That was the first surprise. I’d expected nerves, the sweating, heart-racing, lock-checking kind that had been my constant companion for most of my adult life. I’d expected to lie in bed running through worst-case scenarios: the weather turning, the caterer cancelling, a horse getting loose during the ceremony, Fury making Graham cry before we even got to the vows.
Instead, I woke up on a ranch that was mine, really mine, my horses in the barn, my mountains outside the window, and felt something I’d almost forgotten existed.
Peace.
The bedroom was warm with early light. Graham’s side of the bed was empty. He’d gone to Dex’s rental cabin last night because Maggie had declared it “bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the ceremony” and Graham, who had jumpedoff waterfalls and climbed active volcanoes, was apparently too afraid of my cousin to argue.
I pressed my hand against the sheets where he’d been, smiled, and went to meet my wedding day.
The ranch was chaotic.
Beautiful, noisy, McCrae-Carideo-Gracen chaos.
They’d all come. Every single one of them, because that’s what this family did. They showed up.
Alec and Lumen had flown in from Seattle with Evanne and Soleil. Evanne was sixteen now and had somehow become almost an actual adult while I wasn’t looking, poised and self-assured in a way that made Alec visibly proud and visibly terrified in equal measure. She’d agreed to do a reading during the ceremony. Soleil was beside her, quieter but steady, the kind of steady that comes from someone who’d found solid ground after years of not having any.
Brody and Freedom were staying in the cabin nearest the barn with their little one, and I’d heard them laughing through the walls at midnight. Carson and Vix had come in from New York, Vix pregnant again with their second and resting one hand on her belly the way London had done two years ago, that instinctive, protective gesture that made Theresa’s eyes go soft every time she saw it.
Cory and Rylee had flown in from Palo Alto, and Rylee’s handshake was still firmer than most men’s. Sean and Beth were here too, Sean buzzing with the energy of a man whose life had cracked open in a Glasgow pub and never closed back up. Beth was beside him, warm and sharp and completely unbotheredby the size of the family she’d married into, which was either bravery or insanity and possibly both.
Eoin and Aline were here from wherever they’d been last, Germany, I thought, or maybe France, and Eoin had spent the morning helping Hank set up chairs because he couldn’t sit still.
The Carideos had made the trip too. Austin was handling something on his phone in the corner of the kitchen, because Austin was always handling something. Rome had brought a woman nobody had met yet and was pretending it wasn’t serious. Paris had come back from a dig in Peru, still tan, with dust permanently embedded under her fingernails. And Aspen had closed her restoration studio for the weekend, arriving quietly the night before with a gift wrapped in brown paper that turned out to be a hand-restored antique frame for my parents’ photograph.
London and Spencer flew in from their place in New York with Alexander, who was a toddler now and had Spencer’s dark hair and London’s stubbornness and was currently attempting to eat a pinecone on the porch while Spencer negotiated with him like the child was a Broadway investor.
Xander and Tara had flown in from Miami. Xander looked different than he had two years ago, lighter, like the restless, unhappy edge he’d carried at Chelsea had finally been set down. The transfer to Miami had changed him, or Tara had, or both. She sat next to him at breakfast with her hand on his knee and he leaned into her without thinking about it, the way people do when they start just being.
Fury was engaged to Sienna now, planning a wedding for later this year, and Sienna had a glow about her that Fury kept looking at with an expression of such barely contained wonderthat it made my chest hurt. She caught me watching and gave me a look that saiddon’t you dare say anything yetand I gave her one back that saidyour secret is safe but also congratulationsand we left it at that.
Blaze flew in from Baltimore, where he was still teaching. He’d come alone. He and Trisha had ended things a few months ago, and he carried the breakup the way he carried everything, quietly, deep in his chest, behind a wall of composure that only cracked when he thought no one was watching. I’d caught him staring at his phone the night before, thumb hovering over a contact he didn’t call.
Graham’s side was smaller but no less present. Dex was his best man, obviously. Olivia had helped coordinate the decorations, string lights, wildflowers, nothing flashy, and was now running around with a clipboard. Jamie was already on her second glass of champagne, treating the wedding like a content shoot she couldn’t post.
Graham’s mum, Isla Kincaid, had flown in from Scotland and was sitting on the porch with Theresa, the two of them drinking tea and talking like women who’d known each other for decades instead of just two years. They’d bonded instantly, the way mothers do when they recognize in each other the particular exhaustion and pride of raising difficult, stubborn, extraordinary children.
And Maggie. Maggie was everywhere.
She burst through my bedroom door at eight-thirty with a garment bag in one hand and Carlyle balanced on her hip. Shannon was toddling behind her, having recently discovered both walking and opinions, which she expressed loudly and often.
“The kids tried to eat the cake,” she announced.
“Which kids? Yours or Alexander?”
“All of them. It was coordinated. I think Shannon was the ringleader.” She set Carlyle on the bed, where he immediately grabbed a pillow and started gnawing on it. “How are you feeling?”
“Good,” I said. “Actually good. Not pretending good.”
Maggie studied me, the way she’d studied me on the fire escape in New York, looking for cracks, looking for the version of Rose who disappeared into guest rooms and stopped eating. She didn’t find her.
“There she is,” she said softly. Same words she’d said the morning I decided to do the interview. “There’s the Rose I know.”
“She’s been here the whole time,” I said. “She was just hiding.”
“Well, she’s done hiding.” Maggie hung the garment bag on the closet door. “Now get in the shower. You smell like horse.”
“I went to see Cassie earlier.”
