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Of course—I haven't eaten since breakfast, when I managed half a dry piece of toast while my mother fretted about my dress fitting properly and my makeup artist clucked about puffy eyes.
"I'll take that as a yes," he says, and I swear I hear amusement in his voice.
It's a nice voice, I realize—deep and rough, like whiskey over gravel, but with an underlying warmth that makes me feel oddly safe.
From my position by the fire, I watch him move around the kitchen.
There's something hypnotic about the way he works—efficient, purposeful, no wasted motion.
Vincent pulls ingredients from cupboards and a small refrigerator: potatoes, garlic, what looks like thick steaks. His hands are large and calloused, but they handle everything with surprising gentleness.
The domestic normality of it all strikes me as absurd. Less than two hours ago, I was supposed to be saying "I do" to Matthew in front of three hundred of Rosewood Valley's finest.
We were supposed to be having our first dance to some bland love song his mother picked out, eating overpriced catering that I'd stressed over for months.
Instead, I'm watching a stranger cook dinner like this is all perfectly normal.
A flash of lightning illuminates the kitchen, followed by a crack of thunder that makes me jump.
"This is insane," I whisper to myself, running my fingers through my tangled hair. Most of the pearl pins my mother insisted on are gone, lost somewhere between "here comes the bride" and "get me out of here."
The ones I can find, I pull out, dropping them on a small side table like discarded memories.
"What's insane?" Vincent asks, and I jump again. I hadn't realized he could hear me from the kitchen. His hearing must be as sharp as his gaze.
"All of it," I say, gesturing vaguely at myself, the dress, the cabin. The words start spilling out before I can stop them. "I'm a woman who just ran out on her own wedding. I jumped into a stranger's truck. I'm sitting in said stranger's cabin in the middle of nowhere, wearing a ruined designer dress that cost more than most people's monthly rent. I left my phone in the truck, which means my mother is probably having an aneurysm right now, and Matthew—" My voice cracks on his name. "Matthew probably hasn't even loosened his tie."
To my horror, I feel tears starting to well up.
Not sad tears, exactly. More like overwhelmed tears, the kind that come when everything hits you at once and your body doesn't know what else to do.
Vincent sets down his knife and turns to face me fully. The look on his face is complicated—concern mixed with something else I can't quite read.
He takes a step toward me, then seems to think better of it, running a hand through his hair instead.
"First," he says, his voice low and steady, like he's talking to a spooked animal, "you're not sitting here with a stranger. Name's Vincent Monroe, I build custom furniture, and I live alone up here because I prefer trees to people." He pauses, then adds, "Most people."
The simple introduction, delivered so matter-of-factly, somehow grounds me. Like he's offering me a piece of solid ground to stand on in the middle of my chaos.
"Sadie Parker," I reply, wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand. "Wedding planner. Currently unemployed runaway bride. Expert at making other people's dreams come true while apparently sabotaging my own."
His lips twitch again, and this time I catch a glimpse of white teeth against dark beard. "Nice to meet you, Sadie Parker."
Something about the way he says my name makes my stomach flutter. I blame that on hunger too, though I'm running out of things to blame for my reactions to this man.
"Second," he continues, turning back to his cooking, "there's clothes in the spare room if you want to change. First door on the right. Might not fit you properly, but they're clean."
The thought of getting out of this dress is suddenly all I can focus on. It feels like armor I no longer need, weighing me down with expectations and should-haves. "That would be... thank you."
The spare room is as simple as the rest of the cabin—a double bed with a handmade quilted cover in shades of blue and gray, a wooden dresser that looks handcrafted (by him, I wonder?), a small window overlooking the forest.
In the dresser, I find soft flannel shirts and what look like women's sweatpants, tags still on. I try not to think about why he has women's clothes here, or why that thought sends an unexpected sadness through my chest.
It takes me fifteen minutes to get out of the wedding dress. Fifteen minutes of struggling with forty-two tiny buttons (I know because I insisted on them during the design), of peeling away layers of tulle and lace, of watching thousands of dollars' worth of fabric pool at my feet like abandoned dreams.
Each layer feels like shedding a piece of the life I almost committed to—the country club memberships, the charity galas, the perfectly orchestrated dinner parties where everyone smiles but no one really laughs.
Standing in my wedding lingerie—because of course I'm wearing a white lace set that cost almost as much as the dress—I catch sight of myself in the small mirror above the dresser.
