I watch him. My brother who gave up his twenties so I could have a childhood. Who wants me on a plane because in his mind, planes equal possibility and Harbor Hill equals stuck.
He doesn't understand. He gave me stability. He gave me someone to call when I was scared, someone to show up at every school event, someone who made sure I ate breakfast and did my homework and knew, always, that I was loved.
But he can't give me what I actually want. He can't plant the roots I'm desperate for.
I want people. Plural. I want to stop being someone's responsibility and start being someone's person. I want family so badly I ache with it. Rome was it for so long and now we have Erin, too. I need them both close enough to touch.
"I don't want options," I tell him. "I want a kitchen table and family dinners."
He stares at me, brows furrowing, before he exhales through his nose and turns back to the faucet, twisting the handle like he can fix whatever's wrong just by looking at it hard enough.
"The hot water takes about thirty seconds to kick in," he says gruffly. "Don't panic."
"Noted."
"And the bedroom window sticks if you open it past halfway." He's already moving toward it, testing the frame.
"Okay."
"And if you need anything..."
"Rome."
He stops, hand still on the window frame, shoulders tense.
"Go home," I say gently. "Erin's waiting for you."
His shoulders drop at her name. They always do. My serious, stoic brother goes soft at the edges whenever anyone mentions Erin Scott. It would be nauseating if it wasn't so adorable.
"Call me if you need anything," he says.
"I won't need anything."
"Call me anyway."
He crosses the room and hugs me. Tight, brief, one hand on the back of my head the way he's done since I was small. Since I was ten years old and crying in an airport and he was the only person left who wanted me.
When he leaves, closing the door carefully behind him, I stand in the silence.
I'm burned out at twenty-two. It sounds dramatic when I say it like that, but it's true. Undergrad wasn't easy, four years of orgo and anatomy and MCAT prep books stacked so high on my desk they blocked the window, but I could have handled it. I wasgoingto handle it. I had the score, the personal statement, the whole trajectory mapped out since Iwas seventeen. Medical school was never a question for me. It was the plan. The only plan.
What I couldn't handle was Rome leaving Chicago to oversee a compound build for Ramsey, a client turned close friend who'd hired him for the job and inadvertently changed both our lives. Because that build didn't just give Rome a project. It gave him Erin.
Not only that, but he has formed such a close bond with Ramsey and Callahan that I think for the first time in his life, Rome has actual friends instead of "work people." They gave him a reason to stay in Harbor Hill. And it left me in Chicago without my only family for the first time.
I didn't handle it well. I didn't handle it at all. I just broke, slowly but surely. In the way where you keep showing up to class but you're not really there. In the way where you stop eating regular meals and start crying in the shower and tell everyone you're fine, you're fine, you're fine. In the way where you stare at secondaries from schools you'd dreamed about and can't make your hands type a single answer.
So I made the hard decision. Not just a year off. A full stop. I deferred nothing, applied nowhere. Walked away from the only future I'd ever pictured for myself. Rest. Recover. Figure out who I am when I'm not running on fumes and fear and the ghost of a plan that was supposed to save me.
All that has to wait as I take in my apartment. My apartment. My decision. My Harbor Hill.
The bell chimeswhen I push open the door to Wildflower & Thorn the next day, and the smell hits me before anything else.
Green and sweet, something alive. Buckets of flowers line the walls. Half-finished arrangements cover every surface. Stems scattered everywhere like beautiful chaos. One slow breath, and some of the weight on my shoulders lifts.
Last year, when I'd had enough of missing Rome, I'd hopped on a plane to visit him unannounced. I found him making out with Erin in an alley. Boy, had he been pissed.
But I'd fallen for Erin straight away, and spent more time with her than my brother, honestly. A lot of that time had been right here, in this shop, learning the names of flowers and watching her work.
