28. Chapter 28
Maya
***
The Conservatory is strung with white lights by seven o'clock.
They run the length of the greenhouse corridor and loop between the oak beams Sawyer fought to keep when the architects wanted to take them down, and the whole space smells like cedar and jasmine and the late roses I cut myself this morning with hands that, for once, are not shaking at all.
The forced auction is dismissed. The deed is mine.
The town knows it. And tonight Willow Creek is celebrating in the only way Willow Creek knows how to celebrate, which is entirely, and without restraint, and with more casserole dishes than the folding tables can hold.
Sawyer has been here since six, helping Carl wrestle the last of the string lights into place, and when I step through the entrance in the green dress Lily picked out for me, he is already crossing the room toward me, his sleeves rolled, his tie long gone, looking more unguarded than I have ever seen him in public.
"You're staring," I say, smiling.
"I am allowed to stare. You're mine now." He kisses me on the lips, soft and unhurried, and then seems to hear himself and adds, more carefully, "If that's still what you want."
"It's still what I want."
He kisses me again, quick and warm, and somewhere behind us I hear Bette make a small, satisfied sound that is not quite a gasp and not quite a cheer but lands somewhere in between.
***
People keep stopping us.
Mrs. Calloway, who tells me her sweet peas have never looked better and credits this entirely to my care, which is generous and almost certainly untrue.
The man who runs the bakery, who hugs me without asking permission and smells like cinnamon and relief.
Old Mr. Henley, who finds me near the seed library and simply takes my hand in both of his and holds it for a moment, saying nothing, his eyes bright, and I understand that some thank-yous don't need words.
Petra Sorel finds me near the vendor tables, notepad nowhere in sight.
"I owe you something," she says, without preamble. "An apology, I think, more than a follow-up piece. The article. Charity or Calculated Takeover. I wrote the headline before I had the full story, and that's on me."
"It got people talking," I say, because it's true. Besides, I don't entirely know what else to say.
"It got people suspicious of a man who turned out to be the only reason half this room still has a business.
" She glances toward Sawyer, who is currently being thoroughly interrogated by Carl about the structural integrity of the greenhouse corridor.
"I'm running something next week. The real story.
I thought you should hear it from me first."
"Thank you," I say, and mean it.
She nods once, the closest thing to warmth I've seen from her, and disappears back into the crowd.
***
I find Ellie and Grace near the seed library, both of them watching the room with the contentment of two women who have spent the last several weeks worrying about the people currently standing on either side of me.
"You look happy," Ellie says, hugging me.
"I am happy."
"Good." She pulls back and studies my face for a second, the way she does, sharp and warm at once. "He told me, you know. About the shop."
"He told you?"
"Not the details." She smiles. "Just that you guys talked. Whatever you talked about, he's different now. Lighter." She glances at her brother. "I haven't seen him laugh like that since before our mother died."
I don't have a response for that. I just reach over and squeeze her hand.
***
Ellie spots Lily across the room and excuses herself, already waving, and I look around for Sawyer. I find him near the eastern trellis.
"Hey," I say.
"Hello," he says, that almost-smile already arriving.
"Sawyer, can I talk to you for a second? I want to ask you something." I take a breath. "And I want you to actually think about it before you answer, because I mean it."
He goes very still. "All right."
"The Conservatory needs someone who understands the business side.
The leases, the long-term planning, the parts I am genuinely terrible at.
" I take a breath. "I want you to be my partner.
Not silently. Not from a distance, writing checks and disappearing.
Actually in it. Your name on the paperwork next to mine. "
Something moves through his expression, surprise giving way to something else entirely.
"Are you sure?" he says. "You don't have to do that, Maya."
"I know. And I am certain. I want to build something with you, the way we built the Conservatory plans on my worktable at eleven o'clock at night, except this time it doesn't end when the project does."
He doesn't answer right away. He for a long moment, and then he laughs, once, low and surprised, the sound of a man who came here tonight expecting a celebration and is getting something he didn't know he wanted this badly.
"Yes," he says. "Maya Finch, yes."
I don't know which of us moves first, but suddenly I am in his arms, and he kisses me, short and sure, like a handshake that means more than any contract ever could, and when he pulls back we are both smiling, and for a moment neither of us says anything else at all, because there is nothing left to negotiate.
We are simply, finally, agreeing about the same thing.
***
By eight-thirty Carlton Pike has had two glasses of punch and is telling anyone who will listen about the legal precedent set by his ruling, Bette has rearranged the dessert table twice for reasons no one has questioned, and the deed sits folded inside my small clutch, exactly where it has been all evening, waiting.
I find Lily first. Then Ellie. Then Bette, who finds Carl without needing to be asked. Grace materializes at my elbow before I've even finished looking for her, because Grace has never once in her professional life let a moment go unprepared for.
"I need witnesses," I say, when the five of them are gathered around the table, "for something."
"You have five," Lily says, a little thickly, and I realize she is already crying.
I unfold the deed. I smooth it flat against the wood.
Sawyer comes to stand beside me, and I look up at him.
Grace presses a pen into my hand without a word.
I sign my name first, slow and deliberate, the way you sign something you intend to keep. Then I hand the pen to Sawyer.
"Will you be my witness?" I ask.
He looks at me for a long moment, and then he takes the pen, and he signs his name beneath mine on the line marked witness, his handwriting precise and unhurried, the same handwriting that once told me You forgot this. and I never meant to hurt you, Maya, and for that I am truly sorry.
Bette claps first. Then Carl, then Lily, then the whole table, and within a few seconds the sound has spread outward through the Conservatory the way good news spreads through a small town, person to person, soon the whole room is clapping, a few people whistling, someone calling out something about it being the best wedding they never got invited to.
I laugh. Sawyer laughs.
Bette leans over to Carl and says, not quietly at all, "I told you so," and Carl, with the patient grace of a man married forty-one years, simply nods and says, "You did."
Our eyes meet.
He pulls me in and kisses me, slow this time, unhurried, completely unconcerned that half of Willow Creek is there to see it.
For a heartbeat, the Conservatory is completely still. Then someone starts clapping. Bette, probably. A second pair of hands joins in, then another, until the whole room is applauding around us.
The applause fades after a moment. The band starts playing again. Conversations resume, drift, scatter back into their own small orbits, the way a crowd does when it has witnessed something it was glad to see and is now content to let two people simply have the rest of it for themselves.
Sawyer's forehead rests against mine.
"Partners," he says quietly.
"Partners," I agree.
The lights overhead sway slightly in the evening air, and somewhere behind us Fitzgerald, who Ellie smuggled in inside a tote bag against everyone's better judgment, has apparently made friends with the bakery's golden retriever, and the two of them are curled up together beneath the dessert table as if they have always belonged there.
I stop and look around, standing in the middle of everything I almost lost and somehow kept, and I think: this is what it looks like. Not the absence of fear. The courage to trust and let someone in.
The choice, made over and over again, to stay anyway.