Page 53 of Built Orc Tough
“I was going to give you this,” I say, quietly. “When I was ready.”
She stares at it, fingers trembling as she lifts it into her palm. “And are you ready now?”
I look at her. At the woman who’s fought every day to stay in a place that tried to tell her she didn’t belong. At the woman who loved me when I wouldn’t let her. At the only thing that’s made this town feel like home again.
She’s standing there in front of me, her hands clenched around the carved bloom like it’s the only thing anchoring her. Her voice is quiet now, steady in a way that’s worse than shouting. That steadiness—gods, it guts me.
And I want to move. I do. Every inch of me is screaming to reach for her, to grab her by the wrist and tell her I was wrong, that I’ve been wrong, that I’d rather fail a hundred times with her than succeed alone. But I can’t. I’m frozen. Not with fear this time. Not with pride.
Just with this crushing sense of inevitability.
Because even if I say the words, how long before she realizes I don’t know if I can live with someone in my world without dragging them down into it?
So I just stand there, and I watch the light go out in her eyes.
She nods once. Small. Final.
Her fingers brush the edge of the worktable as she sets the flower down. She doesn’t throw it. Doesn’t break it. Just sets it there gently, like she’s burying something.
Then she turns and walks out.
No slamming doors. No accusations thrown like knives. Just the soft click of the back door and the sound of boots on stone until even that fades.
The silence that follows is worse than any fight.
It’s the sound of something ending.
I feel it. Truly. What it means to be alone. Not just without someone. Without her. Without the color she brings, the chaos, the goddamn joy. The way she laughs like she’s daring the worldto break her again. The way she rearranged the flower bench and the shop and somehow, without asking, rearranged me too.
I sink onto the stool like the wind’s been knocked from me. My hands fall to my knees, open, empty.
The carved flower stares up at me from the table. Petals crooked. Stem imperfect.
Just like us.
CHAPTER 25
IVY
Idon’t know where I’m going at first. Just away. Away from him, away from the look on his face that wasn’t pain or longing or even anger—it was nothing. A blank. A void. And I’d rather deal with a punch to the ribs than nothing.
The flower stays behind. I left it on the table like a damn metaphor, like some poetic fool trying to hold onto scraps of meaning.
My boots crunch down the gravel path leading out of town before I even realize where I’m headed. I don’t stop at the shop. Don’t detour to the greenhouse. I keep going, past the bakery where Mrs. Delling is undoubtedly spying out the window with her cat and her binoculars, past the little pond where the ducks are probably doing something quaint and idyllic just to spite me.
And I end up at the one place I’ve been avoiding since everything started unraveling.
The cemetery sits just beyond the lavender fields, tucked behind an old stone wall that’s too short to keep anything out but tall enough to make you pause before climbing over it. The gate creaks like something out of a horror movie, but I don’t flinch. My aunt’s grave is near the back, under an old pear tree that drops blossoms on the headstones like confetti every spring.
It’s quiet here. Not empty—never empty—but still. The kind of still that wraps around your shoulders instead of pressing against your chest.
I sit beside her grave with more care than usual. It’s the first time I’ve brought flowers in weeks. My hands shake as I pull the bouquet from my bag—simple stuff, nothing flashy. White lilac, rosemary, a single marigold tucked in like a secret. Grief and memory, tucked in ribbon.
I lay them down slowly, brush a bit of dirt off the stone, and sigh like the weight of the whole town’s sitting on my ribs.
“Well,” I say to the headstone, “you picked a hell of a town, Aunt Marian.”
I rest my chin on my knees and stare out across the crooked rows. “You ever fall for someone so hard it felt like gravity changed its mind? And then he opens his mouth and reminds you why you stopped trusting people in the first place?”
