The doorbell detonates with the force of a grenade. I growl as Sienna startles, pulling away from me.
“Too early,” I groan when the bell goes again, followed by my mother’s voice calling from outside.
“Heath? Darling? We arrived early. Let us in.”
Of course they did.
Sienna sits up, eyes wide. “Oh, no.”
“It’s fine.” I tuck her in because she’s naked and gorgeous, and the world doesn’t deserve that view. “Stay here. Lock the door if anyone comes wandering. I’ll handle them and be back in two minutes.”
“You can’t let them in while I’m?—”
“Two minutes,” I promise, kissing her before I lose my mind and the schedule.
I shove on sweats and stalk downstairs. By the time I open the door, the elite invasion has already begun: bags, opinions, fur. I block as much as I can with my body and a smile that saystry me, and herd them into the living room with coffee as a bribe, my jaw clenched so tight I can taste metal.
Two minutes become twenty. Elise needs steam for a dress. Brandon needs Wi-Fi that “doesn’t feel like dial-up.” My father wants to see the ceremony layout to “prevent surprises.” I redirect, deflect, deny. When I finally get free and make it backto the bedroom, the bed is cool. Sienna’s already slipped into her robe and disappeared with Jem to “get ready” at the lodge's bridal suite.
And that’s how the day goes.
We planned a “wedding at dusk.” Somehow, my family turns the hours between into a campaign. A stylist arrives. A florist texts questions. My phone becomes a grenade with a five-minute fuse. Every time I go looking for Sienna, because I need to get to her, I need to say the words before the world gets to us, someone intercepts me with a clipboard or a “quick question.”
“How did they even find all these people on short notice?” I growl to myself as I lock myself in the bathroom for a moment of peace.
By late afternoon, I’m in the upstairs guest bedroom, knotting a black tie with hands that don’t usually shake. The suit fits like a second skin. I look like the version of me my family prefers. Crisp, controlled, lethal in a way that never smudges the cuffs. But underneath is the man who woke up with a girl asleep on his heart and decided he wanted that every morning of his life.
I slide the ring into my pocket—Sienna’s band, the slim gold I’ll add to the diamond she wears—and head for the stairs.
I’m halfway down the hall when a voice older than winter stops me.
“Heath.”
I turn.
My grandma stands on the landing like a portrait that stepped off the wall. Eleanor Whitcomb, always immaculate, always the quiet blade no one sees until they’re bleeding. Silver hair swept back, a dark coat that swallows light, pearls that once belonged to someone who terrified a ship of men.
“Grandmother,” I say evenly.
She studies me, eyes sharp and amused. “You look like your grandfather when he thought he’d won.”
“I’m not him.” It comes out too fast.
“I should hope not.” Her gaze flicks down the hall toward the bridal suite door, where I know Sienna and Jem are getting ready. She lowers her voice. “Walk with me.”
I don’t want to. I do it anyway, because when Eleanor asks, most of Manhattan moves aside. We step into my office. She closes the door with a soft click that feels louder than the bell did this morning.
“I’ll be direct,” she says, taking the chair opposite my desk without asking. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because I love her.”
It surprises both of us how easily it lands in the air. I don’t dress it up. I don’t hedge. I don’t apologize.
One of her eyebrows lifts a millimeter. “Do you?”
“I do,” I say, liking the way those words feel in my mouth. “When I met her, everything else fell away. I want to marry Sienna. I want to wake up with her and go to sleep with her, and relish all the dull hours between that belong to us. The money, the company—they’re footnotes. She’s the story.”
Silence. She could be carved from marble.
