Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Audra
Two weeks have passed since Reese chased me to New York, and everything has changed.
We’re back at the lodge, but this time it’s different.
Real. I leave my things scattered around his room—my reading glasses on his nightstand, my favorite sweater draped over his chair.
I work from the desk by the window, taking video calls with Cosmo while Reese brings me coffee and tries not to be too distracting.
He’s been acting strange all morning—checking his pockets, fidgeting with his phone, practically vibrating with nervous energy.
“You’re being weird,” Taylor observes when she catches him ironing his jeans. Actually ironing them.
“I’m being normal,” he insists, but his ears are red.
She narrows her eyes but gets distracted by a delivery truck. “The flowers for the Johnston wedding are here. Can you handle them? I need to deal with a cake crisis.”
“I’ve got it,” he says too quickly, practically sprinting outside.
Twenty minutes later, Taylor finds me reviewing vendor contracts. “Reese needs help with the flowers. Something about the wrong order?”
“Since when does Reese know right from wrong with flowers?”
She shrugs, but there’s mischief in her eyes. “Just go help him. He’s in the boathouse.”
I should know better. Taylor’s innocent face is never actually innocent. But I go anyway, following the path to the old boathouse we’ve been talking about renovating.
“Reese? Taylor said you needed help with—oh.”
I stop in the doorway, my breath catching.
The boathouse has been transformed. White fabric drapes from the rafters, fairy lights twinkle like captured stars, and everywhere—everywhere—are sunflowers. My favorite. This isn’t for the Johnston wedding.
“Come here,” Reese says softly, holding out his hand. He’s standing in the center of the space, and there’s something in his expression that makes my heart race.
I take his hand, let him pull me forward to where he’s placed a single chair.
“Sit.”
“Reese, what is this?”
“Please. Just... let me do this.”
I sit, already knowing, already crying before he even drops to one knee.
“Audra Gabriel,” he begins, his voice steady despite the emotion in his eyes. “Thirteen years ago, you walked into my Economics 101 class, sat down next to me, and complained that the professor looked like a disappointed owl.”
I laugh through my tears, remembering that first day, how he’d snorted coffee through his nose at my observation.
“You were brilliant and driven and so beautiful it hurt to look at you sometimes. And for three years, I got to be your best friend. I fell in love with you somewhere between study sessions and late-night pizza runs, but I was too scared to risk what we had for what we could be.”
“We were both scared,” I whisper.
“Then you showed up here six weeks ago, running from a life that was suffocating you, and it felt like the universe was giving me a second chance. What started as a fake engagement became the most real thing in my life. Every pretend kiss, every staged photo, every moment we were ‘performing’—none of it was pretend for me.”
He pulls out a ring—not his grandmother’s this time, but something new. A sapphire surrounded by tiny diamonds, the color of the lake at twilight.
“I bought this the day after you agreed to help me. I told myself it was for show, a backup prop. But I had it designed specifically for you, because even then, some part of me hoped this would become real.”
“Reese,” I breathe.
“I love you, Audra. I love your spreadsheets and your color-coding and the way you eat dessert first when you think no one’s watching.
I love your ambition and your vulnerability and your terrible fake rock hiding spot.
I love you at the lodge and in the city and anywhere else you want to be.
So I’m asking—not for the will, not for the lodge, not for any reason except that I can’t imagine my life without you—will you marry me? For real this time?”
I slip out of the chair to kneel with him, both of us on our knees in this beautiful space he created just for this moment.
“Yes,” I say, cupping his face. “Yes, of course yes.”
He slides the ring onto my finger with shaking hands, and then we’re kissing, laughing, crying all at once.
“But what about the will?” I ask when we break apart. “We can’t actually get married before August 31st. That’s two weeks away.”
“About that...” He grins. “Judge Morrison owes me a favor. He can marry us Monday if you want. Small ceremony, just family and close friends. Then we can have the big wedding in October like we planned. Well, like we fake-planned but now real-plan.”
“Monday? That’s in three days!”
“Too soon?”
I look around the decorated boathouse, at the ring sparkling on my finger, at this man who’s turned my whole world upside down in the best possible way.
“It’s perfect. But wait—Bernard is coming today for the final review.”
“Then we’d better go convince him we’re really in love,” Reese says, pulling me to my feet.
“I don’t think that will be very hard.”
* * *
Bernard arrives an hour later, and he’s different this visit. Less formal, more observant. He watches us as we show him the wedding preparations that are now actually for our wedding.
“The ceremony will be Monday,” Reese explains. “Small, intimate. Family and close friends.”
“Rather quick,” Bernard notes.
“We’ve waited thirteen years,” I say, threading my fingers through Reese’s. “That feels long enough.”
Bernard stops walking, turns to study us. “You know, when this all started, I had my doubts. The timing was suspicious. The arrangement too convenient.”
My stomach drops, but Reese squeezes my hand.
“But,” Bernard continues, “I’ve been doing this for thirty years. I’ve seen real love and fake love and everything in between. And what you two have...” He smiles, the first genuine smile we’ve seen from him. “Mildred would be pleased.”
He pulls out an envelope from his briefcase. “She left this, to be given to you once you’d met the terms of the will.”
Reese takes it with shaking hands, and we read it together:
My dear Reese,
If you’re reading this, then you’ve found what the lodge always needed—not just a wife, but a partner. Someone who makes you brave enough to risk your heart.
I added the marriage clause not to control you, but to push you toward what I saw every time you talked about “your friend from college.” You loved her then, and I bet you love her now.
The lodge is yours, but more importantly, the love is yours. Don’t waste it this time.
All my love, Aunt Mildred
P.S. - Tell Audra the greenhouse would be perfect for winter weddings. She’ll know what to do with it.
“How did she know?” I ask Bernard through my tears.
He chuckles. “Mildred was many things, but blind wasn’t one of them. She saw the photo on Reese’s desk every time she visited. The way he’d light up talking about his college friend who planned events. She knew if you two just had a push...”
“She was matchmaking from beyond the grave,” Reese says, incredulous.
“Effectively, it seems.”
* * *
Monday morning arrives in chaos. Taylor’s running around with flowers, Cosmo (who flew up from the city) is arguing with her about centerpiece placement, and Emily’s trying to do my makeup while I stress-eat pastries.
“You have frosting on your nose,” Reese says, finding me hiding in the kitchen.
“I’m nervous. Which is ridiculous. We’ve been planning this wedding for weeks.”
“A fake wedding. This is real.”
“That’s what’s terrifying.” I look up at him. “What if we’re better at pretending than being real?”
He cups my face gently. “Audie, we’ve been real since the moment you drove up. Everything else was just us catching up to what our hearts already knew.”
“Save that for the ceremony!” Taylor shouts. “Audra, you need to get dressed. Reese, go stand somewhere else.”
The dress is simple—ivory silk that flows like water, nothing like the elaborate gown I’d planned for our fake October wedding. This is better. This is real.
Cosmo walks me down the short aisle to where Reese waits by the lake, under an arch of wildflowers and sunflowers.
“Don’t trip,” Cosmo whispers. “I can’t handle both the business and your wedding crisis.”
“I hate you.”
“Love you too, babe.”
Then I’m standing in front of Reese, and nothing else matters.
We wrote our own vows, of course.
Reese goes first, his voice rough with emotion: “Audra, you came here looking for peace and gave me purpose. You agreed to help an old friend and ended up giving me so much more. You showed me that some chances are worth taking, even if they come ten years late. You organize everything except my heart, which you’ve turned into beautiful chaos these past two months.
I promise to love you through every spreadsheet, every crisis, every moment of joy.
I promise to be your home, whether that’s here at the lodge or in your overpriced apartment with the terrible fake rock.
I promise to be real with you, always, even when pretending would be easier. ”
I’m crying too hard to speak for a moment, then manage: “Reese, you offered me a business arrangement and gave me a life. You showed me that slowing down doesn’t mean stopping, that putting down roots doesn’t mean giving up growth.
You love all my contradictions—my need for control and my secret chaos, my city ambitions and my mountain peace.
I promise to love you through every sunrise coffee, every guest crisis, every dream you have for this place and us.
I promise to choose you, not because I need to, but because I want to. Every day. Forever.”
Judge Morrison pronounces us husband and wife, but Reese’s already kissing me before he finishes, pulling me close like he’ll never let go.
“We did it,” I whisper against his lips. “We actually did it.”
“Got married or saved the lodge?”
“Both. Everything. All of it.”
* * *
SIX MONTHS LATER
The October wedding is everything the Monday ceremony wasn’t—elaborate, planned to perfection, with 150 guests and a reception that goes until dawn. My parents flew in from Europe, Reese’s extended family came from all over, and the lodge has never looked more beautiful.
“It’s perfect,” Cosmo says, surveying the scene with professional approval. “You’ve outdone yourself.”
“I had good motivation.” I touch my stomach lightly. We haven’t told anyone yet, but in about seven months, the lodge will have its newest, tiniest resident.
Reese appears beside me, his hand finding the small of my back. “Dance?”
On the floor, under the fairy lights we never took down from the boathouse, he pulls something from his pocket.
“Bernard sent another gift.”
It’s a photo we’ve never seen—Reese and me at graduation, standing together but not touching, both of us looking at each other when we think the other isn’t watching. On the back, in Mildred’s handwriting: “Sometimes love needs a deadline. Trust the process. - M”
“She knew all along,” I marvel.
“Best matchmaker we never asked for.”
Later, as the last guests leave and we’re sitting on the dock watching the sunrise—the same dock where we’ve had so many important moments—I think about how it all started. A desperate escape from burnout. A fake engagement. A will with an impossible clause.
“What are you thinking?” Reese asks, wrapping a blanket around us both.
“That your aunt was right. The lodge needed love.”
“Just the lodge?”
“No,” I admit, leaning into him. “We needed it too. We just needed a really complicated, slightly insane way to find it.”
“Would you change anything?”
I think about it—the doubt, the fear, the night I ran away, all the complications of our fake relationship becoming real.
“Not a single thing,” I say finally. “Every messy, complicated moment led us here.”
“To our haunted matchmaking lodge?”
“To our home,” I correct, placing his hand on my still-flat stomach. “Our real, wonderful, absolutely perfect home.”
He freezes, his eyes widening as he understands. “Audra, are you—?”
“Due in May,” I confirm. “Right when the wildflowers bloom.”
He kisses me as the sun paints the lake gold, and I think about how far we’ve come. Two people who were too scared to risk their friendship for love, who needed an elaborate deception to find their truth.
We started with a lie that became the truth. We faked it until we made it. And sometimes, just sometimes, that’s exactly how love works.
Even if it takes a will, a deadline, and a matchmaking ghost who knew better than we did what we needed all along.
Looking back at that panicked night when I booked a random mountain lodge to escape my life, I never could have imagined this—married to my college best friend, pregnant with our first child, running destination weddings at the place that brought us together.
But then again, the best things in life are never the ones we plan.
They’re the ones that find us when we finally stop running long enough to be found.
THE END