7. The First Rule #4
Fate loves to put me in odd situations, doesn’t she? At this rate, I should get a tarot reading and ask the cards why they love to see me tortured when I’m surely the victim in this grand predicament of things?
"You knew," I say. "Before the estate answered a single email. You knew I was the planner."
"Yes."
"Is that what this is?" I keep it flat, professional, terms-and-conditions. "The wedding. The consent theater, the reports, the her-call-every-step. Is this an opportunity, Beckett? Ten weeks of manufactured proximity, because the direct approach was never going to get past my front desk?"
"No." There’s no heat to it. No wound performed at the suggestion, which lands stranger than denial.
He sets the rolled plans down on the table, and stands there with his hands empty, a big man being deliberately, visibly harmless, and answers like a man who prepared for the deposition.
"The couple chose the house before anyone knew the planner.
Frankly, they chose the planner…you…before I knew anything at all.
I've had one decision in this, whether the estate answers, and I answered because it's your project and the house can serve it, and because I owe you the truth about every part of this property. "
A breath.
"Nothing more is owed to me. I know that."
It's a good answer.
It's a suspiciously complete answer, subordinate clauses all standing at attention, and I've spent five years across tables from people who rehearse, so I say it before I can decide not to.
"Did you rehearse that?"
Something crosses his face, the first unmanaged thing all morning, gone fast.
"I've rehearsed hundreds of things," Beckett says. "Five years of them. Most I've got no right to say, so I keep the ones about drainage." He looks at me then, all the way, gray eyes level, and for one held second the glass room is very small. "That one I've had ready since June."
The sea folds itself against the rocks below us, patient.
My hands are cold on the clipboard, my heart is going like a hummingbird in a jar, and I stand in the ruins-adjacent conservatory of my own almost-life and do the thing I actually came here to do, the real agenda item, the one that was never on Priya's tabs.
I despise how calm he is. How this probably is an every other day conversation for him versus me, where I’m projecting clarity at the brink of a professional crash-out, while on the inside, I’m malfunctioning in all areas of emotional self-sabotage.
None of this is fucking fair.
"Then here's the first rule, and it's not negotiable. It goes for all three of you, and I'll say it once."
I keep my voice in the register I use for contracts, because that's what this is.
"You do not get to use this wedding to ask me for forgiveness."
"Agreed," he says.
Immediately. No flinch.
Okay…now I’m really pissed off.
"No private meetings unless logistics demand it, and demand gets defined by me.
No touching. Not a handshake, not a steadying hand, not a coat over a chair for me, nothing.
No scenting, and I mean held, Beckett, the way you held it in that elevator, every day, every room.
No references to anything before five years ago during working hours, and every hour is a working hour.
No decisions about this event, none, down to a napkin, without my approval.
And nothing, ever, that uses this town, those two people, or their budget as pressure.
Sloane Carroway does not become the crowbar.
If I so much as smell strategy, the estate loses the booking and I will relocate that wedding to a parking lot and make it gorgeous, and you know I can. "
"I know you can." He hasn't moved. "Put all of it in writing, and I'll sign it. Add anything you want later. I'll sign that too. Lena can have it notarized by Friday."
Just like that.
Every term, swallowed whole, no negotiation, no wounded counteroffer, pen practically uncapped, and the anger that goes through me is so fast and so wrong-footed I nearly miss what it actually is.
I came ready for resistance.
Some buried, humiliating cellar of me, five years cold, wanted resistance, wanted him to push back on no touching, to fight for one inch of ground, to prove the wanting still outweighs the obedience.
Now he's standing there agreeing with me out of every last pretext, and I'm furious about being given everything I asked for.
Which is exactly as dangerous as it sounds.
Name it, girl.
You wanted evidence he'd still burn for you, and he's handing you fire safety codes.
Why did I think he’d grovel? That he’d fight for me? That they would regret what they did…what they continue to do even trying to give me the power slot like I’m some walking pity party.
To think I was yearning for this man in the elevator to the point I had to finger fuck myself in the truck on the side of the road to make it home without losing my fucking mind…
I can’t keep playing this emotional foolishness.
I have to throw this all away. Throw it in the mental cellar and lock it away…today.
"Friday," I say, and pick up my clipboard fence, and go find my army on the south lawn.
I’m so over this…and we’ve only just begun.