“I spent so long designing my green spaces and convincing myself it mattered. And maybe it did, in some small way. ButI thought that was nature. I thought a rooftop garden meant something. I thought I knew what the land was.” I let the petal fall from my fingers. “I didn’t know a damn thing. The earth doesn’t need me. It never did.”
I traced the line of Faelan’s brow. It felt like birch bark. “On the street where I grew up, every sidewalk was cracked. Nothing stayed smooth for long. There was one place, right outside my apartment, where a stretch of concrete had split in half—just a thin gap, maybe an inch wide, nothing important. They paved over it again and again, but the grass would always push through.”
Faelan didn’t stir, but I kept going.
“It didn’t matter how much blacktop they piled on. It didn’t matter how many people walked across it every day. Something always grew. I used to stop and stare at it when I was a kid, wondering how a single blade of grass could force its way through asphalt like that. It wasn’t just surviving. It was winning.” The words hovered in my chest for a second before I let them go. “I think you’re a survivor, too.”
His breath hitched.
I froze. “Faelan?”
Nothing.
I was berating myself for thinking I could make any sort of difference at all when, slowly—his eyes opened.
His gaze was steady, but there was distance in it, like he had just returned from somewhere far away.
“Of course the things you do matter,” he said. “They always do. Even if it’s only to you—that’s enough.”
His words settled in the air between us, heavier than they should have been.
I wanted to argue, and tell him that not everything mattered, because sometimes the things you built got paved over, and sometimes fighting didn’t change anything.
But I couldn’t. Because Faelan said nothing he didn’t mean.
His breath came slow, his chest barely moving, but his voice held the same weight it always had. Like the world had already given him all the answers, and he was just passing them down to me.
“Nothing is still,” he murmured. “Not the earth, not the rivers, not even the mountains. Change isn’t something you fight, Samantha. It’s something you move with.” His fingers ghosted over my forearm. They felt more like stem than flesh. “A tree doesn’t resist the wind. It bends. A river doesn’t argue with the stone—it carves through it, reshapes it, until the land no longer remembers what it was before.”
His gaze flickered to me, searching. “You don’t see the shape of your work as it is. Only as it has not yet become.”
I tried to grasp the thread of what he was saying. “So, what do you mean? You think everything I’ve done is just…waiting to grow?”
The hint of a smirk tugged at his lips. “Everything grows.” He turned his head slightly, taking in the vines that curled along the walls and the flowers that now bloomed from the wooden beams. “Even in the places you’d never expect. Like the grass growing through blacktop.”
I hated how much I wanted to believe him and stop fighting against nature. Especially when he was using my own logic to convince me.
And then—
Callie’s phone rang.
The sound shattered the moment, sharp against the hush of the blind.
I used to think her ringtone was cute. But not now. I glared at her hoodie until it quit.
And then it rang again.
And again.
Annoyed, I reached for her phone to silence it—
And froze when I saw the name on the screen.
My boss.
I stared at it, uncomprehending. Why the hell was he callingCallie’sphone?
The ringing stopped. Then immediately started again.
