Page 116 of Wallflower in Bloom

Always so, so quiet.

“I don’t want this, but I accept your decision,” he said, his head resting on hers.

She sniffled, nodding her head. She’d had one spectacular summer. An unimaginable dream she was lucky to have even one day of, let alone six weeks.

“I think you should sleep in the guest room,” she said quietly, even as her lizard brain planned to trap him in her closet and keep him forever.

“Maybe someday there will be a right place, right time.”

She turned silently and walked back up the staircase, starting the first night of the rest of her lonely life.

The mist was starting to burn off in the early morning. Small wisps of it had infiltrated the greenhouse.

Violet ran her hand along the leaves of the Boston Ferns, ready to be sold at Bloom. At the beginning of the summer, these had been merely tiny shoots, but now they were full, healthy plants. Had she grown in the same way they had? Was she different now, too?

She’d hardly slept that night, crying in the closet for most of it. Now it only reminded her of Jack.

The man she loved.

And she’d cried even harder.

After several hours, she gave up on sleep and went out to her sanctuary, but ghosts of their time together surrounded her still.

Jack appeared at the greenhouse door, freshly showered with bags under his eyes, and rapped with his knuckle. The silence was strained between them.

“I’ll, uh.” He pulled a hand down his face. “Looks like I’ll be back in a month. I don’t know if you heard, but my dad is getting married,” he said, throwing a thumb over his shoulder.

She nodded. She’d seen Ms. McClotskey’s happy updates on social media the night before. Their romance had been a whirlwind, but it wasn’t surprising with how smitten they’d been.

Violet would be a liar if she said she hadn’t suspected her feelings for Jack after only a few weeks.

When you knew, you sometimes just knew.

“Violet, you understand I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to go, but I’ve got to. And if I didn’t know you, I’d beg you to come with me.”

“I would, but I can’t,” she whispered.

He nodded slowly. The blue of his eyes looked more like a stormy sea as he fought back tears.

“I have a present for you.” He brought in a decorative pot with a small starter plant.

Violet gasped. Monstera Albo Variegata.

The large healthy leaves were dark green and had signature open holes. Several leaves looked like someone had spilled a bucket of white paint along them. It was exquisite.

“These are expensive,” she breathed. She knew several plant enthusiasts who would give their firstborn child for a healthy variegated Monstera starter.

“I wanted to thank you and for you to have something happy to remember our summer by.”

Our summer.

He handed it to her, his fingers brushing hers, and her breath hitched. Her fingers delicately traced the edges of the leaves, careful not to look up into his face as he stared down at her.

“It reminded me of you,” he said quietly. He hadn’t stepped back, and she felt like a sun-starved leaf, unable to move away from the pull of him.

“Because of my alter ego?”

His voice was low. “Because it’s striking and bold and hard to find. It calms you to be near it. It makes you want to see what your future would be like with it.”

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