Cassian's response comes through almost immediately: "No fucking way."
Jett: "Who the hell is Tangle Peak?"
Pine: "The singer. Multiple Grammys. Sold out Madison Square Garden. She's marrying three alphas?"
Jett: “How do you know?”
Pine: “Social media.”
Cassian: "Sharon, are you okay?"
I stare at that text for a long moment. Am I okay? That's a complicated question. Professionally, I'm about to have the opportunity of a lifetime. Personally, I'm about to have to watch my ex's wedding fall apart and disappear completely, which means I get to keep my first big job with the company but lose the job I was hired to do.
The universe is essentially forcing me to choose: either be the person who planned Ben's failed wedding or be the person who planned Tangle Peak's legendary one. There's no way to have both.
My fingers hover over the phone, and I think about everything that's led to this moment. The mini heat in the office. Cassian showing up with coffee and kindness. Ben screamingabout his eye patch tattoo. Jessica standing in this office, completely starstruck, committing us to something that's going to require miracles.
"I'm fine," I text back. "Everything is fine."
I close my eyes for a moment, feeling the weight of it all pressing down on me. The good, the bad, the complicated, the surprising. It's all here, all at once, all demanding my attention.
Jessica is already on her phone, calling vendors. I can hear her talking about Christmas Eve availability, about bringing in extra staff, about making magic happen. She sounds genuinely excited in a way I haven't heard before.
I pick up my planner and flip to the page that has Ben and Penelope's wedding details. All the color-coded notes. All the vendor confirmations. All the careful planning for a wedding that nobody actually wants to attend.
Then I flip the page, and I write: "Tangle Peak. Christmas Eve. Brownbox pack. Intimate. Beautiful. Impossible."
Thank you, universe, for making Savannah’s business better than ever. If we do this wedding well, we won’t be looking for clients; they’ll be looking for us. It’s good. It’s all good. It has to be.
16
PINE
The text from Cassian comes through at eleven at night:Ben and Penelope at The Sway. Both drunk. Penelope talking loud about the wedding. Sharon's name came up. Get here.
I'm out the door before I've finished reading it.
Jett's already in the truck when I get outside, engine running, his face set in that particular expression that means someone's about to have a really bad night. I climb into the passenger seat and we don't talk. We don't need to. The twenty-minute drive to The Sway feels like it takes hours.
When we walk in, I can smell them before I see them.
Ben's scent is wrong. It's always been sharp, that aggressive beta energy that never quite knew when to back down, but now there's something chemical underneath it. The smell of someone who's been putting things into their body that don't belong there.
Penelope sits next to him at the bar, her designer dress already wrinkled, her matching eye patch tattoo somehow making her look even more unhinged in the dim lighting.
Cassian's at a corner booth, his firefighter uniform still on from his shift, his gray eyes tracking every movement Ben makeslike he's waiting for an excuse to intervene. When he sees us, he jerks his head toward the bar.Now.
Sharon's sitting three stools down from them, her back rigid, her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee that's probably gone cold. She's pretending to look at her phone, but I can see the tension in her shoulders. She's listening to every word they're saying. And from the expression on her face, none of it is good.
I move to her first. Jett and Cassian can handle Ben and Penelope for the next sixty seconds. Right now, Sharon needs to know she's not alone.
"Hey," I say quietly, settling onto the stool next to her. My hand finds the small of her back, and I feel her entire body relax slightly at the touch. "You okay?"
"They've been here for an hour," she says, her voice barely above a whisper. "Drinking. Arguing. Penelope keeps talking about how the wedding is going to 'fix everything', and Ben keeps saying he just needs 'one more score' and then everything will be fine." She looks up at me, and there's fear in her eyes. "Pine, what is he talking about? What score? What's going on?"
Before I can answer, Penelope's voice cuts through the bar like a knife.
"There she is!" Penelope announces, pointing at Sharon with the kind of dramatic gesture that suggests she's several drinks past caring about discretion. "The wedding planner who's been sabotaging us from the beginning! Tell everyone, Sharon. Tell them how you've been sleeping with Ben's brothers while pretending to plan our wedding."
