Marry Me By Midnight

Chapter 3: The Toast

The rehearsal dinner should have been easy. Ivy had run enough of them to have the choreography memorized — cocktail hour, seating, toasts in the right order, dessert timed to the minute so nobody’s speech ran long over melting cake. It was the part of the job she was best at, the part where nothing was supposed to go wrong.

She hadn’t planned for Grant’s toast to undo her in front of forty people.

“I’ve known my brother Michael for thirty-one years,” Grant said, glass raised, tie slightly loosened, looking entirely too comfortable in front of a room. “And in that time, I’ve watched him make exactly one good decision that wasn’t about work. That decision is standing next to him right now.”

A ripple of laughter, Sophie’s hand pressed to her chest, Michael grinning like a man who knew exactly how lucky he’d gotten. Ivy, watching from her post near the kitchen doors, allowed herself to relax for the first time all evening. This was the easy part — sincere, funny, exactly what a toast should be.

Then Grant’s eyes found hers across the room, just for a second, and his voice shifted into something quieter.

“I used to think love at first sight was something people said because ‘we had a nice conversation and then things got complicated’ doesn’t fit on a wedding card.” A few knowing chuckles, guests assuming he meant Michael and Sophie’s story, the one where they’d met at a mutual friend’s barbecue and known within a month. “But I’ve started to reconsider that. Sometimes you meet someone for one night, under circumstances you don’t expect, and it turns out one night isn’t nearly long enough to be done thinking about them.”

Ivy’s stomach dropped straight through the floor.

He wasn’t looking at her anymore — had turned back to Michael and Sophie, raised his glass properly, finished the toast with something appropriately sentimental about family and second chances that made half the room reach for tissues. Nobody but Ivy seemed to notice the detour in the middle. Nobody but Ivy understood exactly which one night he meant.

She made it through the applause, through the clinking glasses, through twenty solid minutes of directing photographers and reseating a table that had gotten its place cards confused, before Grant found her by the gift table, ostensibly checking on centerpiece arrangements that did not need checking.

“That was reckless,” she said, not looking up from the seating chart she didn’t need to be studying.

“It was one line. Nobody caught it.”

“I caught it.”

“You were supposed to.” He said it simply, without apology, and when she finally looked up at him his expression wasn’t teasing anymore — it was something more careful, more exposed than she’d seen from him since the rehearsal. “I know we agreed. Professional. Distant. I’ve been trying, Ivy. I have. But I stood up in front of a room and talked about my brother finding the person he wasn’t looking for, and all I could think about was you standing four feet away, and I couldn’t get through it without at least — I don’t know. Saying something. Even if only you understood it.”

“Grant—”

“I’m not asking you for anything.” He held up a hand, gentle, like he was talking someone down from a ledge — or maybe talking himself down. “I know the deal. No names, no strings, Vegas stays in Vegas. I’m just telling you it didn’t stay there. Not for me.”

The kitchen doors swung open behind them, a server hauling out the dessert cart, and the moment cracked open to the ordinary noise of the reception again — silverware, laughter, someone’s aunt requesting a slower song. Ivy became aware, all at once, of how close they were standing, of the fact that her clipboard had gone slack in her hand somewhere in the last thirty seconds.

“I have four more days of this,” she said finally, quieter than she meant to. “I need you to not say things like that where anyone could hear.”

“Understood.” He stepped back, giving her the space she’d asked for, though something in his face suggested he’d heard the part she hadn’t said — that she wasn’t objecting to the sentiment, only the timing, the audience, the enormous inconvenience of it all. “For what it’s worth — I meant every word. I just should’ve saved it for somewhere with fewer witnesses.”

He walked back toward the head table before she could answer, leaving her standing by a gift table stacked with envelopes and champagne flutes, heart going harder than any wedding logistics problem had ever managed to make it go.

Four more days. She’d told herself six days was survivable. She was no longer entirely sure four was.