Chapter Two: Petals
642 Words
She woke slowly.
Not the vampire instant-alert she usually woke with — something gentler, the specific unhurried surfacing of someone who had slept deeply and completely and had nowhere she needed to be.
The first thing she noticed was warmth.
The covers pulled up carefully around her shoulders, tucked in a way she hadn't tucked herself the night before, the particular attention of someone who had gotten up before her and made sure she was comfortable before leaving.
The second thing she noticed was petals.
She opened her eyes properly.
They were everywhere — scattered across the pillow beside her, along her collarbone, a few caught in her dark hair where it fanned across the pillow. The same impossible winter blooms from their field, plucked apart and arranged with a care that had nothing careless about it, despite how casual the scattering looked at first glance.
She sat up slowly.
Petals slid off her shoulders and settled into her lap.
She looked around the room — more of them on the nightstand, a small careful trail leading from the bed toward the door, like whoever had done this had wanted to be found leaving.
She smiled.
She didn't need to guess who.
She found him in the kitchen.
Barefoot, in yesterday's dress shirt with the sleeves pushed up, humming something low while he moved between the stove and the counter with the specific competence he always brought to a kitchen. The morning light came in gold through the new windows, and for a moment she just stood in the doorway and watched him — her husband, in their new home, on the first morning of the rest of their lives.
He felt her before he turned around.
"Good morning, Mrs. Ryder," he said, without looking up from the pan.
"You covered me in flower petals," she said.
"I did," he said.
"While I was asleep."
"You looked like you needed the covers," he said. "The petals were optional. I got carried away."
She crossed the kitchen.
Wrapped her arms around him from behind, the same way she had a hundred mornings before this one, and pressed her face between his shoulder blades.
"It was perfect," she said. "I woke up and there were petals on my collarbone and I just—" She laughed softly. "I knew it was you before I even opened my eyes properly."
"Good," he said. "That was the goal."
"What was the goal exactly," she said. "Confusing me with flowers?"
"Making sure," he said, turning in her arms to face her properly, "that the first thing you felt on your first morning as my wife was something soft. After everything we survived to get here."
She looked up at him.
At the silver eyes doing the thing they always did — quiet, certain, entirely hers.
"You're ridiculous," she said.
"You married me anyway," he said.
"I did," she said. "Yesterday. In front of everyone."
"Best decision either of us ever made," he said.
She smiled.
Reached up and picked a stray petal from his hair — he must have gotten as covered in them as she had — and held it up between them.
"You have flower petals in your hair," she said.
"So do you," he said, reaching up and pulling one gently from hers.
"We're going to be finding these for weeks," she said.
"Worth it," he said.
He kissed her — soft, unhurried, the specific easy affection of a married morning with nowhere urgent to be — and behind him something on the stove made a small unhappy sound.
"The eggs," he said against her mouth.
"Save them," she said.
"Elara—"
"The eggs can wait," she said, pulling him back in. "I'm not done with this part yet."
He laughed against her mouth.
Let the eggs burn slightly.
Neither of them minded.
- Writer
