Marry Me By Midnight

Chapter 12: The Day Before

The morning of the day before the wedding arrived with a schedule so packed that Ivy barely had time to feel afraid, which was, she decided by ten a.m., probably the only reason she was still functioning.

Final walkthrough at the venue. Seating chart crisis — two cousins who apparently hadn’t spoken in six years, both placed at table four. A flower delivery correction after half the centerpieces arrived in the wrong shade of blush. Ivy moved through it all with the brisk, focused competence that had built her entire career, grateful, for once, for a day too busy to leave room for panic.

Grant found her in a quiet corner of the ballroom just after noon, holding two coffees — hers decaf, unprompted, the way he’d started doing without being asked.

“You look like you’re holding this whole wedding together with tape and stubbornness,” he said.

“That’s the job description.” She took the coffee gratefully. “How are you not falling apart? You’ve got your brother’s rehearsal dinner toast still ringing in everyone’s ears and a room full of people half-convinced there’s something going on with the maid of honor.”

“I’m falling apart. I’m just doing it quietly, in between best man duties.” He glanced around, confirming the room’s few remaining stragglers were out of earshot, then lowered his voice. “I talked to my mother this morning.”

Ivy’s stomach dropped. “About us?”

“No. About nothing, on purpose. I wanted to see if the rumor had reached her yet.” He shook his head. “It hasn’t. Katie’s version fizzled out somewhere around yesterday afternoon, mostly because nothing else happened to feed it. We got lucky.”

“We got careful,” Ivy said. “There’s a difference, and I don’t want to confuse the two, because careful runs out eventually.”

“I know.” He studied her, something softening in his face despite the exhaustion underneath it. “One more day, Ivy. Tomorrow your sister gets married, and after that, whatever we tell people, we tell them on our own timeline. Not because someone in a florist’s back room got a lucky look.”

She let herself lean into him for exactly three seconds — long enough to steal the comfort, short enough that no one glancing in would think anything of it — before stepping back and reclaiming her professional posture, seating chart in hand.

“I need to go referee the cousins at table four,” she said.

“Go referee the cousins.” He caught her hand briefly before releasing it, one last unhurried moment. “I’ll be here. Tomorrow, all of it — the ceremony, the reception, your sister’s whole happy ending — that’s the thing we get to actually watch, instead of just surviving.”

She believed him, mostly. She let the belief carry her through the rest of the afternoon — through the rehearsal run-through, through Sophie’s last-minute meltdown over shoe comfort, through the quiet moment at sundown when the empty ceremony space, chairs set but unfilled, looked for the first time like something that might actually, improbably, work out for everyone involved.

That night, alone in her hotel room, Ivy sat on the edge of the bed with her hand resting on the very slight, very new curve of her stomach, and allowed herself, for the first time all week, to imagine a version of the story that ended well for her too — not just for Sophie, not just survived, but hers, real, out in the open.

Tomorrow was the wedding.

After tomorrow, she thought, there’s nothing left to hide from.

She didn’t yet know how wrong that particular thought would turn out to be.