Page 299 of Wild Card 13

For one suspended second, neither of us moved.

Her eyes searched my face. Then Lucy blinked, looked past me toward the dessert table visible through the windows below, and said, “I was checking on Frozen Bento.” She lifted her chin. “He’s a structural concern.”

A laugh broke out of me before I could stop it. “Of course,” I said. “Public safety.”

“Exactly.”

“Can’t have him losing the other ear.”

“That would make him asymmetrical.”

“Tragic.”

“Devastating to the arts.”

We stood there looking at each other, smiling like idiots in the doorway between a rooftop and the rest of our lives.

I wanted to tell her everything.

I wanted to cross the few feet between us, touch her face, and finish what we had almost started beside Betsy.

Instead, I stayed where I was. Because tonight, for the first time in years, Lucy Thomas did not look like she was trying to survive being near me. She looked like she was choosing it.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs behind her, and Bobby’s voice carried up before he appeared.

“Good news, emotionally complicated people. Vivienne says if everyone doesn’t leave in the next ten minutes, tomorrow’s wedding timeline will collapse and somehow that will be my fault.”

Lucy stepped back, the moment folding itself carefully away. “I have to be up early,” she said.

“Yeah,” I coughed. “Wedding day.”

Her smile wobbled at the edge, but held. “Wedding day.”

Downstairs, the rehearsal dinner had started its slow unraveling into goodbyes. Hugs. Last-minute reminders. Bea crying again because Lo told her she looked beautiful. Alois trying to murder anyone who made Bea cry until Bea explained, repeatedly, that happy tears were not a felony.

Frozen Bento remained by the dessert table, diminished but dignified.

Arlo caught Lucy at the bottom of the stairs and tugged lightly on the sleeve of her hoodie. “You sure you don’t want to keep the full outfit? It’s a statement.”

“We’ll see,” Lucy said.

He grinned and kissed her cheek. “Drive safe.”

“Always.”

When Lucy reached the stairs to the main floor, she glanced back.

“You parked out front?” I asked.

She nodded. “Vivienne made me move my car so the photographer could get exterior shots without my shame-mobile in the background.”

“Want me to walk you?”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “Okay.”

So I walked Lucy Thomas through North Line. Through the warm noise of the main dining room, past the horseshoe bar gleaming under amber lights, past regulars who did double takes at the sight of Ezra Thomas’s daughter in rolled sweatpants and damp curls. Lucy held her head high like she had planned the entire look.

Outside, the summer night wrapped around us.