The Walkthrough

Daniel Cole was already at the venue when Marisol arrived, standing in the empty ballroom with his hands in his pockets, studying the light coming through the tall windows the way he'd once studied everything — carefully, thoroughly, like a man who didn't trust a decision until he'd turned it over from every angle.

He turned when he heard her heels on the hardwood, and Marisol watched six years disappear from his face in real time.

"Mari."

Nobody had called her that since she'd left. She'd built an entire identity — Marisol Reyes, Weddings by Marisol, three hundred and eleven flawless events — around the fact that the woman who answered to Mari didn't run companies. She ran away from altars.

"Hi, Daniel." Her voice came out steadier than she felt, which she counted as a professional win. "I understand Priya's left the company, so I'll be handling the rest of your planning personally. I hope that's all right."

"Is it all right with you?"

It was such a direct question, delivered so plainly, that Marisol nearly lost the professional composure she'd rehearsed the entire drive over.

"I'm very good at my job, Daniel. I promise you your wedding is in excellent hands."

"That's not what I asked."

They stood in the empty ballroom for a long moment, morning light falling across the floor between them, and Marisol found herself doing the thing she'd trained herself out of doing in three hundred and eleven other consultations: actually looking at him. The small lines at the corners of his eyes that hadn't been there six years ago. The way he still stood with his weight slightly forward, like he was always half a second from moving toward whatever mattered.

The chain at his collar, and whatever hung from it, tucked just out of sight beneath his shirt.

"I heard you kept your mother's ring," she said, before she could stop herself. "On a chain. Priya's notes mentioned it."

Daniel's hand moved, unconsciously, to his collarbone.

"Yeah," he said. "I did."

"Can I ask why?"

"You can ask," he said, "but I don't know if today's the day I answer it. Considering." A pause, careful, deliberate. "Considering who's standing in front of me."

Marisol opened the binder like it was a shield. "Let's talk about the ceremony layout. You mentioned you didn't want it in a church."

"I didn't."

"May I ask why?" She kept her voice light, professional, the voice of a woman discussing floral arrangements.

Daniel looked at her for a long moment before he answered, and when he did, his voice had none of the lightness hers had tried for.

"Because the last time I stood at the front of a church waiting for someone to walk toward me, Mari, she never made it down the aisle. I don't think I trust churches with that particular job anymore."

Marisol stood very still, binder clutched against her chest like it could stop what was happening in her ribs.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I never — I know I never properly explained. I owe you that, even if it's six years too late."

"You don't owe me anything," Daniel said. "You're my wedding planner now. That's all this is." But he said it looking at her the way he used to look at her on the rooftop in Austin, and Marisol understood, standing in that sunlit ballroom, that the next six weeks were going to be the hardest professional assignment of her entire career.