Page 191 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

"They basically aren't. They mute your heats. They are not a wall against a pregnancy, especially not a determined one." He tips his head. "And here's the part you're skating right past. Compatibility. Packs aren't math, sugar, they're chemistry. The right configuration can trip a body into fertile faster than anything, same way the wrong one can slam the door shut for years. A body that never took before might've just been waiting on the right combination to walk through the door."

It's a pretty theory. It's the kind of thing men say in the golden afterglow of a good pack forming — all destiny and chemistry and bodies knowing best. I've planned too many weddings to put my faith in destiny. I believe in timelines, contingencies, and the cold arithmetic of a body that's done exactly what I've asked of it for thirty years and not one thing more.

"Nah." I wave him off, but there's the faintest flutter under my sternum I choose to ignore. "It can't be that. Nothing's changed."

"Mhm." He says it so dryly it should leave a mark. "Nothing's changed. Except you get irritable now at about triple your old speed. You keep drifting off mid-sentence and staring at the middle distance like it owes you rent. And you just requested pickles baptized in frosting with a spicy chaser." He ticks them off, unhurried, merciless, fond. "Purely as a neutral observer."

"A neutral observer," I repeat.

"Switzerland. Fully impartial." He examines his nails. "I'm simply noting a pattern, the way I'd note that a sky has gone the color of a bruise. Draw your own conclusions."

"The conclusion is that you've been reading pregnancy forums for fun, which is a deeply strange hobby for a wedding planner."

"Occupational hazard. You would be amazed how many of my brides are counting backward from a due date."

"Oh my God, shutup." I'm laughing again, because if I laugh it stays a joke. "You just want a baby. That's what this is. You've caught the disease. You're exactly like Beckett — one contented month into a pack and suddenly obsessed with the idea of a little mini-me toddling around wearing tiny boots and demanding you fix its hair."

"Guilty of nothing," Sawyer says, but he's smiling now, and it's gone soft at the edges. He pushes off the desk and crosses to me, unhurried, and folds me in against his chest before I can dance away. His voice drops low, meant just for the space between us. "A mini-you would ruin my entire life in the best possible way. A mini-boy with all four of our worst traits would be a menace and I'd love him past sense. Either one, both, neither — I'm easy." His lips brush my hairline. "But would you take a test? For me. When you get a minute. Just so we know what we're standing in."

I sag into him, because the flannel is warm and the magnolia is everywhere and I'm so tired I could cry over a fabric swatch. "Fine," I mumble into his shirt. "I'll check. But not today, and not with any of you hovering like anxious storks. Tomorrow night. I'm doing a sleepover with Marlowe and Juniper before the wedding chaos eats me alive — a proper catch-up, wine and gossip and zero men allowed. I'll pee on the stupid stick there, where the company's better."

The truth is I need the sleepover more than I need any test. Marlowe will say something devastating and precisely correct. Juniper will cry at least twice for reasons unrelated to anything. I'll let them braid my hair and roast my life choices, and for afew hours I'll get to feel like a woman with friends instead of a woman with a spreadsheet. I've earned that much. I intend to collect on it.

He chuckles, the sound rumbling under my cheek, and presses a kiss to the top of my head. "Sure, Blooming Apricot. Deal."

I pull back just enough to look up at him. I let out a breath and say the thing I'm certain of, the thing that makes the whole idea collapse under its own weight. "I know I'm not, though. A hundred percent. Because think about it — if I actually were pregnant, we'd have to basically be married by now. And we're clearly not."

Sawyer looks down at me. Something glints in his eyes, slow and unbothered and entirely too pleased.

"And what's stopping that from happening?"

I laugh, but it comes out with a nervous edge I didn't authorize. "Sawyer. It hasn't been ten full weeks. The provisional period isn't even closed. You cannot just — walk a woman down an aisle in the middle of the biggest wedding of her career."

"Why not?"

"Because." I stop. He waits, head tilting, the picture of a man with all afternoon and no intention of letting me off the hook. "Because it — it just doesn't make sense!"

"Mhmm." He hums, that infuriating, knowing hum. His hands settle at the small of my back. "Would you want a big wedding?"

I go still. It's such a simple question and it opens a trapdoor under me. I look at him for a long, honest minute, longer than the banter can hold, and then I hear myself say it, quiet and certain and truer than almost anything I've said all week.

"No."

He doesn't fill the silence. He just waits, giving me the room, the way he does.

"Truthfully? I never wanted a big wedding." The words come easier once they start. "The huge affair, the four hundred guests, the family name spelled out in ten-foot letters — that was never mine. That was my father's dream. His and my mother's. A wedding to show the whole world exactly how important the Whitlocks are." My mouth twists. "I plan those weddings for a living. I know precisely what they cost and precisely what they hide. And after being left standing at one — humiliated in front of an entire town with a bouquet wilting in my hands — why on God's earth would I ever want to do the spectacle again?" I shake my head. "If it were mine, really mine? I'd want small. Private. Only the people who actually matter, in a room that actually means something. I don't care about flash. I've never once cared about flash. I'd just want to feel valued. Worthy. Intimate and intentional andreal." My voice goes soft. "By the time the world found out, it'd already be done. We'd be off on a honeymoon nobody could photograph, living wherever we chose, and the only people who'd know the address are the ones who earned it."

I don't realize how long I've kept that particular wish underwater until it surfaces, dripping, in the middle of my own ransacked office. I've never said it to a living soul. Not to the girls. Not even to my own reflection. It felt too much like tempting fate — wanting a small, true thing after the big false one blew up in my face on a church lawn. Saying it out loud to Sawyer, watching him take it in without a single flinch, feels dangerous in a way I don't have a name for.

Sawyer is quiet for a moment. When he nods, it's slow, and there's something reverent in it.

"That," he says, "sounds pretty damn nice, actually."

I feel the blush climb my neck and I latch onto the joke to survive it. "You're future-bombing me. You realize that? Ten minutes ago you had me pregnant, and now you've got me eloped. What's next?" I poke his chest. "Are you at least going tolet me visit a tarot reader before you plan my entire remaining life? Let a woman with cards have a little input?"

He laughs, catches my poking hand, and kisses me — slow, warm, tasting faintly of the coffee I couldn't stomach this morning. "I could be persuaded," he murmurs against my mouth. "There's a reader coming with the fair, actually. Sets up a little tent by the water. We should go. Let her turn your cards over and tell you everything I already know."

"Oh my God." I roll my eyes, delighted despite myself. "A knot in the cards. Get it?Knot." I waggle my eyebrows at my own joke like a lunatic. "Knot. Because we're?—"