The air in the Newport mansion was thick with the scent of wilting hydrangeas and simmering panic.
It was ten p.m., the night before the Van der Sloot-Prescott nuptials, and Willa Grant was hiding in a blessedly quiet butler’s pantry, her phone buzzing against the cold marble countertop like a trapped hornet.
Each vibration was another micro-demand from Tiffany, the Bridezilla of the Season, broadcasted via a group text that also included the florist, the caterer, and a bewildered harpist.
Is it too late to switch the doves to albino peacocks? Just spitballing!
The forecast says 74 degrees. My makeup artist says my foundation is formulated for 72. THIS IS A PROBLEM.
Are we SURE the ice sculptures won’t melt into phallic shapes? My uncle’s wedding had that issue.
Willa squeezed the bridge of her nose, fighting the urge to hurl her phone into the industrial-sized sink. The pressure of this wedding was immense.
Her potential feature in Bridal Bliss felt less like a golden ticket and more like a tightrope stretched over a canyon of failure. But heavier than all of it was the hollow ache where Mads’s steadfast presence should have been.
Her fight with Mads had created a silence between them that felt louder than all of Tiffany’s frantic texts combined. For the first time in her professional life, Willa felt utterly, terrifyingly alone.
“Figured I’d find you here.”
Caleb’s voice was a low rumble, cutting through her anxiety. He leaned against the doorframe, his camera bag slung over one shoulder.
The weary lines around his eyes were softened by the dim pantry light, and he held up two bottles of beer, moisture beading on the dark glass. “Tactical retreat?”
Willa managed a weak smile. “More like hiding in a supply closet and praying for the sweet release of unconsciousness.”
“Close enough.” He crossed the small space and offered her a bottle. “You’ve earned a ten-minute furlough, Grant. Even the Secret Service gets breaks.”
She took the beer, their fingers brushing. The simple contact was a jolt, a spark of warmth in the refrigerated air.
“Thanks, Voss. I needed this.” She twisted the cap off on the edge of the counter. The hiss was a sound of sweet relief.
He watched her for a moment, his gaze analytical but not unkind. “She’s really doing a number on you, isn’t she?”
“Tiffany thinks a wedding is a battle to be won, not a day to be enjoyed,” Willa sighed, taking a long swallow of beer.
“And I’m her foot soldier, weapon, and therapist.” The admission felt raw, tinged with the hurt from Mads’s accusation that she was letting her clients—and now Caleb—walk all over her.
She was defending a fantasy, Mads had said. Maybe she was.
“Then let’s desert,” Caleb said, his tone surprisingly serious. “Come on. Just for a bit. We need to breathe air that isn’t 90% hairspray and desperation.”
Duty warred with exhaustion. She had a thousand things to do, a hundred potential fires to put out before they even started.
But looking at Caleb, at the genuine concern in his eyes, her resolve crumbled. He had become her foxhole partner, the one person who understood the specific brand of insanity they were enduring.
She was tired of being strong and solitary.
“Okay,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. “Lead the way.”
He led her through a side door and into the cool, salty dark of the Newport night. The manicured lawns of the estate gave way to the rugged, untamed beauty of the Cliff Walk.
The moon hung full and heavy over the water, casting a silver path across the churning waves that crashed against the rocks below. The grand, sleeping mansions stood like silent sentinels to their left, monuments to an era of impossible extravagance that Tiffany was trying so desperately to replicate.
They walked without speaking for a while, the rhythmic roar of the ocean a balm, washing away the frantic energy of the house. Willa drank her beer, letting the cold night air clear her head.
Here, away from the seating charts and floral arrangements, the wedding felt distant, insignificant. There was only the vastness of the sea, the weight of the stars, and Caleb walking beside her.
“I’ve been watching you all week,” he said finally, his voice blending with the sound of the surf. “All summer, really.”
Willa’s heart gave a little trip. She kept her eyes on the horizon. “Trying to catch me having a meltdown for your highlight reel?” she teased, the words lighter than she felt.
“No,” he said, and the sincerity in his voice made her turn to look at him. He had stopped walking, his silhouette dark against the shimmering water.
“I was watching you perform actual magic. You take all this… this chaos, this performance, this bottomless pit of ego and expectation, and you somehow manage to find the one tiny, genuine thing at its center and protect it.”
He took a step closer.
“In Wyoming, with that groom who got cold feet? You didn’t just give him a pep talk. You reminded him why he was there. You saw his fear and you met it with compassion. I see the way you handle Tiffany’s mother, the way you calmed down that crying flower girl, the way you fixed the caterer’s broken generator with a paperclip and a piece of gum from your emergency kit. You don’t just manage disasters, Willa. You absorb them. You shield people from the reality of their own absurd demands.”
Every word landed like a balm on the wound Mads had opened. He saw her. He didn’t just see the “Happily Ever After Helper”; he saw the work, the emotional labor, the quiet heroism of it all.
“It’s just my job,” she murmured, her throat tight.
“No, it’s not,” he insisted, his gaze intense.
“I came into this whole thing… this summer… convinced it was all a joke. A big, expensive, toxic fantasy people buy into because they’re scared of being alone. I had my camera, my thesis, my whole cynical narrative locked and loaded.”
He shook his head, a small, self-deprecating gesture.
“And then I watched you. And you… you’re not selling a fantasy. You’re fighting for the hope of it. And it’s real. It’s the realest thing in the middle of all the fake.”
He let out a breath. “You’ve made me question everything I thought I knew.”
Tears pricked her eyes, hot and sudden.
“It’s nice to be seen,” she whispered, thinking of Mads, of her own doubts, of the long nights spent wondering if she was just a glorified party planner fooling herself.
Caleb closed the remaining distance between them. He gently brushed a thumb across her cheek, his touch sending a tremor through her. “I see you, Willa.”
And that was it. The last of her defenses crumbled.
The tension that had been humming between them for months, a current of witty banter and charged glances, finally found its release. He lowered his head, and she met him halfway, her hands coming up to cup his face.
The kiss was everything the summer had been: a slow burn igniting into a wildfire. It was salty from the sea air and tasted faintly of beer, but it was also desperate and deep and profoundly affirming.
It wasn’t the hesitant, questioning kiss from a romantic comedy. It was a kiss of recognition, a collision of two lonely people who had found an unexpected anchor in each other.
Willa poured all her stress, her hurt, her isolation, and her soaring, terrifying hope into it. He responded in kind, his arms wrapping around her waist, pulling her flush against him as if he could absorb her into himself, shielding her from the world.
When they finally broke apart, they were both breathless, foreheads resting against each other. The ocean roared its approval below them. In this perfect, silver-lit moment, Willa felt an unshakeable sense of rightness.
This was real.
Caleb’s hands tightened on her waist. He pulled back slightly, his expression suddenly clouded with a pain so deep it stole her breath.
Guilt. That’s what it was. A wave of it, so potent she could almost taste it.
“Willa,” he began, his voice raspy and low. “There’s… there’s something I have to tell you. About my work. About the filming.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs. Here it is, a small, terrified part of her thought. The other shoe.
But then he looked at her face, truly looked at the unguarded trust in her eyes, the lingering softness of their kiss on her lips, her expression shining with a happiness that felt both radiant and fragile.
He saw the woman who believed in love, who fought for it, who had just put her complete faith in him. And he saw himself for what he was: the man with the power to obliterate that light with a single, selfish confession.
He could see the scene play out—the confusion, the dawning horror, the betrayal that would shatter her face. He would lose her. He would lose this. Right here, right now.
The coward in him won.
He swallowed, the truth a bitter pill dissolving in his throat. He couldn’t do it.
“…I just have to tell you,” he finished, his voice strained, “that I’ve never met anyone like you, Willa Grant.”
It was the truth, but it wasn’t the truth. It was a beautiful, hollow lie of omission.
Willa’s fear receded, replaced by a wave of pure, unadulterated joy. She smiled, a brilliant, beaming thing that made his stomach clench with shame.
“I’ve never met anyone like you, either, Caleb Voss.”
She took his hand, her fingers lacing through his, and she started walking back toward the gilded cage of the mansion. She felt weightless, anchored, and hopeful for the first time in days.
The wedding tomorrow was still a mountain to be climbed, but now, she wasn’t climbing it alone.
Caleb walked beside her, his hand holding hers feeling like a brand. He was a liar.
He had stood on the edge of the cliff and chosen the fall, pulling her down with him without her even knowing it. The night was perfect.
The girl was perfect. And he had just sealed their fate, setting the stage for a final, devastating scene he now wished with all his soul he would never have to shoot.