Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Harper

The seamstress arrived on a Tuesday morning, arms full of fabric samples and a tape measure draped around her neck like a badge of authority.

“Mrs. Blackwood,” she said warmly, “I hear congratulations are in order.”

“Twice, apparently,” I said, smiling.

“The best kind of luck.” She unrolled a bolt of ivory silk across the table. “Now, tell me. What feeling are we going for?”

I hesitated. Nobody had asked me that before. Not about clothes, not about weddings, not about anything that mattered this much.

“Simple,” I said finally. “Something that doesn’t feel like it’s trying too hard.”

“Elegant, not extravagant.”

“Exactly.”

She nodded, already sketching something in a small notebook. I watched her work, feeling strangely emotional over fabric swatches, of all things. Maybe it was the reality of it finally settling in. A wedding. A real one. Flowers Lily had personally approved, a dress being designed just for me, an ocean view I still thought about most nights before falling asleep.

Sofia arrived halfway through the fitting, breezing in without knocking, the way she always did.

“Do not,” she announced, “let her talk you into anything with a train longer than three feet. Trust me.”

“Sofia.”

“I’m just saying. Practicality matters.”

The seamstress laughed, clearly amused, while I shot my best friend a warning look that did absolutely nothing to deter her.

“How’s married life treating you?” Sofia asked once the seamstress had stepped out to retrieve more samples.

“Good,” I said. “Really good, actually.”

“That’s suspicious. You’re smiling like an idiot.”

“I am not.”

“You absolutely are.” She dropped onto the chaise beside me, studying my face with the kind of scrutiny only a best friend could get away with. “So? Anything happen on that island besides sunburn and flower brochures?”

Heat crept up my neck. “What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean, Harper.”

I did know. And the honest answer was complicated. Nothing had happened, not in the way Sofia meant. We’d shared a bed the way we always did, tangled together out of habit more than anything else. But something underneath all of it had shifted. Something neither of us had acted on yet.

“It’s slow,” I said finally. “We’re taking it slow.”

Sofia raised an eyebrow. “Slow like actual patience, or slow like you’re both too scared to say the obvious thing out loud?”

“Maybe both.”

“Harper.”

“I know.” I sighed, leaning my head back against the chaise. “I just don’t want to rush it. Everything about this marriage started backwards. Scandal first, wedding second, actual feelings somewhere buried underneath all of it. I want this part to happen the right way for once.”

Sofia’s expression softened. “That’s actually really mature of you.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I’m always surprised when you’re mature. It’s rare.”

I threw a fabric sample at her. She caught it, laughing, and the conversation drifted toward easier things — venue details, guest list disasters, Victoria’s increasingly passive-aggressive letters that had become something of a running joke between us.

Later that evening, after Sofia left and the seamstress packed up her samples, I found Damian in Lily’s room, both of them hunched over a large poster board covered in crayon drawings.

“What is this?” I asked, leaning against the doorframe.

“Seating chart,” Lily announced proudly. “Dad’s helping.”

“Dad’s mostly vetoing,” Damian corrected. “Richard is not sitting next to the cake table.”

“Why not?” Lily protested. “He likes cake.”

“He likes complaining more.”

I laughed, crossing the room to look at their work. Lily had drawn elaborate little tables, each labeled with careful, crooked handwriting. One table, tucked in the corner, read simply: BORING PEOPLE.

“Lily.”

“What? It’s accurate.”

Damian caught my eye, clearly fighting back a laugh of his own. “She’s not wrong.”

“You’re supposed to be the responsible parent.”

“I’m allowing her creative expression.”

“That’s a generous way to describe sabotage.”

Lily giggled, entirely unbothered by our teasing, already moving on to debate whether Sofia should sit near the band or near the dance floor. I watched the two of them together, something warm settling deep in my chest, the same feeling that had followed me since the island and only seemed to grow with each passing day.

Once Lily had finally been coaxed to bed, Damian and I ended up on the balcony outside our room, the city stretched out below us in scattered lights and distant noise.

“She’s already planned the entire reception,” Damian said, shaking his head. “I give it a week before she’s picked the band’s setlist too.”

“Let her have this,” I said. “It’s good for her. Being included.”

“She adores you.”

“I adore her.”

Silence settled between us, comfortable the way it always was lately. I glanced at him, studying the profile I’d grown so familiar with over the past months — sharp features softened slightly in the evening light, tension easing from his shoulders in a way it rarely had before I arrived in his life.

“Sofia asked me something today,” I said eventually.

“Should I be worried?”

“No.” I smiled faintly. “She asked if anything happened between us. On the island.”

Damian turned to look at me fully. “What did you tell her?”

“That we’re taking it slow.”

Something flickered across his face, quiet and unreadable. “Is that still true? For you?”

The question sat heavier than it should have. I considered it carefully, unwilling to answer carelessly with something this important.

“Yes,” I said finally. “But not because I don’t feel something, Damian. Because I want to feel sure before I say anything out loud. I’ve been wrong about people before. I don’t want to be wrong about this.”

He nodded slowly, something like relief crossing his expression. “I feel the same.”

“Good.”

“Good,” he echoed.

We stood there together, whatever this was becoming, it was becoming it slowly, deliberately, exactly the way both of us needed it to.

That, I was starting to realize, was more than enough.