I looked … normal.
Not like someone who’d had her insides rearranged by a stranger’s voice.
Not like someone who’d spent all day trying not to remember what it felt like to be seen and evaluated and—God, help me—wanted.
I climbed into bed and turned off the lamp.
The dark didn’t help.
It made everything sharper.
In the quiet, my mind did what it always did when I was exhausted: it slid backward.
Not to romance. Not to fantasies with candlelight and slow dancing. That wasn’t my brain’s first language.
My brain went to history.
To patterns.
To the way I’d always been a little … behind.
Not in life. I wasn’t helpless. I ran the shop. I kept the books. I handled vendors who tried to overcharge us and brides who wanted impossible things and customers who cried into bouquets like flowers could fix a marriage.
I could do hard things.
But when it came to sex—real sex, not jokes whispered by classmates or scenes skimmed too quickly in books—I was a locked door.
I didn’t talk about it. I didn’t invite questions.
And I’d gotten very good at making it seem like that was just because I was picky.
Because I had standards.
Because I was waiting for something meaningful.
All those things were true.
And also?—
I’d been afraid.
The idea of being touched like that—truly touched—had always felt like something I had to earn. Like if I gave myself to someone, I needed to be sure they wouldn’t take it and decide I wasn’t worth keeping.
I needed certainty.
And certainty was rare.
So rare that I’d built a whole life around not needing it.
Work. Family. Flowers. Beautiful things I could control, grow, fix. Things that responded to care in predictable ways.
People weren’t predictable.
Men, least of all.
I’d come close, once.
College. A guy named Matt who’d looked good in a button-down and had laughed at all my jokes like they were clever, not just polite. He’d walked me home after a late study session and kissed me in the hallway, hands warm on my waist.
