Chapter Three
Holden
The bell over the door rang at a quarter to nine.
I looked up from the arrangement I was working on, a sympathy piece for the Harrison funeral: white lilies, soft ferns, a few stems of white stock for texture.
Sympathy work was my comfort zone. Clear purpose, clear meaning.
The family wanted peace and dignity, and I knew how to give them that.
No ambiguity. No second-guessing whether I'd chosen right.
Jamie stood in the doorway with a coffee cup in each hand and a smile so wide it made my face flush.
“I brought fuel.” He held up one of the cups. “There's extra cream and sugar in the bag, but Mags said you like it black, that you're a purist.”
“Mags talks too much.”
He crossed the shop and set the cup on my workbench, his gaze moving across the space.
Today he wore a rust-colored sweater that looked soft, sleeves pushed up past his wrists despite the January cold.
His jeans had a hole starting at the knee, and his sneakers were beat-up Converse that had no business being worn in a Colorado winter.
“It's bigger than I realized,” he said. “From the outside, I mean. There's a whole back room?”
“Storage. Workroom. The coolers take up most of it.”
“Can I see?”
I led him through the doorway. The back room ran ten degrees colder than the front, the coolers humming their constant low drone along the far wall, glass doors fogged with condensation.
Buckets of stems lined the work counter: roses in various stages of opening, lilies with their stamens still intact, eucalyptus waiting to be sorted.
The green smell of cut stems hung in the air, sharp and clean.
My favorite smell in the world. I breathed it in without thinking.
“This is where I do arrangements.” I gestured at the workbench, the ribbon spools arranged by color, the wire cutters and floral tape within easy reach. “Coolers keep everything fresh. Storage is through there.”
Jamie took it in like I'd shown him something important. His eyes moved across the buckets of stems, the organized chaos of my workspace, the worn spot on the floor where I stood for hours at a time.
“It suits you,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“I don't know. Everything in its place but only you know where.” He picked up a spool of ribbon, turned it over in his hands, set it back down in exactly the wrong spot. “It's nice.”
I didn't know what to do with that. I picked up the coffee he'd brought me. Black, like he'd said. The cup was warm against my palm.
“Here.” I grabbed the canvas apron from the hook by the door and held it out. “You'll want this. The work's messy.”
Jamie took it, struggling with the ties until I stepped behind him and knotted them myself. The apron swallowed him, designed for someone my size, hanging almost to his knees. He looked ridiculous.
“Come on,” I said. “You can shadow me today.”
“Shadow you.” His lips curled up. “I can do that.”
The morning moved faster than I expected.
Jamie asked good questions about stem length and flower placement, and I found myself explaining instead of deflecting. Why you cut stems at an angle and how to strip leaves below the waterline. The difference between flowers that open and flowers that don't, and why it matters for timing.
“Lilies, you buy tight and let them open,” I heard myself saying.
“Roses too. But ranunculus?” I picked up one of the tight buds from the bucket, layers of petals curled in on themselves like secrets.
“These are tricky. Buy them too open, they're done in two days.
But if they won't open at all, you've wasted your money.”
Jamie leaned in, studying the bloom in my hand. “How do you know which is which?”
“Experience. Feel.” I turned the stem between my fingers. “The tight ones have give when you press. The dead ones are hard.”
I didn't tell him what my grandmother used to say about ranunculus. That they meant charm and attraction. That giving someone ranunculus was like saying you are radiant without having to say it out loud.
He listened with his whole body, nodding, those wide eyes tracking my hands as I worked. Most people's attention felt like weight. His felt like warmth.
I didn't hate it.
Around ten, he reached for a bucket of roses near the cooler. His elbow caught the handle wrong, and the whole thing went over. Two dozen red roses, water everywhere, petals scattering across the concrete floor.
“Shit.” He dropped to his knees, grabbing at stems with both hands. Water soaked through his jeans at the knee, darkening the denim. Petals clung to his sleeves. “I'm sorry, I didn't—”
“Leave it.” I was already reaching for the mop. “The stems are fine. Roses are more resilient than you might guess.”
“I'll clean it up, let me—”
“Jamie.” I waited until he looked up at me, his face flushed, his hands full of dripping flowers. “It's just water. Not acid.”
He laughed, startled. The tension in his shoulders eased. “Water. Not acid. Good to know.”
I mopped while he gathered the roses. He handled them carefully now, one at a time, checking each stem before setting it back in the refilled bucket. A quick learner. Not that I'd tell him that.
By noon, he'd also misfiled a stack of order forms so thoroughly it took me twenty minutes to sort them out, and crashed the ancient register twice before admitting defeat.
“This thing hates me.” He jabbed at the keys. “Is there a crank I'm supposed to turn? Does it run on steam?”
“It's from 1987.”
“That explains everything.”
I moved behind the counter to fix whatever he'd done, and Jamie's shoulder brushed against my chest. He went still. So did I.
“Let me show you.” I reached past him for the register, and my hand found his lower back without permission. Just a light touch, meant to guide him aside so I could access the keypad. The warmth of him burned through his sweater, through the canvas apron, straight into my palm.
My hand stayed where it was. Longer than necessary.
Jamie's breath caught. I felt it more than heard it, the slight hitch in his chest under my fingertips.
I pulled my hand back too fast, punched in the override code, and the register drawer popped open with a cheerful ding.
“There,” I said. My voice came out rougher than intended.
“Thanks.” His wasn't much better.
The bell over the door saved us both.
Mrs. Morgansen from the bakery came in looking for something for her sister's birthday. I let Jamie handle the greeting while I retreated to the back, but I could hear him through the doorway. Nervous chatter at first, then settling into something warmer as he found his footing.
“—helping my boyfriend out until he hires someone,” he was saying, and the word landed like a punch. Boyfriend. Right. That was the story we were selling. “I'm just here to help with the busy season.”
“Oh, how wonderful.” Mrs. Morgansen's voice carried genuine warmth. “Holden's been so alone since Lynda retired. It's good to see him with someone.”
I should go out there. Play the part. Instead I stood in the back room with my hands braced on the workbench, listening to Jamie improvise details about our relationship for a woman who would tell her husband, who would tell his customers, who would tell the whole town.
“He's not much of a talker,” Jamie was saying. “But when he does talk, it's usually worth hearing.”
Something twisted in my chest.
When Mrs. Morgansen left, Jamie appeared in the doorway. “So I may have told her we've been seeing each other for a month, that we met right after I moved here. Is that okay? I panicked.”
“A month.”
“She asked how long, and I just, a month seemed believable. Long enough to be real, short enough that people wouldn't wonder why they hadn't seen us together before.”
It was smart. “A month works.”
“Good.” He was still watching me, those hazel eyes too perceptive. “You okay? You look tense.”
“I'm fine.”
He chuckled. “Well that's not convincing.” But he let it drop, and the rest of the morning disappeared into orders and questions and Jamie moving around the shop like he was learning its rhythms. He was terrible at most things, but he was willing to learn.
And present in a way that made the hours feel shorter.
Around noon, he checked his phone and winced. “I've got a client call in thirty minutes. Logo revisions for a brewery that doesn't know what it wants.”
“Go. You're not obliged to be here in the afternoon.”
He'd learned to work the credit card machine, at least. Small victories.
“Right, thanks. But this was fun. Sorry for fucking up so much. I'll be better tomorrow.” Jamie untied the apron, hung it back on the hook. He looked smaller without it. “Hey, I was thinking, Brandy says the Ridgeline Tavern is good. For our dinner thing. Wednesday, maybe?”
“Wednesday works.” I wondered what else Brandy might have told him.
“Seven?”
“Seven's fine.”
He grinned at me, warm and sunny. “It's a date. A fake date. You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean.”
At the door, he paused with his hand on the frame. “Hey. Sorry about the roses. And the order forms. And the register.” He winced. “I'm probably more trouble than I'm worth. You'd get more done without me knocking things over.”
“You weren't trouble.”
He looked at me, surprised. “No?”
“No.” The word came out before I could soften it. I cleared my throat. “You'll figure out the register. The rest is just learning.”
Something shifted in his expression, that brightness I'd noticed the first day flickering back to full strength. “Okay. Well. Good.” He grinned. “See you tomorrow. Try not to miss me too much.”
His laugh followed him out into the gray January afternoon. I stood behind the counter for a long moment after the bell stopped ringing, my palm still warm where I'd touched his back.
The shop was quiet again. Same as always. Same cooler hum, same ribbon spools, same work waiting to be done.