Chapter 17
Early February
Kyla gripped the red pen until the bones of her hand pressed sharp against her skin. She hovered over the chart, blinked at the blur of names and Xs, and missed the first spread of ink.
What registered instead was the ache in her thumb and another hard gust rattling the window behind her, cold slipping in around the frame and settling deeper into the kitchen.
The overhead lights flattened everything.
The room looked chalky and tired, late afternoon pressed thin by weather and worry.
Papers covered the table from one end to the other.
Post-it stacks leaned against a half-crumbled muffin.
Old bills sat half-open beneath RSVP cards stamped with lipstick kisses.
Steam still rose from a mug gone untouched too long, the coffee inside edging metallic. Wind found some loose place beneath the eaves and set up a faint whine overhead.
She lowered the pen to Titus’s aunt’s name. Not for the first time. She had worried that row so much the paper had gone soft. Red lines crossed through it, then got scratched back out, then redrawn again. Mary Lou kept appearing in a messier hand each time.
This was the fourth chart. Or the sixth. Kyla pressed harder and felt the pen drag against the paper. The problem stayed the same. There was not enough room. Not for every relative. Not for every version of herself she was supposed to present.
Mary Lou had three possible tables and none of them worked. Table six put her beside Titus’s rodeo friends, which would leave her offended before supper ended.
Table eight stuck her beside the accountant who still called Kyla the “city chef” after months of free food and favors. Table ten was meant for special guests, which only meant the people who made Kyla talk too carefully.
She dragged the pen through Mary Lou again. The paper gave under her thumb with a rough little tear that cut all the way toward Uncle Hank.
Heat climbed the back of her neck. The quiet had started to feel hostile. Even the kitchen clock sounded too pointed. She had woken to one new email chain, her mother’s latest suggestions, and three voicemails from a co-op vendor who hid little knives inside every polite sentence.
Her socks were thick wool, but the floor still leeched cold into her feet. She had forgotten the baseboard heater again and could not make herself get up to fix it.
The wedding was seven weeks out. Seven weeks. One more person with advice about compromise and she was liable to staple this chart to their forehead.
A slab of snow slipped down the outside pane and pulled her attention to the yard. White sat high against the glass. The picnic table had nearly vanished under it. Her boots from yesterday’s run to the stock co-op sat half-frozen by the back step.
Her eyes burned from tracking the same names over and over. The ache at her temples kept time with the changing pitch of the wind. She drew in a slow breath, trying to ease the lock in her jaw. The air snagged halfway down.
There were only so many versions of herself she could perform in one day. Fiancée. Chef. Daughter. Event planner. The only Black woman in most of the rooms that mattered. Her father’s favorite disappointment.
She straightened from the table. Her back had curved over the chart so long it protested the movement. She had spent too many years under bright kitchen lights and apartment windows that never shut right to become the woman who folded under scrutiny.
Still, she stabbed Mary Lou one more time. The pen split the page again and the red spread wider.
Across the room, her phone pinged. A new message climbed over the three she had not opened. Denver. The supper club wanted a short call about private bookings.
Her mouth tightened. It all came back to the chart. Proof she could keep every plate spinning. Proof she belonged here in Montana, not as a guest, not as an experiment, not as the ambitious outsider people tolerated while things ran smooth.
One wrong table, one weak menu, one mistake at the wrong moment, and somebody would start counting reasons she had never quite fit.
The pen hovered. She flexed her grip, the joints in her hand clicking, then drove one last line through Mary Lou. This time the page caved under the pressure. Kyla leaned back and let the pen drop.
Snow slid from the porch roof in one long sheet just before Titus came in through the back door. Kyla did not look up. His boots scraped across the mat, dull against the linoleum.
She wrapped both hands around her mug and braced herself for the scan she knew was coming.
Titus crossed the room. He stopped across from her and studied the chart like it might answer a question neither of them knew how to ask.
Red ink drew his attention first. The ruined chart.
Her stained thumb. The streak along the edge of the table.
He did not bother with a gentler entrance. “Maybe we should skip all this and elope.”
His tone came flat, not mocking, not even angry. Worse. Tired.
Her head snapped up. “Are you serious.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Oh, you said enough.” Her chair shoved back hard against the floor. “You walk in here, see me doing every damn thing, and that’s what you come up with.”
“Kyla.”
“No.” She shoved the papers flat again with the heel of her hand. “Maybe if you spent half as much time in this kitchen as you do hiding out in the barn, you’d know what’s left.”
His brows lifted. “Don’t start.”
The pen was in her hand before she noticed reaching for it. She threw it at him.
The plastic barrel struck the center of his coat and bounced away, spinning out across the tile before it rattled to a stop by his boot. A red smear marked the zipper.
Everything stopped. Titus blinked once. The look on his face broke for half a second. Surprise that she had crossed from sharp words into something physical. Shame arrived right behind her anger and settled there like a second skin.
His voice came low and controlled. “I’m not doing this like this. I’ll give you space.”
He gathered his hat and keys and left without slamming the door. Kyla stayed at the table with both palms flat against the wood, sweat slick under her hands. For the first time all winter, she looked at the snow outside and wished it would never melt.
Two days passed with the Victorian stripped nearly silent. Kyla kept her head down over invoices while the ring on her finger turned in a slow, resentful circle. If Titus stopped near her, she did not look up.
By the third morning, her stomach rolled. She washed her face, twisted her hair into a tight braid, and swiped on lipstick because routine felt easier than thought.
At nine, she stood in the wedding dress shop on Main Street.
The fitting alcove stood behind a curtain printed with wilted roses.
Kyla ducked behind it, one hand catching the dress at her chest where the zipper still hung open.
Satin and lace slid off one shoulder and left the long line of her back bare to the mirror.
She looked at herself. The dress did not look like her. It appeared too delicate, too willing to float where she had spent a lifetime insisting on edges.
The curtain shifted. Heavy boots moved over the carpet in a familiar rhythm.
Titus stepped inside and pulled the curtain closed. In one hand he carried a bouquet of wild flowers. His face looked rough from lack of sleep.
“Wait,” he said, voice low. “I need to say this first.”
He went down on both knees.
The flowers landed near her bare feet.
“I have been avoiding you,” he said. “All this wedding planning put too much on me and I shut down instead of talking to you about it. That was wrong.”
He touched her carefully, palms moving to the backs of her knees. His mouth pressed first to the inside of her knee. Then higher. Not rushed. A long, careful apology delivered without a single word more.
Kyla’s fingers found his hair. Every hard edge she had carried into the fitting room began to give way. He paused with his forehead against her for one breath, then looked up at her. He showed no shield and no pride, only himself.
“I am sorry,” he said again.
Kyla threaded her fingers tighter into his hair, not pulling, only keeping him there. Pressure built through her body. When release came, it broke through her so hard her knees nearly failed. Titus kept her upright with both hands.
Only then did he rest his cheek lightly against her thigh. Kyla looked down at him, chest still rising hard. The first smile she had managed in days started at one corner of her mouth.
Titus rose slowly. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Kyla adjusted the straps of her dress without bothering to zip it.
“I love you,” he said quietly. “We will get through the wedding plans together. No more avoiding it.”
She lowered her head to his shoulder. “I needed to hear that. I was avoiding it too. Every decision feels like it has to be perfect... I need you to check in with me every day. Do not let either of us shut down again.”
The zipper still hung open. His hand lifted once, then he drew it up slowly. When it was done, his hand remained there, resting between her shoulders.
After a while, they stepped out of the fitting room. Outside, the late winter air was sharp. Kyla tightened her coat and tucked closer to him. Their hands found each other on instinct.
When they reached the house, the kitchen met them with the same spread of paper and ink. Kyla sat in her chair. Titus set the kettle on the burner. Blue flame caught.
“You still stuck on Mary Lou,” he said.
Kyla let out a breath that almost counted as a laugh. “She’s been the problem all week.”
“What if she sits with your Denver folks,” he suggested. “They won’t care how she talks. They’ll just think she’s interesting.”
Kyla considered it. Her pen hovered, then tapped once against the page. “That might work.”
He pulled out the chair beside her and sat. She worked through the next few names, then set the pen down. “That’s as far as I’m going tonight.”
He reached for the chart and slid it a few inches away. “Then you’re done.”
She looked at him. “You’re not going to say we should just scrap the whole thing and elope?”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Thought about it.”
She huffed a small laugh. He took her hand, his thumb moving across her knuckles. “We’ll get through it.”
He stood and pulled her up with him. He reached for the light switch and dimmed the room to something softer. “Come on.”
She followed him down the short hall to the bedroom. This time, neither of them hesitated at the threshold.