Updated Nov 25, 2025 • ~7 min read
The coffee with Paisley was both better and worse than expected.
Better: She didn’t immediately throw her drink at me.
Worse: She looked broken. Hollow. Like the wedding disaster had stolen something essential.
“You were right,” she said after we’d ordered. “About Warren. He was using me. I found out after—after everything went public. He’d been embezzling from Dad’s company. Using my name. I could’ve gone to prison.”
“Oh god, Pais—”
“So thank you. For crashing the wedding. For embarrassing me publicly. For saving me from making the biggest mistake of my life.” Her voice cracked. “I’m sorry I didn’t listen.”
“I’m sorry I crashed your wedding on live television instead of finding a better way.”
“Would I have listened to a better way?”
“Probably not.”
We smiled. Fragile but real.
“So,” Paisley said. “Leander Cork. Quite the upgrade from wedding crasher to billionaire’s fiancée.”
“It’s complicated.”
“Everything with you is complicated. But Morgana? I saw the news. The assassination attempt. The corporate conspiracy. You exposing all of it.” She reached across the table. Squeezed my hand. “I’m proud of you. You didn’t just crash a wedding. You crashed a whole corruption scheme.”
“Team effort. Leander did most of the work.”
“You mean the man you fake-dated and then accidentally fell in love with? That Leander?”
“When you say it like that it sounds ridiculous.”
“It is ridiculous. It’s also very you. Chaotic. Dramatic. Somehow working out despite impossible odds.”
We talked for two hours. Rebuilding sisterhood. Making plans for actual relationship instead of obligatory family contact.
“He wants to get married,” I said. “For real. Soon.”
“Do you want to?”
“Yes. Terrifyingly yes.”
“Then do it. Life’s too short for waiting. I almost married a con artist. You found someone who chose you over billions. That’s worth celebrating.”
I left feeling lighter. Like maybe I hadn’t destroyed everything when I crashed that wedding. Maybe I’d saved something important.
Multiple somethings.
I returned to the penthouse to find Leander on the phone. Angry.
“That’s unacceptable. We had a deal—” He stopped when he saw me. “I’ll call you back.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Mia Barton. She’s threatening to sue again. Says our confession about the fake relationship violated her intellectual property rights.”
“That’s insane. We confessed to our own lives.”
“She claims she created the narrative. That we owe her compensation for using ‘her story’ without permission.”
“What does she want?”
“Twelve million. Or she goes public with the original contract. Shows everyone exactly how calculated it all was. Makes us look like con artists instead of victims who found real love.”
“We already went public! Everyone knows it started fake!”
“But they don’t know details. Contract clauses. Specific manipulations. She’s threatening to reveal things that make us look worse. Much worse.”
I grabbed the contract. Read through it. Looking for leverage.
“Here,” I pointed. “Clause nineteen. Any dispute must go through private arbitration, not public courts. If she sues publicly, she’s in breach. We can countersue.”
“She knows that. That’s why she’s threatening instead of acting. Wants us to settle quietly.”
“So we call her bluff. Again.”
“Or—” Leander’s expression turned calculating. “We give her what she actually wants.”
“Which is?”
“She doesn’t want money. She wants control. Relevance. Her production company collapsed after we exposed her corporate espionage. She’s desperate.”
“So what do we offer?”
“Exclusive rights to our story. The real story. Documentary about everything. We control narrative, she gets producing credit. Rebuilds her reputation. We protect ours.”
“You want to make another show with her?”
“I want to neutralize the threat by giving her stake in our success instead of our failure. Keep friends close, enemies on payroll.”
“That’s disturbingly Machiavellian.”
“I learned from the best.” He pulled me close. “But only if you’re comfortable. This is your story too. Your choice.”
I thought about it. About Mia’s manipulation. Her threats. The damage she could still do.
“One condition. I direct. My vision. My truth. She just produces. Take it or leave it.”
We called Mia. Made the offer.
She accepted immediately. Too immediately.
“She’s planning something,” I said after we hung up.
“Of course she is. But now she’s planning it where we can see her instead of from shadows. That’s progress.”
That night, contracts signed, new documentary deal in motion, we sat on the balcony.
“We should talk about the wedding,” Leander said.
“Okay.”
“I want small. Intimate. No cameras except yours—if you want to document it.”
“I do. For us. Not for broadcast.”
“Where should we do it?”
“Courthouse. Where it started. Full circle.”
“That’s perfect.” He kissed me. “When?”
“Two weeks? Gives us time to plan but not enough to overthink.”
“Two weeks. Can we survive two weeks without another crisis?”
“Probably not. But we’ll survive it together.”
“Always together.”
The next two weeks were chaos. Planning a wedding while launching a documentary while managing corporate reconstruction. Leander’s company stabilizing. My career rebuilding around real journalism instead of reality TV.
But underneath the chaos, something grew. Trust. Partnership. The certainty that we’d chosen each other despite every reason not to.
Paisley helped with wedding planning. Small ceremony. Twenty people. Courthouse steps. Simple. Real.
“This is perfect,” she said, reviewing the guest list. “Nothing like my disaster.”
“Your wedding was beautiful. Warren was the disaster.”
“True. But Morgana? Thank you. For crashing it. For saving me. For showing me what real courage looks like.”
The night before the wedding, I couldn’t sleep. Found Leander in his office working.
“You’re supposed to be sleeping,” he said.
“So are you.”
“Couldn’t. Kept thinking about tomorrow. About how we’re really doing this.”
“Second thoughts?”
“Never. Just… overwhelming thoughts. Good ones.”
I sat on his desk. “Tell me your overwhelming thoughts.”
“That tomorrow I marry the woman who crashed into my life and refused to leave. The woman who chose truth over convenience. Who fought my battles with me. Who makes me want to be better than I am.”
“That’s pretty overwhelming.”
“Your turn. Overwhelming thoughts?”
“That tomorrow I marry the man who chose me over billions. Who learned to be vulnerable. Who fights for us even when it’s terrifying. Who makes me believe in happy endings despite all evidence that they don’t exist.”
“They don’t exist. We’re creating ours.”
“Same thing.”
He pulled me close. “Last night as fiancés.”
“Tomorrow we’ll be married.”
“For real this time.”
“Always for real.”
We went to bed. Not for sex. Just for closeness. Holding each other through pre-wedding nerves and the quiet certainty that we were making the right choice.
Tomorrow we’d stand on courthouse steps. Say vows that mattered. Choose each other publicly. Permanently.
No cameras. No contracts. No performance.
Just love.
Real. Messy. Ours.
And whatever came after?
We’d face it together.
Like we’d faced everything else.
With courage. Chaos. Absolute certainty.
Because we weren’t just getting married.
We were choosing truth over lies.
Partnership over performance.
Real over fake.
Every single day.
For the rest of our lives.
And that?
That was worth every lie we’d told to get here.
Because the truth we’d found was better than any story we could’ve scripted.
Our truth.
Our love.
Our happily ever after.
Starting tomorrow.
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