Chapter 5 Owen
Owen
The wedding was beautiful.
Wildflowers cascaded from an arch at the end of the aisle. The mountains rose behind it, still holding the last of the spring snow on their peaks. The afternoon sun turned everything golden, the kind of light that made even ordinary things look like they belonged.
Riley walked toward us in a simple white dress. I'd only ever seen her in turnout gear or station blues, all sharp edges and sharper focus. But here, in the afternoon light, I understood what Liam saw. Not softer, exactly. Just the full picture of her, the parts she didn't show at work.
Mia rode ahead on Honey, the mare's coat brushed to a gleam, dropping flower petals from a basket with the kind of solemn concentration only a child could manage.
The crew filled the first rows in dress uniforms, brass buttons catching the light.
Cal sat with Lucy and Gabrielle, the baby asleep against her mother's shoulder.
And Liam. Liam was crying before Riley made it halfway down the aisle.
I stood beside him, holding the rings, watching my best friend fall apart in the best possible way. His hands shook when he reached for Riley's. His voice cracked on the vows.
I was happy for them. Genuinely happy. Liam had been through hell.
Losing his parents at nineteen via a phone call that split his life in half.
His grandmother died two years ago. Claire walked away, telling him the life he was offering wasn't enough.
And then almost losing Riley in that clearing, watching her bleed in the dirt while he fought to save her.
He deserved this. They both did.
But happiness and grief can live in the same chest. I was learning that.
I studied their faces as they exchanged rings, watched them promise each other forever, and I couldn't tell if what I felt was envy or something that sank deeper and stayed.
Two friends who were finally getting their real wedding—not the courthouse ceremony that started as an arrangement, but this. The one that counted.
Meanwhile, my own ending was still painfully fresh. Sarah's voice in my head, telling me I was too safe, that too much security was boring, that she couldn't remember the last time I surprised her.
For just a second, the thought surfaced: Why do some people get chosen, and others only ever get used?
I pushed it away. This wasn't about me. This was Liam and Riley's day. I had no right to poison it with my own bitterness.
The officiant pronounced them husband and wife. The crew erupted in cheers. Liam dipped Riley back and kissed her, showing off, making her laugh against his mouth.
I clapped along with everyone else. Smiled when I was supposed to smile, and did my job.
That's what I was good at—doing my job.
The reception spilled across the ranch.
Champagne flowed freely. Music played from speakers someone had rigged up in the barn.
String lights crisscrossed above the dance floor, flickering like earthbound stars.
The caterers kept the food coming, and the bar never slowed.
Slowly, the formal structure of the ceremony dissolved into something looser and warmer.
Cal had commandeered a table near the dance floor, holding court with stories about Liam that made Riley cover her face and the crew howl with laughter.
Something about a training exercise gone wrong, a misplaced ladder, and Liam ending up in a dumpster.
I'd heard it before, but it still made me smile.
I nursed a beer at the edge of things, watching, the way I always did.
Lucy caught my eye from across the dance floor and raised her glass. I raised mine back. She tilted her head, a question in the gesture. I'm fine, I mouthed. She didn't look convinced, but she let it go.
My phone buzzed in my pocket.
I almost ignored it. Probably a notification, an email, something that could wait. But I checked anyway.
Grace's name on the screen.
I stepped away from the noise, moving past the barn toward the quieter stretch of fence line. The music faded to a dull thump behind me. I answered on the third ring.
“Grace?”
Silence. Then a breath that shook.
“He left.”
Two words. My chest went tight.
I didn't need to ask who. I knew. I'd known something was wrong since last weekend, since I'd watched Marcus ignore her in her own dining room, since I'd seen the way she flinched when he touched her shoulder.
“Are you okay?” The question felt stupid even as I asked it. Of course, she wasn't okay.
Another shaky breath. “I don't know.”
“Do you need me to come?”
The silence stretched. I could hear her breathing, uneven and rough. I could picture her in that big empty house, surrounded by all those rooms that used to feel like home.
“Can you?” Her voice was so quiet I almost missed it. “I'm sorry. I know it's the wedding. I shouldn't have called. I just—”
“Don't apologize. I'm coming.”
I found Liam near the dessert table, a beer in hand, Cal beside him, telling him what was probably another embarrassing story. Riley had drifted off toward the pasture fence, watching Mia show off something Honey was doing.
I wove through the crowd. Liam saw me coming, read something in my face, and his smile faded before I even reached him.
“Hey.” I clapped his shoulder, leaned in close. “I have to go. It's Grace. Something happened.”
Liam read it in my face before I finished. He clapped my back once, hard. “Go. We've got this.”
I nodded, already scanning the crowd for Riley. Found her across the lawn, watching us. I crossed to her, that same tight feeling in my chest, urgency clawing at me to move, to go, to get there.
“Hey.” I tried to smile. It probably didn't land. “I have to take off. I'm really sorry.”
“Everything okay?”
I slowed. Not enough to stop, but enough to give myself away. My jaw tightened. I scrubbed a hand over the back of my neck, breath shallow, the words not wanting to come out.
“Grace.” Just her name, low and rough. Then a pause. “Something happened.”
That was all I could manage before urgency pushed past restraint.
Riley didn't ask for details. She just stepped aside, clearing my path, meeting my eyes once and holding them steady.
I nodded once—sharp, grateful—and turned away.
My stride quickened with every step. By the time I reached my truck, I was practically running. The engine roared to life. Gravel sprayed behind me as I tore down the driveway, dust kicking up in my wake.
Whatever was happening with Grace, she needed me.
The drive was fifteen minutes. It felt like fifteen hours.
My hands gripped the wheel, knuckles white. The truck's heater pumped warm air, but I couldn't shake the chill that had settled into my bones. My palms were slick with sweat. I wiped them on my dress pants, one at a time, keeping my eyes on the road.
The smell of wildflowers from the wedding clung to my suit.
Pollen and something sweet—the scent of other people's happiness.
My phone sat on the passenger seat, silent now.
I kept glancing at it, half expecting Grace to call back and tell me she was fine, she'd overreacted, and I should go back to the party.
She didn't call.
I thought about her. My oldest friend. The person who'd been a constant since we were in high school, when she was the quiet girl who worked weekends at her grandmother's B&B, and I was the kid whose dad had just died in a warehouse fire.
She'd brought me cinnamon rolls the week after the funeral and sat with me in silence because she understood that sometimes words were worse than useless.
Sixteen years of Saturday breakfasts. All those years of friendship—helping her with repairs around the B&B, drinking her too-sweet coffee, watching her pour herself into that place the way Gran had taught her. Sixteen years of friendship, steady and uncomplicated.
I remembered the night she told me about Marcus. We were twenty, maybe twenty-one. She'd met him at some college event, and when she talked about him, her whole face changed. Lit up in a way I'd never seen before. He was smart, she said. Ambitious. He had plans. He saw a future.
I'd been happy for her. Genuinely happy. Grace deserved someone who made her light up like that.
And for a while, Marcus seemed like the right guy. He drove up on weekends, charmed her grandmother, and talked about building a life together. When he proposed two years ago, I shook his hand and meant it when I said congratulations.
But somewhere along the way, the light in Grace's face had dimmed.
The visits got shorter. The calls got less frequent.
Marcus started talking about the B&B like it was an obstacle instead of her legacy.
And Grace started shrinking, bit by bit, making herself smaller to fit into the space he left for her.
And now Marcus had left.
I thought about him. The way he looked at Grace like she was a problem to be optimized.
The way he talked about the B&B like it was a burden instead of her heart made physical.
The way he'd scrolled through his phone while she served him breakfast, not even bothering to look up.
The way he'd called me a friend of Grace's, like I was her baggage and not someone who mattered.
Anger rose hot and sharp in my chest. I welcomed it. Anger was better than the fear creeping in underneath—the fear that this would be bad, that Marcus had hurt her in ways I couldn't fix.
I pressed the accelerator harder.
The road curved through farmland, past fields I couldn't see in the dark. The headlights carved a narrow tunnel through the night, everything beyond it black and shapeless. I wondered if Grace was sitting in the dark too. I wondered how long she'd been alone.
The B&B appeared around the final bend. A white Victorian, wraparound porch—the house that had stood for a hundred years and seen everything. It looked the same as always.
But something felt wrong.
Too quiet. Too still. Only one light on, the kitchen window glowing yellow against the night.
I pulled into the driveway and killed the engine. I was out of the truck before the dust settled, crossing the yard in long strides.
I let myself in through the kitchen door. The hinges creaked the way they always did, announcing my arrival to an empty room.
Except the room wasn't empty.
Grace sat on the floor, her back against the cabinets, knees pulled up to her chest. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. Her eyes were red, swollen, staring at nothing.
She didn't look up when I came in.
I didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. I crossed the kitchen, lowered myself to the floor beside her, and sat.
Close enough that our shoulders touched. Close enough that she could feel I was there.
The kitchen was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the tick of the old clock above the stove—the same clock that had been there since her grandmother's time.
The same kitchen where I'd eaten a thousand Saturday breakfasts.
The same floor where Grace had probably learned to walk, to bake, to become the person she was.
“Eleven years,” she said finally. Her voice was flat and hollow. “He left for someone he's known for three months.”
Something hot flared in my chest. Eleven years, and he'd thrown it away for someone he barely knew.
I wanted to find him, drag him back here, make him look at what he'd done.
Make him see her sitting on this floor, shaking, alone.
But that wouldn't help. Nothing I could say would help. So I just stayed.
Her hands were shaking. I noticed that—the fine tremor in her fingers, the way she kept pressing them against her knees like she was trying to hold herself together.
“I knew,” she said. “Some part of me knew. Since she showed up. Maybe before that. I just didn't want to see it.”
I bit down on the anger and stayed quiet. She didn't need my rage right now. She needed someone to sit with her in the wreckage. So I pressed my shoulder against hers and let her talk—or not talk—whatever she needed.
I couldn't take the pain away. Couldn't rewind the years she'd lost on someone who didn't deserve them. But I could sit here on this cold kitchen floor for as long as she needed me to. It would have to do.
She leaned her head against my shoulder. A small surrender. The kind you only make when you're too tired to hold yourself up alone.
I stayed still and let her rest there.
We sat on the kitchen floor until my legs went numb and the light outside faded from dusk to full dark.
Grace didn't cry again. Just breathed. In and out. In and out. Like she was learning how to do it all over again.
Somewhere around midnight, she fell asleep against my shoulder. I didn't move. Didn't want to wake her. Just sat there in the dark kitchen, listening to her breathe, watching the shadows shift across the walls.
I stayed because leaving felt wrong, because sixteen years of friendship meant something.
And because leaving wasn’t an option.