CHAPTER 10 #2
"She'll have more feelings if I let you walk away."
Something broke across her face — not sadness, not relief, something harder to name. The wall she'd been holding since yesterday cracked, and underneath it she looked exactly the way she'd looked the first night at the Wisteria. Exposed. Bright. Terrified.
"I don't want you to tell her today," she said. "I want us to tell her. Together. Not in the middle of Willa's cocktail hour."
"Okay."
"But I need this to actually be real. Not the performance. Not the version. The actual thing where we chose it."
"I chose it."
"When?"
"The porch. The laugh. Probably before that."
She looked at me, and the defensive brightness she'd been running on all week was gone, and what was underneath it was steadier than I'd expected. Not fragile. Not falling apart. Just open.
"I'm going to kiss you now," she said, "and it's not going to be tactical."
"Good."
She stepped in, put her hand on my chest the way she'd done at the Wisteria — palm flat, fingers spread — and kissed me.
Not for the room. Not for the story. Not to survive anything.
She kissed me the way I'd wanted her to kiss me since the first night, without the performance underneath it, without the exit strategy behind her eyes.
Her mouth was warm, and her free hand came up to the back of my neck, and I pulled her in with one arm around her waist and felt her whole body settle against mine like something clicking into place.
When we pulled apart, Theo was standing at the corner of the tent with his camera down, looking like he'd just walked into something he hadn't expected and wasn't sure whether to back up or commit.
"Photos," he said. "Five minutes ago. Willa sent me." He looked between us. "Should I — is this — are you guys okay?"
"We're good," Nora said. Her hand was still on my chest.
"You're really good," Theo said, and then turned around, and I watched him nearly walk into Mae, who had apparently been right behind him.
Mae looked at me. Looked at Nora. Looked at Nora's hand on my shirt and my arm still around her waist and the specific quality of what was happening between us.
"Finally," she said.
"We're coming," I said.
"Take your time. Willa can wait thirty more seconds. She's been waiting for this all week."
She grabbed Theo's arm and steered him back toward the meadow, and I could hear her saying something to him I couldn't quite catch, and I could hear his laugh in response — quick, surprised, warmer than professional.
Nora looked up at me. "Everyone is going to know."
"They already think they know."
"They think they know the bonfire version. This is different."
"Better."
She straightened my collar. A reflex, the same smoothing gesture she did when she was nervous, except now she was doing it to me, and she didn't stop herself.
"We should go," she said. "My sister's going to kill me."
"Probably."
Before we went back around the tent, she caught my wrist.
"No," she said. "Not later. Not after everyone leaves. If we're doing this for real, then we stop hiding it for real too."
I understood what she meant a second before she moved.
Donna and Nora's mother were near the edge of the tent, talking to one of Eli's aunts while the photographer reorganized cousins for family portraits. Nora walked straight to them. I stayed at her side.
"Mom. Donna," Nora said.
Both women turned. Donna's smile came first. Her mother's concern was already there.
"Before this gets any bigger," Nora said, and her voice was steady enough that I knew how hard she was holding it, "we need to tell you one thing clearly. It did not start the way it looked."
The two mothers went still.
Nora took one breath. "The kiss at the Wisteria wasn't some secret relationship finally going public. I panicked. Tyler had just shown up with a date, everyone was looking at me, and I kissed Beckett because I needed the room to stop seeing me fall apart."
Donna's eyes widened. Nora's mother closed hers briefly, like a woman discovering several plot points at once and hating none of them enough to interrupt.
I stepped in before Nora could carry the whole thing alone. "I went along with it," I said. "At first because it was easier than unwinding it in public. After that because it stopped being fake faster than either of us knew how to explain."
Donna looked between us. "So the beginning was a mess."
"Yes," Nora said.
"And now?" Donna asked.
"Now it's real," I said.
No one spoke for a beat.
Then Nora's mother let out a breath through her nose. "Well," she said, "that is unfortunately very on brand for this family."
Donna stared at her. Then at us. Then she put one hand to her chest and shook her head once, slow and disbelieving.
"I am annoyed," she said. "Just so we're all clear."
"That's fair," Nora said immediately.
"But I am not annoyed that it's real." Donna pointed a finger at me. "You and I are going to discuss your standards for communication after the wedding."
"Yes, ma'am."
That got a laugh out of Nora's mother. Donna tried not to smile and failed.
"After the wedding," she said again. "Not one minute before. Today is for Willa."
"Agreed," Nora said.
Donna took her hand then, squeezed it once, and the look she gave her wasn't untouched by hurt, but it wasn't broken either. It was something better than that. Adjusted. Honest.
There. That was the public version changed. Not erased. Not scrubbed clean. Just made true enough to stand on.
Theo called for the wedding party. Mae, who had absolutely heard enough to weaponize it later, only lifted her brows at us and said, "Photos. Move."
The photos happened. The toasts happened.
The reception started under the tent with string lights and the last gold light of the day stretching across the meadow.
I sat next to Nora at the head table and her knee pressed against mine under the tablecloth, and this time it was just contact. Just her choosing to be close.
When the dancing started and Eli spun Willa into the center of the floor, Nora leaned into my shoulder and said, "For the record, the coffee mug thing really was the moment for me."
"I know."
"You don't know. You guessed."
"I measured."
She laughed — real and unguarded, the laugh I'd heard through the workshop wall — and three tables of wedding guests turned to look, and I didn't care, and for the first time all week, neither did she.