Page 28 of Pumpkin Spice & Orc Cinnamon Roll
Like the air thinned out around me, and something hadstepped away.
Now it’s past midnight, and I’m sitting on the worn wooden steps of my porch with a mug of lukewarm chamomile and a stubborn ache under my ribs. The lanterns are all extinguished, the guests long gone, the path littered with gold-flecked leaves that look like the night forgot to clean up after itself. My dress is wrinkled, my curls are slipping free of the careful braid Tara forced on me, and my feet are throbbing from dancing in those absolutely criminal boots I insisted were “practical.” But none of that matters.
Because there’s a package sitting beside me.
I found it on my doormat just after I got home—plain brown paper, twine tied in a careful knot, no name but mine inked in the corner in his handwriting. That impossibly neat, rigid script I used to tease him about for being too precise, like he thought he could charm the universe into behaving if his lines were straight enough.
I haven’t opened it.
Not yet.
I’ve just been staring at it like it might start whispering the answers to every question I’ve been too scared to ask.
I set my mug down and untie the twine, fingers trembling like the wind knows something I don’t.
Inside is a single rolled blueprint.
And a note.
I unroll the paper first—slow, reverent, careful like I’m handling something holy—and feel the breath catch in my chest.
It’s the conservatory.
Myconservatory.
Redesigned. Refined. Built on the bones of that messy, ink-smudged dream I once scribbled on the back of a seed catalog after too much mead and not enough sleep. Every detail is there—arched glass panels, copper gutters for rain collection, heated beds for winter basil, even a tucked-away bench that’s shaded in the morning and sunny by dusk. It’s the kind of structure you build not for profit, but for peace. For planting things that outlive you.
My fingers shake as I reach for the note.
His handwriting is steady, the ink dark and unhurried.
“Every dream is a seed. I’ll plant whatever you wish. —D”
That’s it.
No pressure. No plea.
Just… an offering.
Like he’s laying it at my feet and saying,You don’t owe me anything. But if you want this, it’s yours.
And gods help me, I want it.
Not just the glass walls and herb beds and copper-trimmed gutters. I wanthim.
The man who remembers what I dreamed when no one else bothered to ask.
The man who didn’t just listen—but built it in silence, piece by piece, and waited until I was ready to look.
I carry the blueprint inside like it might fall apart if I breathe too hard. I set it gently on the kitchen table, right where the morning light will hit it. I don’t fold it. I don’t hide it.
Then I go to the pantry, fingers trailing over the row of tins until I find the one that rattles.
The tea tin.
I open the lid.
Inside, nestled among faded rose petals and a hint of old lemon balm, are the acorns. The first one he carved for me when we were barely more than teenagers—before ambition and fear and the ache of growing apart split us down the center—and the second, newer, neater, but no less filled with meaning.
