heel of my boot, and drift away from all three of them toward the door, tossing the words back over my shoulder like a fistful of confetti. "The whole street's got new bars now, gentlemen. Completely different from how it all was five years ago. Try to keep up." I flash them a grin I don't entirely feel. "I've got an excellent tolerance."

I have a truly shitty tolerance.But they do not need to know that.

I walk. I don't look back. This is the whole test, isn't it — this exact moment, my bare shoulders squared, my back to the three of them, the door standing open ahead of me. Their one chance to follow me out into the night, or to let me walk through that door alone, the way they once let me walk down a whole aisle alone. I make my boots keep moving. I make myself not look back to check.

I don't make it three steps.

Sawyer's already there — ahead of me somehow, walking backward toward the door with that insufferable grin and one hand held out, fingers wiggling at me. "Well, come on then, Blooming Apricot. You're the one who said keep up."

I snicker despite my whole self and put my hand in his.

The night air hits me the second we're through the door — salt and cold and sharp after the sweat-warm fug of the bar —and it clears my head just enough to feel the full absurdity of it. Me. Amber Whitlock, who arranges other people's happily-ever-afters for a living, striding down her own hometown street with an Alpha's hand wrapped around hers and two more falling into formation behind me like I'm a parade worth marching in. A month ago I ate cereal standing over my own sink like a Victorian ghost.Look at you now,some giddy, tequila-warm little voice sings in the back of my skull.Just look at you now.August falls into step on my right without a single word, close and warm, that sage-and-iris of his settling over me like he's decided sheer proximity is a winning strategy.

I drift left, fully expecting the space beside me to stay empty — and I startle, just a little, when Beckett drops into it, matching my stride, hat and all.

"Did you just walk off your own shift?" I ask him.

He shrugs, entirely unbothered. "Duty calls. I'm a volunteer."

"Volunteer myass," August mutters from my other side. Then, lower, almost to himself: "...Cade's not coming, then?"

A small silence opens up between the four of us. Beckett's jaw works once, tight.

"Probably's got to hold the place down," he says. "It's a genuine madhouse in there tonight." A beat, careful. "He's got our location. He knows exactly where we'll end up."

I keep my eyes forward. I keep my face light, my steps loose and easy, like the answer doesn't matter to me in the slightest, like I haven't clocked every single word of it and filed it away. But I have. I always do. I know, walking out into the salt-cool dark of the street with three Alphas orbiting me like I'm a thing worth the orbiting, exactly which of the four of them wants this — wantsme— badly enough to walk clean off a shift and chase me down a street. I know precisely which one is still standing frozen behind his bar, too — wanting me and running from it inthe very same breath, too scared of something I can't yet see to close the distance between us.

Five years ago, I'd have waited. I'd have stood at the end of that aisle and waited for the men I loved to finally choose me, and I would have called all that waiting love.

Only this time, I won't be the one waiting for the cards to fall in my favor....

CHAPTER 29

The Last Twinkie

~BECKETT~

"Tolerance my ass."

I say it mostly to myself, watching Amber Whitlock spin in a slow, delighted circle around our campfire, giggling at absolutely nothing, and I start seriously reconsidering whether the four of us should have let her match us shot for shot down the whole length of the strip.

We ended the night back here, at the house — the big rambling place outside town that's meant to make us look like a functioning pack to a suspicious government, and tonight, for the first time, damn near does. Somebody built up a fire in the pit out back. Somebody else turned up marshmallows and graham crackers and a bar of the good chocolate, and we spent the better part of an hour making s'mores like a pack of overgrown children, passing around a bottle of whisky none of us had any business trying to finish. The whole yard smells like woodsmoke and burnt sugar and the salt coming up off the marsh in the dark.

It's the first night since all four of us moved under one roof that hasn't felt like four strangers sharing a rental and a shared legal problem. There's no performance in it tonight, no one watching to see if we pass. Tonight it feels — almost, if I don't look at it too straight on — like the exact thing all that paperwork keeps insisting we already are.

There, in the middle of all of it, glowing gold in the firelight, is her.