Chapter 3
Josie
I'd rehearsed this moment exactly zero times, which in hindsight was its own kind of mistake, because apparently some part of me had decided two years ago that if I just never thought about seeing Sawyer Reyes again, I'd never have to.
That part of me was, evidently, an idiot.
"Josie," he said, and his voice hadn't changed at all, which felt unfair somehow — like it should have, like two years and one career-threatening headline should have left some mark I could hear.
"Sawyer." I kept my clipboard against my chest like a shield, which I registered even as I did it, and refused to stop doing anyway. "I didn't realize you'd be shooting this one."
"I didn't realize either. Not until the contract came through." A beat. "Milo confirmed the timeline with your coordinator. I should have—" He stopped himself, recalibrated. "I should have called ahead. Given you a heads-up."
"Would it have changed anything?"
"No." At least he had the decency not to pretend otherwise. "But it would've been the polite thing to do."
Behind him, his assistant — younger, wiry, carrying a light meter like it was a passport — was doing an admirable job of pretending to be extremely interested in the tent stakes.
I appreciated the effort even as I registered, distantly, that we were apparently about to have this conversation with an audience of one.
"You're booked for the whole season," I said. It came out flatter than I meant it, less a question than an accusation I hadn't decided whether I was allowed to make. "All seven."
"I didn't request Marlowe Orchard specifically, if that's what you're asking." Something flickered across his face — not quite guilt, not quite defensiveness, and some third thing I didn't have a name for. "Couples book me. I don't get a vote on the venue most of the time."
"Convenient."
"It's not convenient. It's the opposite of convenient, actually, and I think you know that.
" His jaw tightened, just slightly, the first real crack in the careful neutral tone he'd been using since he said my name.
"I could turn down every booking that comes through here.
I've thought about it. But that's five couples this season who did nothing wrong, who picked this venue and picked me completely separately, and I'm not going to punish them for something that happened between you and me. "
Something that happened between you and me.
Like it was a disagreement. Like it was two people who'd simply drifted apart instead of one article, one headline, one number on a page that had cost me four bookings the following spring and a conversation with my grandmother about second mortgages I never wanted to have again.
"Is that what we're calling it?" I said. "Something that happened?"
His eyes met mine, and for a second the practiced calm dropped away entirely, and what was underneath it looked a lot more like the thing I'd been carrying around myself for two years — not quite guilt, not quite defensiveness, something tired and old and worn smooth from being turned over too many times.
"I didn't write that headline, Josie."
"You wrote the article that went under it."
"I wrote one paragraph. Factual. Not unkind, if you actually go back and read it instead of the —“ He caught himself again, exhaled, started over in a lower register. “That’s not fair to say to you right now. I'm sorry. That's not what today's about."
"No," I said. "Today's about a hundred and thirty guests and a bride who's spent eighteen months planning every detail of this and doesn't deserve to know that her photographer and her venue owner have unfinished business.
" I made myself unclench my jaw, made myself say the next part the way Eleanor would have said it, level and businesslike, because that was the only version of myself I trusted to get through the next six hours without doing something I'd regret.
"So. Professional. Today. Whatever this is, it waits. "
"Agreed."
"Cocktail hour's on the east lawn, reception under the tent — the new tent, professionally installed, in case you were wondering." I couldn't help the edge on that one, and from the flicker in his expression, he heard it exactly the way I meant it.
"I saw the invoice for the tent company in the vendor packet," he said quietly. "Looks solid."
"It better be."
"It is." He said it simply, like he actually meant it as reassurance and not just conversation, and something in my chest did an unwelcome, complicated thing at the idea that Sawyer Reyes might have spent even one minute worrying about whether my tent was going to hold.
I didn't have time to examine that. Del's voice crackled through the walkie-talkie at my hip — bride's car just turned onto the property, fifteen minutes to first look — and just like that the day took over, the way wedding days always did, sweeping up whatever personal wreckage two people were standing in and demanding they deal with it later.
"Fifteen minutes," I said, mostly to myself, already turning to go.
"Josie."
I stopped. Didn't turn all the way around.
"For what it's worth," he said, and his voice had dropped the careful neutrality entirely now, gone rougher, more honest, "I should have driven out here two years ago and said this in person instead of letting a magazine say a version of it for me.
I don't have an excuse for why I didn't. I just — didn't."
I turned around fully then, and looked at him — really looked, for the first time since he'd said my name — and saw a man who looked exactly as tired of carrying this as I was, standing in the same orchard where it had all gone wrong, with a camera around his neck and an apology two years too late.
"You're right," I said. "You should have."
I didn't say it was okay. It wasn't, not yet, maybe not for a long time, and I wasn't going to hand him absolution on a wedding day I couldn't afford to lose focus on. But I saw something in his face ease, just slightly, at the fact that I hadn't walked away either.
"Fourteen minutes," I said instead, because that was a sentence I knew exactly what to do with. "Bride's in the blue room. Go get your first-look shots set up."
"Copy that." A ghost of something almost like a smile. "Boss."
"Photographer."
I walked back across the lawn toward the house with my heart going faster than the pace of my steps accounted for, and told myself, firmly, that it was adrenaline. Wedding-day adrenaline. The particular electric hum of a hundred small things that had to go right, nothing more complicated than that.
I did not look back to check whether he was watching me go.
I absolutely did not notice, three hours later, cutting across the reception tent with an armful of table runners, that his camera had been pointed my way for a beat longer than the shot required.