Chapter 7 Iris
IRIS
The guest room is too quiet…or maybe it’s just that my thoughts are too loud.
I’ve been lying in this giant bed for what feels like hours, tangled in a fortress of oversized quilts and equally huge pillows, staring at the ceiling and trying very hard not to think about the way Garrik looked at me over dinner.
Or the way he didn’t look at me afterward.
Or the fact that his family clearly ships us harder than a romantic subplot in a dusty archive drama.
I roll over. Then again. The beds here are massive, made for giants, and I feel like a single sock lost in the middle of a laundry pile. I’m both too cold and too warm all at once, and the air smells too much like honey and wildflowers and him.
I give up.
Quietly, I slip out of bed, climbing down the stepstool and padding across the wide-planked floor in nothing but my underwear and the massive sweater I borrowed from Flora that fits me more like a nightdress.
I pause at the window to look out through the gauzy curtains and glass panes, finding the orchard growing softly in the moonlight.
Fireflies dance through the trees, and everything is still. Everything is golden.
The house creaks faintly behind me—just the usual settling—but it feels louder in the quiet. It gives me that uncomfortable sensation of being sleepless in someone else’s space, intrusive.
I just…need a second to settle my thoughts.
When I ease open the front door, the scent hits me all at once: ripe berries, sweet flowers, and the overwhelming scent of honey.
A breeze catches the edge of my sweater, and I shiver as it brushes against my bare legs, but I don’t stop.
No…I thought I would just go for a walk, but I’m clearly going somewhere.
Because now that I’m out here, I need to talk to him.
To Garrik.
So we can start to figure out what’s happening between us…and where we go from here.
His cottage isn’t far from his family’s home, just past the orchard’s edge.
I pass under an archway of blooming vines and into a low, moonlit path flanked by humming plants and soft, glowing moss.
Every step feels like a choice, like I’m choosing him.
The fireflies glow brighter the further I go, drifting in lazy spirals through the trees, casting their spell.
By the time I reach the cottage, the air is thick with warmth and alien magic…and he’s there.
Garrik.
Not inside. Not asleep.
He’s tending to his hives just outside his cottage, shirtless and barefoot, crouched in the middle of the garden.
His back is to me, leaf green skin etched in gold from the fireflies, a lavender glow on his face as it emanates from the bases of the trees–some kind of bioluminescent bloom.
Every muscle shifts with fluid grace as he reaches into the hive, and I see massive creatures that look more like hummingbirds than bees as they settle on his arm.
He hasn’t noticed me yet.
I take one step forward. Gravel crunches underfoot.
His eyes snap toward me.
“Iris?”
His voice is soft, low, and gentle…almost a bedroom voice, which sends a shiver shooting up my spine.
He carefully withdraws his hand, careful not to startle the hive, and one of the bees—a creature the size of a small sparrow with translucent violet wings—lifts gently from his arm and buzzes away into the night.
“Hi,” I say, suddenly at a loss for words.
He blinks at me, the soft glow from the trees casting his features in shifting hues of gold and lavender.
His antennae twitch, brightening to a vibrant pink at the tips, and I can see the moment his eyes trail down…
seeing my bare legs, the oversized sweater slipping off one shoulder, the way I’m standing in the garden like I’ve been called here by the stars themselves.
“You’re…” he starts, then clears his throat. “It’s late.”
“I know.”
“Did you need something?”
I shake my head. Then I nod. A contradiction, I know, but I think he gets it. “Not really. Just couldn’t sleep.”
We both know it’s bigger than that.
We both know neither of us could sleep because we were thinking about each other.
Garrik shifts his weight, glancing toward the hive, then back at me. “You call all the way out here because you couldn’t sleep?”
“I was going for a walk,” I shrug.
“A walk without pants?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Garrik laughs in a way that almost sounds more like a pained groan, then scrubs a hand down his face like he can scrub his brain clean. It doesn’t appear to work. His golden eyes flick to me again, lingering just a second too long on where the sweater flutters around my knees.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again tonight,” he says, voice rough.
“Why not?”
“Because I thought…” He stops and swallows hard. “I thought you would come to your senses.”
I step closer, bare feet brushing the moss at the garden’s edge. “What makes you think that I didn’t?”
His jaw tightens, visible even beneath his curly beard.
His antennae twitch. Garrik doesn’t move a muscle as I inch closer and closer, in the midst of the hives now, the hum of alien bees all around me.
They don’t sting—he told me that a long time ago, swapping stories about our lives before we met—but it’s a little unnerving anyway.
I stop just in front of him.
Close enough to see the rise and fall of his curl-kissed chest. Close enough to feel his heat, to see that the blush on his antennae has spread to his cheeks.
“I can’t stop thinking about you,” I tell him. “About what happened when you came to see me in Mythara…about what just happened in the apiary this afternoon.”
“Iris…”
“I just—” I pause, searching for the words. “I know I make jokes, and I tease, and I maybe showed up without pants, but this isn’t just me messing around, okay?”
His breath catches. He nods once.
“Are you messing around or…or are you serious?” I ask.
His brow furrows and his eyes go soft and melting and gentle. “I’m always serious when it comes to you, Iris.”
That’s the permission I needed—and I reach out to slip my hand into his, my thumb grazing his knuckles. “Can we try this?” I whisper.
Garrik’s fingers curl slowly around mine like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he grabs too fast. His hand is warm and calloused, and when I squeeze, he squeezes back—like it means something. Like he means it.
He looks at our joined hands for a moment, then up at me. “We can try,” he says softly. “But I need you to understand something first.”
My heart stutters. “Okay.”
“This isn’t casual for me,” he says, voice rough around the edges. “It never has been.”
I nod. “I know.”
“I’ve wanted you for so long,” he says. “But I didn’t let myself.
Not really. Not when we were fighting together, not after I came home, not even when you kissed me and I—” He breaks off, staring at me, eyes searching my expression for any sign of doubt.
“If I let myself want this, Iris, there’s no halfway.
I’m not good at pretending it’s just…fun. ”
“I’m not either,” I say, barely a whisper. “You’re my best friend, Garrik. I wouldn’t…I wouldn’t take this risk if I didn’t mean it.”
His shoulders sag with something like relief.
“Then yeah,” he says. “We can try.”
Still holding my hand, he leads me through the garden, past rows of flowering vines and tangled trellises, toward a quiet corner shaded by a canopy of twisting trees.
Moss carpets the ground like a soft, glowing blanket, and fireflies drift lazily overhead.
It feels like a secret—the kind of place people tell stories about, but no one ever finds.
We sit together in the alcove, close but not touching, knees brushing every time I shift. My heart is hammering. My sweater slips a little further off my shoulder, and Garrik notices. He always notices.
For a moment, neither of us says anything.
Then—
“I thought you were avoiding me after dinner,” I admit.
He lets out a quiet exhale. “I was.”
I glance at him, surprised.
“I didn’t want to say the wrong thing,” he says. “Didn’t want to mess it up. You looked so…happy. With my family. And I didn’t want to push. I’ve already pushed too much.”
“You haven’t,” I say, reaching for his hand again. “You haven’t pushed at all. If anything, I’ve been the one pushing.”
His thumb strokes over the back of my hand. “Yeah, well. I don’t mind being pushed. Not by you.”
I swallow hard, staring at where our hands are linked. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” I admit. “I just know that I want to be near you. That it feels good when you look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m the thing you want most in the whole universe.”
He turns to me, slowly, like he’s giving me time to stop this if I want to—but I don’t. I don’t want to stop. I want him to look at me like that forever.
“Iris,” he says, my name barely more than breath. “You are.”
And then he kisses me.
It starts soft—careful, reverent, like he’s tasting the shape of the moment. His lips brush mine once, twice, and I shudder under the gentleness of it.
But the second I tilt my head and kiss him back like I mean it, everything changes.
His big hands come up to cradle my face, one splayed wide against my cheek, the other sliding into my hair like he can’t stand not to be touching me. The kiss deepens—hotter now, hungrier, his mouth slanting over mine like he’s been waiting for years.
Maybe he has.
I climb into his lap without thinking, straddling his thighs, fingers curling around the back of his neck. The heat between us ignites like a struck match—sudden, consuming. He groans low in his throat, like he’s barely holding back, and the sound sends a pulse of heat through my entire body.
My sweater rides up over my thighs. His hands slip beneath the hem to grip my hips.
“Are you sure?” he murmurs, breathless.
I nod, nose brushing his. “I’ve never been more sure. Please…please take me to bed, Garrik.”
And just like that—he kisses me again, harder this time, and I know we’re not coming back from this.
We’re past the point of no return.