Page 87 of Reluctant Bride

“You’ve already walked it twice,” I remark.

“I like being thorough.” She doesn’t blink. She never blinks, which used to read as competence and now reads as something I’m still deciding a word for. “I also want the guest list cross-referenced against known associates one more time before the final headcount goes to the caterer. Can’t be too careful with a crowd this size.”

“Mackenzie’s already run it three times.”

“Then a fourth won’t hurt anybody.” She smiles, smooth and professional, and excuses herself toward the hedge line like she’s got somewhere to be that isn’t just proving she can go there.

Sage watches her go, wine glass tilted forgotten in one hand, her eyes narrowing, keeping whatever she’s thinking to herself for now.

“She wants inside every layer of this,” Sage says, once Erin’s out of earshot. “Not suspicious inside. Helpful inside. Not the same thing, and she’s spent this whole summer making sure nobody notices it.”

“You think she wants to get caught?”

“I think some part of her’s been waiting for somebody to actually look.” Sage’s eyes track the hedge line a second longer than casual requires. “That’s not the same as innocent. It might be the same as tired.”

I store that away too, next to the six catering staff who can’t carry a tray.

Eli finds me by the bar, whiskey in one hand and his mischievous grin he’s worn since we were fourteen and he first figured out it worked on teachers.

“Sully. You look like a man doing math instead of getting married.”

“I’m doing both. Multitasking.”

“You’re doing math about who’s got a rifle in the hedges. I can see it on your face.” He claps my shoulder, hard enough to mean it. “Take the night off, man. The whole valley’s here. Nobody’s shooting anybody at a welcome dinner with full military-grade protection standing in the hedges.”

“That’s exactly the kind of confidence that gets somebody shot.”

“Fair enough.” He doesn’t argue it. Eli’s known me long enough to know when the joke’s not landing because the fear underneath it is real. “You good?”

“I will be. Ask me again after Saturday.”

We slip out before dessert finishes, a dozen of us peeling off the manicured lawn like a jailbreak, Finn already narrating the escape under his breath like it’s a heist movie. Sage giggles and I pull her along with my long strides.

Pizza House smells exactly like it’s smelled since I was a kid, dough and garlic and the scorch of an oven that’s never once been properly cleaned, and Tessa lets us in with her own key, still in her good boots from the dinner. Nobody’s hungry off a table that just fed us four courses. She fires up two ovens anyway, because a night like this one isn’t complete without several of her More Meat Special deep-dish pies.

The wall behind the register is a shrine to every football season Rimrock ever cared about, and Tessa plants herself under it with her phone already out.

“Tessa, no,” I grumble.

“Tessa, yes.” She unpins a photo of me at seventeen, acne, a haircut that looks like someone took a weed whacker to me, matching jerseys with Eli two sizes too big. “Look at this beautiful disaster. Sage, look at your husband.”

Sage takes the phone like evidence in a trial she’s been building for years. “This is going in the wedding slideshow. I’ve already sent it to Kathleen.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did. Done.”

“In my defense, every man at that age looks like he lost a fight with a weed whacker.”

“You didn’t lose a fight, Dawson. You volunteered.”

The whole booth erupts, Finn nearly off his stool, Cora wiping her eyes, and Sage laughs with them, real and fizzing, tucked against my side, and something in me loosens that hasn’t loosened all week, not at the dinner, not at the hedge line, not once since Erin’s name started meaning something other than coffee and trail runs. I catch myself wanting to freeze the whole room exactly as it is, garlic smell and bad jokes and nobody currently plotting against anybody in it.

It doesn’t last, because nothing does, but for thirty minutes it’s close enough.

The Prairie Star’s marquee reads CONGRATULATIONS DAWSON & SAGE in letters somebody clearly ran out of and had to borrow from a different sign, the A’s mismatched, the N tilted, and Sage laughs so hard at it she has to lean on the truck.

“Old Mrs. Barrett’s decided we’re the event of the summer.”