Rival Hearts

Chapter Nine: Run

The Voss estate looked different in daylight than it had in my imagination — ivy climbing one stone wall, a gardener trimming hedges near the front gate who nodded politely as I passed, nothing about it resembling the enemy fortress I had built in my head over the past week. I had come to drop off the finalized guest list, a task simple enough that I could have sent it by courier, except my mother insisted some things needed a personal touch, and I hadn't had the energy to argue with her about one more decision this week.

Elena answered the door and led me through the house toward what she called the east study, apologizing that Kael was somewhere on the property and she would have someone track him down. I told her not to bother, that I would wait, and settled into a hallway chair beneath a row of family portraits that watched me with the same guarded expression I imagined I wore most days now.

I heard the voices before I saw anyone. A door stood cracked open at the end of the hall, and Kael's voice carried through it, low and tight in a way I hadn't heard from him before — not the composed, careful tone he used with me, but something rawer, closer to the edge.

"I'm not doing this," he said. "I can't just stand there and marry someone I don't even—"

"Then don't." That was Theo, blunt as ever from what little I knew of him. "Nobody's chaining you to that altar, man. You get in a car, you go, and by the time anyone figures out where, it's done. Your dad can be furious from a distance same as he can up close."

"It's not that simple."

"It is exactly that simple." Marcus's voice now, quieter but no less certain. "You've spent your whole life doing what your father wants. This is the first thing he's asked that actually ruins your life, not just your weekend. You're allowed to say no to that."

I stood very still in the hallway, my heart doing something uneven and fast, the guest list folder suddenly heavy in my hands.

"And go where?" Kael's voice had dropped further, quieter, almost like he was asking himself as much as them. "I don't have a life outside this family. Everything I have, everything I've built, it's all tied to the company, to my father's name. If I run, I lose all of it."

"You lose money," Theo said. "That's different from losing your life."

"Easy for you to say."

"Kael." Marcus again, gentler this time. "We're not saying it's simple. We're saying you have three days left before this becomes permanent, and if there's any part of you that isn't ready for that, now's the time to figure it out. Not after."

Silence stretched long enough that I almost turned to leave, some instinct telling me I had already heard more than I was meant to. Then Kael spoke again, his voice gone flatter, more resigned than it had been a moment before.

"I keep thinking about just getting in the car," he said. "Driving until I don't recognize the roads anymore. Just for an hour, just to feel like I made one choice this week that was actually mine."

"So do it," Theo said. "We'll cover for you. Say you needed air."

There was another long pause, and I heard the scrape of a chair, footsteps moving closer to the door I was standing beside. My pulse spiked, some instinct telling me to move, to look busy, to not be caught eavesdropping on a conversation this raw. I stepped back toward the portraits just as the door opened fully, and Kael stopped short in the doorway, clearly not expecting to find me there.

"Wren." Surprise crossed his face first, quick and unguarded, before he visibly reached for composure that didn't quite land. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Not long." The lie came easily, though I wasn't entirely sure why I told it. "Your mother let me in. I have the guest list."

Behind him, Marcus and Theo had gone quiet, both of them watching me with the careful blankness of men who had no idea how much I had actually heard.

"Right. The guest list." Kael took the folder from me, not quite meeting my eyes, his knuckles a little too tight around the edge of it. "Thank you."

"Everything okay?" I asked, watching his face for whatever he might let slip if I gave him the opening.

"Fine." The word came too fast, too clipped. "Just going over some last-minute details."

"Sounded like more than that."

His eyes went wary for half a second, and for a moment I thought he might actually tell me the truth — that three days from now he was supposed to marry me, and some part of him had spent the last ten minutes talking himself out of disappearing instead. He didn't say any of it. He just held my gaze a beat too long and shook his head, jaw set, whatever he was thinking locked well behind it.

"It's nothing," he said. "Wedding stress. I imagine you understand."

I didn't push. I wasn't sure why — maybe because some part of me understood exactly what he wasn't saying, having spent the last week fighting the same impulse myself, wanting to run from a life that had been decided for me without my consent. Maybe because pushing would have meant admitting how much it unsettled me, imagining him gone, imagining standing at that altar in three days with no one on the other side of it at all.

"I understand," I said instead, and left it there.

He walked me to the door himself, quiet the entire way, and at the threshold he paused like he wanted to say something else, his jaw working around words he ultimately swallowed. I told myself it didn't matter. I told myself whatever almost happened in that study wasn't my business, that in three days none of this would matter anyway, that a man who almost ran and didn't was no different from a man who never considered it at all.

I didn't quite believe myself. Not then, and not on the drive home, where I found myself replaying his voice through that half-open door, over and over, wondering exactly how close I had come to standing at an altar meant for two people, waiting for someone who was never going to show.

By the time I pulled into my own driveway, the sun had dropped low enough to throw long orange bars across the hedges, and I sat in the car for a full minute before I could make myself go inside. Three days. Three days to plan a wedding, and I still didn't know which version of him would actually show up to it — the man who kept his word out of duty, or the man who had spent ten minutes in a study convincing himself to disappear.

I thought about calling Ivy, spilling the whole thing, letting someone else tell me whether I was overreacting. I didn't. Some part of me wasn't ready to say it out loud yet, wasn't ready to admit how much it had rattled me, imagining him gone before I had even had the chance to decide what I actually wanted from any of this. I sat with it instead, alone, the way I seemed to be sitting with most things lately, and told myself three days was enough time to figure out how to feel about a man who had almost left before I ever really got to know him.

It wasn't enough time. It never would have been.