Page 22 of The Florist and Her Alphas

I don’t look at him. “But are you?”

“Yes.” His voice is quiet. Certain. “I am, and I’m sorry. The way we approached you was wrong. Ezra sees numbers. Properties. He doesn’t always see people.” A pause. “I’m going to fix this, Liana. I’ll do everything I can to make sure you keep your shop. It’s not just a building to you. I see that now.”

A long silence. Pepper has gone very still between us, his bright eyes fixed on Julian.

I don’t know what to do with this. I look down at the cotton candy in my hands. Most of it is gone. The paper cone is sticky, pink sugar clinging to my fingertips.

“Thank you for saying that,” I say, very quietly. “It means a lot.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

Pepper, from the middle of the bench, announces: “Bedtime.”

We both laugh, startled and in our own world. Pepper looks pleased with himself.

“Bedtime,” he repeats gravely.

I lean over slightly to look at him. “Is he always like this?”

“He’s nineteen years old and runs my entire household. So, yes.”

I’m laughing again. “He’s wonderful.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly while looking at me and not at Pepper, his expression soft. “I agree.”

My heart is beating so hard at this point that I feel weak. My palms are sweaty.

“I need to get home. It’s getting late,” I say quickly, realizing I took up so much time of this powerful CEO.

He stands up immediately. “I’ll walk you.”

“It’s only fifteen minutes. I walk alone all the time.”

He just looks at me until I stop talking. His expression is settled. Not pushy. Not commanding. Just certain.

“Liana,” he says. “I’m walking you home.”

I do not have the heart to fight him.

We walk side by side through the early-evening Brooklyn streets. Pepper rides on Julian’s shoulder, occasionally muttering things to himself, “Marco?” followed thirty seconds later by “Polo!” in two different voices.

I’m holding my cotton-candy cone, mostly empty now, and my flower crown is slightly askew on my head. I’m also carrying a small stuffed parrot that Julian won me at the ring-toss game ten minutes ago.

“Because it would be rude to come home without a sibling for Pepper,” he’d said, handing me the plush toy with a flourish. Pepper has been giving the stuffed parrot the side-eye for the last twenty minutes, occasionally leaning down to peck at its embroidered eye.

I try to make small talk. Julian answers easily.

He doesn’t press me for anything. He asks about my friends. About the shop. About what I like to grow in spring. I find myself telling him things I do not normally tell people—small things, the quiet of my morning routine, Mrs. Chen who buys white lilies every Friday for her husband’s grave, the way the light falls through the skylight at three in the afternoon and turns everything gold.

He listens. He remembers every name. He remembers every detail. His focus is almost unsettling, his eyes on my face while I talk, like he’s committing each word to memory.

I have not been listened to like this in six years.

We reach my block. The shop is dark, the CLOSED sign facing the street, the ivy on the brick wall deep green in the fading light.

I turn to him on the sidewalk. Julian is standing in front of me with his hands in his pockets. Pepper has, blessedly, gone to sleep on his shoulder—his bright yellow head tucked under one wing, a small feathered lump of contentment.

“Thank you. For today,” I say, feeling warm in my heart, and also a tinge of sadness that we would have to part ways.