CHAPTER 10: THE VISITOR

Temi found Camille standing at the edge of the gravel path behind the chapel, half hidden by a row of hedges someone had clearly planted decades ago to shield exactly this kind of private moment from wedding guests wandering the grounds. She wore a plain gray coat over what looked like clothes she'd thrown on without much thought, nothing like the polished, camera ready version of herself Temi had watched flee her own rehearsal less than a week ago. Her hair was pulled back loosely, no makeup, dark circles under her eyes that spoke of very little sleep. For a long second Temi simply stood at the mouth of the path, taking in how different her best friend looked without the armor of styling and performance, before finally making herself move closer. The evening had turned cold enough that Temi could see her own breath, and somewhere behind her, faint and distant, the murmur of arriving guests carried across the grounds like a warning that time was already running out.

"You came," Camille said, sounding almost surprised, like she hadn't fully believed the assistant would deliver the message, or that Temi would answer it if she did. Her voice was smaller than Temi remembered it, stripped of the confident, easy warmth that used to fill a room without effort.

"Of course I came." Temi crossed the distance between them, stopping a few feet away, unsure whether the moment called for an embrace or distance and settling, uncertainly, somewhere in between. "Are you okay? Where have you been?"

"My aunt's place in Connecticut. Somewhere no one thought to look, mostly." Camille's laugh came out thin and humorless. "I've been watching all of this happen from a distance. The engagement announcement. The photos. I keep telling myself I have no right to feel anything about it, since I'm the one who ran, but I feel something anyway, and I don't fully know what to call it."

"You don't have to explain yourself to me, Cam."

"I think I do, actually. At least a little." Camille wrapped her arms around herself, the autumn air sharper out here away from the warmth of the chapel. "I need you to know I'm not here to stop anything. I'm not here to make a scene, or beg you to reconsider, or any of the things I'm sure everyone in that building is bracing for me to do. I just needed to see you before you walked down that aisle. As my friend. Not as anyone's replacement."

Something in Temi's chest loosened slightly at that, a tension she hadn't fully realized she was carrying until Camille named the fear underneath it. "I was scared you'd hate me for this."

"I did, for about two days," Camille admitted. "Hate is probably too strong a word. Confused. Hurt, in a way that didn't entirely make sense given that I'm the one who left. But mostly I was scared for you. Adrian is a good man, Temi, genuinely, but he's also a man who has spent his whole life building walls so high he doesn't even remember what's on the other side of them. I ran because I realized somewhere in the middle of all that wedding planning that I didn't actually want to spend my life trying to climb them. I want you to go in with your eyes open, knowing exactly what you're choosing."

"I know what I'm choosing," Temi said quietly, though even as she said it she felt the words wobble slightly, less certain than she wanted them to sound.

Camille studied her for a long moment, something shifting behind her eyes, softer now. "You care about him already. I can see it on you. That's different from the woman who told me two nights ago this was purely a contract."

Temi didn't answer right away, the cold air suddenly feeling very loud around the silence. She thought about denying it outright, the way she'd denied it to Pri just days ago, but something about Camille's steady, knowing gaze made the lie feel pointless before she'd even attempted it. There was no point pretending with the one person who had known her longest, who could read the truth on her face faster than Temi could ever hope to hide it.

"I'm not going to pretend I understand everything that's happened between the two of you this past week," Camille continued. "But I've known you for ten years, and I've never once seen you look like this before a big decision. Usually you research everything to death, make lists, weigh every angle until there's nothing left to weigh. This time you just said yes and kept moving forward. That's not you being reckless. That's you already knowing something you haven't said out loud yet." She smiled faintly, the expression carrying more warmth than sadness now, like some private argument she'd been having with herself had finally settled somewhere peaceful.

"It's complicated."

"Everything worth having usually is." Camille reached out and squeezed Temi's hand, brief and warm despite the chill in the air. "I should let you go get married. I just needed to say this in person instead of over a text you might not have believed. I'm happy for you, Temi. Genuinely. Whatever this turns into, I hope it's everything you actually deserve, not just what you settled for because the timing was desperate."

"Will you stay?" Temi asked, the question surprising her even as she said it. "For the ceremony. I know it's strange, given everything, but I'd like you there."

Camille's eyes went bright, blinking fast against whatever was building behind them. "I don't think that's a good idea. Not for me, and probably not for the story the press would run tomorrow morning. But thank you for asking. That means more than you know."

They stood together a moment longer in the cold, two women who had shared an apartment that smelled like someone else's cooking and a decade of ordinary friendship neither of them had expected to survive a week this strange, and then Camille pulled her into a quick, tight hug before stepping back.

"Go get married," Camille said, wiping quickly at her eyes with the back of one hand. "Before Priscilla sends out a search party for you."

Temi laughed despite everything, the sound cracking slightly at the edges. "Thank you for coming. For saying this."

"Take care of yourself in there. And Temi." Camille paused, already turning to leave, glancing back over her shoulder with an expression Temi couldn't quite read. "Watch out for his father. I never told anyone this, but Marcus came to see me privately, about a month before the wedding was supposed to happen. He offered me money to walk away quietly before the ceremony, framed it as doing Adrian a favor. I refused. I want you to know that wasn't why I ran, in case you were wondering, but I also want you to know exactly what kind of man you're about to have as a father in law."

Temi went very still. "He offered you money to leave."

"A significant amount. I have the emails somewhere, if it ever matters." Camille's expression hardened slightly, some old anger surfacing behind the grief. "I told myself it was petty office politics, a father who didn't think his son's fiancée was good enough for the family name. I'm starting to think it was something else. Something more deliberate." She glanced back toward the chapel, its stained glass windows glowing faintly gold against the darkening sky. "I almost didn't tell you. I told myself it wasn't my place anymore, that I'd given up the right to warn you about anything the moment I ran. But I couldn't let you walk in there without knowing."

Before Temi could ask anything further, one of Priscilla's assistants appeared at the edge of the hedges, apologetic but clearly under strict instructions. "Ms. Callahan, we really do need you inside now. The ceremony starts in fifteen minutes."

Camille squeezed her hand one final time and disappeared back down the gravel path toward the front gate, gray coat blending quickly into the shadows of the tree line, gone before Temi could ask a single one of the dozen new questions suddenly crowding her mind.

Temi walked back toward the chapel in a daze, Camille's words looping over and over, Marcus offering money to derail his own son's wedding weeks before any of this began, long before Temi herself had ever entered the picture. It wasn't simple disapproval. It was something calculated, something that had clearly been in motion long before Camille ever ran from that altar. She thought of the briefcase left leaning against the doorframe, the leaked photo timed with surgical precision, the will story breaking within hours of a private conference room conversation. None of it read like coincidence anymore. All of it read like a pattern belonging to a man who had been planning this far longer than anyone around Adrian had realized.

Pri met her at the dressing room door, eyes wide with barely contained panic. "There you are. I was two minutes from sending a search party myself. What did she say?" She reached out and steadied Temi by the shoulders, taking in whatever was showing on her face, her own panic softening into concern.

Temi opened her mouth to answer, still trying to arrange the pieces into something that made sense, when the same assistant reappeared, breathless this time, an entirely new kind of urgency written across her face.

"Ms. Callahan. There's been a development. Mr. Voss needs you in the north hallway immediately, before the ceremony. He said it's about his father."

Pri's hand flew to her mouth, and Temi felt the last few minutes of calm she'd managed to gather during her conversation with Camille evaporate entirely, replaced by the same cold, focused clarity she'd felt standing in that conference room the day Marcus first walked in and introduced himself as though he already owned the room, and everyone standing in it. Whatever fragile peace the evening had briefly offered her out there behind the hedges was already gone, swallowed up by whatever new crisis waited for her just beyond that door.