26. The Final Blossom #3
He's letting me get there.
"That's my flaw, since you asked for it.
My father's exact flaw, only dressed in nicer clothes.
" I make myself say the whole of it. "When it got hard with Amber, I didn't fight for her.
I managed it. I told myself the kindest thing a man could do was smooth it all over, keep the peace, spare everyone the ugly public scene.
" A bitter breath escapes me. "I built that woman the most beautiful courthouse anyone ever saw.
Then I stood there in it, holding the flowers, and let them read out her sentence without saying one word in her defense. "
"So no," I say. "I won't close ranks around Cade, and I won't decorate over what the three of us did to her.
I already tried that once, five years ago, and it cost me the only thing I have ever truly wanted.
I came back to this town telling myself I could make amends quietly.
Do the wedding. Be useful. Be gentle. Hide the worst of the past so it wouldn't cut her a second time.
" I shake my head. "But that is the identical coward's move, only in a florist's apron.
You do not heal a wound by arranging flowers over the top of it.
We're adults. The single way through the thing is to sit down in the ugly truth of it together, on purpose, out loud, and rebuild from there.
" I meet his eyes. "That's all I'm asking for.
The chance to do it the honest way this time. I only need the opportunity."
I close the hood with a solid, satisfying thump and wipe my hands down the rag.
"Try her now."
Sawyer holds my gaze a beat longer than strictly necessary — something working behind his eyes I can't quite read — then swings up into the cab.
The engine turns over, coughs once, and catches, settling into a rough but honest idle. It runs.
"Well, I’ll be damned," Sawyer says, leaning out the window with a grin splitting his face. "Flower boy's got hands."
"Flower boy has a reputation you swore on your life to protect," I remind him, retrieving my shirt off the mirror. "Not one word. And if you ever need anything else…the truck, a lift, an ear…you know exactly where the shop is. I mean that, too."
He doesn't answer right away.
He's looking at me again, but it's different this time, his gaze snagged low on my ribs, where the ink is.
I'd half-forgotten I was still standing here shirtless.
"That," Sawyer says, nodding toward it. "What's it mean?"
I glance down at my own side.
It climbs me from hip to ribs — a vine, rendered in fine black linework, blooming as it rises up my body.
A peony for the year the shop first turned a profit.
A cluster of forget-me-nots for my grandmother.
A dozen small milestones, each one inked on a different quiet night, a different year.
A whole garden grown up the side of me. At the very top of it, though, near my heart, there's one last bloom that was never finished.
Just an outline. The clean, empty shape of a rose, waiting to be filled in.
"The rose is hers," I say quietly. "Amber's.
We designed it together, back then, the two of us leaning over a sketchbook at midnight.
The plan was to finish it the week after the wedding — ink it in, give it color, make it real.
Our first act as a bonded pack." I draw my shirt back on, slow, over the outline of her.
"The wedding never came. So it's simply...
stayed like this. Five years now. The unfinished shape of her, sitting right over my heart, that I never once got to fill in. "
I've had a hundred chances to have it lasered away, or covered, or finished off with some other flower to spare myself the ache of a blank space over my heart. I never did a single one of them.
You keep the outline, I decided a long time ago, because the outline is the truest thing you own. An unfinished promise. A thing a man swore he'd do, and then didn't.
Sawyer's quiet for a long beat.
The engine idles low between us. The last of the sun has gone down behind the marsh. The first stars are pricking out over the water. His scent has gone thoughtful and warm in the cooling air.
"You're telling me," he says slowly, "that if the opportunity came… a real one, fair one…you'd take it? You'd fill it in. You'd do the whole thing right this time, out loud, the honest way."
I look straight into his eyes.
I don't hedge. Don't soften or dress it up pretty. I don’t leave myself a quiet exit the way I've done my entire life.
For once, I just say the true thing, on purpose, and let it stand.
"Yes."
Sawyer nods. Slow. Something decided, settling into the lines of his face.
"Okay," he says, half to himself. "Okay, then."
He reaches out and claps a warm, solid hand on my bare shoulder, and there's a glint kindling in his eye that's equal parts mischief and something a great deal more serious.
"Since you helped me not miss my date," he says, "let's give you the opportunity you're yearning for."