Page 204 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

Amber and Sawyer exchange a look. It's a small thing, a flick of the eyes, but I've watched enough weddings to know a rehearsed beat when I see one, and my stomach drops another floor. Sawyer chuckles, low and warm, and spreads his hands to the whole crowd like he's apologizing for a rain delay.

"Sorry, ladies and gentlemen." He shakes his head, rueful, charming, absolutely in command. "I'm afraid somebody fed you all some bad information. There's no celebrity wedding here. We're just shooting a little spread for a bridal-outreach magazine — pretty dress, pretty flowers, a few staged photos to sell the venue package." He gestures at the arch, the runner, the whole beautiful fake of it. "You came all this way for a catalog shoot. I'm real sorry."

A man I hadn't clocked before leans into view from behind a tripod down front — a photographer, professional, camera slung across his chest — and lifts a hand in a friendly little wave.

"Yeah, hi, I honestly don't know what's happening either," he calls out, cheerful. "But could you all clear out so we can finish the shoot? We're losing our light. I'd really rather not have to get the police involved over a permit thing."

The wordpolicemoves through the crowd like a cold draft. Then the disappointment sets in, thick and audible — a collective groan of two hundred people who abandoned their funnel cake and their Ferris wheel for a magazine ad.

"Wait," somebody mutters near me. "So the guylied?"

"Helied," a woman echoes, disgusted. Heads start turning toward me. The security teams — both of them now, reunited, unhurried — begin herding the deflating mob back toward the exits with the bored authority of men who were never actually in danger.

"Well, there you have it, folks." The reporter's already pivoting, already spinning it, her cameraman swinging the lens off the platform and back onto me. "No celebrity wedding — just a whole lot of chaos stirred up by one local event planner, apparently for the publicity. It's really something, what people will do to get eyes on their business." Her lip curls. The camera zooms in tight, and I feel the red light of it burning a hole in the side of my face. "Personally? I wouldn't want to hire someone likethis."

"Wait." My voice finally unsticks, cracked and too late. "Wait, no — I can explain, that's not?—"

But they're already moving off, packing the camera, the reporter tossing her hair, the crowd bleeding out through the tent flaps in a grumbling river. Nobody's listening. Nobody's going to listen ever again. The whole apparatus of my public execution simply folds up its tripod and leaves, and inside two minutes the roaring tent has emptied out to a hollow, petal-strewn quiet.

Even the photographer slips out a side exit with a little two-finger salute at Sawyer, and then it's just the three of us. Me at the bottom of the stairs. Amber up on her platform in a wedding dress that was never for a wedding. Sawyer beside her, still in his white suit, still wearing that easy, terrible smile.

I turn to them. I don't even know where to start. "I— you have to let me?—"

Sawyer comes down the stairs.

He takes them slow, one at a time, until he's standing square in front of me on the level, close enough that his magnoliacrowds out the last of the trampled roses, and I flinch. I brace. Every muscle in me locks up waiting for the fist, because I earned it, because I'd swing on me too, because a punch would honestly be a mercy compared to whatever this is.

The punch doesn't come.

He just looks at me, unbothered, almost gentle, and he says, quietly, "Check your phone."

That's all. He turns his back on me like I'm not worth the guard. He looks up at Amber, and his whole face changes — softens, opens, goes warm in a way it will never once go for me again.

"I'm gonna head to the second tent and get set for the video," he tells her. "Give me two minutes to get the camera rolling, then start your walk. The music'll cue the second you step through the arch." He winks. "Chin up, shoulders back. Let 'em fall in love with you."

"Okay." Amber's whole face lights, sudden and real and radiant, the professional blankness melting off her the second it's only him she's looking at. "God, they're going tolose itover this one. Best wedding mock we've ever staged."

"Prettiest bride in the business." Sawyer catches her jaw in one hand and kisses her, slow and certain. She leans into it, and I have to look down at my own shoes. When he pulls back he cuts one flat, dark look at me over his shoulder — the only unfriendly thing he's done this whole time, and it says everything — and then he strolls off down the aisle and out, whistling, leaving me alone with her.

I don't understand any of it. My hands are shaking. "What—" I look up at her, at the bride who was never getting married. "What is he talking about? A video? What?—"

Amber gathers her skirt and comes down a step, looking at me over her shoulder with an expression I have never once seen her wear. Not anger. Not grief. Just focus. The mild, patientfocus of a woman running an event who's been interrupted by a vendor problem.

"They're shooting a music video," she says. "For Sloane and Nolan's honeymoon."

"Honeymoon." The word doesn't fit in my mouth. "Amber, they're not — the wedding's next week. Everything's confirmed, I have the whole timeline, the?—"

She sighs. It's a small sound, and a pitying one. The pity guts me worse than any shout ever could. She pouts, just slightly, the way you'd break bad news to a child.

"They're already married, Cade." She says it gently. She says it like a knife going in slow. "The Carroways and the Reeves said their vows three days ago, in a room with twelve people in it, four counties from here. They're on a plane to an undisclosed island as we speak." Her head tilts. "Check your phone."

I fumble it out of my pocket. My thumbprint won't read the first time. Won't read the second. On the third try the screen unlocks. There's a message waiting at the top, and the sender is Nolan Reeve.

I read it standing there in a wedding tent that was built to bury me.

Cade. It's a genuine shame, learning the leaks were coming from the one man on my team I trusted most. But I'll take it as a valuable lesson, and I'm grateful it didn't cost me my actual wedding — because we caught it early and planned the whole thing around you. I'm in the air right now with my wife, headed off to a place nobody will ever find us, and not one soul knows where, because the real plan was never one you were told. We left you out of it on purpose. Consider your contract terminated, effective immediately. In a way I'm doing you a favor — you'll finally be free of the exclusivity clause I've held on you all these years, the one keeping you from binding yourself to anyone else. You're welcome. You'll also be blocked,and blacklisted. None of my contacts will touch you, and you know how a small town talks. I'd start looking to move your business well outside Honeybell Harbor. — N.

The phone nearly slips out of my hand.