The Merger Clause

Chapter Eight: Wedding Plans, War Plans

Marcus Vane's health took a sharp turn eleven days before the wedding, and the change in urgency rippled through both families like a struck bell.

"He's asking to move the date up," Sebastian said, standing in Wren's kitchen at ten at night, tie gone, looking more exhausted than she'd ever seen him. "The doctors think he has weeks, not months. He wants to see it happen while he still can."

"Are you asking me, or telling me?"

"Asking." He said it like the word cost him something. "I know I've spent this entire process telling you things. I'm trying not to do that anymore."

She studied him in the low kitchen light, this man who'd spent a decade building armor and was, apparently, capable of taking pieces of it off when it actually mattered. "Move it up. If it means he gets to see it, move it up."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. I haven't picked a dress."

That earned her the real smile again, quick and unguarded. "I have faith in your ability to handle logistics under pressure. You've handled worse this month."

"Have I?"

"You've handled me," he said, quieter now, the space between them shrinking without either of them quite deciding to close it. "I know I haven't made this easy."

"No. You haven't."

"For what it's worth, none of it was ever about you specifically. The coldness. It was about surviving a house that didn't have room for anything soft in it." He was close enough now that she could see the exhaustion under his eyes, the real toll the last weeks had taken. "You make me want to put some of it down. That terrifies me more than the company reverting ever did."

"Sebastian."

"I know I have no right to say that. Not with everything unresolved. Not with my brother's face at that party still living somewhere in your expression whenever his name comes up." His voice had gone rough, honest in a way she hadn't heard from him before. "I'm saying it anyway, because we're getting married in eleven days and I'd rather you know the truth of what this is for me than let you walk into it thinking it's only business."

The kitchen felt very small suddenly, the space between them charged with everything unsaid for ten years and everything unsaid for the last several weeks besides. "What is it, then? If it's not only business?"

"I don't know yet," he admitted. "I know I think about you when I'm not supposed to. I know I've read that contract forty times looking for a version where you might actually want to be there when the ink dries."

"Sebastian."

"Tell me to stop and I will."

She didn't tell him to stop. She closed the last of the distance instead, and when his mouth found hers it wasn't careful or calculated the way everything else about him tended to be. It was hungry, unguarded, ten years and several weeks of tension breaking open at once, his hands framing her face like she was something he'd been afraid to want and had stopped being able to resist wanting anyway.

She kissed him back with everything she'd been holding down since the terrace, since the office, since the moment ten years ago she hadn't let herself remember until this exact second, and when they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, his forehead resting against hers, neither of them said anything for a long moment.

"That complicates things," Sebastian said finally, low, rough.

"Yes," Wren agreed. "It does."

Neither of them moved away.