The Garden

Chapter 8

I found the wall by accident.

A gap in the hedges I wasn't supposed to notice led to a narrow stone path, and behind it were roses gone wild over beds nobody had tended in years.

I was crouched over a tangle of thorns when a voice spoke behind me.

"She used to tend this herself."

I jumped, spinning around.

Roman stood a few feet away, his hands in his pockets, watching the garden instead of me.

"I didn't hear you."

"I know."

He didn't order me to leave.

That alone told me something had shifted.

"Who?" I asked, though I already suspected.

"Lyra."

The name settled between us, heavier than the last time I'd heard it.

"You're not going to tell me I'm not allowed here?"

"Would it stop you?"

"Probably not."

Something almost like amusement crossed his face.

He stepped closer and crouched beside the same tangled bush I'd been examining. His fingers brushed over a wilted bloom as carefully as if it might still respond to him.

"She grew these herself. Insisted on doing it without help, even though we had staff for exactly that."

A faint, private smile touched his mouth.

"She used to come out here covered in dirt and refuse to change before dinner. Drove Greta half mad."

"You're smiling."

"Am I?"

"You don't do that."

His eyes shifted toward me.

"Not around me," I added.

He didn't answer.

Instead, he kept looking at the roses as though they held something he wasn't ready to let go of.

"What was she like?" I asked.

"Stubborn."

His voice softened around the word, like it was a compliment.

"She argued with everyone. Especially me. She thought half my rules were pointless."

"Were they?"

"Some of them."

That almost-smile appeared again.

"She used to say I ran this house like I was afraid it would fall apart the second I stopped controlling everything in it."

"Sounds like she knew you well."

"She did."

The smile faded.

"Better than anyone before or since."

I sat back on my heels, watching him.

This wasn't the man who'd stood across a desk explaining contract terms.

It wasn't the man who'd looked me in the eye and refused to tell me what Sable had found in my blood.

For a moment, I almost forgot I still had questions.

Almost.

"How long since you've been out here?" I asked instead.

His jaw tightened.

"Two years."

"Why?"

He didn't answer immediately.

His hand went still over the flowers.

"She died here," he said finally. "On the estate."

His voice dropped.

"I stopped coming after that. I couldn't"

He stopped.

I didn't push.

I could see what it cost him just to say that much.

We sat in silence, the kind that felt too full to interrupt.

Then something strange moved beneath my skin.

A faint pulse.

The same one I'd felt the night before.

My hand instinctively moved toward my wrist.

Roman noticed.

"What is it?"

I lowered my hand quickly.

"Nothing."

His eyes narrowed.

"You sure?"

"Yes."

The lie came too easily.

And somehow, sitting there in the garden with him, I didn't want to turn this moment into another conversation about bloodwork, doctors, and things neither of us understood.

Not yet.

"Maybe she wouldn't have wanted you to let it die with her," I said quietly.

Roman went very still.

I immediately regretted it.

"I'm sorry. That wasn't my place."

He didn't move for a long moment.

I braced for the cold to return. For the walls to slam shut the way they always did whenever I pushed too far.

Instead, he exhaled slowly.

"No."

His voice was quieter than before.

"You're right."

I blinked.

"I am?"

"She'd have hated this."

He gestured toward the overgrown beds and choked paths.

"She'd have told me I was being dramatic. That letting something die because it hurt to keep it alive was the worst kind of cowardice."

A humorless breath escaped him, almost a laugh.

"She was very direct."

"She sounds like she'd have liked me."

His gaze lifted to mine.

"She would have."

Something changed in his expression.

"That's what unsettles me most."

Neither of us moved.

He was close enough now that I could see the exact place where his composure had cracked the fine lines around his eyes, the grief he'd kept hidden behind years of control.

I thought about the study.

The bloodwork.

His promise not to deliberately lie to me.

Part of me wanted to ask again.

What did Sable find?

What aren't you telling me?

But looking at Roman kneeling in his dead mate's garden, finally allowing himself to feel something he'd locked away for two years, I couldn't make myself do it.

Not yet.

Not tonight.

"Why did you tell me all this?" I asked instead.

He considered the question as though it surprised him too.

"I don't know."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only honest one I have."

The words settled between us.

The light had turned gold and low across the garden, dusk creeping through the hedges.

Roman finally stood, brushing the dirt from his knees as though he were gathering the pieces of himself he'd scattered here.

"I should go."

"Roman."

He paused.

"Thank you."

He looked back.

"For telling me."

Something unreadable moved behind his eyes.

"I haven't talked about her to anyone in two years."

Then he turned and walked back through the gap in the hedge.

I remained among the wild roses, watching until he disappeared.

The strange pulse came again.

Stronger this time.

I pressed my palm against my wrist.

It wasn't my heartbeat.

I looked toward the roses.

For one impossible second, one of the wilted flowers seemed to tremble without any wind.

Then it stopped.

My breath caught.

I stared at it.

Nothing moved.

Maybe I'd imagined it.

Maybe.

But as I looked at the space where Roman had disappeared, one question rose above all the others.

Why me?

I stayed until the light was almost gone, listening to the silence of the forgotten garden.

And for the first time since I'd signed that contract, I understood something I wasn't ready to admit.

Whatever this was between Roman and me, it had stopped being simple the moment he let me see him grieve.

And whatever was happening inside me...

It might have started long before I ever entered his house.