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Given where she was now, her relationship with Orlando moving
ahead, Zach could ruin everything. Having sex with him the night of Daisy’s
wedding had been the ultimate boneheaded move on both their parts, and she
bloody well knew it. As soon as she’d floated back down to earth, as soon as the
pink cloud of champagne and wedding bliss wore off, she had felt a terrible
twist of foreboding in the pit of her stomach. In one foolish act, they had
changed their friendship irrevocably, and not for the better. Her father had
just introduced her to Mr. Wonderful; she needed to focus on Orlando, not get
drunk with Zach Alger.

She hadn’t spoken to him since. He’d called a bunch at first,
sent text messages, and she finally texted him back and said, Don’t call me.
Don’t text me. Can we just leave it at that?

His calls had stopped, and she told herself she was relieved.
There was nothing to say. What were they going to say? Sorry I screwed up a
beautiful friendship? Have a nice life?

Willfully she pulled her mind away from the lost phone and
focused on the more immediate problem. The missing key. Now, there was a
boneheaded move for you. When your boyfriend finally gives you a key to his
amazing midtown east apartment, losing it immediately is a bad move. Sure, it
was an accident, but the symbolism was hard to ignore.

On top of that, she was going to be late. Both her father and
Orlando were sticklers for promptness, yet somehow she’d fallen behind. And now
she didn’t even have a way to send Orlando a text.

Her stomach clenching, she found a vacant seat and sat down.
Across from her sat a teenage girl and her mother. Sonnet studied their
reflection in the window glass of the subway car. The two of them looked alike,
except for the way the mother’s Nordic coloring and blond hair contrasted
sharply with the girl’s nappy hair and café-au-lait skin. She wore her mixed
heritage like an ill-fitting garment. Sonnet related to that kind of discomfort
because once, not so long ago, she’d been that girl—biracial and wondering just
where she belonged.

The girl had her iPhone turned up too loud, and through the
earbuds, Sonnet recognized the thud and angry tones of Jezebel, the latest
hip-hop sensation. The chart-topping song was called “Don’t Make a Ho into a
Housewife” or some such nonsense. Though she was no fan of the genre, Sonnet was
aware of Jezebel from the scandal blogs and magazines. She was the latest of
many to be doing time for something or other.

The girl listening to the music looked angry, too. Maybe she
was having a bad day. Maybe she was ticked off at her mom. Maybe she was
wondering why her dad only got in touch with her on Christmas and on her
birthday, and half the time he forgot the birthday. Maybe she was trying to
figure out what she was supposed to do in order to get his attention.

In the window glass, her gaze met the girl’s. Both glanced
quickly away, perhaps recognizing in each other a kindred spirit.

You’ll be fine, Sonnet wanted to reassure the girl. Just like
I’m fine.
Fine.

As she approached her stop on the subway, Sonnet tried to come
up with something plausible to tell Orlando about the key. Saying she’d dropped
it on the subway sounded so…so careless. And she did care. Having access to his
apartment, his private space, was a huge step for them as a couple. It meant
something, something big.

The very thought of it made her heart skip a beat. To Sonnet,
this was not a pleasant sensation.

* * *

Zach Alger stared down at the screen of his iPhone. He
shouldn’t have sent that text to Sonnet. He really,
really
shouldn’t have sent it. What was he thinking? He wasn’t
thinking.

Maybe being in church affected his judgment. Although he wasn’t
in
church, attending services. He was doing
wedding prep work at Heart of the Mountains Church, getting ready for a big
video job here. So at the moment, it didn’t count.

He wrote down a couple of measurements—they were cramming too
many people into the sanctuary, but he’d deal—and then paused to check his
phone. Good, no reply. He scrolled to email, and his queue was full of work
stuff. Endless work stuff, sandwiched between a few notes from women. Yeah, he
was “dating.” In a town like this, with a population that couldn’t fill a high
school stadium, that simply meant he was keeping his options open. On the menu
today—he could go to the climbing gym with Lannie, and there were worse things
than staring at her cute butt while holding the belaying rope. Or, he could go
to Viv’s for dinner. She was a sous-chef at the Apple Tree Inn, and she had
trained at the Cordon Bleu. Third option—an open invitation from Shakti, who
practiced a form of yoga she liked to call Yoga Sutra.

His buddies on his mountain biking team envied him the
attention from women. And hell yeah, he loved women. He loved their soft hair
and their curvy bodies, the flowery scent of them and the lilt of their
laughter. He loved them all, yet to his dismay, he wanted only one. And the one
he wanted was Lady Insanity herself, Sonnet Romano.

No. Correction. She was not the one he wanted. She was the one
he wanted to avoid.

Contacting her had been a bad lapse, and it was convenient to
foist the blame on something other than himself. He hadn’t spoken to her since
that night. Yeah,
that
night. But he’d felt
compelled to contact her today because something weird was going on. After the
epic night of sex, he’d been pretty sure it was their secret.

Yet now he was not so sure.

His friend Daphne, aka the ace internet mole, had alerted him
this morning that something was up. A web-based rumor mill had published a nasty
little bit hinting that the daughter of a certain candidate for the U.S. Senate
was into, ahem, post-wedding hookups.

Politics was a dirty business. In the race for public office,
nothing was off-limits, not even the candidate’s family. In making a run for
national office, Laurence Jeffries was putting everyone in his orbit in the
spotlight. Zach wondered if the guy had thought about that when he’d decided to
go for it.

Zach’s own father—still serving time for defrauding the city of
Avalon—certainly hadn’t taken Zach into consideration. Sometimes, Zach thought
that was what tied him to this little town, long after he should have left. He
had something to prove; he wanted to show people that he wasn’t anything like
his father.

Upon seeing the link to the hookup story, Zach had impulsively
sent Sonnet a text message. A heads-up; it was the least he could do. He didn’t
actually worry too much on his own behalf. Thanks to his father, Zach was beyond
the point of embarrassment. But Sonnet had always been super sensitive about her
reputation.

Yet the moment he’d hit Send, he started wondering if the rumor
mill had simply made a lucky guess, or if they really knew something. Or if
there had been a different wedding…and a different guy.

He batted at a fly buzzing around his head and got back to
work.

She probably wouldn’t respond. Ever since the wedding—the
post-wedding-champagne-fueled sex they’d enjoyed—Sonnet had been in hiding. To
be honest, Zach was okay with what had happened—hell, he’d liked it, but Sonnet
insisted they weren’t a match. No way they were a match, despite the
mind-blowing boathouse encounter, and she claimed they were both old enough to
realize it. She wanted them to go back to being friends, the way they’d been
since kindergarten.

He wanted more. She wouldn’t let him convince her, though. She
made it clear that being with him would put a crimp in her future plans. Fine,
then, he thought. He had plans, too.

But he missed her. Shit, he really did. He missed the
friendship, the easy feeling of being with someone he felt completely
comfortable with. Most guys had a family to lean on, but not Zach. He was the
son of a bad man who was behind bars. His mom had left when he was a kid,
remarried and then died of cancer. So he was not exactly a member of the
all-American family. Through the years, Sonnet had become his default go-to
person, the one he could call or text at all hours, the one who knew his history
and didn’t judge him for it, the one who loved hearing his good news.
Correction—she used to love it. Now she didn’t even pick up the phone.

Inside the church, he ran into the pastor, a paunchy, sober man
who took great pleasure in marrying starry-eyed couples in his storybook-cute
church.

“Hey, Reverend Munson,” he said. “I’ll be out of your way
shortly. Just needed to make a plan for Saturday’s ceremony.”

“Take all the time you need, Zachary. I know how important the
video is to the bride.”

“Yep,” he said. “You’re right about that.”

“Jenna’s back from her mission trip to Korea,” said Reverend
Munson, referring to his youngest daughter. “I imagine she’s going to want to
tell you all about it. She always did like you, and she took a lot of video
footage over there. I’m sure she’ll be in touch.”

She’d already been in touch, Zach reflected. It was awkward as
hell making small talk with the reverend, who was clearly unaware that not so
long ago, Zach had spent a few pleasant hours sipping Zima from his daughter’s
navel. And doing some other things as well.

“I think I’ve got everything I need,” Zach said with hearty
decisiveness. “See you on Saturday, sir.”

“I’ll be camera ready.” Reverend Munson playfully framed his
face with his hands. His clean pale hands, the ring finger encircled with a band
of gold. For some reason, Zach started feeling guilty.

What the hell, he thought as he left the sanctuary. He’d been
working as a videographer and editor for Wendela’s Wedding Wonders since
college. Nothing wrong with the gig except that he was forced to work crazy
hours, endure bridezillas and their maniac moms, and he hadn’t seen a Saturday
night since he’d become old enough to drink.

And what Zach wanted, what he longed to do, was tell stories.
Not his own. God, no. Other people’s stories. He’d been doing it ever since he
was old enough to hold a camera. He had a knack for capturing a subject’s
emotions on film, finding their hidden vulnerabilities, peeling away the layers
to reveal truths that were often raw, but beautiful. He wanted to go out into
the world and find those stories. He ought to get out of Avalon before he got
stuck here forever.

But that took dough, lots of it. For a long time, it had seemed
like an impossible dream as he dug himself out of student loans, made regular
payments to the town of Avalon in an attempt to make up for what his father had
stolen and gambled away, and simply went about the business of living. There was
no law requiring him to make restitution for the damage his father had done, but
the night with Sonnet had reminded him that this was not a dress rehearsal.

In order to move ahead in the field, he needed to go where the
work was. L.A. or New York. He’d been sending out his portfolio for the past
couple of years. So far he’d won loads of admiration and a prestigious award or
two, but no offers of paying work.

Pissed at his thoughts for circling around to Sonnet again, he
scrolled through his contacts, the digital equivalent of a little black book,
and without much thought, hit on one. Shakti. She always picked up.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he asked.

“Waiting for you to call.” She gave a soft, ego-stroking
purr.

“I’ll be right over.”

* * *

Later that night, Zach went to the Hilltop Tavern, an
Avalon watering hole favored by locals. Two of his buddies were there—Eddie
Haven, a talented singer and songwriter who had settled in town to hide from his
past as a troubled child star, and Bo Crutcher, a pitcher for the Yankees who
used to play bass in Eddie’s band, and kept a vacation cabin on the lake. Zach
had filmed both guys’ wedding videos, and they’d become friends along the
way.

“I got girl trouble,” he said, sliding into the booth with
them.

“My favorite kind,” Bo said, filling Zach’s glass from a frosty
pitcher of beer.

Eddie raised his glass of root beer. “What’s up, my brother?
Shit, don’t tell me somebody’s pregnant.”

“No,” Zach said instantly, shuddering with a chill at the very
thought. “It’s complicated. See, I kind of…you know, I’ve always been one to
play the field.”

“Boy slut,” said Eddie. “We’ve all been there.”

“That’s why I’m telling you this,” Zach said. “So now—and I
never thought I’d be saying this—it’s getting old.” He thought about Shakti, who
had rolled out the welcome mat earlier in the evening. He hadn’t taken advantage
of the welcome. Instead, he’d bought her dinner, dropped her off at her house,
and called this meeting with his friends to confess that he was losing his
mind.

“Dude,” said Bo. “Welcome to adulthood. We all take a while to
get there, but we get there. I know I did.”

“You did it by marrying a woman who looks like a supermodel,”
Zach said. “That must have been so hard for you.”

Bo laughed. “I reckon it was harder for Kim. So what’s on your
mind?”

“Who, not what. Sonnet Romano. Yeah,
that
Sonnet Romano. The one I’ve known since she was Willow Lake’s
hopscotch champion. We had…we did…”

“Nina’s girl? You finally nailed her? Awesome,” said Eddie,
high-fiving him. “Doesn’t sound like so much trouble to me.”

“Then you don’t know Sonnet. She could make a copper penny
complicated.”

“Let me guess,” said Bo. “You nailed her, and now she wants
a…what’s that word? Oh, yeah.
Relationship
. It never
fails. Give ’em a few X’s and O’s, and next thing you know, they’re picking out
the china pattern.”

“Jesus, you’re a tool,” said Zach. “How come a tool like you
gets to marry a supermodel?”

Bo glanced from him to Eddie. “What?”

“Here’s the complication,” Zach said, “and believe me, it pains
me to admit this.
I
want the relationship.”