Every client got what they wanted. Every timeline tightened. Every vision polished until it gleamed.
Monte was with me for most of it. Tall and calm, always a step behind, always a step ahead. He walked the perimeter during dress fittings, taste-tested ganache like it was a classified mission, and held the umbrellas when we got caught in Charleston’s moody rains. He was there when Bea couldn’t be, and even when she was.
Bea teased me about it, of course.
“You two,” she said on Tuesday night, after a 14-hour day and half a bottle of pinot, “are like a very chic, emotionally repressed married couple. You do realize that, right?”
I ignored her. Mostly because I couldn’t argue.
Monte stayed late. Monte made things easier. Monte didn’t ask questions I didn’t want to answer. But he looked, sometimes, like he wanted to.
Still, I didn’t let myself drift.
I stayed focused. Professional.
And if my phone was a little too close on my nightstand each morning—if I kept checking it without meaning to—if I jumped every time an unknown number appeared on screen—well. That wasn’t anyone’s business.
Silas Dane hadn’t called.
Hadn’t texted.
Hadn’t sent so much as a smirking emoji.
Maybe he’d gone back to whatever op he’d been pulled from. Or maybe he was just done. Finished with the game we’d started and too smart to keep playing.
I told myself that was fine. That I liked it better this way. No strings. No mess. No time bombs waiting to detonate beneath my skin.
And then, Friday night happened.
I was alone at The Palmetto Rose.
The rest of the building was quiet—Bea had gone out to explore the city, Monte had insisted on getting a few reps in at the weight room. Even the cleaning crew had already slipped out. I sat in a private lounge, bare feet tucked beneath me on a velvet settee, surrounded by swatches and ceremony scripts, timelines for the next three weeks laid out like a general’s war map. I had half a dozen playlists open on my laptop, trying to find the perfect piece of music for one of the processions.
It had to be emotional but not maudlin. Cinematic, but warm.
A song that saidI see you.
A song that saideven in this broken world, I choose you.
And then one of them started to play.
Just a soft piano at first—slow, aching notes that spilled into silence. Then strings, delicate and slow. Then a voice.
Male. Low. Rich with grief and promise.
The lyrics weren’t complex. But they didn’t need to be.
If you fall, I fall, too
If you burn, I’ll burn with you
Say the word, and I will come
There’s no heaven I won’t run from
My throat tightened.
Because suddenly, it wasn’t a wedding song.
