Violet’s POV
I've orchestrated chaos before—family dinners where everyone's performing civility, charity events designed to look spontaneous, the kind of manufactured moments that rich people mistake for authenticity.
This is different.
This is forty-eight hours to transform a working ranch into something worthy of the woman who saved me from becoming just another runaway with expensive luggage and nowhere to go.
"Wildflowers." I'm standing in the meadow at dawn, gesturing to empty space like I can will beauty into existence through sheer determination. "Everywhere. Texas wildflowers. Adison mentioned once that she loved them."
Zachary stands beside me with coffee and the kind of quiet competence that makes my chest do complicated things. "How many is everywhere?"
"Enough that when she walks down this aisle, she feels like she's moving through a painting." I turn to face him, and the morning light catches his profile in ways that make me want to abandon wedding planning entirely. "Can you make that happen?"
"I can make that happen." He pulls out his phone, already texting someone. "What else?"
"String lights in the barn rafters. Chairs are arranged here in the meadow so everyone's facing the sunset. A ceremony space that feels like Texas decided to show off specifically for her."
His mouth quirks slightly. "You're asking Texas to perform."
"I'm asking Texas to be honest." The distinction matters in ways I don't want to examine too closely. "This place changed her. Changed both of them. The wedding should acknowledge that."
By noon the ranch is crawling with people who've been bribed, begged, or voluntarily conscripted into service. Zachary works beside me with the kind of focus that proves he's taking this as seriously as I am, and when a delivery truck arrives with the wrong flowers entirely, he handles it before I even finish swearing.
"You're good at this." I watch him negotiate with the driver, his professional polish somehow not looking out of place against barn wood and dust. "The whole commanding-with-kindness thing."
"I learned from the best." He glances at me, and there's something soft in his expression. "You've outdone even me, Violet. This is going to be perfect."
The compliment shouldn't make my chest feel this warm, but apparently I'm transparent enough that praise from him rewrites my entire nervous system.
"Don't get sentimental on me now." I turn away before he can see how much the words affected me. "We still have string lights to hang and approximately seven thousand other details to manage."
Maria presides over the kitchen like a general commanding troops, her voice carrying through open windows with the kind of authority that makes everyone move faster.
"No, not there. Here. And if anyone touches the wedding cake before tomorrow, I'm serving them for dinner instead."
The threat sounds genuine enough that nobody tests it.
Tommy and Paige handle logistics with easy coordination, moving around each other with the natural certainty of people who've learned to read each other's movements. He anticipates what she needs before she asks. She adjusts her approach based on his subtle cues.
It's choreography without performance, and watching them work together teaches me something I didn't expect to learn.
This is what functional love looks like when it's not performing for anyone.
It's quieter than I expected. Less dramatic. More about showing up and doing the work than making grand gestures.
Though I've made plenty of grand gestures in the last two days because someone had to, and apparently that someone is me now.
By evening the ranch looks like Texas decided to collaborate with a fever dream—wildflowers everywhere creating waves of color that shift with the wind, string lights wound through barn rafters waiting to transform darkness into magic, chairs arranged in perfect rows facing west where tomorrow's sunset will provide the backdrop.
I'm exhausted and exhilarated in equal measure, my boots covered in dust and my hands scratched from wrestling with stubborn flower stems, and I feel more myself than I have in weeks.
"It's beautiful." Zachary finds me standing in the meadow, surveying our work. "You're beautiful."
"Don't." I hold up one hand, not ready for whatever confession is building in his voice. "We still have tomorrow to survive."
That evening I find Adison in the observatory, surrounded by starlight and that telescope Jake insisted on installing, and she looks more settled than I've seen her since Manhattan.
"Jake definitely didn't see the dress?" Her voice carries bride anxiety that makes me smile. "It's still hanging in here where he won't accidentally walk by?"
"Confirmed." I lean against the doorframe, watching her silhouette against the windows. "And tomorrow you're going to be the most beautiful bride Texas has ever seen."
Her hand rests on her belly where Jake's son is growing—that unconscious gesture she's developed over the past weeks, like she's checking to make sure he's still there, still real, still hers to protect.
I think about beginnings and endings and how sometimes they're the same thing wearing different names.
"Have you thought about what happens after?" Adison turns to face me, and there's something careful in her expression. "After the wedding. After university starts. After geography separates you from Zachary the same way it almost separated me from Jake."
The question lands like exposure under surgical lighting. Because I haven't. Haven't let myself think past tomorrow's ceremony, past creating someone else's happy ending, past the immediate work of transforming a ranch into something magical.
"I've been focused on the wedding." The deflection tastes like cowardice.
"Violet." Her voice is gentle but insistent. "You can't just orchestrate everyone else's happiness and ignore your own."
"Why not?" I force lightness into my tone. "I'm excellent at it. Maybe that's my calling."
"Your calling is figuring out what you actually want." She moves closer, and moonlight catches her face in ways that make her look simultaneously exhausted and radiant. "Before time runs out to choose it."
The truth settles into my chest with cold clarity.
I've been so focused on creating someone else's happy ending that I forgot to figure out my own.
University starts in two weeks. Zachary will be in Manhattan managing Adison's empire. I'll be on campus pretending distance doesn't matter, pretending love can survive when proximity becomes impossible.
"I don't know how to want something this much without it destroying me." The admission scrapes out honest and terrifying. "How to hold onto him when geography says I can't."
"Then you figure it out." Adison's hand finds mine, squeezes once. "The same way Jake and I are figuring it out. The same way everyone who's ever loved someone across distance has figured it out."
"And if I can't?"
"Then you try anyway." Her certainty sounds like faith I don't know how to access. "Because wanting him is better than protecting yourself from the possibility of losing him."