Page 6 of The Florist By Chance
My arms fold on instinct. Titan. Of course. I’ve heard the name whispered in town like a curse.
“Titan?” I ask, my voice sharper than I mean. “As in the folks gobbling up every family business within a hundred miles?”
Claudia doesn’t flinch. “As in the folks offering you a way out of financial hardship. Titan invests in community success.”
I nearly laugh. “Yeah, I’ve seen what your kind of success looks like. Starbucks on every corner.”
Her smile only sharpens. “Or stability. Survival.” She slides a glossy folder across the counter, like she’s dealing cards she knows we’ll have to play. “Titan is prepared to give Collins Florals six months under shared ownership. If the shop meets profitability targets, it remains yours. If not…”
She lets the words hang, heavy as a storm cloud. “Titan assumes full control.”
I glance at Mia. Her knuckles are white where she grips the counter. She looks like she might break apart if she lets go. I want to say something, anything, but the truth is, I’m rattled too. Six months isn’t time—it’s a fuse.
Mia clears her throat, her voice strained. “And if we refuse?”
Claudia smooths her jacket, already halfway out the door in her mind. “Then Titan proceeds with acquisition immediately. Either way, the clock has started.”
The bell jingles as she leaves, her perfume lingering like smoke after a fire.
Silence settles, thick enough to choke on. I can hear the cooler humming, the faint traffic outside, even Mia’s unsteady breathing.
Six months. Six months to keep this place from becoming another cog in Titan’s machine.
Mia looks like she’s drowning. I should feel just as panicked, but instead, there’s this strange calm in my chest. Maybe because panicking won’t fix a thing. Maybe because I’ve lived through worse deadlines.
I glance at her, still holding herself together by sheer will, and I say the only thing that makes sense.
“Well.” My voice comes out low, steady. “Guess that means we’re in this together.”
Her head snaps toward me, eyes wide. And the terror in them tells me she’d rather face Titan alone than face it with me.
The shop feels too quiet after Ms. Eldridge leaves, the echo of her heels still bouncing around in my head. Six months. That’s not a business plan—it’s a countdown.
Mia leans against the counter, arms wrapped tight around herself, like she’s bracing for impact. Her face is pale, but her eyes—those sharp, unyielding eyes—are blazing. “She makes it sound so neat. Targets, deadlines, conditions.” Her voice wavers on the edges. “But if we fall short?—”
“If,” I cut in, sharper than I mean. I step closer, trying to ground us both. “Not when.”
She doesn’t look convinced. Her gaze darts to the ledger by the register, the stack of bills tucked underneath, the shelf I just screwed back together, all of it like evidence in a case she’s already lost. “Luke, you don’t understand. Collins Florals doesn’t make Titan-level numbers. We’ve been holding on by threads and prayer. Six months is… it’s impossible.”
I rake a hand through my hair, jaw tight. Part of me wants to agree. To say what she’s thinking—that Titan stacked the deck. But another part of me, the one that walked out of boardrooms in San Francisco, the one that’s made a living out of surviving, refuses.
“Then we’ll make it possible,” I say.
Her laugh is soft, bitter, and it guts me more than I expect. “You waltz back into this shop after years away, and suddenly you think you can just fix everything with determination?”
I bite back my first response, force my voice steady. “I don’t know what else to do but try.”
Silence stretches between us, taut and brittle. For a second, I think she might snap at me again. Instead, she presses her palms flat on the counter, whispering almost to herself.
“If we fail, we lose the shop.” She swallows hard, her eyes glossing. “We lose Collins’s legacy. We lose everything.”
Her words hang in the air like a verdict. And even though I want to argue, want to promise her we won’t let that happen, the truth slams into me like a weight I can’t shake.
She’s right.
Failure doesn’t just mean closing doors—it means erasing the man who gave me this second chance, the place that shaped her whole life, the one tether still tying me to a town I thought I left behind.
Six months.
