Chapter 1 - The Weight of Midnight Rain
The wooden closed sign swung with a dull, hollow thud against the glass door as I flipped it over. Outside, the rain drove down in relentless silver sheets against the dark pavement, blurring the neon signs across the empty street into smears of blue and amber. My fingers, still warm from wrapping the day's final arrangements, lingered on the brass latch. That was when I saw him standing there. He hadn't knocked yet, but his silhouette pressed against the rain-streaked glass, a dark, looming shape in the storm. Water dripped in thick rivulets from his soaked dark hair, plastering heavy strands across a high forehead and shadowing a face etched with a hard, uncompromising fatigue. He wore a black dress shirt and a sodden suit jacket that clung heavily to his broad shoulders. I didn't want to open up. My feet ached in my boots, and the register was already closed for the night. Yet something in the rigid set of his jaw and the hollow stare in his eyes rooted me to the wooden floorboards.
I pulled the door open just enough to slide into the narrow gap, the damp chill rushing in to wrap around my cream-colored knit sweater and green apron. "We're closed," I said, my voice carrying a quiet, defensive firmness born of late hours and solitude. He didn't flinch or step back. Water ran down the bridge of his straight nose, catching the warm amber glow spilling from the hanging pendant lights above my workbench. "I know," he answered, his voice low, gravelly, and stripped of all pretense. The admission hung heavily between us, defying the late hour and the locked door. I stared at him, noticing the fine tremor in his long fingers where they gripped the edge of the doorframe. Rain pattered furiously against the metal awning overhead. "It's my mother's birthday," he said, the words slipping out with a strained, defensive restraint that suggested he rarely admitted weakness to anyone, let alone a stranger behind a florist's counter. My gaze dropped for a fraction of a second to the dark water pooling at his leather shoes before rising back to his dark, troubled eyes. The defensive edge dissolved inside me, replaced by an unexpected ache. I stepped back, holding the door wide. "What were her favorite flowers?" I asked, the curiosity slipping naturally into the damp air. He stepped across the threshold, bringing the chill of the storm inside with him as he looked toward the galvanized buckets lining the back wall. "These," he whispered, pointing a steady finger directly at a brimming tier of pristine white roses.
