Kiera shoots me a glare brimming with anger. “She isn’t in love with you, she’s in love with Nick Smith, the legend who has nothing to do with you except you look the same.”
But I wasn’t Nick Smith with Enya. I was me. I was Dominic Delacour. I was a tired man who found respite in the arms of a kind, honest woman. And now it’s gone, and with it the sense of peace I had started to feel.
“Maybe,” I say resignedly. “But I’m not going to pretend that this time it didn’t cost me.”
Kiera stares at me like she’s seeing a liability where an asset used to be. “Please tell me you didn’t fall for her.”
“I can’t,” I reply truthfully.
Kiera shakes her head. “Dom, go fuck someone’s brains out, okay? Someone hot you pick up at a bar like you usually do after an op. You’ll forget the boring Miss Enya Cahill in no time.” She giggles seductively. “Hell, we can go to my hotel room and fuck. I promise it will ease you?—”
I step away from her. “Not happening ever again.”
Kiera and I’ve fucked to release stress plenty of times in the past decade we’ve worked together—during, and after an op. But that was then.
Her expression twists in puzzlement. “What does that mean?”
I send her a flat, unimpressed stare. “You know what it means, Kiera.”
I leave her standing, aghast, in the observation room, and head out of the building, wanting desperately to have the right to go to an apartment above a flower shop, and bury myself inside the woman I fell in love with.
5
PETALS & PRETENDING
ENYA
Iwalk into Lucille’s—into the warm, bright world of my flower shop—desperate to shed the memory of the cold metal chair, and the echo of my bitter, self-harming words.
The scent of jasmine and roses wraps around me like a blanket, familiar and steady. Lucille’s never disappoints. It’s the only place in my life that has never lied to me.
It’s been my sanctuary since it opened, and I hope and pray it will continue to be, even though I vividly remember making love with Nick on the counter, in the dark, his mouth near to my ear, whispering,“When I’m inside you, baby, I’m home.”
When I recall my response to his false declaration, nausea rises inside me.
“I love you, Nick.”
I take deep breaths and put a hand on my stomach to settle it.
I know it’s going to take some time for my brain and body to adjust to losing Nick, to living with the empty space where he used to be, physically and emotionally.
I walk unsteadily to the small office in the back of the shop, and put my purse away. Then I put on my brown apron, a fewscattered daisies, and Lucille’s Flowers in yellow stitched across it.
I flip the door sign to OPEN.
I’m technically already behind for the day. I open at nine, close at five, close early on Saturdays—but Sundays, when the shop is closed, are for the real work: conditioning flowers, cleaning buckets, placing orders, sketching arrangements, keeping the place alive.
Closing early crosses my mind, but I keep moving.
My body protests, my emotions lag behind me, but the work doesn’t care.
A wedding awaits—ivory roses, soft greens, romantic but restrained. While I prep that, I’m watching for a call from a family who will need to bury someone in a couple of days.
There’s a birthday bouquet cooling in water, and an anniversary order, both waiting to be picked up.
Joy, grief, love, loss—all of it runs through my shop.
My flowers and how they brighten people’s lives, even on the darkest days, give me immense pleasure.
