Chapter Ten
Sophie
Wedding planning in Hell, Kentucky, is less about flowers and more about deciding which men are most likely to start a fight near the cake.
I have a notebook open in front of me, three pens, two bourbon samples, a list of people who should not be allowed near microphones, and a growing headache shaped exactly like the Kings of Anarchy MC.
The Lockup, the Kings’ clubhouse is an old jail, which means every attempt at romance has to compete with iron bars, scarred brick, old cell doors, and the lingering sense that someone once begged God for mercy in the same corner where Lottie is now arguing over ribbon colors.
It should not work.
Somehow, that makes it more ours.
Sunlight comes through the barred front windows in slanted gold strips, catching on dust, chrome, glass, and the bourbon samples lined up on the long table.
The main room smells like leather, old smoke worked into the walls, and something buttery coming from the kitchen.
Kentucky sin, locked up and poured over ice.
Cornbread is in the clubhouse kitchen making what he calls wedding cornbread samples, which is ridiculous because cornbread should not have samples. It’s cornbread. You either trust it or you were raised wrong.
He brought six cast-iron skillets over from the Fire Pit like a man transporting holy relics.
Lottie stands beside the long table with a clipboard she stole from somewhere and a pen tucked behind her ear.
Janie is sorting ribbons by color, though half the colors look the same to me and all of them have names like bourbon blush and saddle smoke, which makes me want to throw the entire wedding industry into Paradise Falls.
Brittany sits at the nearest table, one hand resting on her stomach even though she isn’t pregnant, just protective of every woman within reach now that she has survived Oaks’s particular brand of love.
She has opinions about seating charts, mostly that Elijah should be seated far enough from Oaks that no one has to explain a stabbing before dessert.
Becki is sprawled in a chair with one boot hooked on the rung, eating pickles from a jar and glaring at anyone who looks at her belly too long.
She is pregnant with Royal’s baby and somehow even more frightening than she was before.
Pregnancy ain’t softened her. It has sharpened her into a woman who looks like she might bite the father of her child for breathing wrong, then write him a love note in blood and lipstick.
Royal stands near one of the old cell doors at the back wall, dressed in black as usual, watching her eat pickles like she is a religious experience and a threat assessment at the same time.
Cider sits beside Becki, quiet as a ghost in borrowed clothes.
Royal’s sister.
Found by me.
That still feels strange to think, stranger to say.
Cider was gone since she was a teenager, swallowed by some dark stretch of years no one fully understands yet, and when I found her, she came back with holes in her memory big enough for monsters to live in.
She remembers pieces. A smell. A hallway.
A hymn sung wrong. A woman’s hand with a scar.
Not enough to build truth. Enough to make all of us afraid of what truth might look like when it finally stands up.
Pearly Gates hangs over this room even when no one says the name.
The missing girls.
Cider’s missing years.
Becki’s father and his rotten church.
Ruthanne Peck slithering into the Fire Pit yesterday with her smile and her little gold cross, trying to shame Amelia back into a cage.
There are too many women in this town with pieces missing.
I look down at my wedding notebook and realize I have written Pearly Gates in the margin instead of peonies.
My stomach twists.
Because that ain’t the only secret eating me alive.
My father’s name sits behind my teeth like a stone.
Not because I know everything. I don’t. That is part of the problem.
I have enough to suspect he was involved somehow before.
Enough old business. Enough whispers. Enough paperwork that doesn’t line up cleanly.
Enough pauses when certain men talk about money, horses, church donations, and the kind of respectable connections that make ugly things easier to hide.
My father.
Paradise Falls.
Pearly Gates.
Missing girls.
I keep telling myself I need proof before I tell Legend.
I keep telling myself that giving him suspicion without proof would only hand him a match in a room full of gas.
I keep telling myself I’m protecting him from one more ghost.
The truth is uglier.
I’m afraid.
Not of Legend hurting me. Never that.
I’m afraid of the moment he looks at me and realizes the woman he is about to marry may have brought another rot-thread into his life.
I’m afraid the name Montgomery will taste different in his mouth.
I’m afraid he will see my family’s polished silver and horse-farm money the same way Amelia looks at her wedding ring mark.
Beautiful from far away.
A shackle up close.
“Sophie,” Lottie says.
I blink. “What?”
“You just wrote something murderous next to the cake section.”
I look down.
Beside cake, I have written: ask Whiskey about donation records.
Excellent.
Very bridal.
“I’m multitasking,” I say.
Lottie looks at me for one second too long. She is smarter than people give her credit for, mostly because she likes being underestimated and because a woman can learn a lot if men think she is only listening for gossip.
“Mm-hmm,” she says. “Well, multitask this. Cornbread wants to know if jalapeno cornbread is too spicy for a wedding.”
From the kitchen, Cornbread lifts one huge hand above the pass-through window. “It ain’t too spicy. It’s got personality.”
Becki points a pickle at him. “Your cornbread should not have more personality than half the guests.”
Cornbread frowns from behind a stack of skillets. “That sounds like an insult to the guests.”
“It was.”
Janie leans over her ribbons. “I vote regular cornbread and jalapeno cornbread. Give people choices.”
Royal’s voice drifts from the old cell door. “Choice is a lovely illusion.”
Everyone looks at him.
Becki narrows her eyes. “Royal, I swear to God, if you turn my pickle craving into a poem about free will, I will stab you with a cake fork.”
His smile is slow, private, and entirely too pleased. “You are radiant when threatening me.”
“I’m pregnant and nauseous. That ain’t the same as radiant.”
“To me, it is.”
She glares.
He looks like he loves her more for it.
Cider watches them with her head tilted, a faint crease between her brows. There are moments when she seems almost here, when humor reaches her a beat late and she smiles like a person remembering how. Other moments, she drifts somewhere none of us can follow.
I wonder if anyone made her sit at a table and plan something beautiful while ugliness waited in the walls.
I wonder how many missing girls stopped remembering how to laugh.
My pen tightens in my hand.
The front door opens, and Legend walks in with Derby behind him.
Amelia comes in next.
The room changes.
Not loudly. Not dramatically. But every woman notices before every man does. That is usually how it works.
Amelia is in jeans and a soft green top today, one of the shirts Janie found that makes her eyes look less haunted and more alive.
Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and she has no lipstick on, which makes me think she remembered last night and did not trust herself with that much color today.
She looks tired. Still. But there is something different in the way she walks beside Derby.
Not behind him.
Beside him.
Derby is pretending he doesn’t know that matters.
He is also pretending he ain’t aware of every person in the room clocking the distance between his hand and her lower back. It hovers for half a second when they come through the door, then drops because she steps forward on her own.
He lets it.
That matters too.
Legend sees me and crosses the room. His eyes are on my face before his mouth reaches mine.
Not a kiss, not in front of everyone with the easy affection of a man who takes softness for granted.
Legend doesn’t take softness for granted.
He touches my waist first, then leans down and kisses my temple.
“What did I miss?” he asks.
“Cornbread is trying to give our wedding menu a criminal record.”
Cornbread appears in the kitchen doorway with a towel over one shoulder, looking offended. “Jalapenos are legal.”
“Barely,” Derby says.
Cornbread points at him. “You don’t get a vote after bringing Panty Lady into my bar and turning the Fire Pit into the gossip pit.”
Amelia goes scarlet.
Derby turns slowly. “Cornbread.”
“What?”
“Call her that again and I’m shoving one of your skillets up your ass handle-first.”
Cornbread thinks about this with the seriousness of a man doing geometry. “Handle-first seems harder.”
Royal murmurs, “Not with enough resolve.”
Becki snorts so hard she nearly chokes on a pickle.
Cider laughs.
It’s small.
Quiet.
But it happens.
Royal’s head turns toward her immediately, and the whole room softens around that one fragile sound.
Cider seems startled by herself. Her eyes drop to the table. “Sorry.”
“No,” Becki says, fierce enough that Cider looks up. “Don’t apologize. That was the first sensible reaction to Cornbread all day.”
Cornbread nods like this is praise. “I do bring folks together.”
Amelia’s embarrassment eases a little. She looks at Cider, then Becki, then me. She is still mapping relationships. Who belongs to whom. Who is safe. Who bites. Around here, that is often the same person.
I cross to her and take her hands before she can apologize for arriving, existing, or breathing near a wedding notebook.
“You came,” I say.
Her eyes flick to Derby. “I was told wedding planning could be dangerous without supervision.”