Chapter 32 þetta reddast
tetta reddast
August came in a roar of sunshine, counting down the days before Lilymoor’s bicentennial.
In the mornings, Wykofski would help me water all of the gardens—since they were almost all open now, it was a much larger chore than it used to be—and then in the afternoons I’d tend to the rampant honeysuckle vines, which I had finally found were originating from the Central Garden, and landscape a little, until the blue door showed itself, and then I’d slip into the sun-drenched Someday Garden, and sow seeds and lace willow branches into shin-high living fences, and dance around Cyrus and my own feelings.
If I pretended they didn’t exist, maybe they wouldn’t.
I brought strawberries for snacks, and we laughed and chatted about our childhoods, and Henry’s grand plans for the gardens.
We tried to guess where this garden was in real life, and every day I’d go hunting in that spot for its real location, but I never found it.
I did discover quite a few secret corridors, now overgrown, that were shortcuts to different areas of the garden, and I figured this was how the goose got around so quickly.
“Damnit is conniving,” Rus agreed. “I remember when she first came to the manor. She chased Oliver right into the Reservoir.”
“I’m sure he deserved it,” I said, and he laughed.
“He absolutely did.”
The time I spent in the garden moved too quickly, and every time I left, time seemed to go achingly slow. Whenever the goose did something, or whenever I saw Oliver, or whenever Eula updated me on RSVPs, I couldn’t wait to tell Rus.
And the only person I told about Rus was my mom—and that was purely by accident.
“Do you like him?” she asked after I vented to her about the day and about Oliver’s insistence that he check every RSVP, and to add a plus-one to every guest even if they didn’t specify.
He argued that there wouldn’t be enough food, and that Juliette’s immaculate cheese board would be nothing but rinds if she didn’t budget better.
He and Juliette were butting heads more often than not these days, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to take it out into the parking lot or kiss.
I gave a start. “Oliver? I …” I frowned, thinking back over the last month. “I think I used to—maybe. We flirted, but …”
“There’s someone else,” she inferred.
“I’m leaving in a week and a half, there can’t be anyone,” I reminded her, but she simply tsked.
“Love rarely arrives on time, sprout.”
“Love’s not arriving at all.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m leaving,” I reiterated. “It’s a waste of time.”
I stopped abruptly. Now who did I just sound like?
Mom laughed at me. “Sprout, it’s a privilege to waste time—waste as much of it as you can. On things you love, on things you enjoy, on moments that make you so happy you could burst. And in the end, if you do it right, none if it will have been a waste at all.”
“But . . . what if I really do like him?”
“Good. Let yourself.”
Let myself. It sounded so much easier said than done.
On my eighteenth visit to the garden, we decided to tackle the wall of honeysuckle vines attempting to ensnare a poor dog-wood tree beside it, so we were trying to tamp it back into place. They tended to spread everywhere.
“Henry loved these things,” Rus said, pinching a flower off the vine and tasting the end where the nectar pooled. “He’d always be walking around with one in his mouth. Have you tried one?”
I shook my head. “I’m not really a sweets person.”
“Try it. It’s not too sweet. There’s few things that taste better,” he said.
“Like what?”
He hesitated. “I . . . can’t recall,” he lied, the flower suddenly very interesting to him. He twirled it between his fingers, until I plucked it away and put the base of it to my lips, the same petals he’d just tasted.
My tongue burst with the taste of sweet nectar. It was delightful, and I laughed in surprise. “Oh, that’s actually not bad.”
He smiled, warm and soft like sunshine. “What, you think I’d lie to you?”
“Maybe,” I replied coyly, and tasted it again.
“Though flowers can’t lie. I think that’s what I love most about them.
Did you know in the Victorian era, they used to communicate through flower arrangements?
It was a whole intricate language. There were roses for love and daisies for innocence, sure, but lavender for distrust and edelweiss for courage. ”
“Honeysuckle for devoted love,” he said, surprising me so much I almost dropped the blossom. “Isn’t it?” he went on, tilting his head. “Unless I’m misremembering.”
“No, it is.” How unexpectedly pleasant. I found myself smiling down at the flower. “You’re full of surprises.”
He winked. “I told you, I was a troublemaker. And troublemakers get time-out a lot, and it just so happened this kid got sent to a corner of the library where there was a whole bunch of boring books about flowers.”
I laughed, delighted. “Boring!”
“Incredibly,” he confirmed severely. “I wasted so much time there.”
The smile on my face stretched wider. So much of this was a waste of time, but as my gaze fell to his lips, I couldn’t shake my mom’s voice.
And in the end, if you do it right, none if it will have been a waste at all.
I didn’t know whether this was right, but I knew the ache in my chest, and the way he made me feel when I was near him, and if that was wrong then let this be a waste of time—let me waste it here.
“I don’t think you wasted any time. You used your knowledge to help Eula pick out flowers for the bicentennial, didn’t you?”
“I still think she should’ve gone with lilacs,” he replied.
I hummed. “I think sunflowers fit better.”
“Hydrangea. They come in all sorts of colors.”
“Yarrow.”
His nose wrinkled. “Yarrow?”
“It’s pest resistant, drought resistant, it attracts butterflies Some say it’s even a cure for a broken heart.”
His eyebrows rose a fraction. “Ah, the truth comes out. The gardener is a romantic.”
“I’m not, really,” I replied, and married the space between us, placing the flower behind his ear. “Harrie said I had a love life like a lint dryer.”
“A tragedy,” he replied, and kissed me. My hands slid up to his collar, then the sides of his neck, tracing the line of his jaw with my fingertips.
His breath went shallow under my touch. “Not yarrow,” he whispered, his cobalt gaze sliding up to mine, turning wine dark like the sea.
“Camilla.” He held my hand against his cheek and bent his face into it, kissing the tender part of my wrist. “Buttercups. Orange blossoms.”
Flowers for yearning, for charm, for something old and eternal—something that lasted.
“Mistletoe,” I whispered, but what I meant was kiss me again.
And he understood.
He snagged my mouth with his, rough and urgent, kissing me like he’d missed me for years.
Savoring, his tongue tracing my bottom lip, tasting me like he wanted to commit the way our mouths moved together to memory.
I closed my eyes and sank into the feeling.
He leaned against me, one hand on my wrist, holding it tightly as I cupped his face, his other on my thigh.
His fingers inched upward, underneath my fraying shorts, his thumb falling into the crease of my hip, digging into the soft flesh there.
“You smell like daisies today,” he said against my mouth.
“I was trimming them earlier.”
“The ones on the west side of the hedge maze? I always loved it over there.” He kissed my cheek and then trailed his mouth down my face and burrowed himself into the side of my neck.
“They’re my favorites,” I admitted, feeling myself blush, my breath coming quicker.
On the vines, buds bloomed into bright yellow flowers, and in the soft summer breeze, windflowers burst with pinks and oranges and blues, but we didn’t notice any of it, lost in the taste of honey.
He pressed our foreheads together, breathing in the scent of me.
“I fear I want so much of you. When you first woke me up, I felt so hollow—dormant—as if I’d forgotten what it felt like to be alive.
But with you, Sophie? Here? Now? I can’t remember what it felt like to feel nothing.
” He hesitated, searching my eyes. “I like you so much, Sophie.”
My heart felt so full it could burst. I cupped his face in my hands and whispered, “Kiss me again.”
His pupils dilated at the command. “You could say please.”
“Kiss me again, please.”
His mouth brushed against mine, teasing. “Just a kiss?” he purred.
Yearning burned, deep and hungry, in my belly. “What else do you have in mind?”
“I’ve got a good imagination,” he replied, his voice warm with adoration.
Then he stole another kiss and roughly pushed me all the way back against the wall, the hard brick digging into my shoulder blades.
His teeth nibbled against my bottom lip, sharp and coy, as his long fingers traced the side of my face.
The buttoned-up refinement he’d tried so hard to wear was coming undone one kiss at a time, reawakening something warm and wild.
His touch was featherlight, making my center ache with his gentleness. It wasn’t lost on me how hard he was himself, his trousers giving a valiant fight that must have been painful. I went to the buttons of his pants, but he seized my hands in his large one and kissed the side of my mouth.
“Not yet,” he murmured, planting a kiss against my cheek, and then another on my neck.
“We have time.” And his hand not holding mine shifted down, gliding over my breasts, cupping one.
“We have plenty of it. I can go slow,” and as he said it, his fingers trailed back up my body, snagging my chin between his first finger and thumb.
“As slow as you want, sunshine.” There was a wicked gleam in his eyes, the look of a man who knew how to cause trouble and seldom let himself delight in it.
But I was trouble, too, and shifted my head just enough to capture his thumb in my mouth. I sucked on it. His eyes turned dark and feverish. He slid his thumb out of my mouth, and grabbed my face, and crushed his mouth against mine, as if he wanted to commit the taste of me to memory.
The way his mouth felt, the way his tongue slid along my lip, teasing.
He pushed his knee between my legs and anchored himself against the wall so that he could tilt my head back and kiss me deeper. His thumb gently traced from my chin down the length of my throat, so slowly and deliberately, down to my chest.
“Rus,” I whispered, face flushed, “I—I think—”
He nibbled my neck and then ran his tongue over the indentations he left.
“I think I like you, too,” I finally said, and the hunger in his face grew tender, and he kissed me again on the mouth just to taste the words.