A meadow. Golden grass swaying in the summer breeze, dotted with explosions of color—purple coneflowers and black-eyed Susans and something that looked like wild bergamot. Butterflies drifted lazily from bloom to bloom. In the distance, the tree line of the sacred grove rose like a gentle wall, leaves catching the light.
"I've spent a lot of time here," he said. "Trying to figure out what the hell I was doing with my life."
"It's beautiful."
"Yeah." But he wasn't looking at the meadow. "It is."
She felt the heat rise in her cheeks. A week of compliments that caught her off guard and touches that lingered and she still hadn't figured out how to handle it. How to accept that someone might actually want her, not as a second choice or a convenient option, but as a first and only choice.
They settled in the grass, close enough that their shoulders brushed. The lemonade was cool in her hand. The sun was warm on her face. And all of the tension in her body suddenly just disappeared.
"Tell me something," he said after a while.
"What?"
"Anything. Something you've never told anyone else."
She considered deflecting, but something in his voice, something earnest and unguarded, made her pause.
"I used to want to be a botanist," she said quietly.
"Used to?"
"When I was younger. Before…" She trailed off, plucking a blade of grass and twisting it between her fingers. "Before I realized that wanting things for myself was… complicated."
He was quiet, waiting.
"My mother gets… bored very easily. There's always a newer, more exciting plan. That's how I ended up here." She sighed. "My mother bought the florist's shop two years ago because she thought it would be an exciting new adventure.”
“With a name like Bloom, it's meant to be, darling,” she’d told Marigold cheerfully, and Marigold had bitten her tongue. She was well aware that any attempt to remind her mother of how her previous adventures had ended would only end in tears.
"My mother is —"*flighty, irresponsible, impractical.* She ran through a list of adjectives before finally settling on "not really suited to running a business."
Her mother’s enthusiasm had worn off pretty quickly once she realized that loving flowers and being able to create artistic arrangements was not enough. Not only did she lack business skills, she was too disorganized to keep up with dates. And while she could, in fact, create beautiful arrangements, she rarely created the same one twice.
"That's so boring, darling,” she’d said airily, ignoring the fact that if somebody wanted a bouquet of pink and white roses, they weren't going to be satisfied with a scarlet bird of paradise, no matter how beautiful. And eventually, even her mother'sundeniable charm wasn't enough to appease her disgruntled customers.
"So you bailed her out," he said, making it a statement rather than a question.
"Yes. But I was ready for a change,” she added quickly. It had also fulfilled a secret dream of hers because she, unlike her mother, would never have had the courage to go for it. "And it turned out that I loved it."
"Your mother doesn't live in Harmony Glen, does she?"
"No." She barely managed to prevent a shudder at the thought. She loved her mother, and she knew her mother loved her, but their relationship worked a lot better when they were not in close proximity. "She's currently in India."
"India?" He arched a brow.
"Studying tantric yoga with a yoga master.” *Who is younger than I am.*
"She sounds like a very interesting woman," he said, his voice carefully neutral, but she felt herself flinch.
She'd spent most of her life living in the shadow of her mother's effervescent charm. She wasn't small or cute or bubbly. She was tongue-tied around people she didn’t know, whereas Daisy had never met a stranger. Her mother’s friendships tended to end as quickly as they began, but that never felt like much consolation.
"She also has a bad habit of falling in love," she continued. "Spectacularly. Disastrously. Every few years there'd be someone new—someone who was going to change everything, who was going to be the one. And she'd throw herself into itcompletely. Quit her job. Move across the country. Uproot our entire lives."
"And you?"
"I was the constant. The one who kept things running while she chased whatever dream the current boyfriend had convinced her to pursue." The grass tore between her fingers. "By the time I was old enough for college, the idea of making plans for myself felt… pointless. What was the use of wanting something when it could all get pulled away the next time she met someone charming at a coffee shop?"
