Page 195 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

"...Yes?" Juniper whispers. "Obviously. What is it?!"

I take a breath. "We found a house. Beckett and I signed the intent this week. It's outside Honeybell Harbor — the far outskirts, a gated little community where nobody can drive past and gawk. Room for a garden. Room for a nursery." I feel myself glowing and I can't stop it. "And I've been talking with Sawyer about merging our wedding services. Combining the two businesses. Which means, for the first time in my entire adult life, I could actually—" the word feels foreign in my mouth, "—rest."

They gawk at me. Juniper's hands fly to her mouth. Marlowe just stares, and for once in her salt-crusted life the woman is speechless.

"A gate," Juniper finally squeaks. "A garden. A nursery. You said nursery. You planned a nursery before you knew there was a baby?"

"I planned a nursery-shaped room," I correct, going warm to the ears. "I told myself it was for storage. I am aware, in hindsight, of what that looks like."

"It looks like your body knew before your spreadsheet did," Marlowe says.

I rush to reassure them, because I know how this sounds. "Don't panic, you two will absolutely still have work, nothing changes for you, I'd never?—"

"We don'tcareabout that!" Juniper practically screams, and now she's crying and jumping at the same time. "You're finally taking a break?! An actual break?! Avacation, Amber?!"

I blink. "You guys are... happy?"

"We have been trying to get you to slow down foryears," Marlowe says, and her voice has gone thick and real. "Years, Amber. You work like a woman running from something. We watched you plan four hundred weddings and never once let yourself picture your own. And now you've got a pack that adores you and a baby coming and a house with a gate. So yes. We're happy. We are so happy we could throw you into the marsh."

I laugh, wet and startled. I'd braced for them to be hurt. To feel abandoned, or worried about their own paychecks, or quietly resentful that I get the pack and the baby and the house with the gate while they hold down the shop. It never once occurred to me that the people who love me might simply be glad. Purely, uncomplicatedly glad. It's such a foreign feeling that I have to sit with it a second to recognize its shape.

"It'll be perfect," Juniper says, wiping her nose on her enormous sleeve. "You can hand it all off. Offload every thread. Rest. Grow that baby. Let those men spoil you. Just — enjoy yourpack for once in your life. Be selfish, babe. Just this once. Live a little."

Live a little.The words land deep and unguarded. I turn them over. I've spent so many years being the one who holds everything together that I forgot there was a version of me allowed to simply set it down.

"Live a little," I whisper. "You're right."

"We'll build the whole handoff," Marlowe says, already in logistics mode, already my match in that at least. "You finish the Carroway–Reeve wedding, and the second those two are off on their honeymoon, we start offboarding you. Clean. Gentle. You won't lift a finger you don't want to."

"And you're — you're really okay with all of it?" I ask, small.

"Yes," they say together. Then they're hugging me again, tighter this time. Juniper laughs into my shoulder. Marlowe's arm is a warm iron band across my back.

I let myself be held. That used to be the hardest thing in the world for me — staying still long enough to be loved on instead of bolting off to fix the next thing. I'm getting better at it. I have a lot of motivation now.

"It's finally your turn," Marlowe says against my temple. "Time to take the reins of your own life, Amber. Time to sit down and enjoy the fruit of your labor. God knows you planted enough of it."

I beam at them. At my two impossible, loyal, loud best friends crammed into my tiny bathroom under a string of lights, the smell of lavender and saltwater and my own changing apricot filling the little room. I nod. I press one hand flat and certain over the brand-new life in my belly, and I draw a long, shaking, hopeful breath.

A week ago I stood in my ransacked office and told an empty room that being pregnant was impossible. A month ago I couldn't have pictured a single piece of this — the pack, thehouse, the baby, the two women who love me too loudly for one small bathroom. The plans I've been white-knuckling my entire life are finally, quietly rearranging themselves into something that looks less like a schedule and more like a home.

I guess… this is actually going to work.

CHAPTER 39

The Invitation

~SAWYER~

"And you two didn't cower out, huh?"

I say it to the mirror first, watching the two of them come down the marble corridor behind me in the reflection while I straighten my tie for the third time. It's a good tie. Deep burgundy, the exact shade of the foliage Amber picked for the Carroway–Reeve palette, because I am nothing if not thematically committed. I turn to face them.

They clean up unfairly well. Beckett fills out a charcoal three-piece like the suit was cut off his own ribs, his cowboy hat traded for once for bare, brushed-back hair, and he looks like a man who could buy the building or bring it down with equal patience. But it's August my eyes snag on, the way they've been snagging for weeks now. Flower boy in a slate-blue suit with the jacket open, a sprig of something small and white tucked into his lapel because he cannot help himself, and God help me, he looks good. Iris and pear blossom and green sage drift off him, calm as a garden at dawn.

Beckett catches me looking and doesn't comment, because Beckett has decided, in his quiet ranch-raised way, that whatever's kindling between the florist and me is good for the pack and none of his concern. August catches me looking and goes faintly pink at the collar, which is a small victory I fully intend to collect on later. For now I file it away. There's a wedding to save tomorrow and a monster to disarm tonight, in that order, and neither one leaves much room for admiring the cut of a man's lapels.

Focus, Devereaux. You can undress the florist later. There's a snake to charm first.