"Mari, wait?—"
But she was already moving, weaving through the café toward the door. The morning air hit her face like a slap, cool and sharp, and she stood on the sidewalk for a long moment, breathing through the tightness in her chest.
Her phone buzzed again.
*If you'd rather not do the lesson tonight, I understand. But I'd like to see you. Just to talk.*
She should respond. She should at least acknowledge him. That was the polite thing to do, the mature thing, the thing she would normally do without question. Instead, she opened a new message and typed quickly, before she could change her mind.
*Can't make the lesson tonight. Something came up at the shop. Will text later about rescheduling.*
She hit send and immediately felt sick.
The response came within seconds.
*Is everything okay?*
*Fine. Just busy.*
A pause. *Did I do something wrong?*
*Yes,* she thought. *No. I don't know. You made me feel things I wasn't ready to feel and now I don't know if any of it was real.*
She didn't type any of that. Instead, she shoved the phone back in her pocket and started walking, fast and purposeful, toward the safety of Bloom & Vine.
The phone buzzed again. And again. She didn't check it.
When she finally reached the shop, her hands were shaking too badly to work the key. She leaned against the door, pressing her forehead to the cool glass, and tried to remember how to breathe.
Inside her pocket, the phone began to ring.
She knew the sound—she'd assigned him a specific ringtone after their third meeting, something bright and cheerful that had seemed appropriate at the time. Now it felt like mockery.
She let it ring.
Three times, then four, then five.
Finally, mercifully, it stopped.
A moment later, one final text arrived.
*Okay. When you're ready, I'll be here. Take whatever time you need.*
She stared at those words until her vision blurred. Then she unlocked the shop door, stepped inside, and closed out the world behind her.
The flowers waited in their buckets, needing nothing from her but water and care. They wouldn't lie. They wouldn't charm her. They wouldn't make her question everything she thought she knew about herself.
She picked up her pruning shears and got to work.
CHAPTER 13
The bottle shattered against the stone wall of the wine cellar. Thallos watched the dark red spread across the ancient limestone, rivulets running down like tears—or blood—and felt absolutely nothing. Which was, perhaps, the problem. He should feel something. Anger, at least. Frustration. Instead, there was only this hollow, echoing emptiness where his chest used to be.
Can't make the lesson tonight. Something came up at the shop.
Three days. Three days of polite deflection and unanswered calls and texts that said nothing while somehow managing to scream rejection.
He grabbed another bottle from the rack—a mediocre vintage, nothing worth saving—and hurled it after the first. The crash was satisfying for exactly half a second.
