Page 20 of Built Orc Tough
We sit there for another minute, finishing our food, not talking.
Just breathing.
The energy between us isn’t antagonistic. Not anymore.
It’s... heavier. But warmer, too. Like something’s shifting under the surface, slow and undeniable.
Neither of us names it.
But we don’t move apart, either.
CHAPTER 9
IVY
Some mornings, I pretend the shop is still my aunt’s.
I pretend I’m just here for a visit, that she’s in the back pruning rosemary with her old shears that click like beetle legs, and I’m just some city niece she hasn’t seen in too long. That when I open the door, it’ll be her handwriting on the notepad by the till and not mine, that her clunky teapot is still on the warmer, its lid rattling like it always did when the water hit boil.
But the shop smells different now—like citrus and iron and orc-rooted calm—and I can’t pretend for long.
The thing about trying to control every corner of your life is that it works right up until the second it doesn’t. Then all you’re left with is the wreckage of plans and the relentless echo ofyou should’ve known better.
I’m knee-deep in the front display, trying to convince a particularly rebellious patch of clematis to stay where Itoldit to drape, when Sprout flits in—literal sparkles trailing behind her like she rolled in a vat of fairy lotion.
“Morning!” she sings, flopping into the armchair near the window with the dramatic flair of someone who’s never paidrent. “The whole town is buzzing about the two of you. Miss Lyria says it’s only a matter of time before he proposes.”
I roll my eyes so hard I nearly sprain something. “Proposes what? A truce over the workbench?”
She grins, wiggling her brows. “Oh come on, Ivy. The way you two were talking yesterday? Sharing tea like you weren’t mortal enemies? It was practically foreplay.”
I jab a floral pin into the foam base a little too hard. “If it was, it’s the kind that ends in mutual arson.”
“Still sexy.”
I sigh, setting down the ribbon. “Do you ever get tired of projecting your romantic daydreams onto the walking embodiment of stoicism?”
“Never,” she says cheerfully, then pauses, tilting her head. “But seriously. You seem... I don’t know. Softer?”
I snort. “Great. Next, you’ll be calling me a flower.”
She shrugs. “Not all flowers are soft. Some stab.”
I lean back against the display table, arms crossed, the tightness in my chest tugging in that familiar way it does when someone gets a little too close to truth.
“I bombed in the city,” I say suddenly. “Not just the business. Me. All of it.”
Sprout blinks, not quite ready for the whiplash.
I don’t give her time to interject. The words are spilling out now, steady and sharp, like they’ve been waiting for daylight.
“I opened this trendy botanical studio with my ex—Caspian. Big windows, artisan vines, flowers with names you needed Google to pronounce. We were supposed to take over the floral world.” I huff a bitter laugh. “Turned out he was better at press releases than partnership. Slept with a girl from our pop-up team and told me ‘it wasn’t emotional’ like that was supposed to help.”
Sprout’s face falls. “Oh, Ivy...”
“And the worst part?” I continue, pushing off the table and pacing the floor like the truth won’t come out unless I wear a path into the planks. “It wasn’t even the cheating. It was that I knew. Iknewsomething was off and I just—kept adjusting. Kept tweaking things, fixing things, as if beingmore perfectwould make the cracks stop spreading.”
I stop at the counter, resting my hands on its edge.
