Chapter 6
Chapter Six
The hydrangeas are wilting.
I stare at the buckets lined up in the cooler, my stomach sinking lower with every drooping bloom.
White petals that should look crisp and fresh are starting to brown at the edges, and the blush roses I ordered—half of them look more beige than pink.
I press my fingertips to my temples. Of all the weeks for this to happen, it has to be the one with June’s wedding.
One hundred centerpieces, two massive altar arrangements, and her bouquet.
A bride who told me—twice—that flowers were the most important part of her day.
If this order falls apart, so do we.
“Problem?” Luke’s voice cuts in from the doorway. He’s leaning against the frame like he’s got all the time in the world, arms crossed, that ex-military stillness wrapped around him like a shield.
I don’t even look up. “No. Everything’s perfect. The flowers are dying, the supplier won’t pick up, and the biggest wedding of the season is tomorrow. Why would that be a problem?”
His boots scrape the floor as he steps inside. “Let me see.”
I shift in front of the buckets like I can block his view. “I’ve got it handled.”
He ignores me—of course he does—and crouches down to examine the blooms. He touches a petal, light but precise, like he’s checking a wound for infection. “These won’t last another twenty-four hours.”
The words slice right through me. “Thanks for the diagnosis, Doctor Obvious.”
His mouth twitches, but he doesn’t rise to the bait. “Okay. Options. You can try forcing the fresher buds open with warm water, but that’s risky. Or…” He looks at me, steady. “We call every grower within driving distance and find replacements.”
“Replacements?” My chest tightens. “We can’t just swap out the bride’s vision.”
“We can if the alternative is brown petals in her pictures.” He stands, brushing his hands on his jeans. “I’ll make the calls. You start pulling what’s usable from this batch.”
“I said I’ve got it handled.” The protest snaps out before I can stop it, too sharp, too defensive. My mom never would’ve panicked like this. She would’ve smiled, smoothed her apron, and magically fixed everything. I’m not her, and Luke knows it.
He studies me, not unkindly. “Mia, handled doesn’t mean doing it alone.”
Something in my throat wobbles, but I clamp it down. “Fine. You make your calls. Just don’t promise anything we can’t deliver.”
He nods, already pulling out his phone, rattling off names I didn’t even know he remembered from town. And for the first time all morning, I let myself hope that maybe—just maybe—this disaster isn’t already written in stone.
Luke sets the stems back into their buckets with the kind of precision that makes me grit my teeth.
He doesn’t just place them; he lines them up like he’s in some military inspection.
Meanwhile, my own hands are trembling as I grab for the next bunch, the ribbon slipping loose because I tied it too fast. I curse under my breath.
“Careful,” he says without even looking at me. His voice is calm, infuriatingly calm. “If the ribbon’s crooked, the whole bouquet looks sloppy.”
I snap my head up. “I’ve been doing this since before you learned how to tie your boots. Don’t lecture me about ribbons.”
His brows lift, that half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. He knows it gets under my skin. “Then maybe slow down long enough to show it.”
The nerve of him. I want to fling the ribbon spool across the shop. But there’s no time for tantrums, not with June’s wedding order teetering on the edge of disaster. So I inhale sharply and force my hands to steady. Snip, wrap, knot. Faster. Tighter. Better.
When I risk a glance, Luke is already two steps ahead, stripping leaves from stems with quick efficiency. It makes me want to scream, because for every way he gets under my skin, he also gets things done. Like he doesn’t know how to stop until the crisis is over. I hate that it’s… useful.
“I’ll box these arrangements,” he says, nodding toward the completed bouquets. “That’ll buy you time to fix the centerpieces.”
“I don’t need you buying me time,” I mutter.
“Maybe not,” he says, lifting a heavy crate with ease. “But the bride does.”
That stops me cold. It’s such a Luke thing to say—practical, to the point, the kind of thing Mom used to say when I’d whine about deadlines. My chest tightens, but I shove the feeling down hard, burying it beneath annoyance. I can’t afford to let him sound like he belongs here.
Customers drift in and out, their curious eyes flicking toward us as if we’re some live performance.
Luke cracks a joke about the flowers looking better than we do, and I swear the older woman at the counter nearly swoons.
I roll my eyes so hard it hurts, but my lips twitch despite myself.
He’s ridiculous, but for a moment, the tension in my chest eases.
We fall into an accidental rhythm: I tie, he trims; I arrange, he boxes. The shop hums with the sound of scissors snipping, water sloshing, ribbon spooling. And under it all, the strange, unsettling fact that we’re actually working well together. Too well.
“Not bad,” he says, surveying the table once the last bouquet is tied off. His voice holds that irritating smugness, but there’s something else under it too. Approval. Like he’s surprised we pulled it off together.
“Don’t get used to it,” I fire back, though my voice comes out softer than I mean. I catch myself staring at the neat row of arrangements and realize I almost want to thank him. Almost.
But then his gaze meets mine, steady and sure, and resentment flares up again. Because this is exactly what I don’t want—to see him fit into the cracks of this shop, this life, like he never left. It confuses everything I’ve worked so hard to hold onto.
I busy myself with sweeping stray leaves off the counter, forcing my voice light. “Well, miracles happen. Even you can follow instructions.”
His laugh is low, warm, and far too easy on my ears. “Pretty sure I was giving them.”
The broom clatters against the counter as I grip it tighter, fighting the smile threatening at the corner of my mouth.
This can’t keep happening. I can’t let him turn disaster into teamwork, or resentment into…
whatever this is. Because if I do, I might start seeing Luke not as the intruder who left us behind, but as someone I could rely on.
And that thought terrifies me more than Bloom & Vine, Titan, or any crisis yet to come.
I slump against the counter once the last boutonniere is packed, my arms aching and fingers sore from wiring stems. For once, Luke doesn’t look like he’s waiting to pounce with another critique.
He just leans against the opposite wall, arms crossed, watching me like he’s trying to figure out what planet I came from.
The quiet stretches. I should be grateful—silence means we’re not bickering—but instead it feels like the shop itself is holding its breath.
And in that hush, my mind drifts somewhere I don’t want it to go. Back to when we were kids, and Luke practically lived in this place as much as I did.
I remember him sitting on the worn wooden stool in the back room, boots too big for his skinny legs, peeling labels off buckets while Mom showed me how to spiral roses in my hand.
He’d act bored, leaning back like he was above it all, but then I’d catch him sneaking glances at her work, trying to copy the way she angled the stems.
Once, when I was ten, I caught him fumbling with a daisy, his fingers clumsy.
I teased him until his ears went pink, and he threw the flower at me.
Mom just laughed, called him a natural—even though his “arrangement” looked like it had been through a windstorm.
That memory aches now, like a bruise pressed too hard.
Back then, everything felt simple. Luke was just my best friend’s brother, hanging around, too cool for school but still roped into helping whenever Mom needed muscle.
He was reliable even then, though he’d never admit it.
And now… nothing’s simple.
The scrape of his boot on the floor pulls me back. Luke clears his throat, like he knows I’ve been caught wandering down memory lane. His eyes flick toward the finished boxes stacked neatly by the register.
“You did good,” he says. Just three words, flat and gruff, but they land heavier than I expect.
I busy myself with straightening ribbon spools, my cheeks warming. “Don’t sound so shocked.”
He huffs out a laugh, the sound low and unguarded. “Trust me, I’m not. You’ve always been… stubborn enough to figure it out.”
Always. The word lodges in my chest. He says it like he’s been keeping track all this time, even when I thought he was a million miles away.
Before I can respond, the bell above the door jingles. The air changes instantly, like a draft snuck in with the sound. I turn, already pasting on a polite smile—until I see who it is.
Ms. Eldridge.
Titan’s envoy, in all her crisp navy suit and patent heels glory, like she’s stepped off the cover of a corporate magazine.
She doesn’t belong in a flower shop with dirt on the floor and leaves stuck in the entry rug, yet here she is, sweeping her gaze over everything with the faintest curl of satisfaction tugging at her mouth.
“Well,” she says, voice like glass—smooth, breakable if you’re not careful. “I happened to be in the neighborhood. Thought I’d stop by and see how things were… blooming.”
The pun makes my teeth clench. Luke shifts beside me, his shoulders squaring, but he doesn’t speak. Not yet.
Ms. Eldridge strolls closer to the display cooler, her sharp eyes skating over the buckets of peonies and roses like she’s conducting an inspection. “I hear Bloom & Vine has been quite… enterprising lately. Undercutting prices, scooping up weddings. Must be difficult to keep up.”
The words aren’t even veiled. They’re daggers wrapped in silk.
I force my hands to stay steady on the counter, even as my stomach twists. “We’re managing just fine.”
Her gaze flicks to the neatly packed wedding boxes, then back to me. The smile that spreads across her face is smug enough to make me want to throw a daisy at her, just like Luke did years ago.
“Are you?” she asks softly. “Because Titan is very interested in businesses that… falter under pressure. You understand.”
Luke steps forward then, close enough that his arm brushes mine, his voice steady as a stone wall. “Collins Florals isn’t faltering. We’ll deliver. On time. At quality you won’t find anywhere else.”
The conviction in his tone makes my chest tighten. I hate that I need it, that his steadiness feels like a lifeline I don’t want to grab.
Ms. Eldridge just tilts her head, her smile never slipping. “We’ll see.”
And with that, she turns, the click of her heels echoing off the linoleum, sharp and final. The bell jingles again as the door swings shut again leaving the faint scent of her perfume.
I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. Luke stays where he is, jaw tight, eyes fixed on the door as if he could keep her from ever walking back in.
But she will.
And we both know it.