“An amazing greenhouse.” He comes around the counter with slow, deliberate steps, watchful eyes, and just enough dirt and wood andhimwafting in the air to draw me closer even when I don’t intend to lean. Considering the vase and all its offerings, he selects a soft pink daisy, carefully tugging it free of the rest. Finally, with an intoxicating smile and a dancing stare, he extends his hand. “She has a greenhouse, Rose, and a dictionary in her head with all of those words you just said. Flowers are just flowers to me. They’re pretty and smell good and make my kitchenfun to walk into. But they’renotjust flowers to you, are they? They’re hippe…” He wrinkles his nose. “Hippa… Hippopotamus.”
“Hippeastrum.”
“Exactly! And you say those names like they’ve been a part of you all along.” He tucks a lock of hair behind my ear, following it with the daisy until the stem touches the warm skin high on my neck and the delicate petals kiss my temple. Goosebumps break out from the top of my hair all the way to the tips of my toes, his gentleness intensely sweet. But it’s the heel of his palm, just barely brushing my cheek while he positions the flower perfectly, that feels like electricity in my veins.
“I think you were a florist,” he murmurs, a warm grittiness clinging to each word. “Or a landscaper. Or maybe you worked in a nursery.” He drops his hand and leaves me wanting. Because even without knowing who I am or how I got into this mess, Ifeellike I’ve been without touch for far too long.
I don’t even mean intimate touch. I don’t mean sexual.
I just mean one human being near enough to the other that their pulses sync and their breathing evens out again.
He takes my hand and carefully turns it over, grinning as he trails his fingertips over my palm.
“I would expect calluses if you worked manual labor, hauling logs and rocks, and creating beautiful gardens for rich people. But it’s entirely possible you sold plants. Or maybe you worked in a consultant capacity, telling rich people what to plant, and where to plant it.”
“Why must everyone be rich?”
He chuckles. “Because regular people head on down to the local garden center on Sundays, around noon, and harass the poor, underpaid workers carrying the pricing stickers around. Normal, non-rich folks know plants can’t sit on a shelf forever, and Sunday afternoon is a good time to clear old stock out. Or at least—” He brings his gaze up and searches mine. “—that’s what I used to do, anyway. But Mrs. Gunderson said I’m not allowed to buy plants anymore, ‘cos I keep killing them.”
“Mrs. Gunderson is…” I swallow the lump in my throat. “She’s?—”
“My neighbor. You should meet her sometime and check out her greenhouse. It might wiggle something free in your mind.” Quick as a flash, he releases my hand and strides back to the stove, stirring the contents of the pot as the smell of beef pushes through the room and destroys the far superior smell of flowers. “I think we’re closer to figuring you out. And to think, if I let you go to Barlespy and youdidn’tsee Mrs. Gunderson’s pretty flowers, we might not have figured that out.” He peeks over his shoulder and tips his chin toward the potted plant across the room. “Do you know how to fix that? Because I’m too scared to ask Mrs. Gunderson.She gives me advice, and I swear, Rose, I listen. I write notes. I go onto the internet andbegfolks to help me out. But these plants come into this house and commit suicide. It’s not my fault.”
“You’ve got it sitting in a dark corner, for starters. In winter.”
“It used to be by the door, but then she burned.” He gets back to work chopping the carrot. Onion. Zucchini. Tossing the lot into the pot, he happily stirs. “I read it shouldn’t sit in too much light, because it suffers.”
“You put it in front of glass in the summer, and in a cold, dark corner in the winter, and expect it to thrive?” I roll my eyes and start across the room, but with my back to him, I press my palm to my belly and smile as my stomach does nervous cartwheels. Ifeelthe flower pressed to my skin, and fight everything in me demanding I run to a mirror and take a peek.
Arriving at the plant, I find it mercifully already on wheels, so I push its thirty pounds over smooth hardwood and park it at the door, then I slip my finger into the dirt—without thinking, without even stopping to wonder if I should—and find the soil damp.
Too damp.
“Don’t water it again until I say you can. Leave it by the door in the winter, and put it in the corner in the summer. And if you tell me you haven’t fertilized it since you bought it, I might smack you.”
He grabs a second, much smaller pot and plops it on the stove, then he moves to the fridge and takes out more ingredients. Butter. Milk. “So I won’t tell you. But for absolutely no reason at all, perhaps you could accompany me to the local plant store sometime this week? It’s definitely not because I want to buy fertilizer, though.”
“Mmhm.” I set my hands on my hips and stare down at the fig’s drooping, sad brown leaves, and then behind it, to the deck with a shiny new nail, front and center. I’ve changed his home already. Simply by being here. Simply by existing.
“You take care of the plants,” he decides. “I’ll take care of dinner. We’re having lasagna, and I don’t know if you know, but my lasagna is fan-fucking-tastic. Not that I’m bragging or anything.”
“Right.” A rosy blush warms my cheeks and leaves my fingers tingling. It’s so silly. So girlish. But for every word he speaks, every joke he tells, and plant he kills, all I know is how thankful, so immeasurably, impossibly grateful I am that I’m here and not at The Wallflower.
Drawing a long breath and expanding my chest, I turn from the fig and study Oliver’s broad, strong back. “Do you have any other victims in your home?”
He chuckles. But he points toward the hall with the glistening spatula. “I got some stuff all over. Go on an adventure and see what you find. I’ll be right here.”
“It felt good, didn’t it?” Liam crosses Oliver’s backyard with his hands in his pockets and an easy smile folded across his face. There’s no snow. No freezing wind. In fact, every time I’ve dreamed of him, we’ve been surrounded by lush gardens and perfect, warm weather.
Is ithewho brings the sunlight? Or am I just that desperate for refuge from a brutal winter?
“It felt good when he realized you possess a special kind of magic in the garden. When he looked straight into your eyes and said your name like he’s known you all along.”
“Yes. It felt good.” I sit on the finished porch and study the elaborately designed railings. The smooth, sanded finish. I trail my hand over the wood and relish the pleasure of knowing he got there in the end. He finished it. And then I feel it—my nail—under my fingers.
It doesn’t have the same smooth flushness as the other nails do. Its head sits just above the surface, high enough to be found by touch. Bent enough to make it impossible to sink all the way without making a mess of things.
A bit like me, I suppose. Rough and out of place. I don’t quite fit in with the rest, but he allows me a safe place to stay, anyway.
