Page 190 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

The name sits there between us, unspoken, because saying it out loud would make it a thing I've decided to believe, andI am not ready to decide that.It can't be Cade. He's careless, he's a coward, he's currently the most frustrating man in three counties, but a leak? Selling out a client? That's a different kind of low.Except every time I run the numbers, the same answer keeps falling out of the machine. It isn't one of my other men, and it certainly isn't me.

"We stay creative," Sawyer says finally. It's not a denial. It's not an agreement. It's a decision to keep moving, which right now is all either of us can afford. "We keep the real plan to the four of us. Nobody else gets the true version, not even by accident."

"That's the plan." I press the heels of my hands to my eyes. "God, I'm tired. And starving. Did I mention starving?"

"Once or twice."

I go back to pacing, because sitting still lets the Cade-shaped thought catch up to me, and I'd rather outrun it. I start talking to myself, which I do when the list gets long — narrating the final decorations, the bakery trays, whether the fig branches will hold overnight or wilt into sad little twigs by the ceremony, whether I confirmed the second refrigeration unit, whether?—

I walk directly into a wall of warm flannel.

Two hands catch my shoulders before I can rebound off him and land on the floor. Magnolia floods over me, close and sudden. I blink up. Sawyer is standing right there, out of his chair, solid as a doorframe, steadying me with an amused tilt to his mouth.

"You," I accuse, "materialized out of thin air."

"I did no such thing." His thumbs stroke once over my shoulders. "I called your name three times. I stood up. I walked halfway across the room. You were nose-deep in a monologue about bakery trays and refrigeration and you didn't so much as blink. I could've set off a flare."

Heat prickles up my neck, because this is the third time this week somebody's had to physically stop me to get my attention. Beckett caught me walking into a doorframe on Tuesday. August fielded a mug I set down on empty air. I keep losing the thread of the present tense and surfacing to find one of their hands already there, catching whatever I dropped before it hits the ground.

"Oh." I deflate, pouting up at him. "I was on a tangent."

"You were on an odyssey, Blooming Apricot." He says the pet name like it's a hand cupping the back of my neck. "So let me ask the only question that matters right now, since your brain has clearly filed everything else underlater." His head tilts. "What do you want to eat?"

The question lands low and primal. I actually stop and consult my body, which has been screaming at me for two hours in a language I kept ignoring, and it answers with such immediate, specific certainty that I say it before I can be embarrassed.

"Cold dill pickles," I announce, "dunked in whipped vanilla frosting. And a bag of those extra-hot jalapeño chips. The crunchy kind. To alternate."

Silence.

I hear the words replay in the air. I feel my own face scrunch. "Wait." I press my fingers to my lips, genuinely bewildered at myself. "When have I ever, in my entire life, wanted that? That's not a food. That's a dare." Then, despite everything, a grin breaks across my face, because my mouth is already watering and I cannot lie to myself about this one specific thing. "But God, it would taste fucking delightful. Sour, then sweet, then fire. It's got a whole arc. It's practically a three-act structure."

Sawyer looks at me for a long, unreadable beat. One eyebrow climbs toward his hairline.

"Right," he says slowly. "Okay. I'll get you your award-winning pickle situation, on one condition." He points a finger at the disaster of my office. "You don't reorganize this entire room into a new and more elaborate disaster while I'm gone. I want to be able to find you under all of it when I get back."

"I would never." I'm already bouncing on my toes. "Thank you, thank you, you beautiful man, I could kiss you?—"

"You can, actually, that's allowed now?—"

"—but honestly, aren't you even a little weirded out?" I tilt my head. "That was an unhinged request. Most people would judge me."

"Nah." He shrugs, easy. Then something shifts behind his eyes, sly and careful all at once, and he tucks his hands into his pockets. "I'm not weirded out. I am, however, intrigued by exactly one thing."

"What thing?"

He lets the pause stretch just long enough to be dangerous. Then he asks it, mild as milk, watching my face the whole time.

"What's the probability," he says, "that a certain wedding planner is pregnant?"

I stare at him.

Then I laugh. It bursts out of me, big and disbelieving, because the idea is so far outside the realm of possibility it's almost sweet that he'd float it. "Oh — Sawyer. Sorry, but no. There's no fucking way." I shake my head, still grinning. "Do you know how much unprotected sex I have had, historically, with three separate alphas? I used to be with August and Cade and Beckett constantly, back in the day, and not once — not one time — did anything take. My body's never so much as flinched at it. Plus I'm on blockers. Have been for years." I spread my hands like the case rests itself. "So. No. Impossible."

Sawyer doesn't laugh with me. He crosses his arms, leans a hip against my desk, and arches that maddening eyebrow.

"Blockers," he says, "aren't birth control, my Blooming Apricot."

"They basically are."