Page 83 of Reluctant Bride

Both sets of parents arrive inside the hour, one loud convoy of trucks pulling up the drive before I’ve even changed out of my yoga tights.

“There’s no version of this family that gets safe,” Gideon says, standing in my kitchen like a man who’s spent his whole life making himself at home in rooms that aren’t his. “Waiting for safe means waiting forever. I’d rather bury this war in front of three hundred witnesses than let it keep bleeding in the dark.”

“For once,” Declan says, adjusting his cuff like agreeing with a Blackwater is a tax he’s decided to gladly pay, “your father and I agree completely. A wedding this size, this public, tells every enemy either family has that we’re not hiding. It tells the county the Sullivans and the Blackwaters aren’t at war anymore. It’s the best press either name has had in a decade.”

“Romantic,” I mutter.

“I’m being accurate. It can be both.” Declan almost smiles, which on him looks like a threat assessment resolving in your favor. “Sullivan Ranch. Three weeks. We’ll have the crews out by Thursday.”

Kathleen’s already got both hands on Dawson’s jaw, her face doing three things at once, thrilled and terrified and already mentally redecorating a lawn into a spectacular venue.

“Three weeks. And you didn’t think to warn your mother before you proposed on a porch swing in front of God and Cricket.”

“I didn’t plan it, Mom. It happened.”

“Nothing in this family happens, Dawson Sullivan. Everything gets decided and then it happens to the rest of us five minutes later.” But she’s crying the good kind of tears, and she pulls me into a hug that smells like rosewater and kindness. “I’ve been waiting for this exact chaos since you were nineteen.”

My own mother’s been standing back the whole time, letting the Sullivans have their moment, and she finds my hand once the kitchen finally quiets. Josephine doesn’t do speeches. She’s never needed one.

“I watched you spend years convincing yourself you weren’t allowed to want this out loud,” she says, quiet, just for me. “That you weren’t the one who gets chosen. I should have told you sooner that you were always allowed to choose, and to be chosen right back. I’m telling you now instead.” She squeezes my hand once and lets it go before either of us has to explain it to the rest of the room.

I don’t know yet how much I’ll need those exact words back by the end of the day.

The house fills up fast once the wedding word gets out. Kathleen commandeers the dining table with a legal pad. Maren and Tessa argue about caterers over the sink.

It’s the middle of that chaos, folder already open on the kitchen table, that Erin sits down across from me for coffee.

“Wedding security,” I say, sliding the folder across like it’s the only reason she’s sitting in my kitchen. “We just decided this morning, holding the ceremony to Sullivan Ranch. Bigger footprint, more gates, more strangers with cameras and no idea what they’re walking into. I want your read before anyone else touches the plan.”

Erin doesn’t blink. That’s the first thing I notice, before she’s even through the folder. She flips it open, scanning fast, the same clean economy she brought to a rifle at the fundraiser.

“You’ll want a second perimeter at the tree line here.” She taps a spot on the map that isn’t marked on anything Tate gave me. “Blind spot in the current camera coverage. I walked that stretch already.”

“You’ve walked the Sullivan tree line?”

“Preliminary site visit.” She says it easy, doesn’t even look up.

Dawson leans in the doorway behind her, arms crossed. “You walked ground on a venue nobody outside six people in this house knew we’d chosen before nine o’clock this morning?”

For half a second her eyes give her away before the pleasant mask resettles.

“I like to stay ahead of the work,” she lies.

“So do I,” Dawson retorts, and doesn’t push it further.

I catch his eye over her shoulder for a second. He doesn’t nod. He doesn’t have to. We’ve gotten good at saying the whole conversation in one held look.

She knows the tree line. Nobody told her the tree line.

“This is great,” I tell her, closing the folder before she finds anything else to be useful about. “I’ll loop you in once the guest list’s finalized.”

“Look forward to it.” She stands, in no rush, and pauses at the door. “Congratulations, by the way. Both of you. This valley could use a happy ending.”

She’s gone before I can decide whether that was warmth or a threat wearing warmth’s coat.

The house empties out by noon, one truck at a time down the drive, and Dawson finds me in the kitchen once the last of them clears, two coffees gone cold between us. He doesn’t dress up what he’s about to say.

“I don’t have all of it,” he says. “What Ashley used against me. She had a photograph of us on the boundary house porch. And she had paper.”