Page 29 of The Florist By Chance
The hum of the cooler fills the shop, low and steady, like it’s the only thing holding us together. Luke is a few feet away, sleeves rolled up, forearms streaked with green where he’s stripped leaves from stems. He doesn’t notice the mess—he never does. He just works until the job is done.
And I hate that part of me finds it comforting.
I stack another bunch of hydrangeas into the bucket beside me, but my hands hesitate. The blooms are heavy, lush, and a little too much like my thoughts right now—crowding, spilling, impossible to contain.
“Those need cutting down another inch,” Luke says without looking up. His voice is steady, practical, but I catch the barest hint of a smile tugging at his mouth, like he knows I’ll argue just to argue.
“Or,” I counter, clipping them my way, “we keep them tall so they don’t disappear in the centerpiece.”
Finally, he glances up. A challenge sparks in his eyes, but it’s softer now, more playful. “Stubborn as ever.”
“Efficient as ever,” I shoot back, though my lips twitch despite myself.
It shouldn’t feel like flirting, but it does.
I turn too quickly toward the counter, hoping distance will dull the edges of this awareness. My chest is tight, my pulse uneven. He’s just Luke—my best friend’s brother, the one who left and came back like nothing had changed. The one I told myself I’d never let close again.
But tonight, with the shop quiet and the world outside pressed dark against the windows, it’s harder to keep those walls up.
Grace’s voice echoes in my head from dinner last week:“You don’t have to carry the whole shop alone, Mia. Let someone stand beside you.”
Easy for her to say. She hasn’t watched Titan chew at our business like termites, or felt how thin the floorboards of this place are under our feet. And she hasn’t spent years nursing the sting of Luke walking away when I needed someone steady.
I glance back at him, and my chest does that uneven lurch again. Because the truth is, he is steady—at least now.
He catches me watching. His eyebrows lift just slightly, the kind of subtle tell that says he’s not sure whether to tease me about it or let it pass.
I clear my throat and focus on trimming stems, the snip of scissors sharp in the quiet. “Don’t read into it,” I mutter.
“Into what?” His voice is light, innocent, but there’s a current under it.
“Into me… looking.” The words slip out before I can cage them. My cheeks burn.
He doesn’t smirk. Doesn’t tease. He just studies me for a moment, long enough I have to grip the scissors tighter. Then he says, quiet but sure, “I wouldn’t—unless you wanted me to.”
The floor seems to tilt beneath me. Trusting him feels like standing at the edge of a cliff—you’re not falling yet, but the air whips sharp in your lungs, reminding you of the drop.
I busy my hands with another bucket of flowers, but my thoughts won’t quiet. Every laugh tonight has felt too easy, every silence too charged. And the longer we work side by side, the harder it is to remember why I built those walls in the first place.
Because if I let him in again and he leaves—if he decides Bloom & Vine or San Francisco or some other dream matters more—I don’t know if I’ll recover this time.
The cooler hums on, steady, steady, steady. My hands tremble anyway.
“Hey,” Luke says softly, and when I look up, his expression is gentler than I expect. No challenge, no smirk, just sincerity that cuts straight through me. “We’ll figure this out. Together.”
And just like that, I feel the edges of my resolve fray. Because part of me wants to believe him. Part of me already does.
The bell above the shop door jangles, sharp in the quiet. Both Luke and I freeze. No one should be here at this hour.
It’s Mr. Kwan, our landlord, his umbrella dripping a puddle on the entry mat. He glances around the shop, eyes narrowing at the buckets of flowers still scattered across the floor, the stems and leaves we haven’t swept yet.
“Late night?” he asks, voice clipped.
I wipe my hands on my apron, trying to sound breezy. “Big order for the community event. We’re just finishing up.”
Luke sets down his shears and steps forward, solid as a wall between me and whatever this is. “Evening, Mr. Kwan. Everything all right?”
Mr. Kwan shifts, clears his throat, then blurts it out: “Titan made me an offer.”
