I nodded, my hands trembling as I slipped them into my apron pockets. “It’s creepy. Like there’s something I don’t know.”
The shop suddenly felt smaller, and the cheerful crafts I had made on the walls no longer seemed so bright. My throat thickened as I tried to swallow past the knot that had formed. I felt a little sick.
“Hey, we’ll figure it out. That’s what we do.” Ellis looked like he might step forward and pat me on the shoulder to comfort me, but changed his mind when a customer walked in.
“Can I go?” The delivery driver hitched a thumb toward the door, shuffling a bit as if he was about to bolt.
“No, you can’t. Stay here until I can talk to you. We want details on the location you pick up from. What you know about who ordered it, all of that shit.”
The snap was so hard that I could practically hear the kid’s spine come to attention.
Minutes later, the door swung open, and Rhodes entered like a force of nature, tall and brooding. His gray eyes locked onto me with that intense, possessive stare for a moment before he pulled me into an unprompted hug, his arms wrapping around me like steel. "You okay?" he growled, his voice a low rumble against my ear.
It was like he was ignoring all of our previous texts or the whole thing with Catherine. Instead of sinking into him like I wanted, I wiggled away even as Rhodes’s face fell. Maybe I should have felt bad, but I just wrapped my arms around myself.
Rhodes
The moment Sage slipped out of my arms, it hit me like a punch, leaving me breathless. Her body stiffened, arms crossing over herself like a shield, and those green eyes that normally shimmered with a mix of sass and warmth were shadowed with doubt and a touch of anger.
Doubt I'd put there by rushing things, and then amplified by Catherine’s visit. I hadn’t handled things well at all. Parrish said he’d only been able to drop her off in Alder Valley at some motel she was staying in. Hopefully, she’d just go back to Seattle and wait for the next month’s check.
“Since you’re here. I’m going to just go get the details from this kid.” Ellis jabbed a thumb at the delivery driver. He shot me a glance. The kind that said,handle your shit, boss. Yeah, I was trying.
"Sage," I said, my voice low, rough with the frustration boiling under my skin. I kept my hands at my sides, fighting the urge to touch her again. "Talk to me. Please."
I wanted to pull her back, crush her against me until she felt how real this was, but I could see that now wasn’t the time for that.
She glanced at the forget-me-nots on the table with its creepy note still lying there. Then she looked back at me, and her lips pressed into a thin line. For a second, I thought she'd bolt.
"It's not just the flowers," she finally said, her voice quieter than I'd ever heard it. "Or yesterday. It's... everything. It’s a lot.”
She pressed her hands to her eyes. She was right. The day had been fuck all, and us sleeping together had complicated it. I waited for her to finish what she had to say.
“Catherine showing up like that, calling you 'husband.' And you... You said her being Opal's mom meant nothing to you. That scares me, Rhodes. What kind of man says that?" She bit her lip, and those hazel green eyes moved over my face carefully, like she was looking for all the answers.
We’d moved deeper into the back of the flower shop, but I would have liked more privacy and time for this conversation. Her words hit hard, tearing into complicated places. I ran a hand through my hair, exhaling sharply. She deserved the truth, all of it, not the sanitized version. "Sit down with me. Let me explain."
She hesitated, arms still crossed, but nodded toward the back of the shop, away from the front where customers might wander in. The area where her flower presses were was crowded and a bit chaotic, but it had a couple of stools. It was surrounded by the pressed flower frames she made. Tons of delicate, beautiful things that screamed ‘Sage’ in every petal.
The issue of the flowers that were delivered weighed on me like needles against my skin, but Sage looked at me with accusation and hurt. She deserved answers to the questions she needed. Wehad skipped some steps. There was a lot I didn’t know about her, either.
“It was never love," I started, meeting her eyes directly and not looking away. “We met when I was building Redhawk. I’m not proud of the fact that I slept around a lot in those days.” Clearing my throat uncomfortably, I tried not to look away. “She was charming, played the part perfectly, but it was all fake. She was only interested in the lifestyle I provided — fancy nails and dinners out. To be fair to her, I was only interested in an easy lay.”
Rubbing my palms on my jeans, I tried to breathe as I moved into this next part. “The night she told me she was pregnant, I’d been at a bar with Briggs, you’ve met him.”
“I have. He’s nice.”
Her quiet words drew my eyes to her. She was watching me now with a cautious softness.
“I’d told Briggs that I was breaking it off with her. She was using me, and I didn’t like it.” I gave my hands another wipe. “Anyway, she showed up and told me she was pregnant. We’d been more than careful. I always wrapped up, and she said she was on birth control.” Sage’s eyebrows drew together. “I wasn’t upset. In fact, I was ecstatic about having a kid, but she wasn’t. She was super angry about it.”
“I see.” Her hands twined together.
No, I didn’t think she did. “Catherine had never wanted kids because they’d interfere with her life, and she was open about that. It was fine with me at the time because I wasn’t looking for long-term or to marry her.”
“But you did,” Sage interrupted.
“I did it because that was what Catherine demanded in exchange for having the baby. We had an agreement on paper. She wanted a ring, a settlement, and a list of stuff, really.” Massaging the back of my neck, I tried to find words to explain. “She had what I wanted, and she knew it. So she got her marriage and her penthouse, but she never wanted me as a person. And she certainly never had any interest in being a mother. She didn’t change a diaper or even hold Opal once.”
