Page 29 of Built Orc Tough
“I don’t do this,” I murmur.
“I know.”
“I don’t...talk. About things. I don’t open.”
“I noticed.”
Her voice is steady, but there’s a tremor in it. Not fear—just feeling. She’s not pretending to be unaffected. She’s just choosing to stay anyway.
I shift, not away from her, but so I can really look at her. She meets my gaze without flinching, her brown eyes unguarded in a way that terrifies me more than a blade ever could.
“Do you want me to stop?” she asks, but her hand doesn’t move yet.
I shake my head once. “No.”
She exhales, a sound half relief and half disbelief, and finally lets her palm rest fully over the curve of my arm. Her thumb finds a scar near my elbow and pauses there, like it wants to ask the story but knows better than to push.
“I don’t want to fix you,” she says. “I just want you to know I see the pieces.”
I close my eyes. Just for a second. Just to hold the quiet.
“Then you’re already doing more than most.”
The bouquet sits finished between us, forgotten. The herbs, the flowers, the ritual of it—it was never about the arrangement. It was about having a moment we could build something that didn’t come from pain.
Ivy’s hand stays on my arm a little longer. Neither of us speaks.
And in that stillness, I feel it—not peace exactly, but the possibility of it.
For the first time in years, I don’t brace for the next blow.
I just breathe.
CHAPTER 13
IVY
It’s the dream that does it. Not the kind that’s hazy around the edges or filled with metaphor and symbolic goats or whatever. No, this one’s vivid. Sharp. Obnoxiously detailed.
We’re standing in the middle of the shop, candles flickering, petals floating like confetti from nowhere in particular. He’s staring at me with those too-serious eyes and then suddenly—bam—his hand’s on my jaw, gentle but certain, and he’s kissing me. Slow at first, like we’ve got forever, then hungry, like we both just figured out we don’t. And I kiss him back. Gods help me, I kiss him back like I’ve been waiting my whole damn life for it.
And then I wake up.
Disoriented, tangled in sheets, and approximately one hundred degrees warmer than is socially acceptable.
“Hell’s teeth,” I mutter, shoving the blanket off like it personally betrayed me.
My heart’s racing. My skin’s flushed. And my brain? Oh, she’s doing the most. Replaying every second of that ridiculous dream in hi-def like some cruelly directed romance reel. Ugh.
I shove my feet into my boots like they owe me money and stomp downstairs. The cooler. I need to reorganize the cooler.Nothing says emotional repression like categorizing dahlias by color gradient.
Gorran’s not in yet, thank the stars. I practically sprint into the back where the floral cooler hums like a judgmental aunt. Inside, it’s a blissful ten degrees cooler and smells like eucalyptus and denial. I grab a bucket of freesia and start rearranging the stems with the precision of someone pretending not to be wildly flustered by her subconscious.
By the time he does show up—carrying a sack of something that smells earthy and suspicious—I’m halfway through alphabetizing the gardenia tags.
“Mornin’,” he rumbles, voice still sleep-rough.
I grunt. Not because I’m annoyed. But because if I say anything more complex, it might come out ashello please kiss me again but for real this time, and that’s not exactly the energy I’m trying to lead with.
