Page 5 of Finlay

For the next few hours though, I was going to be selfish.

I was going to feel it all, before burying it deep once more.

With only the moon and Calan as my witnesses, I shifted back into my human form.

Falling to my knees, I wept.

Chapter 1

Chester

PRESENT DAY

Processing the morning delivery was my favourite time of day.

There was something about spending the silence of the dawn sorting through beautiful flowers that was truly peaceful. No one was making any demands of me. No customers. No other staff. No one bringing me down with snarky comments about how this wasn’t a steady income or a suitable profession for a burly northerner like me.

There was none of that.

It was just me and the flowers.

It was a long way from my life of a few months ago. A life I liked to pretend had never happened.

But pretending didn’t stop it from creeping in when I least expected it. All it took was seeing a car the same colour ashis. Or someone his vague height and size.Then everything would start to spiral.

Even fried eggs. It was stupid, but he’d had me make them for him every morning. Now I couldn’t even have eggs in the house. A perfectly healthy food that I used to love, now tainted by memories I couldn’t escape.

You’re okay now. You’re safe. You’re happy.

It was my new mantra. The more I repeated it to myself, the more I believed it.

I hummed as I trimmed the stems before arranging the flowers in various buckets full of water and feed. Taking care not to crowd them, I carefully loaded them into the cooler. We had a busy day ahead, with a wedding and two funerals to prepare for.

People often assumed that arranging flowers for a funeral was depressing. To me though, it was a way of celebrating life. I always talked to the family at length, to learn not just their departed one’s favourite flowers and colours, but what made them tick and the idiosyncrasies their loved ones remembered about them.

Then I used that knowledge to create displays that honoured them. Ones the family could have a personal link to. I wasn’t sure I always achieved it, but it gave me a sense of pride unlike anything else.

See, there you go, bigging yourself up. You’re so full of yourself, Chester. They probably despise them. You’re no good at this, just like everything else you’ve ever tried.

I took a steadying breath, pushing his voice from my head. I hated that he still had a hold on me. I fuckinghatedit.

But he wasn’t here now. He couldn’t hurt me any longer. All I had to do was recover from the wounds he’d already inflicted.

Fuck, how I wished it was as easy as that.

I turned to the funeral arrangements as they needed to be delivered first thing. Assuming Reid showed up on time, that was. He was an amazing florist with a knack for arrangements that had customers coming back repeatedly. His timekeeping though…that left a lot to be desired. I didn’t give him shit for it; I wasn’t that kind of boss. It wasn’t like he did it intentionally—his ADHD meant he didn’t see time the same way as the rest of us. Unfortunately, it was something that had got him fired from several previous florists.

Not mine though. Here atThistle Do Nicely we were all about second chances. Well, I say ‘we,’ but really it was just me. I was the sole owner—something I still couldn’t quite believe. In the span of just over a year, my entire life had changed for the better.

Before moving to Scotland, I’d been living down in Portsmouth. To say I’d been unhappy there was an understatement. Not because of the area, although Portsmouth had nothing on the Highlands, but because of him.

Matt.

I shut the door on the cooler, closing the thoughts of him inside along with it. Rehashing the past and wondering how the fuck I’d ended up in that situation in the first place wouldn’t get these orders finished.

This shop…this life, it wasmysecond chance. I’d been trapped in a cyclone, with no signs of the storm ever ending. The worst part was that I hadn’t realised it until I’d been freed. Until the clouds had cleared, allowing me to see the truth of what my life had become.

Lonely. Isolated. Miserable. Tormented.

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