Then Eleanor exhales, almost a laugh. “You always were inconvenient when you were certain.”
“Is that a yes or a we’re-done-here?”
“It is an assessment.” She rests her gloved hands on her knees. “Your grandfather built this family’s power on leverage. He bound people tightly with what they wanted. He did it to me. To your father. To you. I refuse to continue his ghost’s work.”
I narrow my eyes. “Meaning?”
She tilts her head. “Meaning this, Heath. If you call off tonight’s wedding, I will wire the entirety of your inheritance toyou tomorrow morning. No conditions. No performance. It is yours. Always should have been.”
It shouldn’t hit like a slap, but it does.
“Call it off,” I repeat numbly, as if I misheard.
“Yes.” Her gaze doesn’t waver. “If this marriage is some ill-considered bid to rip victory from a dead man, then let us excise the dead man from your choices. Take the funds. Walk away from the theater. Find a partner who?—”
“No.” My voice is flat and absolute. The word burns clean on the way out.
Eleanor goes still. “No?”
“No,” I say again, and everything inside me settles. “I’m not marrying Sienna to spite a grave. I’m marrying Sienna because I can’t imagine breathing without knowing she’s in the next room. Keep the money. Burn it. Bury it with him. I don’t care. I’m marrying her.”
We stare at each other. Her mouth softens the tiniest fraction, like a curtain lifting in a locked house.
“Very well,” she says at last. “Then you may have both.”
I blink. “Both?”
She reaches into her bag, takes out a single page, and slides it across my desk. The Whitcomb trust authorization. The one my grandfather weaponized into a condition. My name is already filled in. The signatures are already there.
“I had this drawn up when he was first hospitalized,” Eleanor says, voice dry. “One must always have a failsafe for tyrants.”
I huff out something like a laugh. “You could have spared me a great deal of paperwork this week.”
“You could have spared me a great deal of worry this life,” she counters, but her eyes are warmer now. “Do not mistake me. I would have given you the funds if you had chosen to wait because love does not arrive obediently to our clocks. But I much prefer this answer.”
“You’re… okay with Sienna?” It feels dangerous to ask.
“I haven’t met her yet. Besides, I am not in the business of being ‘okay’ with the women you love,” she says. “I am in the business of seeing straight. And I see the way you look at her. More importantly, I saw the way she looked at you when she thought you were not watching.” Eleanor rises, smoothing her coat. “That girl will not spend your name. She will spend her life on you. There is a difference.”
Something tight in my chest loosens. “Thank you.”
She nods once, crisp. “Go. Earn the privilege of keeping what you’ve been given. And fix your tie; it’s half a line off.”
She leaves me with a pen, the paper, and a future that feels like it finally belongs to me.
I sign. Not because I need it to marry Sienna, but because it will be useful to build the life she deserves. Homes and classrooms and a kitchen where she can dance barefoot at midnight. A town with a library fund that doesn’t have to beg. A bakery that might have her grandmother’s cinnamon rolls on the menu for free.
When I pocket the authorization, I catch my reflection in the office window, a man in a black suit with a stupidly soft expression. I don’t care. Let the records show that I was happy before the vows.
I head for the hall, my pulse a steady drum. The house hums with voices, footsteps, and soft music drifting up from the living room as the first guests arrive. I take the stairs two at a time and thread through the knot of Whitcombs clogging my foyer, ignoring Elise’s gasp and Brandon’s “fifteen minutes, cousin.”
I’m headed up the stairs when Jem steps out of the living room, nearly colliding with me. She braces a hand on my chest, eyes wide, then narrow.
“Are you going to make her cry or break her heart?” she demands, whisper-rough and fierce, the kind of friend who would fight me with her teeth.
“No,” I say, and I mean it with bone-deep certainty. “I would never do that.”
Jem studies me and nods once. “Okay. Good. Then I’ll be Team Heath.”
