37. Blooming Apricot #2
I go back to pacing, because sitting still lets the Cade-shaped thought catch up to me, and I'd rather outrun it.
I start talking to myself, which I do when the list gets long — narrating the final decorations, the bakery trays, whether the fig branches will hold overnight or wilt into sad little twigs by the ceremony, whether I confirmed the second refrigeration unit, whether—
I walk directly into a wall of warm flannel.
Two hands catch my shoulders before I can rebound off him and land on the floor. Magnolia floods over me, close and sudden. I blink up. Sawyer is standing right there, out of his chair, solid as a doorframe, steadying me with an amused tilt to his mouth.
"You," I accuse, "materialized out of thin air."
"I did no such thing." His thumbs stroke once over my shoulders. "I called your name three times. I stood up. I walked halfway across the room. You were nose-deep in a monologue about bakery trays and refrigeration and you didn't so much as blink. I could've set off a flare."
Heat prickles up my neck, because this is the third time this week somebody's had to physically stop me to get my attention.
Beckett caught me walking into a doorframe on Tuesday.
August fielded a mug I set down on empty air.
I keep losing the thread of the present tense and surfacing to find one of their hands already there, catching whatever I dropped before it hits the ground.
"Oh." I deflate, pouting up at him. "I was on a tangent."
"You were on an odyssey, Blooming Apricot." He says the pet name like it's a hand cupping the back of my neck. "So let me ask the only question that matters right now, since your brain has clearly filed everything else under later." His head tilts. "What do you want to eat?"
The question lands low and primal. I actually stop and consult my body, which has been screaming at me for two hours in a language I kept ignoring, and it answers with such immediate, specific certainty that I say it before I can be embarrassed.
"Cold dill pickles," I announce, "dunked in whipped vanilla frosting. And a bag of those extra-hot jalapeno chips. The crunchy kind. To alternate."
Silence.
I hear the words replay in the air. I feel my own face scrunch.
"Wait." I press my fingers to my lips, genuinely bewildered at myself.
"When have I ever, in my entire life, wanted that?
That's not a food. That's a dare." Then, despite everything, a grin breaks across my face, because my mouth is already watering and I cannot lie to myself about this one specific thing.
"But God, it would taste fucking delightful.
Sour, then sweet, then fire. It's got a whole arc.
It's practically a three-act structure."
Sawyer looks at me for a long, unreadable beat. One eyebrow climbs toward his hairline.
"Right," he says slowly. "Okay. I'll get you your award-winning pickle situation, on one condition.
" He points a finger at the disaster of my office.
"You don't reorganize this entire room into a new and more elaborate disaster while I'm gone.
I want to be able to find you under all of it when I get back. "
"I would never." I'm already bouncing on my toes. "Thank you, thank you, you beautiful man, I could kiss you—"
"You can, actually, that's allowed now—"
"—but honestly, aren't you even a little weirded out?" I tilt my head. "That was an unhinged request. Most people would judge me."
"Nah." He shrugs, easy. Then something shifts behind his eyes, sly and careful all at once, and he tucks his hands into his pockets. "I'm not weirded out. I am, however, intrigued by exactly one thing."
"What thing?"
He lets the pause stretch just long enough to be dangerous. Then he asks it, mild as milk, watching my face the whole time.
"What's the probability," he says, "that a certain wedding planner is pregnant?"
I stare at him.
Then I laugh. It bursts out of me, big and disbelieving, because the idea is so far outside the realm of possibility it's almost sweet that he'd float it.
"Oh — Sawyer. Sorry, but no. There's no fucking way.
" I shake my head, still grinning. "Do you know how much unprotected sex I have had, historically, with three separate alphas?
I used to be with August and Cade and Beckett constantly, back in the day, and not once — not one time — did anything take.
My body's never so much as flinched at it.
Plus I'm on blockers. Have been for years.
" I spread my hands like the case rests itself. "So. No. Impossible."
Sawyer doesn't laugh with me. He crosses his arms, leans a hip against my desk, and arches that maddening eyebrow.
"Blockers," he says, "aren't birth control, my Blooming Apricot."
"They basically are."
"They basically aren't. They mute your heats.
They are not a wall against a pregnancy, especially not a determined one.
" He tips his head. "And here's the part you're skating right past. Compatibility.
Packs aren't math, sugar, they're chemistry.
The right configuration can trip a body into fertile faster than anything, same way the wrong one can slam the door shut for years.
A body that never took before might've just been waiting on the right combination to walk through the door. "
It's a pretty theory. It's the kind of thing men say in the golden afterglow of a good pack forming — all destiny and chemistry and bodies knowing best. I've planned too many weddings to put my faith in destiny.
I believe in timelines, contingencies, and the cold arithmetic of a body that's done exactly what I've asked of it for thirty years and not one thing more.
"Nah." I wave him off, but there's the faintest flutter under my sternum I choose to ignore. "It can't be that. Nothing's changed."
"Mhm." He says it so dryly it should leave a mark.
"Nothing's changed. Except you get irritable now at about triple your old speed.
You keep drifting off mid-sentence and staring at the middle distance like it owes you rent.
And you just requested pickles baptized in frosting with a spicy chaser.
" He ticks them off, unhurried, merciless, fond. "Purely as a neutral observer."
"A neutral observer," I repeat.
"Switzerland. Fully impartial." He examines his nails. "I'm simply noting a pattern, the way I'd note that a sky has gone the color of a bruise. Draw your own conclusions."
"The conclusion is that you've been reading pregnancy forums for fun, which is a deeply strange hobby for a wedding planner."
"Occupational hazard. You would be amazed how many of my brides are counting backward from a due date."
"Oh my God, shut up." I'm laughing again, because if I laugh it stays a joke.
"You just want a baby. That's what this is.
You've caught the disease. You're exactly like Beckett — one contented month into a pack and suddenly obsessed with the idea of a little mini-me toddling around wearing tiny boots and demanding you fix its hair. "
"Guilty of nothing," Sawyer says, but he's smiling now, and it's gone soft at the edges.
He pushes off the desk and crosses to me, unhurried, and folds me in against his chest before I can dance away.
His voice drops low, meant just for the space between us.
"A mini-you would ruin my entire life in the best possible way.
A mini-boy with all four of our worst traits would be a menace and I'd love him past sense.
Either one, both, neither — I'm easy." His lips brush my hairline.
"But would you take a test? For me. When you get a minute.
Just so we know what we're standing in."
I sag into him, because the flannel is warm and the magnolia is everywhere and I'm so tired I could cry over a fabric swatch.
"Fine," I mumble into his shirt. "I'll check.
But not today, and not with any of you hovering like anxious storks.
Tomorrow night. I'm doing a sleepover with Marlowe and Juniper before the wedding chaos eats me alive — a proper catch-up, wine and gossip and zero men allowed.
I'll pee on the stupid stick there, where the company's better. "
The truth is I need the sleepover more than I need any test. Marlowe will say something devastating and precisely correct.
Juniper will cry at least twice for reasons unrelated to anything.
I'll let them braid my hair and roast my life choices, and for a few hours I'll get to feel like a woman with friends instead of a woman with a spreadsheet.
I've earned that much. I intend to collect on it.
He chuckles, the sound rumbling under my cheek, and presses a kiss to the top of my head. "Sure, Blooming Apricot. Deal."
I pull back just enough to look up at him.
I let out a breath and say the thing I'm certain of, the thing that makes the whole idea collapse under its own weight.
"I know I'm not, though. A hundred percent.
Because think about it — if I actually were pregnant, we'd have to basically be married by now. And we're clearly not."
Sawyer looks down at me. Something glints in his eyes, slow and unbothered and entirely too pleased.
"And what's stopping that from happening?"
I laugh, but it comes out with a nervous edge I didn't authorize. "Sawyer. It hasn't been ten full weeks. The provisional period isn't even closed. You cannot just — walk a woman down an aisle in the middle of the biggest wedding of her career."
"Why not?"
"Because." I stop. He waits, head tilting, the picture of a man with all afternoon and no intention of letting me off the hook. "Because it — it just doesn't make sense!"
"Mhmm." He hums, that infuriating, knowing hum. His hands settle at the small of my back. "Would you want a big wedding?"