Chapter 34 #2
Joel groans under his breath and mutters, “Shit.”
She crosses her arms. “You said you were on your way to the table, remember?”
“I was ,” he insists, looking not even a little guilty.
She narrows her eyes. “Sure.”
Then she spots Sawyer and her whole face lights up.
“Oh my god , Sawyer!” she says, wrapping him in a hug.
He lets out a laugh and hugs her back. “Hi, Nova.”
She pulls back, looking at him like she could squeeze his face. “It’s been forever! And you’re still stupidly good-looking. Ugh.”
Then her eyes flick to me, and she practically beams. “And you must be Wren!”
Before I can say anything—before I can even prepare for it—she throws her arms around me.
I freeze—completely short-circuit. My arms hang there, useless, while she hugs me, and it takes me a beat too long to react. When I finally move, it’s more of an awkward pat than a proper hug, and my eyes flick to Sawyer.
He’s already watching, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth, like he’s enjoying this a little too much. I narrow my eyes at him.
“Um…hi?” I manage.
Nova pulls away, completely unfazed. “It’s so good to finally meet you in person!”
Joel wraps an arm around her waist and gives me a look that’s both apologetic and not. “My wife’s a hugger. Sorry.”
Nova rolls her eyes like she’s never been sorry for anything in her life, which somehow makes me laugh.
She grins again. “I’ve heard so much about you. It’s good to put a name to a face.”
Then she shakes her head and adds, “We were so close to making it to your wedding, but our daughter had other plans and decided to be born the night before. She has terrible timing, honestly.”
I blink at her, trying not to smile too hard.
She’s clearly a talker—one of those people who fills every gap in conversation without ever making it feel forced. Who can hug a stranger and make it feel like you’ve been friends since kindergarten. Who probably makes friends at the grocery store and remembers their birthdays.
She’s the opposite of me in every way, and I kind of already love her for it.
Nova’s eyes shift from me to Sawyer, then back again, and she tilts her head like she’s putting the final piece into a puzzle.
“You two make sense,” she says, her voice matter-of-fact. “Like offensively good-looking sense. It’s honestly a little unfair.”
Before I can respond—or figure out if I’m supposed to say thank you—she loops her arm through mine like we’ve been doing this for years.
“I’m stealing your wife!” she calls back over her shoulder.
I glance at Sawyer, panic blooming in my chest. He just grins and winks.
Asshole.
Nova pulls me through the room, knowing exactly where she’s going, weaving between tables and servers. She finally stops at one of the front tables—close enough to the dance floor to see the band, but far enough to not get roped into anything right away.
The table is stunning. Creamy linens with tiny gold beads stitched into the borders. Low glass vases filled with floating candles and pale roses. Name cards in perfect script tucked into little gold holders. Even the plates look expensive, ones that seem like belong behind glass, not under food.
Joel and Nova’s cards are right next to ours. Of course.
Nova sinks into the chair next to mine and looks around the ballroom. “God, this is gorgeous,” she says, resting her chin on her hand. “I mean, don’t get me wrong—I’m here for the animals, and for Joel, of course—but I’m really here for this bread basket.”
I laugh before I can stop myself.
She keeps talking—about the florals, and the band, and how last year’s gala had these weird fish appetizers that made Joel gag—but then she cuts herself off mid-sentence and turns toward me.
“Sorry,” she says, letting out a breath. “I’m a yapper. I want to know about you .”
My fingers find the edge of the thick cloth napkin in my lap, tracing the seam. I shrug, trying not to look as awkward as I feel. “What do you want to know?”
She leans in. “Everything. Sawyer says you train horses?”
I nod. “Yeah. I run a training program out of my family’s ranch.
Mostly high-performance horses—off-track Thoroughbreds, sometimes warmbloods.
A few jumpers, a few dressage prospects.
I do rehab work too, help retrain them for second careers.
And I teach lessons in the afternoons—mostly kids and teenagers. ”
Nova blinks at me like I just told her I casually lasso stars for a living. “Wait. So you’re hot and you train horses and you teach kids? Are you going to leave anything for the rest of us? Have you ever trained for, like…famous people?”
I huff out a laugh and lift a shoulder. “A few.”
Her jaw drops. “Okay, so you’re also a boss-ass bitch. What else?”
She tucks a loose curl behind her ear and I grin despite myself.
“I wouldn’t really say that.”
“Well, you should,” she says, matter-of-fact, just as a waiter glides past our table with a tray of champagne. “Because that’s what you are.”
I let her words sit with me for a second. It’s not something I’m used to hearing. And definitely not the kind of thing I’m used to believing. But Nova says it so easily, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
She grabs champagne from the tray and looks at me expectantly, so I follow suit.
She holds her flute high in the air. “To bad bitches everywhere—may we raise horses and maybe a little hell.”
I snort, clinking my glass to hers. “That’s oddly motivational.”
“Yeah, well,” she says, shrugging as she takes a sip. “I’m nothing if not motivational.”
I take a sip of the champagne, just to have something to do with my hands. It’s dry and a little sweet. Fancy. Definitely not boxed.
“So what do you do?” I ask, shifting slightly in my seat so I can face her better.
Nova crosses one leg over the other, smooth and confident. “I’m an event planner. Weddings, mostly. Some fundraisers, the occasional bat mitzvah. Basically, if it requires place cards and fairy lights, I’ve probably done it.”
I nod, because of course she is. It fits her—her presence, the way she somehow manages to make every interaction feel important, like she’s already figured out the emotional temperature of the room and adjusted accordingly.
She’s one of those people who knows exactly where the dessert table should go to keep a bride’s mother-in-law from spiraling. You can just tell.
“And you seriously just had a baby?” I ask, motioning toward her. “Because you look…incredible.”
She grins. “Pilates. Religiously. All the way through my third trimester. Swear it’s the only reason I don’t walk like I just got off a bucking bronco.”
I chuckle. “Do you have a picture of her?”
She lights up and pulls out her phone without hesitation.
“Do I have a picture of her? Wren. My entire camera roll is her sleeping. Or blinking. Or just…existing, really.” She hands me her phone and shows me a photo of a newborn lying on a cream blanket in a ruffled pink onesie, her little fists curled tight near her cheeks, her dark hair thick and shiny.
Her eyes are closed and her lips in that soft, instinctive pout babies always seem to have.
“That’s our Charlotte. We call her Lottie,” she says softly, proud in a way that makes me ache.
“She’s beautiful,” I say, handing her phone back.
“She better be. I had to push all eight pounds and eleven ounces of her out of me.”
That makes me laugh again, and she grins like she’s proud of that, too.
Then she tilts her head. “Do you have any kids?”
I shake my head and try to smile like it’s nothing. “No kids.”
“Do you and Sawyer want them? You know. Down the line?”
I hesitate—just for a second—but she catches it.
She holds up a hand. “That’s personal. You don’t have to answer that.”
Her voice softens, but her eyes stay steady. “Some women don’t want kids. And that’s okay. The world makes it feel like we’re supposed to, like we’re failing some unspoken test if we don’t hand over our bodies and our lives just because we can. It’s bullshit.”
She says it so plainly, but hearing it out loud still makes something knot up in my chest.
“You get to choose the life you want,” she adds, taking a sip of champagne. “And it doesn’t have to involve diapers or daycare unless you say so.”
I nod, my fingers curling tighter around the stem of my glass. “We’re just enjoying being aunt and uncle for now.”
The words slip out smoother than they should for something I’ve never actually said out loud. They sound like an excuse I’ve rehearsed in my head enough times to almost believe it myself. Even if it still lands heavy in my chest, even if part of me hates how easily it covers the truth.
But Nova doesn’t press, and I’m grateful.
Because the real answer—the one that lives somewhere between grief and acceptance—doesn’t belong here.
Not at a table glowing with candlelight and laughter, with champagne flutes catching gold and strangers leaning in like old friends.
Some truths are too sharp for soft places.
Nova nods like she understands anyway. “Honestly? Good answer.”
And just like that, the conversation shifts. Something about Lottie smiling for the first time yesterday—probably gas, but Nova’s choosing to believe otherwise. I let her words fill the air between us and lean back in my chair.
Shit. Does Sawyer want kids?
I haven’t asked. We haven’t talked about what comes next.
We’ve been too busy navigating the mess we’re already in—figuring out how to share a last name, a bed, a life that wasn’t supposed to be real but is slowly turning real in every sense of the word.
We’re still pretending, technically. But every time he touches me, it feels a little less like make-believe and a little more like something I won’t be able to survive losing.
And if this keeps going—if we keep going—what happens when we get to the part where we have to talk about the future? About babies and forever and everything I can’t promise him?