Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
DAWSON
I count the exits at my own welcome dinner before I count the beer bottles, and I catch myself doing it fast enough that I laugh out loud.
Sullivan Ranch glows gold at eight o’clock on a Monday evening that’s supposed to be the easy start to the wedding week, long tables running the length of the south lawn under string lights strung tighter than usual this year, extra bulbs, extra generators, extra everything, because Mackenzie asked for redundant power on every camera loop and my father heard redundant and doubled it out of pure instinct.
The mountains stand up solid, unwavering, behind it all, the last of the light bleeding orange along the ridgeline, and a local four-piece is tuning up under the catering tent for a crowd that includes half the extended family in pressed Wranglers and good boots, my aunt from Bozeman already asking three different waitstaff whether the shrimp is wild-caught, and enough hats between the tables to stock a feed store.
Filthy rich people throw a welcome dinner like it’s a smaller wedding they’re allowed to relax at, even in boots and Wranglers instead of black tie.
Nobody here is relaxed. I’ve counted six of Mackenzie’s people in catering blacks who’ve never once carried a tray correctly, two more on the roofline, generally hidden, and one of Erin’s hires walking the hedge line with a rifle slung low, unremarkable to a crowd that’s long since stopped noticing armed men at the edges of a party.
I see it. I see all of it. That’s the whole problem with tonight.
Holt’s at the family table instead, jacket off, sleeves shoved up, arguing with Knox over something that’s got Mackenzie laughing hard enough to spill her wine. Off duty for one night. He’s earned it more than I have.
“You’re doing the thing,” Sage says, appearing at my elbow in a rust-colored sundress and her good boots, hair in a complicated braid down one shoulder, how she wears it when she’s decided a room doesn’t get her armor.
“The scanning thing. Eyes doing laps around the lawn like you’re grading an evacuation drill. ”
“I’m admiring the string lights.”
“You’ve looked at the string lights zero times. You’ve looked at every path and gate four times.” She loops her arm through mine, loose and easy, ignoring the dozens of relatives currently pretending not to watch us do it. “Stop working, Sullivan. It’s your own party.”
“It’s not a party. It’s a security exercise with a raw bar.”
“Then let the exercise run itself for one hour. You built the whole apparatus. Trust it.”
She’s right, and I hate that she’s right, and I love her enough right now that hating it barely registers.
I make myself look at her instead of the tree line.
Rust-colored sundress, whiskey brown eyes gone dark in the low light, that sapphire catching every bulb overhead like it was cut for this evening.
I let my hand settle low on her back, right where the thin fabric dips at her spine, skin warm under my palm.
“You’re doing it again,” she says, quieter now, a different kind of doing it entirely.
“Doing what?”
“Looking at me like you’re trying to decide whether the party can survive you leaving early.” Her breath catches when my thumb drags once along her spine. “Which color did you land on?”
“Excuse me?”
“The lace. You’ve been staring at my back for a full minute like you’re solving for it.” Her mouth curves, wicked, and she couldn’t care less about the guests two tables over who are absolutely watching. “Guess wrong and I’ll let you find out the hard way later.”
My cock stirs behind my jeans before I can talk myself out of it, thick and heavy just from the dare in her voice, and I force my eyes back up to her face before half this dinner gets an eyeful of exactly what she does to me.
“Purple,” I say. “To match your mood when you’re about to win an argument.”
“Cheating. You’ve been looking in my dresser.”
“I’m your husband. Isn’t that allowed?”
“Absolutely not! Some secrets are worth waiting for.” She gives me a sideways glance and pinches my ass.
“One hour,” I say. “I’ll enjoy this party, then I go back to being insufferable.”
“You’re already insufferable. I’ve made my peace with it.”
Maren ruins the peace before it lasts a full minute, climbing up onto the bench seat with a fork and a wine glass in one hand, tapping it loud enough that half the lawn turns to look whether they want to or not.
“Nobody asked me to do this,” she announces, swaying only slightly, “which is why I’m doing it.”
“Maren.” Knox, already reaching for her elbow. “Get down.”
“I will not.” She holds her glass higher, out of his reach, and points it straight at Dawson and me.
“I watched this man mope through two entire years of pretending he didn’t care whether a Blackwater lived or died.
I have never once in my life seen anybody work that hard to be miserable on purpose.
So forgive me if I want thirty seconds to say, out loud, in front of my family and the caterer, that I am unbelievably glad he finally stopped. ”
“That’s not a toast, that’s an intervention,” Finn calls from three tables down.
“It’s both. I’m a woman of many talents.” Maren lifts her glass higher still, unbothered, eyes bright. “To Dawson, who took entirely too long. And to Sage, who’s apparently been patient enough for both of them. Cheers.”
The whole lawn drinks to it, laughing, and Sage’s hand finds mine, warm and steady, and I don’t bother pretending my throat isn’t tight for a second before Knox finally gets his wife back down off the bench.
Nell’s pie sits at the end of the dessert table like a dare, right next to a raw bar big enough to feed twice this crowd, and somehow both things look like they belong.
My mother arranged it that way on purpose.
Kathleen’s spent three weeks proving this family can throw money at a problem and still remember where it came from.
Erin finds us at our table later.
“Floor plan’s locked,” she says, tablet already out, scrolling through something with the same efficiency she brings to everything. “I want a second walk of the north hedge line before Saturday. There’s a gap in coverage where the caterers’ tent poles interrupt the sightline from the house.”
“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.”