The in-box on my iPhone had been crammed with messages from brands—reminders to update the wedding website Carson built for us, e-mails from Crate & Barrel and Williams-Sonoma warning me their sales were going, going, gone. I scrolled through them while sipping my too-sweet coffee. After I got my scar, getting married wasn’t something I thought I’d do. God knows planning a wedding wasn’t something I expected to enjoy; the fashion and extravagant frivolity were lost on me, a woman who used dollar-store shampoo and owned exactly three pairs of pants. But Carson kept signing me up for newsletters, hoping I’d come around. He said it would be cathartic, and it was true I’d found some comfort in ticking off a to-do list. My ability to be methodical about unresolved issues means organization comes naturally. Plus, planning the wedding kept my mind off the marriage itself.

It wasn’t that I was reluctant to wed this handsome and successful catch, just that everything was moving fast. I’d already pushed back the date once because of the move, so Carson was more eager than ever to “tie the knot and get on with our lives.” For him, the big day couldn’t come soon enough. As I deleted a message promising to reveal my bridezilla ranking on a scale of one to ten, he brushed my cheek with his hand and asked if I’d thought about inviting Tim to the wedding.

“Hon,” I said. He’d brought up the idea twice already. In fairness to Carson, I couldn’t stall any longer. “I’ve thought about it a lot, actually. I know you’d like him there. The thing is, it’s awkward.”

“Why would you think that?”

“It just is.” I flipped my hand on the kitchen table and the diamond on my engagement ring, an obscenely large cushion cut I’d drop in a box on the dresser before leaving for work, struck the wood. A spark of pain whizzed up my arm like a shock. “For one thing, we barely know each other.”

“All the more reason for him to come.”

“For another, we can’t invite him and not McIntyre and the rest of the troop.”

“Timmy’s your partner. It’s different.”

“BCI investigators don’t have partners,” I said, though I saw his point. Compared with Tim, the time I’d spent with the other investigators was negligible. “Timmy,” I repeated with a half smile. “Did he really let you call him that?”

I thought I’d seen blue eyes before I met Carson, but his were next level. Shards of sky and slate twinkled and flashed at me when he smiled in response. “We used to be best friends, Shay. I helped him blow out the candles at his fifth birthday party. After the summer we learned to water-ski? When he sprained his wrist? I took notes for him in class for a month. I was there when Timmy set fire to a porta potty at a construction site in town and landed himself in jail.” Carson scratched his salt-and-pepper goatee and laughed. “I thought his dad was going to lose his mind.”