Page 127 of Falling for Mr. October

Her smile is full of sadness as she says, “Don’t sound so surprised. You’re easy to love. I’m the one who’s hard to love.”

I scowl at that piece of nonsense. “Whoever made you think that is a stupid fool, and I’d like to kill them.”

She runs her fingers over my face as if she wants to memorize me. “Thank you for that. Giovanni…I need to take you somewhere.”

“Right now?” I ask, surprised.

“Right now.”

“Are we leaving through the front door?”

She tips her head toward the window. “Why bother, when we have a perfectly fine escape route right here?”

I wouldn’t deny Bianca any bit of fun, so I open the window and follow her out into the tree, then drop down into the leaves after her, remembering again that long-ago day when I tried to impress the Murphys with my unimpressive jump.

“What now, Bianca?” I ask.

She reaches down to help me up. I pull her to me instead, laughing as she falls into my arms. “I think I like this,” I say softly. “We could make leaf angels instead of snow angels.”

“We could,” she whispers into my ear, then kisses just beneath the lobe, “but there’s something I need to show you. First, we need to grab a flowerpot.”

“Oh, are we gardening in the middle of the night?”

“You read my mind,” she says.

I help her up, and no shit, she slips into the shed positioned against the back of the house and reemerges with a couple of flowerpots and a trowel.

“You’re a woman of mystery, Bianca Murphy.”

“I’m a woman with a plan.”

“And I’m but your humble servant,” I say, which earns me an eye roll.

She drives us downtown, where we park, and then she leads me to Gallagher Park. A few college-age kids are gathered in the lower section of the park on blankets and beach towels, and they watch us warily as Bianca leads me past them, both of us carrying pots and trowels.

“Don’t worry, kids,” I say, aiming for a smile from my girl. “You’ll learn all about midnight gardening when you’re older.”

Bianca’s laughter trails behind us as we climb to the top of the hill, the gravel crunching beneath our shoes, the air smelling of leaves and apples and sweet rot. We make our way to the old bench that sits at the pinnacle.

Time should have worn away this bench too, as it has the Murphy house and Apple Ridge itself, but it still looks deceptively new.

“Will you sit with me?” she asks, arching her head up to look at me.

“Gladly,” I say, and I lower down next to her on the bench.

“Do you know any of the stories about the bench?” she asks.

“I’ve heard rumors that people like to sit on it.”

Smiling, she reaches for me, and points to the ground below us with our joined hands.

The lamps on the trail are dim, and it’s dark enough that I can’t see what she’s indicating. Until I do. Several green shoots are mixed in with the soil, bricks, and grass around the bench.

“That’s weird.” I frown. “You don’t usually see much growing at this time of year.”

She lifts my hand and kisses it softly. “They say that if you throw seeds from this bench with a wish in your heart, and the seeds grow, it means your wish has come true.”

I shift to get a better look at her, her eyes almost luminescent in the night. “You threw those seeds…”