VESPER'S POV
Marriage didn’t change the way we worked.
We still opened late. We still closed when we were done. We still slept on the floor when the nights were cold. The only difference was the ring on my finger and the way Elias looked at me when he thought I wasn’t watching.
Like I was something he was afraid to break.
I hated that look.
So I broke things. On purpose. A pot. A stem. My silence.
“Stop looking at me like I’m glass,” I told him.
“What should I look at you like?”
“Like dirt,” I said. “Like something that grows back.”
He smiled. The first real one in weeks.
“Okay,” he said. “Dirt.”
And he did.
Black Petals was alive again. Not big. Not famous. But real. The town came for roses. For tea. For silence. They left money in a jar. They left their stories on
