11. Celeste #3
“I can when the flowers got competition.”
My lungs forgot the assignment.
He stepped closer, not crowding me, just close enough for the warmth of him to meet the lavender in the air.
I looked away first because the roses were safer. “You still didn’t answer my question.”
“I made a reservation.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It’s the one I’m giving.”
I smacked his arm lightly, and he caught my hand before I could pull it away. He held it there, gentle but certain, his thumb still moving over that tender place beneath my palm like he knew my nerves had started speaking in tongues.
His voice lowered. “I figured a woman who spends all day making other people feel beautiful deserved to sit somewhere beauty didn’t ask for anything from her.”
I stared at him.
“You can’t keep doing that,” I said.
“Doing what?”
“Saying things that make me forget I had defenses.”
His eyes held mine. “I don’t want you defenseless.”
“No?”
“No. I want you safe enough not to need armor every second.”
My fingers tightened around his.
He checked in with the hostess, and she led us down a winding path beneath hanging wisteria toward a section marked by a small sign in hammered copper.
The Red Garden.
I slowed.
Deep red roses climbed arched trellises along the entrance. Hibiscus bloomed wide and dramatic near the corners, their petals dark as wine. Burgundy orchids spilled from hanging baskets. Copper-toned leaves shimmered among green vines, warm and burnished beneath the lanterns.
Our table sat in the middle, small and private, tucked near a fountain where water ran over smooth black stones. Two glasses waited beside a pot of tea, and a charcuterie board sat arranged with fruit, cheeses, nuts, honeycomb, and tiny pastries dusted with sugar.
I looked at Josiah.
He pulled out my chair. “You said you liked flowers. Plants. Gardening. And I remembered your hair.”
My throat tightened. “My hair?”
“The red. The brown. The copper when light hits it.” He waited until I sat, then eased my chair in with care. “This section made sense.”
I looked down at the table because my face had become a full confession.
“You’re doing too much,” I whispered.
He sat across from me. “Not yet.” I looked up. His smile held enough restraint to make my stomach dip. “Tonight is me being respectful.”
“Josiah.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“You’re flirting.”
“I am.”
“At a botanical conservatory.”
“Correct.”
“With tea.”
“And charcuterie.”
I shook my head, but I could not stop smiling. “You are not normal.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
The server came over and explained the tea blend, something with hibiscus, orange peel, ginger, and rosehips.
Josiah listened like she was explaining a circuit diagram, nodding at the right places, asking whether anything on the board had walnuts before sliding that side closer to himself when I made a face. Details were where intention lived.
When the server left, he poured my tea first.
I wrapped both hands around the cup. “You’re very good at this.”
“Dating?”
“Making a woman feel . . .” I paused, searching for a word that did not make me sound like I had been waiting my whole life to be impressed beneath wisteria. “Considered.”
He leaned back, eyes steady on mine. “That’s the goal.”
“You say that like it’s simple.”
“It is simple. It just isn’t common.”
I looked at him over the rim of my cup, and the honesty in that sentence made my chest ache.
We ate slowly, letting the conservatory do what it had been built to do.
Josiah fed me a slice of pear drizzled with honey after I accused him of giving me the smaller piece, and I nearly embarrassed myself over how good it tasted.
He laughed when I closed my eyes, and I kicked his boot under the table for making fun of me.
“You always fight people who feed you fruit?” he asked.
“Only when they get arrogant about it.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You breathed smugly.”
He grinned. “My breathing got tone now?”
“Everything about you has tone.”
His eyes moved over my face, and the playful air between us warmed into something slower. “You noticed everything about me?”
I sipped my tea because I needed my hands busy. “I notice enough.”
“What you notice?”
“No.”
He leaned forward, forearms on the table. “No?”
“You’re not about to have me sitting in The Red Garden confessing under mood lighting.”
His smile deepened. “You scared?”
“I’m cautious.”
“About me?”
“About myself around you.”
The play in his face softened. He nodded once and let my answer breathe.
“That’s fair.”
The fountain trickled behind us.
“You looking at me hard, Mr. Brooks.”
His thumb brushed over my knuckles once. “I’m trying to read what you won’t say.”
“And what am I not saying?”
He leaned closer, not enough to crowd me, just enough for the warmth of him to enter the space between us.
“That you’re happy, but you don’t fully trust it yet.
That you like being here with me, but part of you keeps checking over your shoulder for guilt.
That you want me closer, but you’re scared closeness is going to ask more from you than you’re ready to give. ”
My throat tightened.
He lifted my hand and pressed his mouth to my knuckles, his eyes still on mine when he lowered it. “I’m not here to take what you haven’t offered, Celeste. I’m here to show you that a man can want you and still honor your pace.”
The conservatory kept humming around us.
“You always talk like this?”
“No.” His gaze stayed intense. “Only when a woman makes me want to be careful and bold at the same time.”
I swallowed.
He saw it.
Of course he did.
I traced the handle of my teacup. “I was married young, you know. Not child young, but young enough to think love was supposed to feel like certainty all the time. Jamal and I grew together. We got on each other’s nerves.
We had babies. Bills. Arguments about thermostat settings and whether he needed to stop buying the children loud toys.
But even when we were mad, I never doubted he was for me. ”
Josiah listened without interrupting.
A rose petal fell from somewhere above us and turned slowly through the lantern light before resting near the edge of the table.
I swallowed. “After he died, everybody kept talking about how blessed I was to have been loved like that. And I was. I am. But sometimes, being loved well makes starting over harder. Because now I know what it feels like to be cherished, and I also know what it feels like to have it snatched from the middle of an ordinary day.”
His jaw flexed, and his hand moved closer to mine across the table, stopping just short of touching.
“What scares you most?” he asked.
I looked into my tea. Steam curled against my chin and disappeared.
“That if I let myself love again, I’ll spend the whole time waiting for God to take it back.”
His hand covered mine.
He didn’t rush to correct me. He didn’t tell me God didn’t work that way. He didn’t hand me a bright little phrase and call it healing. He turned my hand palm-up and traced one slow line across the center with his thumb.
“I’m sorry you have to carry that.” My eyes burned, but I blinked the tears back because I did not want to cry into the hibiscus tea on a first date. “You don’t have to hold tears hostage with me.”
I laughed softly. “I’m not trying to cry tonight.”
“You’re not trying to do a lot of things your heart keeps doing anyway.”
I looked at him. “That sounded like a read.”
“It was gentle.”
“It was accurate.”
“Both can be true.”
I shook my head, but my fingers tightened around his.
“What about you?” I asked.
His thumb slowed over my hand.
“What about me?”
“You keep reading me like a devotional with notes in the margins, Mr. Brooks. But I know a man doesn’t get that careful with a woman unless something taught him the cost of moving wrong.”
His eyes stayed on mine for a second before he looked down at our joined hands. “Her name was Domonique.”
The name settled between us without fanfare, but I felt the weight of it in the way his shoulders shifted.
I didn’t reach for my tea. I didn’t fill the silence with comfort he hadn’t asked for. I just waited.
Josiah’s thumb started moving again, slow and absent, as if touching me helped him speak without letting bitterness climb into his voice.
“Domonique and I were together long enough for me to start making plans around her. I don’t do casual well.
Never did. If I’m locked in, I’m locked in.
I was working long days, building the business, helping Mama, looking out for people, thinking I was laying foundation.
Turns out, she had Kacey laying something else. ”
My hand froze around my teacup. “Kacey?”
Josiah’s thumb stilled against my knuckles. “My alleged childhood best friend.”
The words came out calm, but something in his jaw betrayed him.
I lifted the tea to my mouth because anything else felt too small for what he had just placed between us. The hibiscus hit my tongue warm and sharp.
“My God,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
He nodded once, no smile. “Caught them. Not almost. Not suspected. Caught.”
My stomach twisted. “I’m sorry.”
“I was too, for a while. Then I got mad. Not crash-out mad, but the anger that makes a man question his own judgment. I kept replaying everything. Every time she acted strange. Every time my spirit checked me, and I ignored it because I didn’t want to seem insecure.
Betrayal is bad enough, but realizing you helped lie to yourself will humble you. ”
That sentence made me sit back.
He looked at me then. “She came back later and said she was pregnant.”
I froze. “What?”
“Baby was Kacey’s.”
“Oh, she would’ve had to see me.” Josiah’s laugh came fast, surprised and full. I lifted my chin. “No, because some women need to be baptized in consequences.”
He laughed harder, and the sound loosened the anger I had started carrying on his behalf.
“I handled it.”
“How?”
“I removed myself before I became somebody I’d have to explain to God.”
The answer sobered me.