Tonight, it felt like hiding.
She sank onto the sofa and pulled a pillow into her lap, hugging it against her stomach like armor. Outside, she could hear the faint sounds of evening in Harmony Glen—a car door closing, someone laughing on the street below, the distant chime of the clock tower marking the hour.
Inside, she could hear nothing but the echo of her own thoughts.
Wine and warmth and the brush of his lips and?—
She hugged the pillow tighter.
It had been barely a kiss. A graze. The kind of thing that could almost be explained away as an accident, a natural consequence of standing too close to a beautiful male who smelled like summer and looked at her like she was worth looking at.
Her fingers found her lips, tracing the place where he'd touched her. They felt impossibly sensitive, as though that single brush had changed something fundamental.
*Stop this,*she told herself sternly.*You know better. You know what happens when you let someone like him get close to you.*
But that was the problem, wasn't it? She didn't know him. Not really. She'd made assumptions based on a single trait—the charm, the easy confidence, the way he moved through the world like he owned it. The same charm her mother wielded like a weapon. The charm she'd learned to associate with disappointment and abandonment and a trail of destruction that she had to clean up.
But Thallos wasn't just charm. He was the grief in his eyes when he talked about his mother. The pride when he showed her the vineyard. The way he'd accepted her refusal to let him walk next to her with nothing but a quiet "Whatever you need, little flower."
And the flowers. God, the way the flowers had bloomed at his touch, as though the entire trellis had been holding its breath, waiting for him to tell them it was time.
She pushed herself off the sofa, suddenly restless, and paced to the back of the apartment. The French doors stood open, the evening air flowing in, cool and fresh after the day's heat. She stepped out onto the tiny balcony, her bare feet on the cool wood, and looked down at her garden.
Not a big garden—barely more than a container garden, really, with pots and planters of every description crowding the small space. But it was hers. She'd built it from seedlings and cuttings, from the remnants of her mother's neglected collection and the additions she'd carefully cultivated since moving in.
Her fingers trailed over the leaves of her favorite—a climbing hydrangea in a massive pot that she'd been training up a trellis for the past year. The blooms were just beginning to open, delicate lace caps of white and pale green, and she thought about the way Thallos had made her roses bloom. The way she might have bloomed under his kiss if she hadn't pulled away so quickly.
What if she hadn't pulled away?
Her chest tightened at the thought. What if she'd let him kiss her properly? Would it have been as devastating as she imagined? Would his hands have found her waist, pulling her closer? Would he have tasted her as thoroughly as he'd tasted the wine?
She was being ridiculous. Getting carried away with a fantasy that had no place in her life. She was the careful one, the sensible one, the one who knew better than to trust in charm and pretty words and promises made in the heat of the moment.
But the memory of his lips on hers wouldn't fade. The way her body had responded, softening before her brain could catch up. The way her hands had wanted to reach for him, to pull him closer instead of pushing him away.
"You're being an idiot," she whispered to her hydrangea. The leaves rustled slightly in the evening breeze, as though in agreement.
She needed a distraction. Something concrete, something she could control. Her gaze fell on the stack of floral design magazines on the small bistro table—inspiration for tomorrow's arrangements, nothing more.
But as she picked up the top magazine, she caught sight of her reflection in the darkened window. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair escaping from its braid, her lips slightly swollen as though she really had been thoroughly kissed.
"Stupid," she muttered into the empty apartment. "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
She wasn't sure if she meant him for kissing her, or herself for letting him, or the whole situation for existing in the first place. Maybe all three. Maybe none of them. Maybe the only stupid thing was the way her lips still tingled, even now, as though his mouth had left a mark she couldn't see.
Her phone buzzed in her bag.
She ignored it.
It buzzed again.
And again.
With a groan, she dug through her bag until her fingers closed around the vibrating rectangle.
Lila's face grinned up at her from the screen—a selfie they'd taken three months ago at the Harmony Glen farmers' market, Lila's brown curls wild from the wind, both of them laughing.Lila was new in town as well, an artist who'd given up on city life to dedicate herself to her art. She'd found the creative inspiration she'd been seeking—along with a huge minotaur who worshipped the ground she walked on.
Three text messages.
