If my face was hot before, it’s incinerating now. I glance down to where I sit, straddling his waist. My thighs are pinned against his ribs. My pelvis rests on his pelvis, where I feel a solid, thick weight—oh my god, I have to get off him.
I list sideways and scramble off the man in a very ungainly tumble of limbs, thanks to my embarrassment making me clumsy, my stiff joints resisting sudden movement. “Sorry,” I mutter, trying to arrange myself in a dignified seated position on the floor. I’m not even going to try to stand yet, not when I’m this turned around and discombobulated.
Slowly, he eases up, then leans against the table’s end, how he was when he was asleep. He draws up his knees and rests his elbows on them, rubbing his hands down his face.
“So,” I offer, trying to move past the tension, “you were saying what, uh, brought you to the greenhouse.”
He drops his hands, and his eyes meet mine. I bite my lip reflexively. Those eyes. They had no business being so beautiful back when I saw them across a pub in Scotland, and they have no business being this beautiful now, either.
But they are. They’re as rare and striking as his copper hair—pale green, slivered by shards of silver, like frost-streaked leaves. I tell myself to stop staring at them, but dammit, I can’t.
“The party was . . . a lot,” he finally says. For the first time, I register the quality of his voice—warm, yet edged with a smoky roughness, like whiskey that hits your tongue rich and smooth and finishes with a peat-tinged complexity that makes it taste infinitely better. “I needed a break.”
I tip my head. “So . . . you came in here, and then you fell asleep?”
Pink creeps up his cheeks, past the edge of his thick beard. “Passed out might be more accurate.”
“Ah.” I peer down at my soaked dress and pluck at the fabric to unstick it from my thighs. When I glance up, his gaze jumps up, too, as if it was lower, as if he was following my movement.
Our eyes meet. He blinks, then looks away, his focus traveling the flowers lined up along the far wall. He tugs down the brim of his ball cap, until his eyes are in shadow and his profile is distilled to the brim of his hat, his long, straight nose, and thick beard.
“You have to admit”—I set the trowel back on the table where I found it—“that this is pretty strange, that I randomly saw you in Scotland, and now you’re here. It’s a very weird coincidence.”
Serendipitous, even.
I ignore that voice. Because that’s a voice that belongs to someone I’m not anymore. Someone who always used to see romantic possibilities—meet-cutes and kismet and love at first sight—so much so, it led me right out of reality into the kind of fantasy that started off a dream and ended a nightmare.
I don’t do that anymore—romanticize moments and people and see the world through rose-colored glasses. I used to. All the time.
But eight months ago, I stopped. Because eight months ago I realized where it had gotten me—in love with a manipulator who I didn’t understand was a manipulator until he’d twisted me up so badly, I didn’t recognize myself. I ended our relationship, quit my PR consultancy work, and hid away in a Scottish Airbnb for a month, licking my wounds, pickling my liver with whiskey, pounding shortbread, and bingeing Fleabag.
And then I told myself it was time to pick myself up and come home and get my shit together. Deal with the nagging health issues I’d been ignoring and couldn’t afford to ignore anymore. Focus on facing my future head-on, rather than numbing myself to the pain of my past. I decided I was going to heal, grow, and move on.
Since then, I’ve built a new routine that’s gotten me into a better place: I take care of my body and take my meds; I write freelance on a flexible work schedule; I don’t date. I’m still scared to trust myself to accurately read people, and until I can, I’m not giving romance a chance or giving my heart to someone new only to risk getting hurt all over again.
Generally, that’s been going well. My body doesn’t feel amazing yet, but these things take time. My work doesn’t pay what I’d like, but it’s enough to scrape by. And I haven’t missed romance, because I get plenty from the novels I’ve been reading voraciously since age twelve, when I found Mom’s bodice rippers in the family library.
Well, I haven’t missed it too much.
Except, in this moment, maybe I do. Just a little. Because this is a moment the old Juliet would have thoroughly enjoyed—a chaotic meet-cute with an enigmatic, hot stranger who I saw across a room once before. The old Juliet would toss her hair over her shoulder and say something witty right now, offer this guy a hand up and flirt her way out of the awkward.
Which is why the new Juliet needs to get the hell out of here, before she reverts to the very kind of behavior she’s sworn off for damn good reason.
I try to stand, which, between my stiff body and my waterlogged dress, doesn’t go so well. The man springs up and grips my elbow when I teeter sideways, lifting me gently, firmly, until I’m standing upright.
And then he drops my elbow the second I’m steady.
I should be glad about that, but I’m a little sad to have lost what’s now only an echo of the feeling of his hand, warm and rough, callused palm and fingertips.
The guy tugs at the brim of his ball cap, lowering it so the shadows over his eyes deepen as he stares down at the ground. “This is definitely very weird,” he confirms. “Seeing you here, after seeing you in Scotland.”
“So you saw me, too.” I tip my head, peering up at him. A smile wins out that shouldn’t, but I can’t help but be pleased: I didn’t just notice him that night; he noticed me.
He peers up from beneath his ball cap and catches me smiling at him. His mouth is mostly hidden by the thick beard, but I think it tugs down in a frown. He clears his throat as he shoves his hands in his pockets. “It wasn’t busy that night. ’Course I saw you.”
I lift my eyebrows. “It was very busy that night. I had to shoulder my way to the bar.”
Oh, now he’s definitely frowning. And I’m enjoying it. I have no business enjoying it, but I am. “Not how I remember it,” he says.
“But you do remember it.” My smile deepens.
His eyes narrow.
I bite my lip so I won’t laugh.
This is bad. Bad, bad, bad. I’m flirting for the first time in over half a year with the last person I should—someone whose life is entwined with Christopher’s, which means indirectly, it’s entwined with mine.
I want to ask him why he was in Scotland that night, as much as I want him to ask me what I was doing there, too. I want to invite him in for a whiskey, like I saw him drinking back at the pub last December, and learn someone new and feel those butterflies, the thrill of a fresh start.
But as my heart starts to pound, and not in the good way, I’m reminded that I’m not ready. And even if I was, he’d be the last person I’d try again with. If I acted on this with him, if he was as interested as I think he might be—judging by the way he keeps trying not to look at everywhere my wet dress clings to my curves—and if it went sideways with someone who matters to Christopher, who’s an important part of his life, that would be a disaster.
I need to go. I need distance from this man. Now.
As if the universe is smiling down on my resolve, the rain stops, leaving us in sudden quiet and soft, nighttime darkness closing in around the lights that brighten the greenhouse.
“Well,” I finally say, reaching back for my hair and squeezing the water out of it. “Now that the rain’s done, I’ll be going. But feel free to stay here and regroup from the party chaos for as long as you like.” I wait a moment, thinking maybe he’ll respond, but he doesn’t. He just clears his throat and tugs his ball cap lower again.
I offer my hand. “It was nice to see you again . . .”
It takes him a moment before he finally extends his hand and wraps it around mine. I bite my lip, resisting the urge to melt into how good his touch feels.
He doesn’t offer his name. So I don’t offer mine. I suppose, when all’s said and done, that’s for the best. It’s easier to leave someone in the past without a name to knit them to your memory.