Married for a Year

ChapterOne

Fourteen Days Earlier

By the time Brooks Floral belonged to the bank, Elena Brooks would already be married to a man she didn't love.

She just didn't know it yet.

The knock came at exactly 9:17 on a Tuesday morning. Three slow, measured knocks that seemed to echo through the tiny flower shop.

Elena looked up from the bouquet she was wrapping.

"We're open," she called.

The door swung inward. The man who stepped inside wasn't dressed like a customer. He was dressed in a navy suit and polished shoes. His gaze swept across the room with detached efficiency before settling on her.

"Miss Elena Brooks?"

Her smile faltered.

"...Yes?"

He held out a thick cream envelope.

"You've been served."

The words landed heavier than the envelope itself. Before she could ask another question, he tipped his head politely and walked back out into the sunshine.

Elena stared at the envelope. Her name was typed neatly across the front. She already knew what was inside. She just wasn't ready to read it.

"Sweetheart?"

Her grandmother's warm voice floated from the workroom.

"Who was at the door?"

Elena's fingers tightened around the envelope.

"No one.”

She slid the envelope beneath a stack of ribbon catalogues just as her grandmother stepped through the curtain carrying an armful of freshly cut lavender.

At seventy-four, Mrs Dalia Brooks moved more slowly than she once had, but her smile hadn't aged a day.

"Another supplier?"

"Mhm."

"You've been frowning an awful lot at suppliers lately."

"I'm negotiating."

Her grandmother laughed.

"With that face? I'd pay extra just to make you smile."

Elena laughed too.

Mrs Dalia reached out and brushed an invisible speck of pollen from Elena's cheek.

"Whatever it is..."

Her voice softened.

"You don't have to carry it alone."

For one terrifying second...Elena wanted to tell her everything, about the debt, about the sleepless nights, about the letters hidden beneath the counter. Instead she swallowed it all.

"I know.”

—

By two o'clock, the shop was empty again. Her grandmother disappeared upstairs for her afternoon nap. She walked to the counter, reached beneath it and pulled out the envelope.

FINAL NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE

Failure to remit payment within fourteen days will result in seizure of property and termination of lease agreement.

Twenty-three years of memories had been reduced to fourteen days. This wasn't just a flower shop, it was home. She looked around slowly, every corner of the shop held a memory. The scratch near the counter where she'd crashed her bicycle when she was nine, the old work table where her grandmother used to braid flowers into crowns for her and her sister. A tear landed silently on the paper. She wiped it away before another could follow. Crying wouldn't negotiate with banks.

The ringtone of her phone shattered the silence.

SOPHIE.

Elena answered.

"If you're calling to convince me to take a lunch break, you're wasting your breath."

"I was actually calling to ask if you're still alive."

"Barely."

Sophie laughed.

"Bad day?"

Elena glanced at the foreclosure notice still spread open on the counter. The number fourteen stared back at her, patient and merciless.

"I'm fine."

"Elena."

"...Probably.”

"That's a terrible answer." A pause, and when Sophie spoke again the teasing had gone out of her voice entirely. "I'm serious. What's going on? And don't say suppliers, you always say suppliers when it's actually something real."

Elena opened her mouth and then closed it. Her sister was nineteen and already in her second year of college, already fighting her own battles with tuition and textbooks and a part-time job that paid badly and asked for too much. She didn't need this landing on her too. Not yet. Not until Elena had figured out whether there was anything left to land.

"I'll explain soon," she said quietly. "I promise. Just not today."

A long pause on Sophie's end. "You'd better," she said finally. "I mean it. Soon."

"Soon."

She hung up and stood there a moment with the phone still warm in her hand, the notice on the counter, the silence pressing in around her.

Then the tablet on the register pinged with a new order, and she had no choice but to keep moving, the way she always did.

—

An hour later, another order from Moore Holdings came through. It was a Premium floral arrangement and same-day delivery. Elena blinked at the total. It was the largest order she'd received all month. Maybe all year. Her grandmother smiled when she saw the invoice.

"See?"

She squeezed Elena's hand.

"I told you."

"What?"

"Flowers always find their way back to people who love them."

For the first time that day...Elena almost believed her.

She lifted the finished arrangement carefully into her arms.

"I'll deliver it myself.”

—

Forty minutes later, Elena eased the finished arrangement onto the passenger seat of her aging hatchback. White lilies, blue hydrangeas, imported orchids. It was the most expensive bouquet she'd ever created. She then started the engine. Outside, the city buzzed with life. Moore Holdings towered above the surrounding buildings, all glass and steel reflecting the afternoon sun.

Elena balanced the arrangement carefully as she stepped through the revolving doors. She reached the elevator just as the doors slid open. Someone stepped out. She wasn't watching. The bouquet slipped. White lilies scattered across the polished floor.

She gasped.

"Oh no—"

A pair of expensive black shoes stopped beside the crushed flowers. Before she could kneel, another hand reached down first. Long fingers gently lifted a bent white lily. He turned it

over once, checking the petals. Then he looked at her.

His voice was calm.

Almost amused.

"White lilies deserve better than the floor.”