Page 188 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

"One more thing, before you stamp anything," I say, because the planner in me won't rest until every last thread is pulled taut. "Our provisional window closes on a hard deadline. The final registration has to lock before the Carroway–Reeve wedding, or the whole certification we're standing on goes shaky underneathus. Does this hold put that date at risk? Can I still finalize as four inside the window, or does the state make my entire pack sit and wait on Cade's mess to clear first?"

"You can finalize as four," Wren says, and the plain certainty of it loosens something knotted in my chest. "The hold is on him, not on you. You four proceed right on schedule, deadline intact. He simply isn't in the frame when the shutter clicks. If he clears his clause down the road and everyone still wants him, an existing registration can be amended." She offers a small, kind shrug. "But that's a bridge for a different day."

The window's safe. We make the wedding. We just make it as four.

"I'll add," Wren continues, softer now, watching me closely, "that this truly isn't a disaster if four is what you want. It's a delay, not a denial, and only if you intend for the fifth to eventually join. If your intention is a permanent pack — a real, final registration when your provisional period closes — then the reality is simply that Mr. Mercer will have to sort out his own paperwork before he can be part of it. Until he does, he sits outside the certification. That's not a judgment. That's just the mechanism." She pauses. "The two of you will want to look into the specifics down the line, once you know his timeline. For today, though, I need to ask you plainly, for the record." She looks between us. "Do you have any objection to me processing the registration as a pack of four?"

There it is. The question with the whole rest of my life folded up inside it.

I look at Beckett. He looks at me. In that shared beat I feel him ask, without a word, whether I want to carry this one or hand it to him. I feel myself hand it over, because my throat has gone unexpectedly tight and I trust him with the words.

Beckett shakes his head slowly. He sets his big hand flat on his hat brim like a man taking an oath.

"No," he says. "No objection. We're fine with the change. Process it as four." A beat, and then, because Beckett is unfailingly courteous to anyone who's kind to the people he loves, "Thank you for informing us. And for doing it straight."

"Excellent." Wren's smile is warm and relieved, and she uncaps a pen with a decisive little click. "Then I'll proceed. Give me just a few minutes with the stamps and I'll have you both on your way."

She bends to her work. The stamp thuds — once, twice — a small, final, bureaucratic sound that somehow lands heavier than it has any right to. I watch her ink our new shape into the permanent record. Four. On paper. In a government office that smells like chamomile and old copier toner, the pack I nearly died wanting gets narrower and, somehow, more solid at the same time.

We rise to go. I gather my bag. Beckett stands, unfolding to his full ridiculous height, and settles the hat back onto his head. We thank Wren again, and she waves us off with a kind reminder to call if any questions come up. The frosted-glass door swings shut behind us, and the corridor is cool and empty and hushed.

I can't help it. I reach over and squeeze Beckett's hand.

He stops mid-stride and looks down at me, and whatever he reads on my face makes his brow furrow, gentle and questioning. I go up onto my toes, closer, my voice dropping to something only he can catch in the quiet hall.

"Maybe," I whisper, "we should tell him. About the clause. Or — I don't know. Or..."

I trail off, because I don't have the end of the sentence. I don't want to be cruel. That's the knot of it. I know exactly how it feels to have information kept from you, to be steered and managed and left to find out the hard way what everyone else already knew, and the thought of doing that to another living person — even Cade, even now — turns my stomach. But underneath thatis a second thing, sharper and more selfish and just as true:How many more times am I supposed to hand my heart over to be juggled? How long do I keep running my own emotions out into the ring like a circus act for a man who won't lift a finger to catch them?I'm so tired of being the one who does the reaching.

Beckett squeezes my hand. Then he uses it to turn me, gently, until I have no choice but to look up into his face, and what I find there isn't anger and isn't pity. It's certainty. Bedrock certainty, the kind he's been building stone by stone since the day he swore by a stalled truck that he was done running.

"Amber." He says my name like it's the whole argument. "When life moves on, we all have to sit with the choices we made. Same as we sit with our regrets. There's no separating the two." His thumb strokes once across my knuckles. "Cade's a grown man. It is long past time he learned that being one means either fighting for what you want, or carrying the weight of the regret that shows up when you don't. That's not cruelty, sugar. That's just the bill coming due." His voice gentles, but it doesn't waver. "You didn't hide this from him. You didn't build this. He built it, brick by brick, every single time he chose the easy door. If he wants a seat at this table, he knows where it is. He always has. This one is his to fix, not yours to fix for him."

I breathe out. Slow. He's right, and the rightness of it settles something that's been jangling in me since the campfire. It doesn't make me feel triumphant. It just makes me feel clear.

"His decision now," I say quietly, testing the shape of it.

"His decision now," Beckett agrees.

For a moment we just stand there in the empty corridor, his hand swallowing mine, the frosted door throwing pale light across the linoleum. I let his words do their slow work. It's a strange gift, being told you're allowed to set something down — that a thing you've been white-knuckling was never yours to hold in the first place. Nobody's ever handed me that particularpermission before. Trust Beckett to be the one who does, in a government hallway that smells like floor wax and old coffee, without making a single speech about it beyond the one he already made.

I nod, and I let it be true. For five years I have been the woman who carried everyone — who smoothed the road, hunted the fine print, showed up early and stayed late and made a hundred impossible things run on time so that nobody else had to feel the friction. I don't have to carry Cade. That was never in my contract, the real one or the paper one. If he wants back into this, he has to walk himself through his own door and sign his own name and do the unglamorous, tedious, adult work of undoing the mess he made. No one can do it for him. No one should.

As we push out through the front doors into the bright honeyed afternoon, Beckett's hand warm and sure around mine, I understand with sudden, ringing clarity that this is it. This is the final arc. Everything from here forward is a test, and the terms of the test have changed. It won't be decided by who says the prettiest thing, or who makes the most beautiful promise on a doorstep, or who swears they've changed. I've had a lifetime of pretty words. I've got the scars to prove exactly what they're worth. From here on out, the only currency that counts is action — who shows up, who stays, who does the hard and boring and unbeautiful work of actually choosing me, day after day, in ink and not just in air.

It's a test with four seats already filled and one conspicuously empty. Beckett earned his the morning he put himself between me and the worst of it and refused to move. Sawyer earned his with steady hands and a stubborn old truck he keeps coaxing back to life for our sake. August earned his by finally, after five silent years, saying the hard thing out loud instead of smoothing it flat. Cade has a chair too — the same chair he's always had,sitting out in the cold with his name on it, a clause in the way, and nobody left willing to carry him to it. He knows exactly where it is. Whether he walks himself over and does the tedious, unglamorous, grown-up work of clearing his own path is the last question that matters, and it isn't mine to answer for him.

Words got us to the altar and left us there.

Actions are what will decide who's standing in the room when the doors finally open for good.

Now the clock begins to tick before the celebrity wedding everyone's anticipating will either invite blessings or catastrophe.

CHAPTER 37

Blooming Apricot

~AMBER~