Chapter Six
Gabriel
I don’t need your help,” Frank gripes at me from the back entrance of his flower shop, bony hands on his bony hips, his apron stained with soil. “I am capable of moving my own deliveries through the door.”
I ignore him, shouldering another bag of potting mix. “Oh? Is that why I saw you dragging them down the alley last time?”
“I wasn’t dragging them.”
“There was a trail of soil from the street. You cut one open and just left it there. For six days.”
He doesn’t lower his eyes. “You certainly seem to be in a mood this morning.”
I grunt. After Darcy left me in the alley last night, I went back to the bar and pretended like I didn’t let my libido override my good sense. I filled drinks, wiped down the bar top, and kept my customers from making monumentally stupid decisions.
But that kiss wedged itself in the back of my mind like a god-damned burr. I couldn’t shake it free. Her taste, her sounds, the way her body moved against mine. It was nothing but Darcy for me, even after I closed the bar for the night and trudged up to my apartment above it.
What was the truth? And what was the lie? I’ve never met a Reaper who didn’t relish the thrill of the chase. But Darcy didn’t seem all that interested in having the upper hand. She said she wanted something different, and— Shit. I think I believed her.
It’s not true, I remind myself. She was just saying what you wanted to hear. She was preying on your own misgivings.
Frank shuffles behind me as I cart the massive bag to his work-bench, dropping it on top of the others.
“Thought you’d be whistlin’ Dixie,” he mutters. “All things considered.”
He grabs his pair of discarded gardening shears and starts to prune the thorns off the rose he was working on when I burst through the door five minutes ago, looking for a distraction.
“Yeah, well,” I glance back in the direction of the alley, wishing there were more heavy things for me to toss around. I’ve already scrubbed the bar within an inch of its life and reorganized all the bottles in the storage room by color. “I’m not.”
“You looked cozy with your mystery girl when I left for the night.”
I make a noncommittal sound.
“Oh?” Frank snips another thorn. “She give you a hard time, pretty boy?”
I drag my hand through my hair. “Something like that.”
Frank snickers. “Maybe it’s because you were acting like a fool.
” He sets his flower to the side, then grabs another.
“Women like a more subtle approach, not whatever it is you were doing. The drinks, and the towel, and the leaning. You need to work them up to the idea of you, play hard to get. Build a strong foundation, for all the things to come. You know, I have this story from when I was seventeen—”
I turn toward the window as he keeps prattling on, trying to locate my patience. It’s nowhere to be found, probably buried beneath the self-flagellation I’ve been subjecting myself to since I found out I tried to get in the pants of a Reaper.
A Reaper.
For God’s sake.
I’ve lost my damn mind.
“Nothing happened with her, Frank,” I offer, sounding more sullen than I’d like.
Well, I think mournfully. Something happened.
“Of course it didn’t. If it did, you wouldn’t be throwing around my gardening supplies at half past ten in the morning.” Another snip, snip, snip of his shears. “Where did it go wrong?”
“She wasn’t who I thought she was.”
He pauses. “The woman you met at the bar last night and had a five-minute conversation with wasn’t who you thought she was.” Frank snorts. “You lack imagination.”
I turn toward him. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” He gestures at me with his shears, then turns and grabs an armful of lavender from one of the massive bins that line the wall.
Every day, the bins are filled with whatever fresh flowers come in from the various farms in the area.
Roses, lavender, daisies, baby’s breath, tulips.
A living collage of color, spread across the back of Frank’s Florals.
He peers up at me, both eyebrows inching up into his hairline. “Connection takes time. Effort.”
“I’m not interested in a connection.” Not with someone like her. Someone who collects souls like trinkets. Someone who has a complete and utter disregard for human life.
She’s a bottom-feeder. The worst of the worst.
“You seemed interested yesterday,” Frank chirps from his table full of flowers. “I’ve never seen you look at anyone the way you were looking at her.”
I drag my hand down my face. “Frank.”
“What?”
“Enough.”
“There’s plenty left to explore in this conversation. If you feel the need to assert your presence in my shop, tossing things around—”
“I gently placed the potting mix next to your bench.”
“—then you can listen to an old man talk.” He huffs and stretches his neck to the side. “Get me that bunch of peonies, would you?”
I snort. “Oh, now you want help.”
He doesn’t spare me so much as a glance. “Be gentle with them.
They’re delicate.”
I know they are. Frank has some sort of sentimental connection to the full, round blooms. The top three bins are almost always exclusively full of pink and white peonies. Heaps of them, and yet they never make it into any of his arrangements.
I gently grab the bin and pull it down, toting it over to the table.
“Easy now.” He hovers at my side as I set the flowers down. “Put them so they— Perfect. Thank you.”
I brush my hands against my jeans. “No problem.” I watch the way he takes them out, one by one, laying them gently across his workspace. He was tossing the lavender around a few minutes ago, but with the peonies, he’s specific. Careful.
“You like peonies, Frank?”
His hands fumble one of the blooms, a lone white petal drifting to the worktop. He stares at it, then picks it up, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger.
“My wife did.”
Three words said in a whisper, but they crack through the room like lightning. I watch his face, the faint tremble in his hands, the way his shoulders curve inward. Frank has never so much as mentioned his wife, and the information sends my curiosity blazing.
I wait for him to say more, but he stays quiet, still staring at that single petal.
“What was she like?” I hedge, my voice light. I don’t want to spook him.
He inhales a deep, bracing breath, then lets it out again, just as slow.
“She was beautiful,” he whispers after a long pause. “In every way a person can be.”
I hesitate. “What was her—”
Frank shakes himself free from his study of the flower. “That’s enough for now,” he gently admonishes. He doesn’t raise his voice, but there’s a warning there. “That’s enough,” he repeats.
I brace both hands against his worktable. “I’m sorry, Frank.”
He reaches for some lavender and tucks it around a cluster of peonies. His fingers work quickly—efficiently—muscle memory as the colors start to twine together.
“For prying?” he asks, one eyebrow arching up.
“No.” My empathy is a gift, but sometimes I feel the weight of it like a curse; his hurts feel like my own. “That’s not what I’m sorry for.”
“Yeah, I know,” he says, his voice a rough scratch. “I’m sorry, too.”
We’re quiet as he finishes the rest of his bouquet, admiring the small bundle of peonies and lavender tied with a simple bit of twine. He sets it to the side, away from the rest he’s preparing for the shop this morning. Then he reaches for the bucket of roses again.
“Heard they’re going to start doing those pumpkin muffins down at the bakery again.”
I allow the clunky attempt at a subject change, pressing my hip up against the side of his table, flipping through some of his seed packets instead of meeting his eye, giving him time to collect himself. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. They’re doing a crumble this year instead of—” The rest of his recipe description drifts off mid-sentence.
I glance at him. “What about the crumble?”
He’s looking over my shoulder, out the massive window that stretches across the front of his flower shop. “Is that the woman from last night?” His eyes squint. “And did she domesticate a wolf in the past twelve hours?”
I turn to look. On the other side of the street, Darcy is walking down the sidewalk, a frankly terrifying-looking animal at her side. She stops at one of the lampposts and holds up her hand, urging the dog—if you can call it that—to sit. He drops to the ground at her feet, tail wagging happily.
“What the fuck?” I whisper.
“Language,” Frank chides. “The flowers don’t like cursing.”
“Yeah, well, I think it’s warranted in this case.
” I drag my hand over my mouth. I don’t particularly want to confront her, but I can’t have a Reaper roaming around town.
I need to set clear boundaries for where she is and isn’t allowed to be.
Preferably, I need to encourage her to be elsewhere.
I’ve been stationed here for almost a decade now.
This is my town. These are my people.
I bound through the front door of the shop, Frank’s call of be nice floating behind me.
It’s never something I’ve had trouble with, but mentally, I’m still stuck in that alleyway, watching black magic curl around her wrists, feeling like I’ve been sucker punched.
She made me look like a fool, and I’m eager to return the favor.
Darcy is about three blocks ahead, but I eat up the distance like it’s inches, my magic buzzing beneath my skin. Her hair is in a braid again, and I hate that my palms immediately itch, wanting to feel it wrapped around my fist.
“Hey!” I call. “Hold up!”
She doesn’t slow down. In fact, I think she speeds up.
“Darcy!”
On the other side of the street, an older woman holding a grocery bag in her arms turns to look, shielding her eyes against the autumn sun. But her balance on the edge of the curb is precarious, and she teeters sideways, her foot slipping.
“For fuck’s sake,” I mutter under my breath, quickly changing direction and cutting across the street instead. I grab the bag and then her elbow, right as a teenager on a scooter goes whizzing past in the bike lane.