Marry Me By Midnight

Chapter 8: The Ask

By day three, the wedding machine had fully taken over — a blur of tastings, tuxedo fittings, and a rehearsal for the rehearsal that Sophie insisted was necessary. Ivy ran point on all of it, clipboard in hand, earpiece crackling with vendor updates, while somewhere in her periphery Grant handled his own assigned chaos: groomsmen logistics, his brother’s rising pre-wedding nerves, a best man speech he swore he’d already rewritten twice.

They found each other in stolen minutes. A hallway between the cake tasting and the seating chart meeting. The back stairwell during the sound check. Nothing scandalous — just five minutes here, ten there, hands finding each other’s for exactly as long as it took to remember they weren’t imagining this.

It was during one of those stolen minutes, tucked into the florist’s supply room while Sophie argued with the DJ about first-dance songs down the hall, that Grant finally said what had clearly been building since the fountain.

“I want to ask you something, and I need you to actually think about it instead of just saying whatever gets us out of this closet fastest.”

Ivy huffed a laugh despite herself. “Okay.”

“After the wedding — I don’t mean married, I don’t mean anything that sounds like I’m trying to solve this with a ring, I promise—” He exhaled, visibly recalibrating. “I mean I don’t want the plan to be ‘text sometimes and split holidays.’ I want to actually do this. Together. Same city, same house eventually, whatever that looks like. I don’t know the shape of it yet. But I know I don’t want to find out from a distance.”

She stared at him, aware of the buckets of ranunculus crowding her peripheral vision, aware that this was possibly the least romantic room in the building for a conversation like this, and aware, mostly, that she believed him.

“I live in Portland,” she said slowly. “You live in Chicago.”

“I know.”

“That’s not a small logistics problem.”

“I know that too.” He reached for her hand, careful, like he expected her to pull away and was bracing for it anyway. “I’m not asking you to solve it today. I’m asking if you want to solve it. With me. At all.”

Down the hall, the DJ argument escalated into something involving a playlist app and Sophie’s raised voice. Neither of them moved.

“Yes,” Ivy said finally. “I want to solve it with you.”

Grant’s whole face changed — some tension she hadn’t realized he was carrying easing out of his jaw, his shoulders. He didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to. He just laced his fingers through hers among the buckets of flowers meant for someone else’s wedding, and for the first time since Vegas, the future didn’t feel like something happening to her.

It felt like something she was choosing.

The supply room door swung open a second later — a florist’s assistant, arms full of eucalyptus, stopping short at the sight of them. Ivy and Grant broke apart fast, mumbling something about checking on table centerpieces, but the assistant’s knowing little smile followed them both out.

Two days closer to being caught. Ivy found she didn’t mind nearly as much as she should have.