Page 214 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

"What do you want, Iris? I'm not in the fucking mood."

"Wow." Her voice comes back dry as a cracker. "You're welcome, by the way. I'm about the only person in this whole town willing to dial your number right now, and this is the thanks I get." A pause, gum snapping. "I figured you probably hadn't heard the news."

"You mean the news of me trending across the entire eastern seaboard as the biggest snake in Honeybell Harbor?" I let my head fall back against the seat. "Yeah, Iris. I caught that one. Front-row seat, actually. It was me."

"Okay, dramatic. Not that news." She huffs. "The other news."

Something in the way she says it — a little too casual, a little too pleased to be the one holding it — makes me sit up.

"What other news?"

"You seriously don't know?" A delighted, disbelieving little laugh. "Wow. Okay. So. Amber and that Sawyer guy? Theycombined their whole wedding-planning operation. Merged the two businesses into one. And the word going around is they're pivoting the entire thing to abroad clients only. Fancy international stuff. Elite."

"Since when does Amber do international?" The question comes out of me sideways, dazed. "She's a small-town planner. That's the entire brand. Barefoot brides on the beach, mason jars, the whole cozy?—"

"Was," Iris corrects, entirely too cheerful. "Was the whole brand. I'm telling you, it's a brand-new operation. Rebranded, relaunched, the works. Somebody with real money and real reach got involved, and it wasn't an overnight thing either. This kind of pivot takes months to set up. Months, Cade."

Months.

The word snags on something cold in me. She's been quietly building an exit the whole time I've been busy burning my own house to the studs.

I frown into the dark.

"Wait. What?"

"That's the reaction I was hoping for." I can hear her settling in, getting comfortable, the phone shifting against her ear. "It got announced today, right in the middle of your whole circus. Apparently the whole slate for the next couple months is nothing but high-end celebrity clientele. Overseas. Nobody knows a single name, obviously, because those people guard their NDAs like state secrets, but the gist of it is she won't need to be anywhere near Honeybell Harbor to run it. Some folks are even saying she's stepping back completely. Taking a break."

A beat.

"I only called because, y'know. She's your Omega. Figured you'd want the heads-up before the rest of the town."

The word lands wrong, and I flinch off it.

"She's not."

"She's not what?"

"My Omega." The correction scrapes coming out. "She's not. There was…it turns out there was a clause. Some legal thing. I found out this morning, standing in the government office like an idiot, that I was never actually registered into the pack at all. Been that way ten weeks. Nobody told me. I didn't even get a letter." I drag a hand down my face. "Best I can figure, it locked in before the night I crashed on your couch. So."

There's a little silence.

"They're seriously still holding the couch thing against you?" Iris sounds almost offended on my behalf, which is more loyalty than I've gotten from anyone all day.

"No shit they are."

"Well." She draws it out, and I can hear the shrug in it. "I mean. Yeah. Okay, if I'm being real with you, I probably would've been pretty ticked too, if my man went and slept over at some other girl's place just 'cause he was tired. That's a look, Cade. Even if nothing happened."

"Iris." I pinch the bridge of my nose. "You are not making me feel any better right now."

"Right. Sorry." She doesn't sound sorry. She sounds like she's enjoying herself.

In fairness, I can't blame her the enjoyment.

I've been a cold, careless kind of friend to Iris over the years — showed up when I was lonely, vanished when I wasn't, crashed on her couch and let her take the blame for a scandal she had nothing to do with.

She owes me exactly none of the softness she's spending on me right now. That she's on the phone at all, feeding a disgraced man his own bad news gently, is more grace than I've earned from a single soul in this town tonight.

"Okay, okay. So then you definitely don't know about the other two."