Chapter 6 - Maya's Warning
The morning sun cut through the frost-webbed storefront windows, casting sharp, golden angles across the wooden workbenches piled high with damp foliage and wrapping paper. I was trimming the thorny stems of a fresh batch of crimson roses when the shop bell chimed cheerfully, announcing the arrival of Maya. She tossed her canvas tote bag onto the counter, her sharp eyes immediately scanning my face with the kind of intuitive scrutiny only a twenty-one-year-old art student could manage.
"You look like you haven't slept since Tuesday," Maya observed, leaning against the counter and popping the top of a to-go paper cup of coffee. She eyed the empty ceramic mug sitting near my ledger—the one Julian had used the night before. "And unless the ghost of Christmas past dropped by to help with the greenhouse, I'd say our mysterious midnight architect has been making house calls again."
I kept my scissors moving, the crisp *snip-snip* of green stems filling the quiet shop. "He just helped secure the plastic insulation," I said, trying to keep my voice flat and professional. "It would have frozen out there."
Maya arched a dark eyebrow, blowing across her coffee surface as steam curled into the air. "Right. Because high-powered downtown architects in custom black shirts famously spend their midnight hours driving around town taping plastic to suburban flower shop windows out of the goodness of their hearts."
"He was just being neighborly, Maya."
"He's not a neighbor, Anna," she said, her tone softening into genuine concern as she stepped closer. "He's a client. A complicated, grieving client who walks in here looking like a storm cloud every time he remembers his mother. You spend all day protecting this shop from falling apart, and now you're letting someone else's emotional wreckage move right into your workspace."
I stopped trimming, the rose stem slipping from my fingers onto the wooden table. Maya's words hit uncomfortably close to the truth. For two years, I had built a fortress out of routine, duty, and quiet independence. I knew every crack in the hardwood floor, every bill that needed stretching, every melancholic hour that came with running a dying business alone. But Julian Vance didn't fit into the tidy, predictable categories I had constructed for myself. He was an interruption—a sudden, heavy downpour that had somehow managed to wash away the dust I didn't even know I was collecting.
"I'm not letting anyone in," I said defensively, though my voice lacked the steel I intended.
May you like
"Just be careful," Maya replied quietly, picking up a bundle of baby's breath and walking toward the display buckets. "People who build walls for a living usually don't know how to live in a house with open doors."
I didn't answer her. I turned back to the roses, but my hands felt clumsy and my mind raced, haunted by the memory of Julian's hand hovering just inches from my cheek in the freezing nursery yard, and the terrifying realization that I no longer wanted him to keep his distance.
