Advance Praise for Where You’re Planted

“Where You’re Planted is a work of heart—raw and romantic…. [Melanie Sweeney] has outdone herself here. Five gigantic stars.”

—Annabel Monaghan, bestselling author of Summer Romance

“I’m convinced Melanie Sweeney could hand me her grocery list and I’d happily devour it. Instead, she’s given us the gift of Where You’re Planted, which delivers so much adversaries-to-lovers perfection that I couldn’t put it down until I’d inhaled every single delicious word…. Plant me right next to this book so I can read it over and over again.”

—Jessica Joyce, USA Today bestselling author of The Ex Vows

“Raw, comforting, and devastatingly tender, Where You’re Planted is a gorgeous beating heart of a book…. [Melanie Sweeney] is undoubtedly one of my new favorite authors.”

—Tarah DeWitt, USA Today bestselling author of Savor It

“Where You’re Planted is an instant classic! This book is everything I love about the romance genre…. A beautiful ode to Houston and community and gardens and libraries and found families. I loved every page of Melanie’s brilliant prose, and can’t wait for what she does next!”

—Naina Kumar, bestselling author of Say You’ll Be Mine

“A romance reader’s dream! Sweeney is two for two in getting under my skin with romances that both bring on the swoons and pull on my heartstrings in equal measure. I cannot wait to see what deliciousness she brings us next.”

—Meredith Schorr, author of Roommating

“Melanie Sweeney can do no wrong!…[A] pitch-perfect love letter to romance, libraries, and finding community amidst unfathomable hardship. With its crackling chemistry and delicious angst, this grumpy-sunshine romance had me grinning from ear to ear, clutching my chest, and praying that this perfect book would never end!”

—Ellie Palmer, author of Anywhere with You

“A master class in balancing heart with heat! Melanie Sweeney’s delicious characters and world made this book impossible to put down, but the lesson of her deeply personal story will stay with me forever: that love is the only material we truly need to rebuild places and, more importantly, people.”

—Jessie Rosen, USA Today bestselling author of All the Signs

“Hope, heart, and heat—Melanie Sweeney delivers her signature trifecta and then some…. I sweated, I giggled, I cried. An unmissable, sparkling rivals-to-lovers romance about figuring out what we’re worth, and the love we deserve.”

—Katie Naymon, author of You Between the Lines

“Where You’re Planted is a beautifully moving story of love and community. Tansy and Jack are vivid and fascinating characters on their own and absolutely sparkling together…. I didn’t want this warm, swoony book to end!”

—Jamie Harrow, author of One on One

Praise for Take Me Home

“Funny, angsty, heartwarming—and so satisfying.”

—Abby Jimenez, author of Just for the Summer

“Sweeney’s debut is the kind of romance I love—with road-trip hijinks, small-town kitsch, family chaos, plenty of laughs, and some seriously steamy scenes.”

—Washington Independent Review of Books

“Smart, layered, and emotionally resonant, Take Me Home is an absolutely perfect love story.”

—Annabel Monaghan, author of Nora Goes Off Script

“This book is like a cup of hot chocolate—it’s sweet and will infuse you with warmth from the inside out.”

—The Washington Post

“With razor-sharp sexual tension and crackling banter, this is the frenemies-to-lovers book of my dreams.”

—Christina Lauren, author of The Soulmate Equation

“[A] phenomenal achievement, with a perfect blend of humor and angst. While most of the book is devoted to growing its main couple’s dynamic, Sweeney gives equal weight to the familial relationships that define them and explores the meaning of truly growing up emotionally…A heartwarming contemporary romance that will keep readers hooked until the last page.”

—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“A delightful enemies-to-lovers chock-full of zippy banter, sexual tension, and holiday charm. If you love sassy, prickly girls and hot, patient boys, this small-town romance is for you!”

—Georgia Clark, author of It Had to Be You

“Debut author Sweeney sparkles in this emotionally nuanced contemporary…Add in a fun road trip and some deliciously dirty love scenes, and Sweeney’s stirring romance impresses.”

—Publishers Weekly

“An absolute stunner! Part tension-riddled romance, part family drama, and part self-discovery…This is the kind of book that reaches into your chest and grabs onto your heart.”

—Falon Ballard, author of Right on Cue

“Sweeney’s strikingly realistic tangle of family dynamics and forced proximity between two believable characters overcoming past presumptions about each other, along with sexy love scenes, make this a must read.”

—Library Journal

“Both youthful and mature, both tender and bold, both melancholy and hopeful, Melanie Sweeney’s Take Me Home is a gem of a romance…one I won’t soon forget.”

—Kate Clayborn, author of Georgie, All Along

“Readers will be held rapt by these two fully drawn characters…. Sensitively probe[s] the meaning of love and the many facets of ‘home.’ ”

—Shelf Awareness

“Take Me Home is like the book version of that Taylor Swift song you play on repeat. Sweet. Sexy. And full of heart.”

—Trish Doller, author of Float Plan

Also by Melanie Sweeney

Take Me Home

G. P. Putnam’s Sons

Publishers Since 1838

an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright © 2025 by Melanie Sweeney

Penguin Random House values and supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader. Please note that no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.

Cover design and illustration: Vi-An Nguyen

Book design by Shannon Nicole Plunkett, adapted for ebook by Maggie Hunt

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sweeney, Melanie, author.

Title: Where you’re planted : a novel / Melanie Sweeney.

Other titles: Where you are planted

Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2025.

Identifiers: LCCN 2024050376 (print) | LCCN 2024050377 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593716113 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593716120 (epub)

Subjects: LCGFT: Romance fiction. | Novels.

Classification: LCC PS3619.W442628 W54 2025 (print) | LCC PS3619.W442628 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20241223

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024050376

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2024050377

Ebook ISBN 9780593716120

The authorized representative in the EU for product safety and compliance is Penguin Random House Ireland, Morrison Chambers, 32 Nassau Street, Dublin D02 YH68, Ireland, https://eu-contact.penguin.ie.

pid_prh_7.1a_152035053_c0_r0

For the librarians, for the custodians of our natural green spaces, and for the helpers

“Horrible in itself, disaster is sometimes a door back into paradise, the paradise at least in which we are who we hope to be, do the work we desire, and are each our sister’s and brother’s keeper.”

—Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster

1

Tansy

Of all the terrible decisions Tansy Perkins had made in her life, rescuing two parakeets in the middle of a hurricane had to be near the top of the list.

Already, the relentless rain had filled the Grant Gellman branch library parking lot, splashing over the tops of her yellow mid-calf wellies as she raced toward the building. She was drenched by the time she reached the door, hair plastered to her forehead and cheeks, pale pink tank top sucked wet against her stomach and breasts. She regretted going braless, not that anyone was here to be scandalized by her nipples showing through the transparent cotton. No one in their right mind was out in this storm.

Tansy unlocked the heavy exterior door, flipped on one set of overhead lights, and jogged, squishing and squeaking, through the main circulation room while the fluorescents flickered to life. Inside their cage, the birds, one blue and one green, squawked at the disturbance, puffing up their feathers and pacing on their perches.

If anyone should have risked their neck to come fetch the parakeets during the storm, it absolutely should have been Marianne, who had recently donated them as branch pets without administrative approval. But because they were new, no one had established a bird-retrieval protocol in the event of a hurricane, and by the time Tansy’s daughter, Briar, asked who was keeping them safe, area roads were already starting to flood.

I’ll be in and out, back in ten minutes. That’s what she’d told her next-door neighbor, Dottie, when she left Briar with her. The scant three blocks between her house and the library couldn’t get that much worse in ten minutes.

The cage was so big her arms couldn’t reach all the way around it, and as soon as she hoisted it up, the water in the dish sloshed out onto her hip. The rain pounded urgently against the roof of the library. Tansy glanced around for a tarp or newspaper, anything to cover the open slats of the cage to keep the birds dry. Upon racing into meeting room A, she immediately spotted the big rainbow-colored parachute that she and the parents puffed up over the babies during story time. It was made of nylon or something—not totally waterproof, but good enough. She wrapped it around the cage, bear-hugged the load, and shuffled awkwardly back toward the entrance.

When she was halfway across the main room, the front door banged open.

“Who the hell is in here?” a deep voice boomed. “I swear, if you’re saving books in the middle of a hurricane—”

Tansy was just rounding the circulation desk into the foyer when the man barreled in and nearly slammed into her. She lurched back, bumping against the checkout counter. Underneath the parachute fabric, the birds let loose a volley of alarmed squawks.

“What the hell are you doing in here?” The man glanced back out the door at the dense veil of rain, then past Tansy into the dim library, where all the books were neatly slotted and the Children’s Corner toys were stowed away in the chest under the Wish Tree. Finally, he focused on the covered cage, inside which the birds flapped and knocked about noisily. “What is that?”

“Birds.”

He crossed his arms over his sage-green polo, which had the adjacent botanic gardens’ logo and a name—Jack—stitched onto the breast. It clung wetly to his broad shoulders and chest. His drenched khaki cargo pants were similarly plastered to his thick thighs. Water dripped from his longish, dark hair onto his collar. “Birds,” he said flatly.

“If the roads get worse, and we can’t get back for a few days, they’ll run out of food and water.”

“If the roads get worse,” Jack echoed, hands on hips, chest rising and falling quickly. Rivulets of water sluiced down his face, catching in his short beard. His thick eyebrows were wet, drawn together with a trench between them, and his nose had a prominent Roman bridge and severe slope. It was a face made for stern looks, just like the one he was giving her now. “You realize that’s a category four hurricane out there?”

His condescension lit a brush fire of shame just under her skin. She shifted the birdcage to her hip, forgetting it was shielding the view of her nipples. Until he tracked the movement, eyes blatantly tripping at her chest. “Of course,” she said, resisting covering herself and acknowledging another of her poor choices. “Why do you think I came for them?”

He shook his head tersely, sending droplets of water flying off the ends of his hair. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

His open scorn was needles under her nails. “I get it,” she snapped. “It’s a big storm. But I’m not an idiot. I was on my way out when you—”

“I was about to lock the gate,” he cut in. “Just happened to see your car. If I hadn’t, you’d be trapped in here.”

That thought sank through her like a cold stone. But for all this man’s urgency and judgment, he was the one holding her up. If not for him, she’d be locking the door by now.

“Risking your life for some fucking birds.” He knifed a hand at her cargo like it personally offended him.

“I couldn’t leave them to starve to death.”

“When the creek overflows its banks in about an hour, it’s gonna run directly through here. Won’t be inches. It’ll be four, five feet, maybe more. They wouldn’t starve. They’d drown.”

Tansy gulped. She knew the library was prone to flooding. Just before she was hired last year, it had closed for a six-week renovation following a springtime flood that brought three inches of water into the building. But she hadn’t realized the nearby creek could rise so high, or so quickly. Pains in the ass or not, the birds drowning in their cage was an unbearable thought, followed immediately by what that much water would do to all the books. And to her house, half a mile away.

Shit. She should have heeded all the early warnings, should have taken Charlie’s offer to evacuate to his place in Dallas. But three days ago, that had seemed like an overreaction.

By the time the storm had intensified to a greater threat and admin closed all the branches yesterday, the traffic heading out of town was already congested, even with the southbound lanes reversed for contraflow. Maybe she still should have tried to leave. Instead, she’d driven all over her northeast Houston suburb with Briar and managed to snag a couple gallons of water, some bread, and peanut butter. She’d charged backup battery packs and filled the tub with water for flushing toilets, all the while hoping she was overpreparing.

But now, seeing this man’s incredulous expression, Tansy felt like an utter idiot. And a terrible mother. As hard as she tried to make better choices for herself and Briar, she kept winding up here, about to face the consequences of yet another crucial misjudgment.

“What are you, five-five? A buck thirty soaking wet?” Jack asked.

Tansy straightened to her full five feet, seven inches. “Excuse you. What does my size have to do with—”

“Forget it,” he said, sweeping his arm impatiently toward the exit. “We have to get out of here. Assuming you can make it out of the lot without flooding your engine.”

Was the water already that high? She’d been inside less than ten minutes.

“I get it, okay?” she snapped. “You don’t have to be a jerk.”

He ran a hand over his hair and clutched the back of his neck. He looked almost chastened. But then he said, “What even is that toy car out there?”

She huffed. “It’s a Civic.” She hoisted the cage back up, its bottom edge digging uncomfortably into her stomach. If he was in such a damn hurry, he could have helped with the cage. But he clearly already thought she was incompetent, and she wasn’t about to prove him right by asking for a hand.

“If you’re gonna run around in a flood, at least have the sense to drive a truck.”

The nerve of this man. She clenched her teeth and marched ahead of him. “Noted.”

Tansy’s first step onto the slick linoleum in the foyer sent her suddenly pitching forward. She fully expected to slam onto her knees, unable to break her fall without losing hold of the birds, but something hooked under her ribs and caught her mid-drop. The abrupt stop knocked the wind out of her, and all she could do for a few long seconds was open and close her mouth like a fish on land. Jack didn’t speak and didn’t immediately unhook his arm after pulling her back to standing. Finally, she caught a productive gasp, and he passed her to shove the door open, back to the business of rushing her out. No Are you okay? No Sorry for basically Heimliching you. Well, fine.

The overhang outside blocked the downpour, but the wind whipped the rain sideways at their backs and legs as Tansy wedged the cage between her hip and the door to lock up. Jack tapped his boot impatiently. “Come on. Hurry up.” She was already rehearsing the phone call she would make come Monday to his supervisor at Lerner Botanic Gardens. That would teach him not to be an asshole when his place of business and his name were embroidered right there on his shirt.

But as Tansy fantasized about his comeuppance, the rain-slick keys slipped her grasp and fell into the water. It churned above the curbs now, licking the underside of her car in the lot, sloshing up near her license plate. She froze, overwhelmed by the sudden lake between her car and the exit.

“Which one?” Jack had her keys now.

“The big one.”

He jammed it in quickly then dragged her away by her elbow. Rain beat with incredible force on her head and shoulders. His strides were too long, and she tripped after him. Jack indelicately manhandled the birdcage between the door frame and her folded-down front seat, then shoved the seat back into place with a loud thunk. When he turned to find her still frozen on the curb, he snapped, “Get. In.”

On principle, Tansy didn’t take orders from assholes. But in this case, with water sloshing onto her floorboard, she obeyed without a word.

“Follow me close,” he shouted over the rain, ducking his face near hers. “Stay on my bumper. The lot dips through the middle there. If you stop, you won’t make it. Got it?”

“Like…how close?” Her hands were slick on the steering wheel.

“Close. My truck will push the water out, but it’s gonna flow right back at you if you stop.”

“Okay, but—” Shit, she was suddenly so scared. She was sure he could see it all over her face, in the tremble of her chin and her wide eyes.

If he did notice, he had no patience for her panic. “Whatever you do, don’t fucking stop,” he said and then slammed the door.

Tansy followed his huge truck as closely as she could, tapping frequently on her brakes so she didn’t ram him, then lurching to catch back up. Just like he’d said, his truck pushed up high walls of water on either side of Tansy’s car. Her heart was fully lodged in her throat, hands clenched around the wheel so tightly they ached.

As they crossed the center of the lot, Tansy’s headlights submerged and dimmed, and for one brief, terrifying moment, all the warning lights on the dashboard flashed on. She was sure she was going to stall right there. Would Jack stop or just leave her behind? What if she got trapped? If she couldn’t push her door open? The power windows wouldn’t work. She didn’t have one of those window-breaker things. Why had she never bought one of those?

Tansy couldn’t breathe. She hunched forward over the steering wheel, nearly pressing her forehead to the windshield.

But just as quickly as the warning lights flashed on, they blinked off, and her car kept going. Soon they were ascending the slope of the lot up onto the road. Jack pulled through the gate and parked on the shoulder. On his jog back to lock the gate, he bent to meet her eyes through her window. Despite the rain and chaos, he didn’t break away immediately, just held his gaze on her and saw her face crumple with the threat of tears before she controlled it. He nodded as if to say, I know. And for that brief moment, Tansy felt seen and okay. Then a loud bang on the roof of her car startled her—his fist—and he waved her on.

The short drive home was a panic-ridden eternity. Even on the most aggressive setting, her windshield wipers barely cleared the rain for brief glimpses of the street ahead of her. After hydroplaning twice, her stomach plunging to the floorboard both times, Tansy steered to the higher middle of the road. She couldn’t even see the center line, could only guess where it was.

Finally, Tansy pulled into her driveway, half of which had disappeared into the wide canal the road had become. Teeth chattering so violently it hurt, she killed the ignition, hugged the steering wheel, and sobbed.

Once she composed herself enough to mask her distress from Briar, she muscled the birdcage from the back seat and hissed shakily into the parachute cover, “Sure hope you’re worth all that, you lucky little shits.”

2

Jack

By the sixth rescue run of the evening, Jack was soaked through, his fingers pruned and his hair stuck to his neck under his drenched cap. He cut the motor and let the boat drift for a moment, straining through the beating rain to listen for anyone calling out.

“We got another address?” he shouted to Omar at the bow, wiping rain from his face with his wet forearm. The last two houses they’d checked had already been picked up. Good for those families, but the chaos of this whole operation exacerbated Jack’s already frayed nerves from the constant beating rain, the discomfort of wet clothes, and the frustratingly limited visibility. Other volunteers who were not coordinating with the fire department were making their own runs, and Jack couldn’t shake the certainty that while some folks were getting checked on two or three times after sending out pleas to friends, to emergency services, and on social media, others must be going unnoticed.

“Take a left up here,” Omar called back, pointing at a street sign. The water reached halfway up its pole.

“Heard anything from Amy?” Jack asked.

Omar dug his phone from his dry bag, checked the screen quickly, and called over his shoulder, “Nothing new. I’m sure they’re getting busy with people showing up.”

Jack wanted to press his best friend to try texting her again. He didn’t like the thought of his sister on her feet, working through the night in the temporary shelter she was helping set up. She’d had major surgery only a few months ago and needed to be at home, taking it easy. Although, if she were home alone, he’d worry about that, too. Omar had once been on Jack’s side when it came to protecting Amy—okay, overprotecting Amy—but the longer he’d been married to her, the more easily he deferred to her stubborn confidence.

“She knows what she can handle,” Omar added, apparently reading Jack’s thoughts.

“Still can’t believe she drove over there in this,” Jack grumbled.

Omar barked a laugh. “Wonder where she got that from.”

“Says the guy who runs into burning buildings for a living.”

“Nah. By the time she came to me, she was already like this.”

She’d come into Jack’s life already like this, too. She’d been stressing him out since he was nine years old.

Jack kicked the outboard motor back up and cruised down a channel that had once been a road, careful to dodge the handful of cars drowned along the curbs. Garbage bins, tree limbs, and other debris bobbed past. Only the crossbar of the swing set and the upper level of the slide remained visible in the park Jack knew to be on their right.

“Over there!”

Jack followed Omar’s direction into a short cul-de-sac.

On the porch of a little blue house at the end of the lane, three figures waved erratically. An elderly woman in a trash-bag poncho braced against one of the porch posts, the water just above her knees, while another, younger woman carried a bag on each shoulder and something big in her arms—a pack of some kind. Behind her, a child, who was also wearing a trash bag, stood on a table just out of the water. “Over here!” the younger of the two women called out, her voice hoarse like she’d been at it a long time.

Jack steered the boat up over the submerged front lawn, and Omar caught the porch railing to prevent them from ramming it.

“What did I tell you? Here are the helpers,” said the young woman brightly to the girl, who was maybe seven or eight. With her arms still full, the woman crouched as if to piggyback the kid. Her mother, Jack realized.

The trio’s relief was so palpable, it seemed to surge through him, too. Who knew how long they’d waited for help while the water kept rising, while they watched boats zoom down other streets?

When Omar reached to help them onto the boat, though, the mother looked Jack dead in the face, something like shock in her wide eyes, and stood straighter, preventing the kid from climbing up. “Never mind.”

“What?” Omar called over the rain.

“We’re okay. We’ll get the next one.”

The next one? Jack made his way to the bow, bobbing with the current. Then he saw it, the slick, primary-colored cover on the pack. She’d changed her clothes, but it was definitely her, the reckless blonde crusader from the library, still carrying around those birds.

And she would rather risk drowning than get on his boat.

The table wobbled under the girl’s unicorn boots, and she shrieked. “Mom?”

Her mother snapped to her senses, crouching for her climb up again. “God, sorry. Of course we’re coming.”

As the kid wrapped her arms around her mother’s neck, something white and fuzzy dropped into the water and immediately drifted out of reach. “Beans!” the girl cried.

Jack lunged and caught the stuffed animal as it slipped around the hull, but not before the woman went for it herself, despite having no free hands and her kid on her back. She misjudged her step and nearly plunged right off the porch. The child’s cry pierced through the drumming rain. Jack reached to stop their motion, stretching himself so far over the side of the boat he almost sent himself overboard. A burst of needles prickled under his skin.

“The birds,” he said through gritted teeth. It was all the language he could access through the adrenaline.

She gulped a bracing swallow then huffed. “I couldn’t save them from drowning in the library to let them drown in my house.”

He’d meant for her to pass him the cage to free her hands, but apparently she’d interpreted it as chastising. And, yeah, now that he thought about it, it was insane to continue hauling around those birds while she had a child and an elderly woman in her care. “Would you please,” he said with hard-fought control, “get on the goddamned boat?”

“I was,” she said. But as she turned for Omar to lift the kid over the side, she added, “Of all the freaking rescue boats in all of Houston…”

Jack guided the girl to the middle bench. She’d stayed dry until now. He wished his small fishing boat had a canopy, something to break the rain spiking her eyelashes. He pulled off his wet ball cap and tightened the band to the smallest notch before placing it on her head and helping her into a life jacket.

Omar had helped the older woman aboard and was still getting her situated, so Jack returned for the mom. But at the sight of him reaching for her, she stumbled gracelessly into the boat with her bags and her birds. She willfully ignored the hand he offered and nodded at the waterlogged stuffed bunny he’d set down. “Thank you for getting Beans.”

He passed the bunny to the girl. She was trembling.

The ride back out to the freeway felt much longer this time. Omar sat up front with the older lady. Directly facing Jack, the mom and kid huddled together. Every time she set down the birdcage to hold the girl tighter, it slid or tipped, and she had to pick it back up. Finally, Jack reached for it, intending to brace the cage between his boots, but the daughter scrambled forward, taking his extended arm as an invitation, and climbed up beside him. To his surprise, she hugged him fiercely. Jack’s arm hovered, uncertain, above her.

“Briar.” The mom winced apologetically at Jack. “I’m sorry. Briar, honey, come back.”

But Briar didn’t let go. He could feel her tiny body shaking, and he didn’t think, just tucked her more securely into his side for the rest of the ride.

Volunteers met them at the drop-off point and ushered the passengers from his boat toward a fleet of school buses. Jack waited until they were safely up the steps of one.

Only then did he realize the little girl was still wearing his hat.

3

Tansy

Four Months Later

After four months of temporary assignments at other libraries around Houston, Tansy’s first day back at her home branch was bittersweet. Not only had half of her coworkers opted not to return, but the building itself remained gutted and dark. Tansy passed by the empty shell of it on her way to the shared parking lot between Grant Gellman Library and Lerner Botanic Gardens, unable to block out memories of her last time here, five days following the storm, when she and her work family trudged into the musty building to retrieve anything salvageable.

The thin gray carpet, squelching under their feet and caked with fine orange silt.

The Wish Tree, tipped on its side, all the handwritten wishes torn off or turned to soggy pulp.

The books. Thousands of books, tossed off their shelves, spines splayed violently where they’d fallen, damp pages stuck in inseparable clumps.

In the kitchenette, the water had swept their personal mugs from the upper cabinet like a temperamental cat. Tansy’s bright yellow T mug. Irma’s HEA or GTFO. Kai’s Ask Me About My Gay Agenda. All in broken pieces littering the tile floor and smothered in the same silty sludge.

In the office, their work sweaters had been yanked off their hooks and left in a sopping heap, the arms twisted and tangled together like they’d fought to hold on to one another.

Ugh. She didn’t want to think of the storm. She wanted to get on with their fresh start.

Which was really more of a last chance.

When their expected renovation announcement ended up being an official closure announcement, Tansy had appealed to the county commissioner. His solution was to move the library into the adjacent botanic gardens. It bought them four months.

Four months to prove her library was an essential county institution that deserved to be renovated and reopened, despite its history of flooding and the loss of its entire collection.

If not, the branch would permanently close, and Tansy’s work family would break up again, for good. After everything else she’d lost—her home, which had to be stripped to the studs, her car, and all of her and Briar’s belongings—Tansy refused to lose one more thing.

Except she’d have to endure a little salt in her wound, apparently. In the library staff’s absence, the gardens’ staff had taken to manspreading their trucks, crossing lines to occupy multiple spaces in the communal lot.

These were the people she was now at the mercy of. Guys like Jack Reid, whose rudeness during the storm she’d never had the chance to report, saddled with more pressing concerns like where she and her daughter would sleep. Although he’d also been the one to rescue them from the floodwater later that night, he’d managed to make her feel even smaller while doing it. If she could work inside the gardens without ever seeing that asshole, she’d consider it a miracle.

This was some truly wishful thinking, though, because she was set to meet him—she checked her watch—right now.

Late on her first day back. Not exactly the show of competence she’d intended as the new interim branch manager.

“Oh, thank God!” Marianne called a few minutes later as Tansy jog-walked up the landscaped flagstone path and through the entrance gate. “We thought maybe you quit.”

Tansy’s skirt, a flowy, secondhand number that still held a hint of patchouli despite several washes at the Laundromat, snagged on a bush. Her ballet flats—also secondhand—were already rubbing blisters on her heels. “Quit? No, I just had to park in the back lot,” she explained, yanking her skirt free from the prickly bush and leaning into greeting hugs from Marianne, Irma, and Kai.

Kai, who had shaved one side of their head and dyed their remaining chin-length hair teal since Tansy had last seen them, bent to remove a clinging twig from Tansy’s skirt. “Marianne thought you quit. No one else thought that.”

“Well, everyone else quit,” Marianne said.

“Four people,” Kai corrected.

Tansy did not point out that among the four staff who left was their branch manager, Rashida, leaving her to steer the ship despite her short tenure.

“This whole thing is giving me whiplash,” Marianne complained. She looked like a Filipina Zooey Deschanel, with her thick glasses and bangs and her rotating daily uniform of a color-coded skirt, cardigan, and flats. Today’s color was mango, same as every Monday for the past year. The familiarity edged out some of the nervous energy buzzing through Tansy.

“First, we get sent all over the city,” Marianne went on. “Then our branch is shut down, and now we’re open again but in the gardens? I don’t understand any of this.”

Irma said, “What’s not to get? Tansy saved our butts.”

“Kind of,” Kai amended. “More of a stopgap.”

Marianne threw up her hands, still confused. “If they moved us here, does that mean they’ll renovate our building after all?”

“No,” Tansy admitted, then added, with a pang of guilt at the false hope she couldn’t help but offer, “Not yet.”

She peered down the different paths splitting off like spokes from the fountain where they’d gathered. There was a serious lack of color in the gardens, even for winter. Entire beds sprawled, empty of plants. The large lawn beyond the fountain was brown and patchy.

“Has anyone seen this guy?” she asked, turning back to her friends. “Jack?”

They looked at one another and shrugged.

She checked her phone, even though it wasn’t like he had her number in the first place. She noticed that she’d missed some texts from Charlie, which momentarily distracted her. Briar was with him in Dallas for the last few days of winter break.

Charlie: Everything’s okay but can we talk later?

Charlie: It’s about this hat

Charlie: Not an emergency

She appreciated his assurance that it wasn’t an emergency, but any text from Charlie when Briar was with him sent her heart into a frenzy.

“What’s up?” Kai asked quietly.

Tansy tucked away her phone. “He hasn’t come yet? He was supposed to meet us at eight.”

Another round of shrugs.

Tansy checked her watch. 8:07. She scanned the paths again and spotted a stone building, which she assumed was the staff cottage the commissioner had offered. “Fine. Let’s go.”

“Who is this Jack person?” Marianne asked, falling into step beside Tansy.

“The assistant director,” Kai answered. “Soon to be the director when the current one retires next month.”

Tansy twisted to look back at Kai, surprised. That last bit was news to her. “How do you know that?”

Kai laced their fingers together and turned their palms out, cracking every knuckle. “I did some recon last night.”

“Stalking, you mean,” Marianne coughed.

“We need to know what we’re walking into here.”

“So, what…you memorized the staff directory?” Tansy asked.

“Only the hot ones. Jack, the current director, a couple maintenance staff…”

Irma quirked an eyebrow. “This Jack fella is handsome?” At seventy-two, Irma still had a robust interest in romance. Her Kindle was set to the largest font size, and Tansy didn’t judge, but she had absolutely blushed a time or two at the explicit passages she saw on Irma’s screen.

“I wouldn’t say he’s handsome,” Tansy muttered.

Kai clutched their Smurfs shirt in protest. “I saw what I saw. He’s, like, rugged. Not really handsome but definitely hot.”

“Rugged,” Irma parroted with interest. She paused to rub her knee through her wide-wale corduroy trousers, and Tansy waited, then resumed their trek at a slower pace.

“He looks like he sweats a lot, but somehow it smells good,” Kai went on, adding a skip to their step. “Or he dips in the creek once a week and calls it a bath.”

Marianne wrinkled her nose. “So he’s filthy? How is that attractive?”

Kai turned to share a mischievous grin with Irma, who fluffed her white hair and answered, “Sugar, if you don’t know, I can’t explain it to you.”

Marianne gasped. “Irma.”

“You got all this from a staff photo?” Tansy asked over Kai and Irma’s delighted cackling.

“No,” Kai said. “I found one of their interns on Instagram, and he’s all over the account, like, digging holes and lifting heavy stuff. It’s a whole vibe.”

When the commissioner agreed to move the library into the gardens, Tansy had poked around on its website and stumbled upon a video of Jack kayaking through the park a day or two after the storm, describing the damage. She hadn’t realized it was him at first, drawn in by his muscular arms and easy oar strokes. She could understand the appeal of those arms doing all kinds of manual labor, and for just a second, she wanted the name of that Instagram account.

Unfortunately, reality had already ruined for her any fantasy involving Jack Reid.

“A rugged, sweaty, unwashed vibe,” she summed up, hoping to shut down this line of commentary.

But Kai was just getting started. “Like he’d take you overnight camping on a first date.”

Tansy laughed. “So an actual nightmare.”

“He’d pitch a tent for you,” Kai continued, pausing for dramatic effect, “and then…you know…”

“This is inappropriate work conversation,” Marianne said, yelping as a gecko darted across her path.

They reached the cottage and stopped. It was a small stone structure, maybe twenty feet wide, with a chimney and crooked wooden shutters. “Trust me,” Tansy said, “from what I’ve seen, the guy would leave you to pitch your own tent and then lecture you for doing it wrong. He’s the one who yelled at me when I came back for the birds.”

Kai frowned. “Oh, shit. Really?”

“Really.” As if she’d forget the man who’d made her feel like an idiot on the worst night of her life.

She hadn’t told the group chat that it had been his boat that had picked her up during the storm. The deep gratitude she’d felt in that moment—before she’d recognized Jack—was entirely woven through with shame and fear and a dozen other sharp-toothed emotions, and she’d have given a kidney to never have to see him again.

Except Briar wore his ball cap every single day, like a talisman. And despite him apparently standing them up this morning, she was going to have to face him later at a joint staff meeting.

Marianne crossed her arms, souring at the mention of Jack’s disregard for the birds. “It’s official then. He’s dead to me.” Strong words from her—she thought hate was a swear word and could only whisper it. But Tansy’s account of that run-in with Jack in the library had struck the one nerve that could make Marianne openly dislike a person.

“And just how are the birds, Marianne?” Kai asked.

“The birds are fine,” Marianne said primly.

“What am I missing?” Irma barked, struggling under the weight of her tote bag that said, simply, Romance Novels, Y’all and was likely stuffed with exactly what it said. Tansy reached for it to ease her load, but Irma waved off the help.

Kai grinned. “Her seventeen cats almost murdered them.”

“Five cats,” Marianne corrected. “And Mr. Beasly just held Jelly in his mouth. He didn’t bite her.”

“Now she has to separate them, and that’s on top of keeping all the healthy cats from the one with the contagious skin disease. She keeps the birds in her bedroom, and they squawk all night while the cats yowl and scratch at the door, all bloodthirsty.” At Marianne’s indignant glare, Kai explained, “You posted about it on that cat-fostering Facebook group. It’s all public.”

Irma laughed but pulled Marianne in for a consoling hug. “Maybe there’s a lesson in all this, hon.”

“Close off my heart to the Lord’s most vulnerable creatures?” she asked petulantly. “Never.”

Before Kai could rile up Marianne more, Tansy directed their attention to the cottage. “Here it is, our new home.”

“It’s small,” Irma said, squinting skeptically.

“Yes,” Tansy agreed with confidence, as though this was a highlight rather one of the building’s many, many flaws—chunks of stone missing from the walls, for one, and dark sludge climbing up the chimney. They couldn’t fit even half of their old circulation materials inside this building. But it was what they had. And anyway, admin wouldn’t allocate many new materials for them. They would keep a small rotating collection of books borrowed from other branches but primarily serve as an interlibrary-loan pick-up hub. So really, a bigger space would only emphasize their austere offerings. “It has charm, though, right?” she said. “A fairy-tale feel?”

“Sure. The witch’s house in ‘Hansel and Gretel,’ ” Marianne said.

Kai batted back an overgrown bush encroaching on the walk while Irma forged through the patchy grass to peek in one of the windows. “I can’t see a thing.”

“Door’s stuck,” Kai reported, jiggling the handle.

Tansy sighed. “We’ll have to get the key.” Where was Jack Reid?

“No, it’s not locked. Just needs a little muscle, I think.”

“Okay, but don’t—”

“This window’s broken!” Irma called, making her way around the side of the cottage. Tansy’s every muscle tensed at the sight of her Naturalizer loafers traversing the uneven ground.

Just as she started to call her back, Kai threw their shoulder into the door, bouncing back with a grunt. Marianne shrieked and swatted in a panic at some invisible bug, distracting Tansy just long enough to fully lose sight of Irma around the building, and now Kai was crouched in a runner’s pose for another try. “Wait, don’t—” she exclaimed.

Kai ran and leapt into a flying kick at the door. Their boot broke straight through the wood with an impressive crack and then lodged in it, suspending their leg at the knee. Kai hopped on one foot. “It’s okay. I’m—nope. Shit. Mistakes were made.”

Marianne said helpfully, “Well, this is embarrassing.”

“Irma?” Tansy called, steadying Kai. “Could you please come back where I can see you?”

“Huh?” Irma shouted. Then, “Y’all need to see this!”

“See what?” Tansy asked warily. She wasn’t sure she could handle any more surprises.

“I don’t think her hearing aid is on,” Kai said, hissing in pain as Tansy tugged at their leg.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. This was fine. She would free Kai from the door, retrieve Irma before she tripped in a gopher hole, see what unwelcome development awaited them at the back of the building…and then figure out how to fix the door. One step at a time.

“What the hell are you all doing?” came a deep voice.

Tansy whirled around.

Jack. He was dismounting an ATV she hadn’t heard motor up, wearing an untucked sage-green polo, khaki cargo pants, mud-caked boots, and a severe scowl. He jabbed a plastic water bottle at her in a way that could only be considered aggressive and then at the door as he marched across the grass toward her. “What is this?”

Another, younger guy stepped down from the passenger seat of the ATV but hung back, taking in the situation. His shirt was tucked in, and his boots were far cleaner, his round face shaved smooth, blond hair combed neatly to one side.

Kai propped a nonchalant arm up against the door as if to downplay the fact that their leg was stuck through it.

Tansy’s cheeks burned as though they’d caught her personally spray-painting dicks on the door. Jack’s energy was angry, dismissive, and impatient—as she’d expected—and immediately put her on the defensive. “We were trying to get into our building.”

“This isn’t your building,” Jack snapped.

“Yes, it is.”

“No,” he said, crossing his arms and glaring down at her. Who glared at someone they barely knew? “It’s not.”

“The commissioner promised—”

He shrugged flippantly. “That guy’s an idiot.”

She floundered at his quick dismissal. This couldn’t fall apart. The commissioner had pointed to this building when he promised her space here, and Greta, the gardens’ director, had agreed to it. But maybe Jack was already transitioning into her position, if Kai’s digging was true, and maybe he could undo that agreement.

“That guy is your boss,” she pointed out weakly.

“Doesn’t mean he knows the first thing about what goes on here. Your little stunt at our reopening, hijacking our news coverage and putting him on the spot, just backed him into a promise he couldn’t keep.”

Hijacking was a strong word. Tansy had merely intercepted some of the visitors in the parking lot until the middle of the commissioner’s big speech at the ribbon-cutting ceremony and allowed their voices, chanting the line she’d supplied, to be heard as they marched into the park. And then, after the commissioner had explicitly asked if she had something to say, inviting her up to the microphone, she’d made her case for reopening her library, challenging him to prove the county valued books and essential library services as much as they valued a bunch of flowers and trees.

“So,” Marianne asked, her mousy voice even mousier, “we don’t have a building?”

The second guy came closer, concern knitting his brows. “Uh, do you need a hand?” He jogged over to help Kai, quickly extracting them from the door and then kneeling to survey the bloody scrape down their shin bone with a sympathetic hiss.

Jack frowned, distracted but not visibly concerned by the wound. “Now I’m gonna have to fix this door. Got a hundred more important things to do.”

“Well,” Tansy said defensively, “we might not have tried to get in if someone had met us on time.”

“Eight sharp,” he said. “You weren’t here, and I had other things to do. Still do. So if you’re finished kicking in doors, could we get on with it?”

“Get on with what?”

Clutching his hips and shaking his head at the gray sky, he blew out a deeply aggrieved sigh. His shaggy hair caught on his collar. Half-moons of dirt caked his nails.

Rugged. Not handsome, but definitely hot.

If you were into scraggly beards and terrible attitudes, which Tansy absolutely wasn’t. Her gaze snagged longer than she liked, though, when that little carpenter muscle near his elbow flexed. Damn it.

Jack sniffed then asked tightly, “You want to see your building or not?” Without another word, he marched down a path that was partially washed out and marked off with yellow caution tape.

When they passed Irma around the back of the building, Tansy discovered what she’d hollered for them to come see. The back half of the roof was caved in under the weight of a massive tree.

—

“You can’t be serious,” Tansy huffed five minutes later.

Jack’s shoulders lifted, as if he didn’t see the problem.

Or problems.

“This is a shed. Attached to a public bathroom.”

He casually checked his watch. “It’s got a roof, walls, a window.”

“This window?” Tansy snapped, yanking open the door, which had one tiny square windowpane. A glorified peephole.

Oh, but it got worse. Inside, the cement floor was caked with sludge and rotting leaves. The pungent smell that wafted out the door indicated that something else was rotting in there, too. Everyone groaned and covered their noses.

Except for Jack. His nostrils flared, but otherwise, he refused to acknowledge the unholy stench they’d just released.

“Yikes,” Marianne piped up.

If ever there was a time for a full-throated swear word, this was it.

“You can use the tools in there for cleanup,” Jack said, nodding at rusty old shovels hanging on the back wall. He crushed his water bottle and shoved it into his back pocket. “I’ll get you your keys at the meeting later.”

“That’s it? ‘Here’s your shed. See ya later’?” Tansy pushed into his personal space, only to realize he was a full head taller and hardly intimidated by her talking to the notch of his Adam’s apple. She lifted her chin anyway, desperate for one more inch, and cut him off before he could say something infuriating, like Calm down. “This is a biohazard! We can’t put books in here, let alone people. Not that either will fit. What is this, eight by eight feet? Is there even electricity?”

His jaw clenched, but instead of arguing, he scuffed back a step. Because he had no argument. He couldn’t honestly think this was an acceptable option.

She crowded him again, intending to say more about the mud pit and the caution tape, but wind caught her hair and the opening of her wrap skirt, whipping both around her erratically. Jack jolted back as she bent to snatch her skirt closed. She was exposing more thigh than anyone needed to see before nine a.m. Which never would have been a problem in a climate-controlled building.

When she straightened, he was already walking away, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.

The younger guy offered an apologetic smile, ducking out from under Kai’s arm, where he’d been bracing them. “There is electricity,” he said, “and a pressure washer in the greenhouse. I can bring it by later if y’all want it.” He had to jog to catch up with Jack.

“Thanks!” Tansy called to Jack sarcastically, adding under her breath, “for absolutely nothing.” Then, she put on a bright smile and turned back to her team.

The librarians spent the next four hours shoveling sludge from the floor, startling themselves at every snakeskin, dead roach, anthill, and—finally—the opossum carcass that was responsible for the awful smell. At one point, Marianne ran, gagging, to wash her hands in the attached bathroom because she’d touched animal droppings, only to tear right back out screaming, “Spider nest!”

So they were going to need that pressure washer and a flamethrower.

The spiders were also the reason Irma had left to find a different bathroom. More than twenty minutes ago.

“I’m going to haul off this trash and see if I can find Irma,” Tansy said, wiping sweat from her forehead despite the January chill and then grabbing two full garbage bags. “If we don’t come straight back here, we’ll meet y’all in fifteen minutes in that covered courtyard for the meeting.” She hoped the director would be there instead of just Jack.

After she tossed the bags into the dumpster behind the visitor’s center, which had been dressed like a shiny new package for the ribbon-cutting ceremony two weeks ago, she tried the door, surprised to find it locked. She peeked in through the window. Like her library, it was gutted and dark.

Well, that was odd.

She tried the admin offices next. No Irma. Sure they’d somehow missed each other by taking different paths, Tansy headed back. But the trail she thought was a shortcut around the greenhouse veered unexpectedly to the outer perimeter of the gardens. The path turned from pavers to gravel and then to a mix of clay and sand. Soon, towering pine trees and tangly undergrowth pushed in from both sides.

She cut through the trees, a slight incline taking her, she hoped, to a better vantage point. Her shoes sank in the muddy ground, and the incline grew steeper, forcing her to bear-crawl up the last bit of the hill. As she stood at the top, she saw that she was at the edge of a sudden drop-off into a ravine.

The creek.

She’d known it was here, but she hadn’t ever seen it like this, up close. Her stomach swooped at the steep drop. The creek snaked in and out of wide bends far below—so far that the amount of water it must have taken to fill this ravine and spill over into the rest of the gardens, through the library, and a few blocks away to her neighborhood, was unfathomable and more than a little menacing. She inched back, heart racing, and then scurried down the hill, feeling as though she’d escaped a predator.

She clung to the likelihood that Irma hadn’t wandered out this far and tried to find her way back to the path, but a sound like a grunt halted her. And then movement several yards through the trees, obscured by foliage. She froze. A bobcat? There were bobcats in Texas, weren’t there? Or—God, some stranger lurking in the woods? Her mouth went dry, and unease skittered up her spine.

Static crackled through the silence, followed by a woman’s scratchy voice over a radio. “Yoo-hoo. Are you coming to this meeting?”

Another low grunt and then a thud—something heavy dropping to the ground—and the figure, a man, ducked under a thick tree branch and walked a few steps away from her. She moved sideways both to see him better and to obscure herself. He had his back to her—his bare back—and between the branch at eye level and the dense overgrowth, she could see only the middle half of him.

He’d been doing something to the branch, she realized. It had a split down its length, not fully broken off at its trunk, and thick screws and wooden braces were holding it together. A toolbelt hung over a different branch alongside a sage-green gardens shirt. Which meant he worked here. She caught glimpses of the guy’s bare, tanned skin and his broad, muscular back emerging from low-slung khaki pants.

He exhaled a long sigh into the woods and then yanked a walkie-talkie off his belt.

“Don’t tell me you’ve ‘forgotten’ your radio again,” the tinny voice added before he could reply. Tansy recognized the delicate lilt, the slight German accent of Greta, the gardens director, whom she’d met at the reopening.

The guy grumbled something too low to make out and re-clipped the radio to his belt.

Curious, Tansy ventured into the tree line, wincing as leaves crunched under her feet. Now that she knew he worked here and wasn’t some creep in the woods, she could ask for directions back. She wasn’t confident she’d make that meeting on time otherwise.

The man reached up for his shirt, and her fingers flinched with an unexpected tactile curiosity about the smooth skin over his taut lower-back muscles and the way his pockets hugged his ass. It was muscular, just like his thighs. Tansy flushed. She hadn’t felt such lightning-quick interest—attraction—like this in years. A purely physical, magnetic pull to an anonymous body. It was unnerving, like standing at the top of the ravine moments ago.

She pressed the cool back of her hand to her forehead, interrupting the spell. She was a single mother. She didn’t wander down unmarked paths and drool over half-naked men in the forest. Except…

It wouldn’t hurt to establish some allies around here. And if this guy happened to be one of the hot ones Kai had memorized on the gardens’ staff page, well…she didn’t judge books by their covers, but she did appreciate objective beauty.

He moved around behind the trees, further obscured as he pulled off his cap to slip his polo over his head, and Tansy’s little fantasy died on arrival. Jack Reid shook out his shaggy, dark hair, raked it back, and secured his hat back on his head. And then, at the sound of her disappointed huff, he turned and looked right at her.

“What are you doing out here?” he demanded. “This is a restricted area.”

She didn’t know what was worse, losing the fantasy of an attractive stranger or of a helpful ally. Jack was neither, even if the little swoop in her stomach begged to differ on the first point. “Our bathroom is full of spiders.”

“Did you come out here to—” He gestured vaguely at a bush.

“To what?”

“To pee.”

“In the woods? No. Gross. I’d drive back home before I peed outside.”

“Then, what—” He heaved a sigh. “Never mind. Don’t care what you’re doing. You can’t be back here.”

“I was looking for Irma. She went to find a bathroom without spiders and didn’t come back.”

He slung his toolbelt over his shoulder then stomped through the trees toward her, tucking his shirt back in. And jeez, why was that so riveting? Her lips parted, her mouth suddenly dry. There was nothing sexual about it, and yet, it felt so blatantly intimate, his hands slipping unselfconsciously down the front of his pants.

“The admin building has bathrooms,” he said as he stalked past, casting a long, skeptical side-eye down at her, like maybe he’d somehow heard her stupid body’s thoughts about his stupid body, and then joined the path toward the main gardens. Five steps later, he called back, “Are you coming?”

“Is that a question you regularly have to ask women?”

He stopped mid-step but didn’t turn around, and Tansy held her breath, appalled that those words, in that old flirty-mean tone she hadn’t used in years, had come out of her mouth. Hastily, she added, “You’ve got to be the least patient person I’ve ever met.”

He turned to face her, hands on his hips in a melodramatic disgruntled man pose. “For the record, patience in that area is not a problem for me.”

Tansy’s cheeks—and other regions of her body—flooded with heat, and her eyes dropped straight to her mud-caked shoes. Had he really just—

“And you,” he added, “might have the worst common sense of anyone I’ve ever met.”

“Excuse me?” Images from that day broke through her thoughts. She couldn’t change the choices she’d made. She’d done the best she could with the information she’d had at the time. At least, that was what Dr. Sharon had instructed her to remember after Briar’s last session. But the memory of her utter helplessness—how she’d failed to keep Briar safe, how even in that moment when he’d pulled up in his boat, she’d wanted to save face and wait for anyone else rather than take more of his judgment—cut right through any of the soothing scripts she repeated to ease her guilt.

He pointed at her feet, gaining steam. “Those shoes? That skirt? There’s poison oak and ivy, snakes, exposed roots, mud—”

“I dressed for my job. At a library. And you’re talking about hazards out here, but what about the mud pit on the way to our little shed of horrors?”

“It’ll get fixed,” he said. And once again, instead of engaging with her and addressing her points, he turned to go.

“When?”

“I don’t know. Maybe let’s get through this meeting first.”

She caught up to him, matching his pace with occasional bursts of a jog. When they reached the main path, she followed the left fork, back toward the greenhouse and the covered courtyard across from it.

Only Jack was no longer speedwalking by her side. “You taking the long way?” he called over his shoulder, striding in the opposite direction.

Damn it. Tansy raced to catch back up, just in time to hear him mutter, “Should’ve let you go. Solve a few of my problems.”

4

Jack

“Where’s the food?” Ian asked when Jack, annoyed and out of breath, marched up just ahead of the librarian. “Didn’t Greta say to get coffee and cookies?”

“If adults can’t get through a ten-minute meeting without a snack, that’s on them.”

Ian raised his palms and backed away from the stairs, where Jack took his position in front of the small group. He’d removed his shirt while repairing the live oak to avoid working in sweaty clothes for the rest of the day, but now he was damp anyway from the juvenile foot race, possessed by God knew what to beat that librarian here just because she’d turned it into a competition, despite having no sense at all which way here even was. She took a seat now with her colleagues, cheeks flushed but a cheery smile in place.

He checked his watch. It was three minutes past their scheduled meeting time, yet only a dozen people slouched in the twenty folding chairs facing him in the covered courtyard. And he couldn’t blame the sparse turnout on the librarians. Only one of them was missing. Meanwhile, half his interns and two maintenance staff had yet to arrive.

Greta usually ran these meetings, but she’d given him more responsibility ahead of her retirement in a couple weeks. She’d also forced him to start spending an hour every day in the office, answering emails and phone calls, and he was beginning to think taking over as director so he could ensure the park didn’t wind up in the hands of some hack was possibly not worth the time he now spent dealing with so many people instead of outside with his hands in soil.

Not to mention that, even with Greta still in the job, the commissioner was undermining their work, freezing their budget and requiring case-by-case approval for every little thing while pushing his own agenda of largely cosmetic improvements around the park. The essential but less visually impressive flood-mitigation projects, soil rebalancing, and other true recovery work never made the cut. A county politician with no expertise in horticulture had no business overseeing this place.

“All right,” he said, cutting through the din of voices. “As you can see, we have some new folks on the grounds for a few months. Everyone, these are the librar—”

“Four months.”

Jack’s gaze skipped over the crowd, snagging on golden hair as the crusader librarian stood once more. She waved shyly at the rest of the group. He bristled. She’d proven she wasn’t too shy to disrupt a gathering or add her complaints to someone else’s full plate.

“Hi, everyone,” she said, crossing the courtyard to stand beside—no, in front of—Jack, blocking him in on the staircase. “I’m Tansy Perkins. Children’s services librarian. Also, technically, interim branch manager and assistant manager. I wear many hats.” A laugh. “But only figuratively. Hats never look cute on me.”

The group chuckled softly.

“What,” Jack whispered, reaching for and then abruptly stopping himself from tugging the back of her sweater, “are you doing?”

She turned and flashed him a big smile. “Introducing myself.”

His gaze dropped to the gas station receipt where he had written Introduction. Boundaries. Question. Only now did he realize he’d left the s off Questions, but that was just as well. He was on a tight schedule.

Pitching his voice low, he said, “I’m introducing you.”

“Are you?” she whispered, squinting skeptically.

He showed her his list.

She moved in closer, and he resisted the impulse to retreat to higher ground on the second step. The group was watching, albeit with only half interest, and he wasn’t about to concede an inch.

“Before just now,” she said, casting big doe eyes and a sugary-sweet smile at him, “did you even know my name?”

The truth was, she’d said it a minute ago and he’d already forgotten it. Her whole schtick, with the bright clothes and the glistening, berry-red lips and her demanding energy, was destabilizing. She was a kick to an anthill, stirring up chaos.

“Collectively,” he said, circling his index finger over the list. “As a group.”

She panned a hand like some game show host, conceding the floor, but now he was rattled and static filled his brain. Even on a good day, his thoughts sailed past him like fast-moving clouds, and he was lucky to grasp one or two to wrangle out loud. Especially when another person’s emotions were coming at him like a bull down a chute. And despite her placid smile and calm demeanor, that was what he felt—a force radiating from her, like she’d come already prepared to lock horns with him.

“As I was saying…librarians.” He sliced his hand toward their small group and then to the right, where the punctual portion of the interns slouched in their chairs. “Interns.” He was about to point to the maintenance crew when Tansy reached out without warning and squeezed his forearm. His brain went dormant on the spot, just completely blank.

“Do any of them have names?” she whispered. She seemed aware enough not to challenge him loudly, in front of his staff, but she had to realize the constant interruptions and convening between them made him look like a jackass. Not to mention that she still hadn’t budged from her place in front of him. He needed to move, if only because he couldn’t.

Jack knew the interns as Chatty Girls One and Two, Mullet, Red Bull, and Hugger, for reasons that were pretty straightforward. Aside from Hugger, who was a middle-aged empty nester in need of a hobby, the rest of the interns were college students who weren’t even interested in horticulture or botanic garden management but needed to fulfill a volunteer service requirement. The only staff member Jack tolerated was Ian, who had been his right hand for the last few years and would move into Jack’s current position when he took Greta’s. Ian was rising now, making room for a late arrival. The commando librarian squeezed past, limping on the leg that was now bandaged.

Distracted, Jack mumbled, “Why do you need to know names?”

Tansy removed her hand from his arm and pressed it to her chest, affronted. “We’re sharing this space. We should know each other’s names. For instance—” She turned back to the group, placing her hands on her hips. “Like I said, I’m Tansy Perkins. I’m the person to come to with any library-related issues or questions. My pronouns are she/her. I love coffee, crosswords, and cozy myster—”

“Christ,” Jack muttered.

She turned slowly, eyes wide and her lips rolled between her teeth in a tight line.

He leaned into her space just to see if she’d give an inch. She didn’t.

“This is a ten-minute meeting. Otherwise, it’ll cut into lunch,” he said. “We don’t have time for everybody’s quirky personality traits.”

She threw a good-natured laugh over her shoulder as if to assure everyone this disturbance was being handled, even though she was the disturbance. And what kind of name was Tansy Perkins? Although it matched her cartoonish, technicolor clothes—the highlighter pink coat she’d worn at the reopening, today’s green skirt that was dangerously susceptible to a modest breeze, and the electric blue slipper things she’d gotten muddy in the back property.

She patted him firmly on the shoulder, a gesture that looked friendly but packed surprising force, and toed up to hiss into his ear, “Quirky personality traits?” Her chest nearly brushed against his, and she could smell her. Rosemary and mint. Surprising for someone who looked more inclined to douse herself in synthetic perfume that smelled like cookies or some pumpkin spice nonsense.

“Yeah. Dating profile stuff.”

“Can we talk privately for a minute?” She nodded at the storage room that helped support the second story of the admin building.

“What for?” His itinerary did not include a side meeting. He crossed his arms, accidentally brushing her breast. She hadn’t been wearing a bra at the library during the storm. She was more than covered now in a bright yellow sweater, but for self-preservation reasons, he shifted his gaze to the ceiling fan turning lazily overhead.

She crossed her own arms. “To get on the same page, before you say something offensive.”

“You realize this is my meeting, not ours,” he said, blowing right past that offensive remark because who knew what this woman was talking about?

She raised her hands as if in surrender, although nothing else about her posture and fierce glare got that memo. “It’s a simple courtesy to let people share their preferred name and pronouns. Unless, of course, you have a problem with gender inclusivity.”

“I—no.” Jack shifted from one foot to the other, scraping his ankle on the step behind him. He didn’t have an issue with gender inclusivity. His issue was with people sharing anything. But he doubted the distinction would impress her. “Fine. Names, pronouns, whatever. But none of this ‘long walks on the beach’ crap.”

“How about an icebreaker?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Fine. Mind if we go first?”

He gestured for her to go ahead, thinking she’d return to her group, but she remained planted directly in front of him, her backside mere inches from his front. For all that these time-consuming social niceties mattered to her, personal space apparently did not.

“Yo, I’m Kai,” said the commando librarian with a salute. “They/them. Teen services.” Now Jack understood Tansy’s ferocity about the pronoun thing. He wanted to say she’d misunderstood him, but as soon as he leaned in near her ear, he bumped flush against the curve of her ass. She glared over her shoulder.

The other two librarians followed suit, followed by his interns. Turned out, both the college girls were named Madison, and the boys were Caden (Mullet) and Aidan (Red Bull), so he wasn’t banking on keeping them any straighter after this refresher. Only Hugger, the empty-nester whose real name was Beverly, had a chance of sticking.

After the final maintenance staff intro, Jack cut back in, moving them along. “Grounds boundaries. All the outer and back trails are off-limits. It’s a safety issue. It’s also a liability issue because we’re not cleared to resume work on the expansion.” Plus, Jack retreated to the back property when he needed a breather from his staff and the visitors. “I’ve put up cones and tape where I can, but stick within the inner loop, and we won’t have any problems. Next—”

“Hold on. I have some questions about that,” Tansy said, pulling a folded piece of paper from the waistband of her skirt and smoothing it open. “As you know, we are situated beyond the inner loop, past cones and caution tape, so I’d love to get an idea of when exactly the path to our building will be fixed.”

He wanted to know if her list held warmth from where it had been tucked against her skin. And then he was imagining that little dip beside her hip bone, how soft that lower curve of her belly might be. Because the thing was, although she was truly obnoxious and distracting in every way, some of her distracting ways were ones that, historically, worked for him. Under the loud siren of her colorful clothes, her body looked curvy and soft in all the places he liked best. She was self-possessed and confident, unafraid to say what she wanted. She had a full, pretty mouth and long hair that would fall down around him if she were on—

“We can discuss that after the meeting,” he said tightly.

She shifted her weight to one foot and blew a puff of air at the long bangs falling into her eyes. “Why not now? Isn’t that what this meeting is for?”

“This meeting,” he snapped, hands clenching at his sides, “is to welcome you.” He took a bracing breath and said more calmly, “And to address any simple logistic questions without derailing everyone’s workday.” If he’d known she was going to come with a laundry list of complaints, he would have…hell, he didn’t know, sent an intern to write down all their problems and report back.

“You’re sure nailing the welcoming part,” she said under her breath.

Ian raised his hand, glancing timidly from Jack to Tansy to the other librarians. “I could replace those pavers this afternoon. It’s no trouble.”

Jack had already planned to have Ian help him with the path today or tomorrow, assuming they got everything else done. The irony was, the longer this meeting went on, the less likely that was to happen. But now it would look like she’d forced him into it. “I need you in the back with me today,” he said curtly.

Ian’s cheeks flared pink. He slid lower in his chair with another shy glance at the librarians.

“While we’re on the subject,” Tansy said, “we’ll need a gathering space for programs. Maybe like this, with a roof overhead for rainy weather.” She pointed above at the ceiling. “But something fenced in to help contain the children would be better.”

“Children?” he parroted. “What children?”

“The ones who attend story times. I saw a garden near the back with a wrought iron gate and a rock wall all the way around it. That would be—”

“No.”

“No?”

“That garden is in the restricted area. It’s off-limits.”

“Then,” she said with a huff, “where do you suggest we hold story times?”

All they’d been promised was a building. Now, they wanted one of his gardens? And not just any garden. The rare and native species area had been Jack’s most prized accomplishment before the hurricane. He’d cultivated a collection of species, a few of which existed in just double digits in the entire world, let alone in a public park. Rather than recovering that space, the commissioner wanted to convert it into a Japanese friendship garden. A bunch of rocks with bridges and water features, basically. An inexpensive “photo opportunity.” The guy was full of ideas like this one, which prioritized the appearance of the park over its actual health.

Tansy was waiting for an answer about where to host her story times.

“Aren’t kids in school?” he asked.

“Not babies, toddlers, and preschoolers. Not to mention the after-school programs we do for elementary-, middle-school-, and high-school-aged patrons.”

He winced at the thought of all those loud, wandering kids, ignoring signs, trampling plants, and disrupting the peace and quiet he’d cultivated here. She had just mentioned at least six different ages of children—basically all the children. Exactly how much programming was she planning to run?

“Oh,” she said with an unamused laugh. “How surprising. You don’t like kids?”

“I don’t—” His head filled with static again. All her interjections, paired with her persistent, suffocating proximity, caught him flat-footed. He looked down at his list, as if the three words scribbled there might provide an escape strategy.

Just then, the metal staircase he was still standing on shook. He turned to find Greta at the top, eyebrows raised in question and maybe a little admonishment about how he was handling this simple meeting. How much had she heard? He hadn’t planned for this whole thing to be so interactive. To Tansy, he muttered, “Kids are loud, they trample things, and they can’t read signs.”

No longer trying to keep their side conversation private, Tansy replied, “They can’t read? Wow.”

Jack shoved his list into his pocket, deciding to leave the final item, Question, off the agenda. “All right,” he said. “This is over. Everybody, get to work.”

She didn’t move out of his way. “I have more to discuss with you.”

Jack sighed. “You know, you seem like a resourceful woman. You got yourself a building here on our grounds despite having nothing to offer in return.”

“Nothing—” she cut in, offended.

But he was done letting her control his meeting, his space. “Something tells me y’all can figure out how to handle whatever your issues are. Or, hey, if the building we gave you isn’t up to your standards, feel free to try Liberty Park up the road. It’s got a partially covered pavilion I’m sure you could sweet-talk your way into.”

She put her hands on her hips, squaring for a fight, but it was empty bluster. When he stepped forward, she moved back to let him pass. In a tight voice that fought for civility, she said, “I will be holding our first story time Monday at ten. Here, I guess. Do I need to reserve the space?”

“Nah. It’s all yours.”

He stalked back to the Gator Ian had parked at the edge of the courtyard. Ian joined him in the passenger seat, and Jack floored it toward the back property. Over the wind, he snapped, “That went fucking great.”

Ian scratched his head, peering over his shoulder toward the courtyard. “Might have gone better with snacks.”

5

Tansy

“That was completely pointless,” Tansy growled, stomping toward their shed.

Kai jogged to catch up, grabbing her by the arm when she didn’t slow down. “Dude.”

“What?” she snapped.

Kai raised their hands, eyes wide. “You’re freaking out Marianne.”

Marianne, Tansy wanted to point out, was freaked out by everything, and maybe, as a fully grown twenty-eight-year-old woman, she could stand to be coddled less.

But the bitter thought immediately cut through Tansy’s anger. She was the leader here. She couldn’t give in to despair.

Maybe Jack wasn’t going to make anything easier for them. In fact, maybe he was hoping they’d fail quickly and get out of his gardens before their four months were even up. But Tansy was used to fighting from behind, and other than Briar, nothing mattered more to her right now than saving her library.

She took a cleansing breath. “Sorry. You’re right.”

The others caught up, and Tansy switched into problem-solving mode. “Forget all that. We still have a lot to do to get this place clean. Except for you, Irma. I want you on socials. Progress videos. Maybe one showing the way from the front gate, but don’t push yourself too hard.”

“On it,” Irma said.

They arrived at the shed to find the pressure washer waiting for them, and after they all took in the multiple stickers warning of severe bodily harm, Kai volunteered as tribute. They aimed the high-powered spray at the side of the building, making percussive machine-gun noises with their mouth then shouting to Irma, who was recording, “This is really satisfying!”

It was, actually. The dirt ran down the dingy green siding, revealing a pretty shade of mint underneath.

“Looks like we have ourselves a little green library,” Irma said.

“That’s what we should call it,” Marianne added.

When the whole exterior was clean, Tansy had Irma film again as she pulled open the door. “Day one, part two!” she announced brightly. “We’re hard at work in our newly washed Little Green Library.”

Then something darted out from beneath the shed and clawed up the inside of her skirt.

—

The video had gone viral by the next afternoon, when Tansy left to meet Charlie and Briar at a gas station halfway between Houston and Dallas. In the clip she was all smiles, yanking open the door, when suddenly, she jumped high enough to warrant a comment from the WNBA’s official account and screamed, “Bobcat!”

The animal that scrambled up the inside of her skirt was not, in fact, a bobcat, but a fluffy orange kitten. And it had friends—a gray tabby and a tortoiseshell—who marched out for their adorable film debut. Irma captured it all, including Marianne scooping them up and declaring them the new branch pets.

Their second day had been spent solving the puzzle of the tight layout, troubleshooting the Wi-Fi connection, quickly uploading new videos to strike while the algorithm was hot, and laughing, which was a nice change of pace, even if they’d accomplished less than Tansy had hoped by the end of the day. Plus, she didn’t see Jack at all.

On her way out of the park, she was surprised to find new pavers filling in the section of the walk that had been washed out. Tansy peered around the quiet space, half expecting to catch the younger, nicer guy, Ian, sneaking away before Jack realized he’d done something decent for them. She made a mental note to thank him later.

Now, Tansy was pulling into the gas station parking space beside Charlie’s 4Runner. He tried to open her door for her, but the power locks on the used car she’d bought after her Civic died a watery death in her driveway had a mind of their own and clicked shut twice before he succeeded. As if the sight of her bargain junker right next to his shiny, year-old model wasn’t embarrassing enough.

Charlie pulled her into a hug that she shrank out of. She tried to soften her skittishness by patting his arm and was grateful when Briar saved them from themselves, burying her face in Tansy’s solar plexus. The movement knocked the hat off her head. Charlie stooped to lift it from the pavement and cast a loaded look at Tansy before tugging it back down over Briar’s dark hair.

Tansy had texted him back late last night, hands blistered and swollen, arms too tired to hold up her phone, asking if they could talk tomorrow. Today.

“I missed you so much,” she murmured, absently straightening Briar’s sweater—new and luxuriously soft, a gift from Charlie, she assumed—and winding one of her chin-length curls around her finger. Voicing the words suddenly made her feel them, that raw thing she’d tried to ignore these last few days while throwing herself into the shed cleanup. She’d missed Briar’s smell, her lanky little body, her tangles. Tansy blinked back tears and hugged her more tightly. “Did you have fun?”

Briar shrugged, still not letting go.

“We had a great time. Didn’t we, B?” Charlie scratched the back of his head. “We did,” he said, a hint of insecurity bleeding through.

Tansy knew Briar wasn’t upset or even indifferent. Transitions just overwhelmed her, even more so since the storm. For at least the first month, when they were in temporary housing and Briar’s school had closed due to damage, she retreated into herself, preferring to grunt and gesture instead of talk. It had worried Tansy enough to find a therapist without a six-month wait list. And the therapy had helped. She would be withdrawn this evening, and Tansy would give her space, but tomorrow, she’d come out of her shell again.

She should have reassured Charlie of this. But something held her back. The part of her that had missed Briar like a phantom limb these past few days. The part that hadn’t wanted to raise their daughter alone eight years ago but hadn’t had a choice. The part that supported Briar’s relationship with him now but hated that it meant separating from her.

“We talked about video-calling sometimes,” Charlie said, affectionately palming Briar’s head, squatting down to her level. “On her new tablet.”

Tansy’s gaze cut to him sharply. “Tablet?”

“I want her to be able to call whenever she wants. Or message me, if she doesn’t feel like talking.”

“I wish you would have discussed—” Tansy stopped. She’d vowed to herself not to argue with him in front of Briar. Not that they ever did, really. Charlie deferred to her on most things or asked for her approval before making even small choices regarding Briar, desperate to make up for his past mistakes. But lately, as she’d stopped supervising their visits and given him more time on his own with their daughter, he’d developed more confidence as her parent. He’d begun to take liberties, like buying her expensive toys. It wasn’t necessarily bad. But every once in a while, his new assertiveness woke a bear in her—the part of her that was so used to being Briar’s only protector she sometimes felt any change around them as a threat.

Charlie opened his arms for a hug, which Briar accepted, and then he asked her to wait a minute in Tansy’s car. All the while, Tansy held her tongue.

“So, the hat?” he said when they were alone.

“What about it?”

“I don’t know. Can you explain why she’s so attached to it?”

“Did something happen? When you texted yesterday?”

He sighed. “We went to a park the day before, and it was wet. She got muddy. Her clothes, her hair. The hat, too.”

Tansy closed her eyes, braced for the worst. “She needed a bath?”

“Yeah, but I did what you said. I gave her options, said she could wipe down with a washcloth, wash her hair in the sink, whatever she wanted. She wasn’t thrilled, but she got in there for a few minutes.”

“In the bath? That’s great.” She drifted closer to him, surprised by this positive news and eager for more. “I mean, that’s actually kind of big.”

“Yeah, but then…” He eyed her hand hovering near his own, and she pulled it back. He turned his face up to the cloudy sky, dread crowding into his voice. “While she was getting clean, I threw all her clothes in the wash. The hat was in there. So she comes out of the bath, asks for it, and I tell her it’ll be clean in the morning, and Tansy…”

She didn’t need him to fill in what happened next. She could imagine Briar’s spike of anxiety, her voice threading shrill and high, the tears, the pacing, the bargaining, the blaming. “She flipped,” Tansy supplied.

His eyes were wide, like it was happening now. “It was unreal, Tans. Like…this doesn’t seem…”

Normal, she filled in for him. Although she’d thought it plenty of times herself, an anticipatory swell of protective anger rose against his judgment.

“It just seems extreme,” Charlie finished delicately.

Was it a relief for someone else to see it, for her not to be alone in witnessing Briar’s intensity? Yes, a little. But that relief was quickly washed away by a tidal wave of shame. Tansy worried all the time that the therapy wasn’t doing enough—that she wasn’t doing enough—but it stung to hear it from someone else.

“So what exactly is the deal with this hat?” he pressed. “It doesn’t even fit her.”

“One of the men on the boat put it on her. I didn’t remember to give it back until we were at the high school.” The shelter. Maybe if she didn’t say it, she could still believe she wasn’t some damsel in distress, could still teach Briar with a shred of integrity that, as independent women, they were capable of saving themselves.

“So it’s some random guy’s hat? Why—”

“It’s like a security blanket. It must have helped her feel safe when he put it on her that night, and now, when she doesn’t feel safe…” Tansy frowned at the baffling truth that Jack, of all people, had comforted Briar.

“Jesus,” Charlie said under his breath, glancing at Briar through Tansy’s rear window. “You’re saying she doesn’t feel safe every day?”

“No, not exactly. Her therapist thinks it’s more of a habit. She reaches for it at the first sign of discomfort. But we’re working on other coping strategies. Breathing, movement, reframing. She’s not going to need it forever.” Tansy hoped, anyway.

“And this therapist, is he good? Is she seeing him enough?”

Tansy’s chin lifted in defense. “She’s great. We’re going plenty.”

“Because if you need money for more sessions—”

“I said we’re fine.”

Charlie swallowed, nodding aimlessly. If he flaunted his money again, she might just scream. Even though she knew he wasn’t flaunting anything. He cared. She shouldn’t hold that against him.

This whole new arrangement—her letting him take Briar for the occasional long weekend, or longer over school breaks—was only on the table now because he’d proven his commitment to being back in Briar’s life. Since his return to their lives, he’d agreed to supervised visits entirely on Tansy’s terms. She didn’t want to be the reason Briar didn’t have a relationship with her father. So she was trying.

“And you?” he asked, studying his shoes now. “You’re doing okay?”

“I’m fine.”

He was still doing the nodding thing, clearly distracted by some unspoken thought.

“Anything else?” she asked, turning back to her car.

He shrugged, but his mouth pinched to one side as he drew in a deliberate breath—a familiar tell that he was annoyed. “Just, you know, maybe you could keep me updated on this stuff.”

Tansy stopped short. Like you and the tablet? She pressed her lips together tightly. But who was he to take that scolding tone? This was why she still hadn’t given him more than a few days at a time. The second he asserted himself, acted like they were on an even playing field as Briar’s parents, she wanted to throw history in his face.

He sighed and raised his palms in apology. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just…missed so much. I want to be all in. That’s all.”

This erratic flux of emotions made Tansy feel crazy. She couldn’t deny, though, that if she’d told him about the hat before, he could have handled that situation differently, which would have been better for Briar. And that was what mattered most. Briar.

He reached for another perfunctory hug, although it didn’t feel entirely perfunctory when he resisted her immediate attempt to slip back out of it. “Tansy,” he said quietly, holding her close. She still knew his smell, a primal-level comforting mix of his cologne and laundry detergent that contradicted all the times he was not a comfort to her.

Sometimes, Charlie seemed to want a do-over with more than just Briar, although he hadn’t mustered the audacity to say so. Tansy hoped he wasn’t about to find it now because, despite her vow to never go there again, in her weaker moments, she’d imagined perfect-world scenarios where everything worked this time, where he stayed by her side, where she didn’t have to do everything alone. She knew how enticing—if absolutely wrong—that proposal would be.

“We’ll talk more,” she promised, slipping free and yanking open her door.

On the drive home, Tansy fought the urge to ask Briar a million questions while she read with her book light in the back seat. The impulse came from something stickier than curiosity, something rooted in anxiety, a need for control. Like if she could know about every second of Briar’s visit, she could scoop up all the little pieces of her she’d missed while they were apart.

It was the same feeling she got when she dwelled on all the belongings they’d lost, even though she’d cursed a million times after stepping on cheap, plastic Happy Meal toys on the floor and had felt zero attachment to Briar’s outgrown clothes that she’d meant to donate before the floodwater turned them into emotion-laden artifacts.

Anyway, these interrogations she held back would uncover nothing more than a loving, doting father whose worst flaw was that he hadn’t figured out how to be that eight years ago. She had to get better at these visitation handoffs. She would get better at them. Sometimes, instead of fixating and worrying the whole time Briar was away, she imagined using their time apart to relax for a change, to not worry about anyone else for a few days. Or to catch up on house projects. Or even, someday, to date again. Maybe.

But right now, the distance to that goal felt farther than the hundred and nineteen miles back home.

—

The weight on Tansy’s shoulders gained mass as they shuffled tiredly through their empty house that night, shoes scraping along the exposed concrete slab foundation, past the living room with no furniture or light fixtures, past the kitchen that held no appliances or cabinets, past Briar’s old empty bedroom, past walls that, according to the contractor Tansy could no longer afford, still needed to be “taped and floated,” whatever that meant.

She’d thought once they moved back in that at least this one thing, their home, would return to normal. But her insurance claim had been denied because she lived in a floodplain and didn’t have the special flood coverage she hadn’t known to get, FEMA had declared the house “livable” because she’d already used her savings on decontamination and mold remediation, and the only safety net she had left was one credit card she was uncomfortably close to maxing out. She could hardly breathe when she thought about it, the fear of losing the home she’d only just last year managed to buy, the shame of failing to do her due diligence before putting every penny she’d scraped together toward the home loan, the threat of having to crawl back to her parents like last time. That wasn’t an option.

And yet, how long could she justify raising Briar in a house that lacked basic necessities? Only her bedroom and bathroom had been finished before the work stopped. In lieu of a new HVAC system, she ran a measly space heater. Instead of real kitchen appliances, she cooked on a hot plate and in a microwave balanced on top of plastic bins filled with other people’s cast-offs. She didn’t know when she’d ever get her head above water long enough to change any of it.

They brushed their teeth, pulled on thrifted pajamas, and settled onto the queen-size air mattress that would slowly deflate through the night until it was more like a hammock than a bed.

Briar nestled her cheek against Tansy’s pillow, scooting into her side. “Disaster check?” she asked on a yawn.

Tansy had hoped the visit with Charlie might disrupt this particular bedtime ritual. Ignoring the pang in her heart, she reached for her phone. “Let’s see. Clear skies, low fifties. Pretty good weather night.”

“Hurricane?”

“Out of season.”

“Tornado?” Briar murmured, nestling down.

“No watches or warnings. Light winds from the southeast.”

“Flash flood?”

“Low precipitation.”

“Blizzard?”

“Same. And too warm.”

Briar closed her eyes. “So no ice fog either.”

“Also, we don’t live in Alaska,” Tansy pointed out.

“Earthquake?”

“We don’t get earthquakes here,” Tansy said, just like she had a hundred times. None of this was news to Briar. She just wanted to hear that the answers were still the same.

“Mudslide?”

“You’re reaching,” Tansy said, smoothing back Briar’s hair and kissing her temple.

“You’ll wake me up if there’s a warning?” Briar asked sleepily.

“Of course. You don’t have to worry about it.”

Within a couple minutes, Briar was breathing heavily. Tonight more than ever, Tansy relished those little sighs against her skin. Still, she had to get Briar’s room finished so they weren’t literally sleeping on top of each other.

She used to spend these precious nighttime hours between Briar’s bedtime and her own winding down with a book, but lately, she scrolled mindlessly on her phone in the darkness until her eyes stung, feeling vaguely trapped in the bed, even though Briar slept soundly enough for her to slip away. That separation was hard to initiate most nights and impossible tonight. So she put in earbuds and watched videos about animals being rescued and book-binding tutorials and exotic travel montages filmed by twenty-somethings with disposable income.

She swiped on a video that made her bolt upright, jostling the bed like a boat on waves. It was Jack, carrying fence posts over one shoulder, hoisting a big bag of soil onto a table, and chopping a massive tree trunk into smaller pieces with an axe. There were close-ups, too, the camera zooming in on his Adam’s apple as he guzzled water, sweat glistening on his forearms while he turned a screwdriver, gloves shoved into his back pocket that flapped as he walked across the main lawn at the gardens. Now he was talking to Ian, both of them crouched, digging into an empty bed of dirt, and suddenly, Jack scowled back at the camera, which panned abruptly to the ground. The caption said simply Plant Daddy, part 8 with a drooly face emoji.

The comments were similar.

I need this man to handle me like that bag of soil.

Never been so interested in gardening in my life.

I just want to be a glove in Plant Daddy’s back pocket. Is that too much to ask???

Tansy shook her head in the darkness. Something was wrong with her algorithm if this was the content it was funneling to her.

When it looped back to the beginning, though, she didn’t click away.

6

Jack

“Finally!” came Amy’s loud call as soon as Jack let himself into his sister’s house.

He followed her voice and the sounds of pop music and clattering pans toward her kitchen. Amy was wearing plaid pajama bottoms and one of Omar’s fire department sweatshirts, its sleeves shoved up around her elbows. “You’re late,” she accused, jabbing a spatula at him.

“You’re still cooking,” he pointed out. “Actually, why are you cooking? And what are you cooking?”

“Excuse me. I’m an adult.”

“I’m gonna get food poisoning, aren’t I?”

“Relax. It’s pancakes.”

“This is your adult meal? Pancakes? How have you survived this long?”

“Hey, how about don’t criticize the person feeding you?”

Jack shrugged out of his coat. He’d left his muddy boots by the door and now was hyperaware of the hole in the big toe of one sock. “Is Omar on shift?”

“Yep,” she said, turning off a burner and adding charred pancakes to a heap already on a plate. “Sorry, you’re stuck with just me.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “I’m fine with just you.”

“You sure? Because I binged this new reality dating show, and I have theories I’m dying to tell someone.” She switched off her music and handed him the plate with a dozen too many pancakes on it. Before herself, she placed a bowl of chicken broth and a sleeve of saltines.

“What’s with the soup? You sick or something?”

She faked a cough into her hand and wiped it on his shoulder, saying, “So sick and contagious.”

“Who raised you?”

She beamed at him. She loved this joke. He’d grown up without a mother, her without a father. For three years in their childhood, his dad and her mom had dated, and they’d all lived together. Even though their parents split up and eventually married other people, Jack and Amy had already bonded as siblings. When her mom passed from a genetic heart defect shortly after Amy’s nineteenth birthday, Jack became her only remaining relative, even if it wasn’t a legal bond.

He put away six of the pancakes while Amy filled him in on her new show. Then she said, “Okay, now tell me all your work drama. Who’s hooking up? Who’s in a love triangle?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Do y’all ever go out together?”

Ian and Jorge had invited him out for drinks before, and a few weeks ago, the interns had tried to get him to join some trivia night thing, which he’d declined on account of it sounding like a nightmare. Too much noise. Too many people.

At his expression, Amy amended, “Okay, maybe not with your coworkers. But if you’re as busy with work as you seem, I worry about you going full hermit in the woods and forgetting how to function in society. What ever happened to that Parks and Wildlife lady you were seeing?”

“I wasn’t seeing her. We went out twice.”

“Why’d you stop?”

“Because she wanted me to meet her sisters. Right before Thanksgiving.”

Amy exaggerated a gasp. “Heaven forbid.”

“It was gonna be a fast track to matching sweaters at holiday parties and being her plus-one at weddings.”

Now Amy rolled her eyes. She had opinions about his lack of a love life. He wasn’t in the mood to hear them.

“Anyway, if you want to know what’s actually going on at work, it’s the same as it’s been since the storm. Greta’s holding out hope the commissioner will finally approve the flood-mitigation projects before she retires, but I don’t trust that guy. He rejects every request we put in but then he turns around and expects us to pull a fucking Japanese friendship garden out of our asses.”

He pushed his plate away, working himself up about this all over again, even though he hated to bitch and moan about problems instead of just fixing them. “Also, the library folks moved in a couple days ago,” he said. “Their leader’s a real piece of work.”

Amy’s eyes lit up. “A piece of work how?”

“Just—she’s unbelievably pushy. Has it in her head that I’ve got it in for her.”

“Do you?”

“I’m too busy with my own problems to create problems for her.”

Amy squinted, skeptical.

“Just because I don’t think we should give up more resources when we’re already under strain doesn’t mean—”

Amy slurped her soup noisily, eyebrows arched.

“Okay. You aren’t there, so you don’t know.”

“Is this the one who interrupted the reopening?”

Jack grunted in confirmation. And to think, when Tansy had burst in that day, he’d felt oddly relieved to see her after four months of wondering how she and her kid had fared. He’d realized he probably owed her an apology for being short with her in the heat of the moment. But after her dismissive remarks at the reopening about the county caring more about a bunch of trees and flowers than books and her entitled demands the last few days, he’d since reneged on any wish to make amends. “Now she wants to do story times every damn day of the week. She asked for the gated garden, like she’d just take her pick and I’d hand it over.”

Amy offered a sound of sympathy but said, “I wouldn’t cross her. The way she put that politician on the spot, she’s like a folk hero. To be honest, I kind of admire her.”

“No. You’re on my side here. No one else is, so I’m playing the family card. You know, it’s like she forgot Omar and I rescued her. I swear she’s actually holding it against me for some reason.”

“Why would she—Oh.”

“What?”

“Well…” Amy tilted her head. “You can be a little…”

Jack crossed his arms. “A little what?”

She laughed, pointing at his exact current posture. “Impatient. And snippy when you’re stressed.”

“If I was snippy, it was because she was knee-deep in rapidly rising water but wanted to wait for the next boat.”

Amy threw her head back on a laugh. “Oh my God, I love her. Is she pretty?”

A memory of Tansy’s exposed thigh assaulted him. “She wears impractical shoes and these skirts that make no sense.”

Amy’s smile stretched even wider. “So she’s pretty.”

“She’s a pain in the ass.”

“Well, so am I, and I dare say, it’s why you love me so much.”

Jack huffed and leaned back in his chair, uncomfortably full of burnt pancakes. “You know, I came tonight because Omar guilt-tripped me for being too busy since the storm to come see y’all, but he’s not even here, and you barely managed to mix Bisquick and water, so—”

The humor drained from Amy’s face, and for a second, Jack worried he’d gone too far. Amy had always been able to take as good as she gave, but he was under so much pressure lately that maybe his prickliness, which she usually found amusing, was sharper than he realized. She took his plate and her bowl to the sink, and he muttered, “Sorry.”

“No, it’s not that.” She braced her hands on the sink and looked sidelong at him, drumming her fingers. “Omar and I…”

“You two aren’t having problems.” It was a statement. He refused to rework his life around the two most important people in it splitting up.

“No, it’s not that either. It’s actually the opposite of that.”

“What’s the opposite of having problems?”

She breathed in deeply, turned to face him, and said in a small, careful voice, “Having a baby.”

She visibly winced, and more than the news, which caught him off guard, that flinch was a sucker punch. Because she knew exactly how he’d react, and he hated that he couldn’t prove her wrong, couldn’t conjure a shred of convincing joy. With everything in him, he wished to course-correct the direction his body had veered—tense muscles, buzzing brain, a flood of adrenaline prickling through his veins. He forgot how to swallow. “That’s…”

“I wanted you to know before I couldn’t keep it a secret anymore.” She turned sideways and smoothed Omar’s sweatshirt over the smallest bump. Fuck, if she was already showing, she was…

“I’m eighteen weeks,” Amy said to her stomach rather than to him, smiling softly. “Turns out, we were super cliché and conceived a hurricane baby. A girl.”

Had it really been that long since he’d managed to visit? He’d talked to her plenty, though. Texts and calls. She never let him go more than a few days without checking in.

Reading his confusion, she said, “I didn’t want to say it over the phone and then you kept canceling our dinners. Also, I chalked up missing my period to stress at first, so I didn’t even know until, like, nine weeks.”

Six years and a lifetime ago, he’d been obsessed with the slightest promise of a baby bump—the one that never formed, despite two years of trying with Sophie. Or at least, not when she was with him.

Amy’s eyes were so full of pity and understanding and something like guilt. He started to assure her that she didn’t have to hide her good news from him. But then he remembered her heart.

“Wait. Is that safe so soon after…”

Amy’s hand drifted up to her sternum. The surgery scar was still raised and pink, poking out from her collar. “I’ll have extra monitoring.”

“What does your cardiologist think?”

Amy rolled her eyes, and at that dismissive gesture, the pain and fear burning in his veins seared hotter. “This is the reason I had the operation, Jack,” she said. “So if I had a kid, I wouldn’t leave them too soon.”

“I know, but it was open-heart surgery. And it’s only been—”

“Seven months.”

He shook his head. “Feels too soon.”

“Well, it’s happening.”

Jack swallowed. He didn’t know why he was arguing with her. His resistance would only drive a wedge between them. He knew this, and yet pressure built in his chest and throat, remarks straining for release. Had she and Omar tried to get pregnant this early into her recovery? Or had it been an accident, the kind of casual miracle that happened to other people but not to him? His bitterness was like acid on his tongue. He pushed up from the table and grabbed his coat.

“Just to be clear, are you sad,” Amy asked, her voice even, “or mad because you think it’s some huge risk I shouldn’t be taking right now?”

“Neither.”

She followed him to the front door and watched him shove his boots back on. He didn’t bother to tie them.

“Because I understand if it’s hard for you after—”

“It’s not hard for me,” he said, his voice harsh and cold.

“Maybe it’s easier to make it about my heart,” she went on, raising a pointed eyebrow. “I swear to God, if you regress to mother-henning me again, I will murder you. But if you want to talk about the rest of it, we can, you know.”

The rest of it. He preferred never to talk about the rest of it.

“I don’t need to talk,” Jack said, shrugging in a way that could only be described as the opposite of nonchalant. One hundred percent chalant.

“Fine. Hug me at least.”

He did and then he bolted from her house before anxiety could knock him on his ass.

7

Tansy

The day’s bad vibes had set in early, beginning when Briar pulled a flyer off the car’s windshield before they’d even left home. The bright pink half sheet announced a gathering for neighborhood residents to recognize the rescuers who pulled so many of them from their homes during the storm. Briar begged to attend, and Tansy grudgingly promised to discuss it later, hoping she’d forget.

Then, school drop-off had nearly turned disastrous. While they waited in the congested line, Briar checked the weather app on Tansy’s phone, nervously eyeing the thick mass of clouds through the windshield. When they reached the curb, she hopped down wearing Jack’s hat, which she’d retrieved from her backpack.

The drop-off attendant carelessly yanked the hat off Briar’s head and chucked it back into the car, admonishing, “The rules haven’t changed. No hats.”

Which led to Tansy bolting from her car, blocking the drop-off line to a cacophony of horns, to explain that Briar had an accommodation in place—she was allowed to keep the hat in her backpack and wear it at recess. The school counselor got involved, relenting for today, only to gently but firmly suggest Briar work toward leaving the hat at home, and soon.

All the while, Briar tucked into herself, holding the hat firmly on her head, hiding under it. Tansy itched to tell her to use her voice, to tell them if she couldn’t do that yet. But then this whole thing—needing special permission to wear a hat because it was the only utterly baffling object that helped Briar cope—felt like it undercut the message. Stand up for yourself…in order to cling to your security blanket. Tansy had made a hundred decisions in her eight years of motherhood that she feared would do lasting harm, but this choice, to either indulge Briar with the hat or nudge her to let it go, the same way they’d belatedly said goodbye to pacifiers, felt like the one that might really do irrevocable damage if she got it wrong.

Briar would be going to recess in a few minutes, Tansy knew. Although it wasn’t fully raining, a fine mist spit on Tansy during her walk toward the covered courtyard for her first story time. She felt jittery and couldn’t distinguish whether it was her own anxiety or Briar’s via some parasympathetic mother-daughter bond.

She had to fake her enthusiasm as she welcomed the first few moms with their toddlers and a grandmother with two kids. Gradually, though, the comfort of her familiar routine lifted her spirits. Only five families showed, less than a third of her old crowd. But it was okay. This was the first story time. She couldn’t expect everyone to know about their new location yet.

Tansy recognized one of the mom-and-kid pairs—Lena and her daughter, Stella. Since the last time she’d seen them, the little girl was toddling about, grabbing fistfuls of the ferns at the edge of the courtyard while Lena redirected her to the circle mats Tansy had laid out.

Usually, she got to witness the kids’ transitions from one age group to the next and gush with their guardians about how quickly time passed. She’d missed that milestone with this pair. She imagined them in the storm, as she so often did any time she reunited with people now. Did Lena also lift her child onto the kitchen counter to keep her feet dry as the water poured in? Or had she driven her to safety three days before the storm made landfall?

“Who knows our song about the weather?” Tansy asked, directing a big smile at the children in her circle. A breeze cut through the open courtyard, blowing her hair across her face, and she exaggerated her shiver. “Brr, it’s cold today, isn’t it?”

One of the moms tugged a coat onto her child, a little redheaded boy, who shrieked and bolted from her lap, only to fall face-first on the pavers. He sent up an ear-splitting wail, and the mom scooped him into her arms. Offering a quiet apology, Tansy fished a tissue out of her bag to press to the child’s bloody chin. Not a great start.

They sang the weather song and were just starting to read their first storybook when loud motors revved up and two maintenance workers began edging the lawn a few yards away. Tansy raised her voice to read over the noise, but the kids squirmed and whined, agitated by the racket, and the parents glared at the men over their shoulders. Then a riding lawnmower joined the edgers, and the noise level rose exponentially.

“I’m so sorry,” Tansy called out, closing the book. “You know what? Let’s just get out the toys and let them play.”

She overturned the crate of stuffed animals, blocks, music toys, and cars in the middle of the circle. The kids lost interest quickly, though, wandering to explore the plants, dirt, and rocks at the edges of the courtyard. One little girl was determined to climb the stairs up to the admin offices. Tansy helped redirect the children, but the parents were clearly getting frazzled. Nothing here was babyproofed.

Tansy caught sight of Jack exiting the greenhouse and ran to intercept him. “Hey!”

He kept walking, and she had to snatch the back of his shirt. “What is this?” she demanded, cutting off his outrage at the interruption. She jabbed a hand at the fleet of maintenance workers ruining her program. “I told you I was having story time this morning.”

He peered over her shoulder at the parents hastily packing up their diaper bags. “And?”

“And you had your guys do work right here, right now, to ruin it?” Her inflection made it a question, but Tansy had no doubt he’d orchestrated this to wreck her program.

“On Monday mornings, they mow the main lawn and blow off the paths. That’s been the schedule as long as I’ve been here. If you have a problem with it, though, you’ll have to take it up with Jorge. I don’t micromanage the groundskeepers, just like I haven’t masterminded the schedule in some nefarious plot against you.” He turned to leave.

“Do you always just walk away from conversations you don’t want to have?” She headed him off then countered his attempt to sidestep her. “You’re so busy,” she mocked. “I get it. You’re the busiest guy in the world. But you brought this conversation on yourself because I told you I would have story time this morning, and you apparently knew they’d be doing noisy lawn work, but you didn’t say a word about it.”

He shrugged. “Didn’t think about the noise.”

Tansy threw up her hands in frustration. “If we’d had a real meeting, we could have compared schedules and worked this out. Instead, I now have stressed-out parents and two-year-olds eating dirt.”

“This,” he said emphatically, “is a botanic garden. Maybe the things you did in the library aren’t gonna work here.”

“They have to!” she snapped with an angry, helpless stamp of her foot.

He studied her, stony and silent, heightening her awareness of the ridiculous tantrum she was throwing. Finally, he nodded, his eyes trained behind her.

“What?” she bit out.

“Kid’s in the koi pond.”

Tansy whirled around to see the grandmother fishing out a little boy, drenched and crying, from the shallow pond.

“This is why I don’t want kids here,” Jack pointed out.

“This,” she cut back, “is why I asked for the gated garden.”

“If the fish are harmed—”

“Oh my God,” Tansy muttered and stomped away.

8

Jack

“We have to get moving on the new greenhouse,” Jack said when he barged into Greta’s office, fresh off another run-in with Tansy.

He was rougher around his edges since Amy’s bombshell three nights ago. A baby. A baby, when he’d only just stopped having nightmares about her surgery. He hadn’t thought of Sophie in a while, but all weekend, his body had transported back to the hyperalert cage he’d lived in at the end of his marriage, when every sigh and extended beat of silence were pieces of a puzzle he couldn’t figure out how to put together, only to discover, finally, that he was the piece that didn’t fit.

Jack grudgingly did the coping techniques that had once been necessary just to function—breathing patterns, exercising to exhaustion, visualizing calm—but the more effort he had to throw at it, the more he resented this part of himself that was as prone to catastrophic malfunction as the damn greenhouse circulation system. The techniques helped in pockets, but all weekend he had battled adrenaline that couldn’t be mentally sandbagged, only sweated out, physically exhausted, and worn down.

It was a relief to come to work today, to direct all that energy into something useful, but it had been one problem after another since he’d arrived, and Tansy’s latest outburst while her patrons wrecked the courtyard ferns had nearly pushed him over the edge.

Greta gave him an assessing up-and-down, her eyebrows pinching together in concern, before pulling off her glasses. “The greenhouse?”

“Found a whole damn rabbit family in there feasting on our sale stock. Know how they got in? I’d give you three guesses, but that’s not even half as many entry points as I just found. Plus, the exhaust fans aren’t working again.”

Greta clasped her hands on her desk. “You should sit.”

“Why?” he asked, wary.

“Because you look exhausted. And because I have news.”

Jack reluctantly slouched into the chair facing her across the desk. People didn’t usually need to sit for good news.

“I’ve finally reached an agreement with Commissioner Burke. He will commit to funding the flood-mitigation projects in full, with some conditions.”

“You mean he’ll deign to fund essential work?” Jack muttered sarcastically. Shit, he really was a grumpy asshole lately.

Greta ignored his interjection. “He wants the plant sale back on in April.”

Jack scoffed. “The plants currently being devoured by rabbits?”

“Also, he wants it to be a big event. A family festival. And he’d like to revisit the Japanese friendship garden idea, preferably have it open by then.”

“No.”

“Jack.”

“No, Greta. That’s not possible.”

She opened her hands helplessly on the desk, then re-clasped them. “You and I both agree that the flood-mitigation work is nonnegotiable. That was my last card to play before I leave.”

“Yeah, nonnegotiable. But you’re giving in on everything he wants.”

She raised a stern eyebrow. She’d pushed back on proposed staff cuts and on the soil-rebalancing efforts that the commissioner had initially refused to sign off on. Jack scratched his beard, chastened.

“He wants good press,” she continued evenly. “It’s an election year for him. A festival celebrating the recovery of the park would—”

“Would be a damn lie, is what. Come on, Greta. We’re slapping cosmetic improvements wherever he wants while the real work doesn’t get done because it’s not flashy enough for him.”

She sighed. “I’ve called in every favor I’ve banked. Sometimes you have to compromise in the end, give more than what feels fair, to get the most important things.”

“Great system.”

She lifted one shoulder, which was as effusive of an agreement as he would get from her. “You know I hoped to retire with the expansion and the new greenhouse well underway, not like this.”

Jack swallowed his anger, aware that he was preaching to the choir, that she’d lobbied hard for this tiny victory.

“And on that note,” she sighed, “I’m afraid there’s one more thing. The money for the flood mitigation will come from the expansion fund, and the work won’t start for a few months. He intends for the festival to raise some money to offset that cost, but of course a plant sale won’t bring in the kind of numbers we’re talking about, especially with our compromised inventory.”

The minimal budget for the flood-resistant upgrades, last Jack had calculated it, would eat up nearly all the budget for phase one of the expansion, which included the new greenhouse, hiking paths, and the conversion of a barn into new administration offices.

“Robbing Peter to pay Paul?” Jack asked grimly.

“I’m afraid so.”

Well, fuck. He should have been relieved to finally get the flood projects covered. The park’s long-term stability depended on them. But every step forward they made with this guy, he knocked them back another one.

“Any other delightful news for me this morning, Greta?”

“Only a suggestion that I urge you to take.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Invite the library to partner on the festival.”

“Ah, hell.”

“The library has deep roots in this community, with lots of organizational experience. And I’ve asked around about Tansy. By all accounts, she has good ideas and strong leadership skills. She seems to manage her people very well.”

“And I don’t,” he concluded with a scowl.

“You don’t like working with people. Think of it as delegating.” Her gaze returned to her computer screen, and she slid her glasses back on.

“I’ll do it,” he said, pushing up from the chair. “But for the record, having some caution with outsiders isn’t crazy.” He rapped his knuckles on the doorframe on his way out. “Tansies, for example, are an invasive species.”

—

He waited until late afternoon to swing by the shed, and when he got there, Tansy was helping an elderly gentleman down the single step.

“Used to just browse the shelves and see what caught my eye,” the man was saying.

“I know. I’m sorry. But you can browse on our website at home, reserve whatever looks good, and we’ll email you when it’s time to pick it up.”

“It’s not the same,” he grunted.

“It’s not,” she agreed, her cheery smile faltering. “I understand.”

“When will you be back in the real library?”

Tansy’s gaze cut to Jack and held for a long moment. There was something familiar in her expression, something he’d seen during the storm. A naked plea. It was so openly vulnerable, he had to look away.

He feigned great interest in the shed’s exterior as she told the man, “We’re doing everything we can to get back into our building.” Not technically a lie, Jack supposed. She probably was doing everything in her power to make that happen, unlikely as it was.

The librarians had gotten the green shed’s siding cleaner than he expected. A neat, hand-painted sign that said The Little Green Library hung on a post. He couldn’t ignore the height of the grass encroaching on the path to the door and itched to kneel down and start pulling weeds.

Just as Tansy’s patron ambled away, Jack spotted two small metal bowls with paw prints around the rims, one filled with water and the other with dry kibble. “What are you feeding out here?”

Tansy tugged her sleeve back up where it had slid down her pale shoulder and retied a little ribbon just under the hollow where her collarbones met, closing a three-inch V in the neckline. Her adjustments only drew his attention to the shadow of cleavage she was covering up. He was so occupied that when she answered, “Kittens,” he’d nearly forgotten what he’d asked her.

“What kittens?”

“The three kittens that live under the shed.”

Jack marched around the way she gestured. “Where?”

She followed. “They wander around during the day.”

“Cats don’t belong in the park.”

She shrugged and let her hands fall with a slap to her thighs. “Well, they’re here.”

“This is a delicate ecosystem. It’s a refuge for birds. You know what happens to birds when cats are introduced to an environment?”

“We didn’t introduce them. They were already here.” Tansy turned on her heel and walked back around to the door, and now he followed her.

“Never mind that you won’t be feeding only the cats,” he said, ignoring her clarification. “Good luck dealing with the raccoons, opossums, rats, ants—”

“Was there a reason for this visit, or did you just need to get in another lecture for the day?”

Jack adjusted his hat. He was stuck on the cat food now and needed to impress upon her the imperative of not feeding animals here. He wasn’t ready to switch gears to his actual reason for seeking her out. But the sooner he spit it out, the sooner he could get on with his day. “We’re throwing a festival in a month, and Greta thought—”

“A festival? Like, with games and activities?”

“Yeah, I don’t really know yet. Still working out the details.”

“We want to be included.”

Jack laughed. Of course she hadn’t given him an opening to extend the invitation himself.

“What?” she said, defensive. “We may be here only temporarily, but if there’s going to be a festival, we should have a place in it.”

“Do you ever ask for anything or just make demands?”

Tansy’s cheeks burned pink. She fiddled with another tie, this one on today’s precariously wrapped skirt. A beaded, tassle-y thing dangled from it, down the front of her left hip, snagging his attention like a shiny fishing lure, which annoyed him for its simple effectiveness and for how it undermined his objective. He wasn’t supposed to be looking at her hips in this stretchy purple skirt, nor wondering just how little he’d have to tug to send it fluttering to the ground. He didn’t even like this woman or her obnoxiously colorful clothes, but hell if he was no better than some dumb trout chasing a flash in the water anytime she was around.

“Sorry,” she said. “Sometimes I get a little…”

“Aggressive?” he supplied, sounding even grouchier than he meant to.

She crossed her arms. “Passionate. The truth is, we need the boost a festival could give us. So…” She cleared her throat and schooled her face into a softer expression. When she wasn’t slanting her eyes angrily at him, they were big and golden brown and caught the afternoon light with a richness that reminded him of sun tea. “I’m asking if we can please participate.”

“Fine.”

“Yes?” Her face lighting up in sheer relief stunned him stupid for a few seconds.

As much as her default opposition got under his skin, this—pleasing her—sent a sensation like warm honey dripping all down his insides, soothing some of the adrenaline he hadn’t been able to shake since Amy’s news.

Which meant he had to leave immediately. “Fine,” he said again, turning to go.

“Wait. What’s the festival going to be called?”

He waved over his shoulder and strode briskly down the path. “Untitled as of yet.”

“There has to be a name,” she said. “And a theme.”

“We’ll work out the details later.”

“A real meeting!” she called after him. “I have lots of ideas!”

He was sure she did. And he was going to have to listen to every single one of them.

9

Tansy

In their third week in the Little Green Library, Pagan Pete found them. He showed up in his black trench coat, horns, and red face paint, and planted himself outside the library.

“Hey! Pete!” Tansy said when she arrived to unlock the building. “How’ve you been?”

He mimed doffing a hat. “Can’t complain.” Then he cleared his throat and began chanting.

When Tansy left for story time, Jack intercepted her on the sidewalk. “Who the hell is that, and why is he chanting?”

“That’s Pagan Pete. Last I checked, he’s attempting to conjure Satan.”

“You’re not going to stop him?”

She laughed. “From conjuring Satan? I’m pretty sure it’s not even real Latin, so I’m not that worried. Plus, Irma’s horoscope today said a good surprise might come from an unsettling source. She’s got her fingers crossed that he’ll end up chanting winning lottery numbers.”

Jack pulled her to a stop by the elbow. “He’s disturbing the peace.”

She eyed his hand on her arm until he let go. “He’s harmless, Jack.”

“When y’all moved in here, I didn’t realize we were opening the gates to all the freaks and—”

“Hey,” she snapped. “You don’t know what other people are going through. He’s not bothering anybody.”

“He’s bothering me,” Jack said. “You can’t tell me you’re working in there with that noise. When the kids come back to check out books after your story time, they’re not gonna be traumatized by the devil horns?”

Sure, she’d had to ask patrons to repeat themselves over the phone a few times this morning. And he had a point about the kids.

But it was the principle. A library was one of the few public spaces where people could simply exist, where loitering wasn’t criminalized. People from all walks of life and in all states of wellness turned up. As far as disturbances went, Tansy would take Pagan Pete or the lady who wore a tattered evening gown and conversed with a taxidermy opossum on her shoulder over the brigades of righteous white moms who used to come in, figurative guns blazing, to demand the removal of award-winning LGBTQIA+ novels from the YA shelves.

“I’ll ask him to chant more quietly.”

Jack shook his head in exasperation and walked away, muttering something that sounded like Unbelievable.

On Wednesday, Tansy and Marianne arrived first thing in the morning to find their three new branch kittens trapped in metal cages, which Jack promptly turned up to collect.

“Where are you taking them?” Tansy demanded.

“Out of the park, where they belong.”

“To a shelter?”

“I’ll take them,” Marianne blurted. But Tansy knew she couldn’t have another pet at her apartment, and when Jack hesitated, considering, Marianne added meekly, “I just need a few days to figure it out.”

He grunted and carried them off.

Story times were still a moderate disaster. Only three families from the first toddler session returned for the second, and the infant and preschool programs were just as chaotic, although at least no one fell into the koi pond. Tansy had to pull Kai and Marianne in to help corral the kids, and a few sneaky runners still made it past them. On Thursday, strong winds nearly ripped the pages of Tansy’s picture book, and she’d had to cut story time short, all the kids’ cheeks and noses chapped and pink and jackets billowing like sails set to lift them away.

On their social media accounts, Irma fielded complaints about all the services they couldn’t offer, including copy and print services, computer access, and assistance with government benefit websites.

Why bother reopening at all if there are hardly any books and no computers? someone had commented under their video showing the path from the front gate all the way to their shed.

There’s literally no place to even sit and read. At a LIBRARY.

I don’t have a car and can’t get to another branch, so I was happy to hear our library was reopening, but…this is such a disappointment.

The wave of negative feedback reminded Tansy of what Jack had said the previous week. Maybe the things you did in the library aren’t gonna work here. She refused to let him be right.

Last night, between disaster check with Briar and watching YouTube tutorials about floating and taping drywall from a retired carpenter’s channel called ImYourDadNow, Tansy had realized that, rather than entirely count on proving the branch’s worth, she needed a backup plan. She began investigating the real deep pockets of Houston—private donors.

Their abandoned library building needed new walls, flooring, electrical, plumbing, HVAC…all the things she needed in her home, but on a larger scale. And she couldn’t argue with the board’s assessment that, given its proximity to the creek and its history of flooding, any renovation would require more extensive—more costly—flood-resistant upgrades. The most expensive reno at another damaged branch had surpassed a million dollars, mostly funded by FEMA with ten percent falling to the county. If Tansy could secure the county’s portion of a similar budget, how could they not reconsider restoring her branch?

Her search for donors turned up one grant for which her library fit the eligibility requirements and which promised a large-enough payout, awarded by local Houston barbecue-mogul-turned-philanthropist Chet Fullton. The Fullton grant would cover one project, and the application process involved submitting a brief proposal that she immediately began to write on her phone in the dark while Briar slept on her shoulder. In three months, finalists would give a live presentation before the grant was awarded. The timing of it, coinciding with the library board’s decision, felt fortuitous, and the more she thought about her team’s tenacity and heart, the more certain she felt about their chances.

So Tansy was hopeful on Friday afternoon when she went to meet Jack in the covered courtyard for the festival meeting he simply couldn’t make time for before today. He was on his cell phone and coming down the stairs from the upper offices when she arrived, and he held up a finger to stop her from interrupting his call before she’d uttered a word. She magnanimously let that annoying little gesture roll off her back.

“I gotta go,” Jack muttered into the phone. Then, “I’m not. I’m just busy.”

Tansy scoffed. At least she wasn’t the only one at whom he threw that irritating line.

Jack sighed and dragged a hand down his face. “Ah, come on. I’m not going to that.” A pause. “What do I need to be thanked for? Look, I’m late for a meeting.” Another pause. “Tell her I will come over as soon as things ease up around here. Now we’ve got this festival, and—it’s not an excuse.”

He gave Tansy a slow up-and-down glance, lingering somewhere near the crystal-studded letter B on her necklace, and adjusted the side of his waistband. She self-consciously pinched the charm and zipped it along the chain. His eyes followed the motion until they didn’t, cutting abruptly to hers, reading perhaps whether she’d caught his open staring. Feeling suddenly warm, Tansy twisted her hair up off her neck. Jack took a slow, deliberate breath. Then, he half turned, lowering his voice. “I know what Amy thinks. I’m not dodging anything.”

A few muffled exchanges later, he shoved his phone into his pocket, cleared his throat, and turned back around. Something stormy churned in his eyes. They were hazel, Tansy realized. Mostly green, ringed with brown and flecked with gold, and disconcertingly pretty on such a rugged, thickly bearded face.

“Everything okay?” Tansy asked.

He frowned. “That was personal.”

“Oh-kay.”

He adjusted his hat, lifting and tugging it back down, and something in the tilt of his head and the press of his lips made her think he might apologize, but he simply gestured to the path and said, “Can we walk? I’ve been stuck in the office all afternoon.”

“A classic Aaron Sorkin walk-and-talk? Of course.”

His quizzical look said he had no idea what she was talking about. He rolled his neck and released a sigh, falling into step with her toward the park entrance.

“So,” she began, “do we have a theme for this festival?”

“Yeah. Spring.”

“Very imaginative.”

“People get what it is.”

“Maybe so. But what about pollinators? I’ve found all these books that could tie in, and we can have a craft table to make antennae, a face-painting station…” She trailed off as they approached the fountain, distracted by a flash of red at the entrance gate. Coming in from the parking lot was a group of teen girls in full, sparkly ball gowns—red, aqua, gold, hot pink, royal blue—trailed by photographers and assistants carrying lighting equipment.

“What is this?” she asked.

Jack sucked his teeth, impatient. “Quinceañera photos. It’s almost golden hour.”

“A procession of princesses!” It was so whimsical, like a fairy tale right there in the gardens. Behind the princesses, a family trailed with another photographer. They were dressed in matching jeans and white button-downs, the mom visibly pregnant and the dad toting a toddler on his shoulders.

Jack pulled her away by the arm. Along with his usual scowl, the lines between his eyebrows were deeper than ever.

“What’s wrong with the princesses?” she asked, amused. “Wait, let me guess. Too colorful? You hate sparkles?”

He grunted, and she assumed that would be the extent of his response, but then he said, “It’s not just the princesses. It’s the whole photography thing. No one watches where they step. They climb on things. Anything to get their shot. Although, yeah, the plastic sequins also end up all over the place.”

Right on cue, a photographer climbed onto a large rock and tugged a skinny tree branch down over the hot-pink princess to create a frame for the shot. Tansy winced at the strain he put on the small tree.

“They all cram into the formal garden because it’s got arches and pillars. Complain when things aren’t in bloom because it’s still winter and there’s been a damn hurricane.”

Tansy hummed. “You don’t like arches and pillars?”

“There’s a lot more to see here is all I’m saying. Even without everything in bloom.”

“Okay,” she said, stopping before a newly cleared area. “What should I see here?”

Jack clutched his hips. “You won’t see what should be here.”

“What does that mean?”

“We’re putting in a friendship garden.” He said it like a different f-word.

“Ah, right,” she concluded with a laugh. “You are opposed to friendship.”

“I’m opposed to developing a whole new garden for pretty pictures when there’s other real work to do.”

“Aren’t you in charge? Why do you have to put in a friendship garden?”

“Like you said, the commissioner’s my boss. He’s got all kinds of ideas I don’t agree with.”

Like moving her library into his gardens.

Jack directed her to a bench facing a small circular garden with a bird bath in its center and some kind of clover surrounding it. When they sat, his hulking shoulders occupied a surprising amount of space. Tansy angled her body so their arms didn’t brush, freshly reminded that she was on his long list of complaints.

Another awkward silence descended. Or a kind of silence that was actually full of rustling leaves and a distant wind chime and the scratchy scramble of a squirrel up a nearby pine. It was chilly, too, and she tugged her sweater sleeves down over her hands, uncertain how to redirect their conversation back to the festival.

He crossed his arms over his chest. She’d come to realize there were two shirt options for gardens staff—the sage-green polo and a hunter-green button-down. Jack was wearing the latter today with the sleeves half rolled, half shoved up his thick forearms.

She could smell pine and grass, the slightly sweet scent of decomposed soil, sunscreen, and a hint of sweat. It wasn’t the designer scent of cologne, but one you’d find in a well-loved sweatshirt, something threadbare and broken in, warm and unfairly soft. Like he sweats a lot, but somehow it smells good. Tansy couldn’t explain it, but she understood this now. He smelled unquestioningly, oddly, irritatingly good. And because it was so unmanufactured, she had to wonder if there were pheromones involved here. Body chemistry.

Which would be entirely unfair, given that she despised this man.

“Anyway, thanks for fitting me into your busy schedule,” she said, digging into her tote bag.

He raised an eyebrow at her tone, which sure, wasn’t exactly as gracious as the words themselves.

She removed the clipboard with her festival ideas, and with it came loose papers, which immediately caught in the breeze and cartwheeled down the paved path. Tansy was on her knees, gathering them all back up, when she spotted her Fullton grant proposal under Jack’s boot. She tried to yank it out, but he slid it back from her reach then crouched to peel it off the ground.

“Chet Fullton,” he murmured, eyes glued to the page. “The Brisket King?”

She rose, clutching her haphazard stack of papers, and smoothed her skirt, accidentally catching one of the front buttons and popping it through its buttonhole. God. When she’d bought it for five bucks at Goodwill, she’d convinced herself this midi linen skirt was cute in, like, a modern homesteader way, an independent Little House on the Prairie-minus-the-racism way. But now, she felt like a frumpy one-room-schoolhouse teacher. She spun around, shoved her papers into her tote bag, and refastened the button.

When she turned back, he was angled away from her, still half crouched, eyes glued to her proposal.

Tansy reached over his shoulder to take it back, annoyed that this was the rogue paper he’d caught. She hadn’t even told the others about the grant yet to avoid getting their hopes up prematurely. Just as she moved in for the paper, he jolted fully upright, extending it out of her reach, as if it was his instinct to thwart her.

Her own instincts weren’t much better. Instead of the reasonable thing, which would have been to back off as he lurched up, she threw her arms around his neck and held on, her feet losing purchase with the ground when he easily took her weight. He emitted a sharp grunt and pitched forward. At the sudden lurching movement, she tightened her hold, hooking her foot around the front of his leg. His large hand caught her thigh, gripping her tightly. She was sure he was going to pry her off him. Instead, he hitched her farther up his back, loosening her arm from his throat to gasp, “What is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with you?” she shot back, breathless and very aware of his fingertips still squeezing into her thigh. “Let me go.”

He released her immediately. She dragged slowly down his back. As soon as her feet hit the pavers, she reached around him and snatched her paper.

Jack gaped at her, his hand rising to his neck. “Did you just try to choke me?”

“You stole my paper.”

“That’s not a proportionate fucking response.” He rolled his shoulder melodramatically, cheeks and neck ruddy, chest rising and falling with effort, like her own. His hair fell loose from his skewed hat. He looked like he’d just had a run-in with a wild animal.

Abrupt laughter spilled from Tansy, as did all the tension in her body.

Jack was staunchly unmoved by her fit of giggles, committed to remaining grumpy, arms crossed, mouth set in a tense line.

It made her laugh harder.

And then he broke. First, it was just an aggrieved gust of breath, like he was trying to show how annoyed he was, but it caught on its way out, releasing a low, pent-up rumble of a laugh. A rockslide. The sound of it shifted something inside her.

As quickly as it happened, he locked it back down, dragging his hand down his mouth, erasing the last vestiges of a smile. His eyes dropped to her neck, where she was absently touching her collar, and then lower. Her shirt was twisted across her torso and down one shoulder, and she guessed she looked about as riled as he did. Then, as he licked his lips, his eyes trailed back up to her face, pinning her with a look so dark and heated and…pleading? She gulped, and she was sure he heard it.

“We should…” she breathed, tugging her shirt back into place and swinging her hair back behind her shoulders.

“We should what?” he asked, his eyes on her mouth, voice low and thick in a way that swiped through her middle like a finger through honey. His boots scuffed closer, one hand flexing as if to reach out and then clenching at his side.

“Talk about the festival.”

He cleared his throat, shifting his gaze to some point over her shoulder. He adjusted his hat. “Yeah.”

She laughed again, a kind of convulsive aftershock. He didn’t join her. He was all buttoned up once more, scowl back in place, that confusing heat in his eyes snuffed out. Could you miss something that happened just ten seconds ago? Because she did. That warm chuckle had fundamentally, alarmingly altered her.

He seemed determined not to acknowledge that a door, previously bolted shut, had swung open between them.

But Tansy felt the shift, the exciting whisper of possibility. She’d wedge herself into that small door gap if she had to. She wouldn’t let him slam it shut.

10

Jack

Today’s precariously fastened outfit was some kind of flowy yoga tank top that looked normal enough from the front but which, when Tansy wove among the handful of women on the main lawn, turned out to be two halves of cloth literally tied together at the small of her back, with a giant slit running all the way up her spine and exposing a sliver of cardinal red underneath—a sports bra or something, Jack didn’t know, and he was trying not to think about it.

He’d also spent the weekend trying not to think about her soft thigh in his grip, her leg hooked around his, and her body, soft and warm, pressed to his back last Friday. The way she’d dragged down off him. It had momentarily tipped him into wanting her. Not just interest, not simple attraction, but pure, screaming, unadulterated need like he hadn’t allowed to sneak up on him in some time. Even though he’d shut it down, a ghost of that desire lingered, haunting even this wide-open space.

Someone cleared their throat, and he flinched at the interruption. Greta sipped her mug of coffee and nodded at the group. “Thinking of joining them? You could use some movement and meditation.”

“Hell no,” he grumbled, turning his back to Tansy in her mere suggestion of a shirt. “They were chanting earlier. Thought the Satan guy was back.”

Greta raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Fine. The women hadn’t been chanting exactly. They had recited a series of affirmations: I am safe in my body. I observe with curiosity, not judgment. I release limiting thoughts that do not serve me. And he’d wandered out of the greenhouse earlier not because of their noise but to investigate an odd humming sound in the corner of the building, noticeable because the exhaust fans weren’t working. He’d gotten distracted by the sight of Tansy.

Now they were near the end of a familiar grounding exercise, identifying five items in the environment that they could see, four they could hear, three they could touch, and so on. At the beginning, Tansy had kicked off her shoes and dug her toes into the grass with the others, only to scrunch her nose up and shudder, he guessed, at the slick morning dew. With each new instruction, she’d cast sidelong glances at the instructor, then around the group. They were on the final sense now—taste—and her eyes popped wider as a lithe white woman with dreadlocks yanked up a fistful of grass and put it in her mouth.

No one else reflected Tansy’s horror, and Jack stifled a laugh as she scanned the area for something to taste that wasn’t disgusting. He would have said something if she’d gone for the berries on the bush behind her, which were a purgative, but he didn’t have to because she took a pull from her water bottle instead.

He was enjoying watching her struggle to maintain her charade of serenity—until the group returned to their mats and began stretching. Now he realized he would have to avoid the main lawn from eight to eight-forty every Monday morning because seeing the smooth, bare curve of Tansy’s back and her perky ass in those leggings as she pushed her hips up into downward dog absolutely did not serve him.

“Can you spare a minute?” Greta asked, still standing there all this time. He couldn’t be sure, because her delivery was always pretty dry, whether she was genuinely asking or subtly skewering him, but he thought he detected a teasing lilt in that question.

Jack physically turned his shoulders away from Tansy. He returned to the corner of the greenhouse, where the faint humming persisted. “What’s up?”

“I don’t want to make a big deal of my leaving.”

He laughed. “Don’t see how it could be much smaller of a deal.” She’d nixed every party idea he’d suggested, which had put him in the unfamiliar position of pushing for fanfare instead of limiting it. He didn’t personally want a big event either, but he did want to honor her twenty years of leadership and give her the send-off she deserved. They’d settled on coffee and pastries in the courtyard with the staff on Friday morning.

“I don’t plan on making a speech,” she warned.

“That’s fine. But I’m pretty sure the others are going to.” Some of the staff had even looked into having a bronze statue of her created, but it was a lot more expensive than they’d expected and couldn’t be done that quickly. Jack had been preparing his own remarks, although so far nothing he’d come up with captured the magnitude of her legacy here, the challenge of adequately filling her shoes, and the recent realization that his professional relationship with her was one of his longest-running ones, period.

“I don’t want to make a speech,” she said again, frowning in confusion as he bent his ear to the solid wall below the window panes, “but that doesn’t mean I have nothing to say.”

“Okay,” he said slowly.

She stood straighter, as though she were about to make an important declaration, only to frown at his distracted investigating. “What is this?” she asked. “More rabbits?”

“Nah, I got all the holes patched up. Do you hear that humming sound?”

She bent beside him. “Yes. What is that?”

“No idea. There’s nothing mechanical over here.”

“Hmm,” she said, standing back up.

He stood, too, perplexed, then asked, “Sorry, did you have something to say?”

She looked a little cornered, maybe rethinking this whole interaction, then said quickly, “I want you to know you will be a capable director. I wouldn’t leave the park in your hands if you weren’t.”

“Greta—”

“You have always understood the needs of this place and the mission here. You’re pragmatic. You’re not afraid of hard work, and you don’t expect recognition for it. You understand progress can be a long, slow march.”

He did understand those things. And he liked the daily work in this place—the actual, hands-in-dirt work anyway. But he didn’t understand why Greta was jumping the gun on what felt like an important moment—a goodbye—when they had four more days before she’d leave.

“If there’s anything I worry about with you, it’s that you’ll forget an ecosystem doesn’t have to be controlled to be healthy. It’s not a unidirectional, top-down system. Your job as director will not be to solve every problem yourself. An ecosystem’s strength lies, as I know you know, with its interdependent biodiversity.”

“You came to give me a fourth-grade science lesson?”

“No. I’m simply reminding you that you’re not alone here, as much as you sometimes would like to be, and that’s not a bad thing. And to tell you, without a nosey crowd, that I’m…” She shook her head, her no-nonsense gray ponytail swinging. “Quite proud of you. I don’t think I’ve ever told you that.”

Jack couldn’t help that his shoulders rolled back, preening a little, with the compliment. It was possible he was blushing. “Uh…thanks.”

“Good. Okay. That’s done.” She looked back to her office above the courtyard, apparently uncomfortable with such effusive sentimentality. “For the record, I’d prefer to leave you with money for the expansion rather than wisdom and compliments.”

“I’d prefer that, too,” Jack joked.

“If only the storm had uncovered buried treasure here in the park, or the ancestry kit I got at Christmas revealed a close connection to royalty.”

Jack grunted in agreement, pulling a screwdriver from his back pocket and wedging it experimentally into a gap in the siding. He surprised himself when he blurted, “The Brisket King.”

Greta spun back, eyes sharp. “Excuse me?”

Jack sobered as a sneaking feeling of regret came over him. “Chet Fullton. He’s offering a special recovery fund. The librarians are—” He cut himself off, glancing at Tansy and the others contorting themselves on the lawn.

There was no reason not to tell Greta about Tansy’s application. She didn’t have dibs on publicly available information, and the library wasn’t the only place around here that was struggling to recover.

Still.

But Greta raised an expectant eyebrow and ordered, “Speak.”

So he did.

And when she told him what he already knew, that he must apply for that grant, he put a little more muscle into levering open the greenhouse siding. He pried it back with his hands, and the humming grew louder as he revealed…

Bees. Hundreds of bees.

—

The bee specialist Jack had found—even he wasn’t dumb enough to fuck around with DIY bee removal—was a woman in her fifties named Margie who referred to the queen as babygirl and spent her time, while casually scooping handfuls of bees out of the cluster searching for her, explaining to Jack in gruesome detail that drones die after mating with the queen because when they part, their insides get violently ripped out of their abdomens.

Jack was relieved for the interruption when Ian wandered up. “Shouldn’t y’all be wearing protective suits or something?”

Margie unceremoniously shook the bees off her hand. Some flew around her face. Others crawled around on the box at her side. Jack took a big step back, joining Ian on the path, clocking his furtive glance to the small group of teens gathered around Kai in the courtyard. They were doing some kind of weaving project. He’d checked because last week the project had involved glitter, which was still stuck in the grout between the pavers.

“You done already?” Jack asked, checking his watch. Ian had been working with the interns to finish digging out the bed and offload rocks in the new friendship garden. Jack had compromised with the commissioner to develop it closer to the park entrance, where more people would see it, saving his gated garden for now.

“Taking a break,” Ian admitted. He looked nervous, glancing between the bees and the Teen Art Club, shifting on his feet. “Thought I’d see if you need me for anything here.”

Jack himself wasn’t much use here, standing around while Margie sweet-talked the bees in a way that seemed weirdly sexual.

He started to say there was nothing to help with when Ian turned his attention to the courtyard again, following Kai’s movements around the group. Jack might have missed it if he hadn’t stood in nearly this same spot just this morning, gawking at Tansy on the lawn. Ian wasn’t here to help him. He was here to catch a glimpse of the commando librarian with the same colorful flair in their ever-changing dyed hair that Tansy expressed with her clothes.

“Some of us are going out later, and I thought I’d invite the librarians,” Ian said, unprompted.

“Sure.”

“So I might wait here and catch Kai in a minute then, when art club ends.”

“Makes sense,” Jack said.

“You should come, too.”

“Ah.” Jack crossed his arms to keep from swatting at an errant bee drifting near his face. “Nah, I’m good.”

“You got other plans?”

Jack had plans not to go out to some crowded bar and make awkward small talk over loud music, only to go home overstimulated and exhausted.

“Come on,” Ian pressed gently. “You never come out. Might be nice, what with Greta leaving and all, to make everyone feel better about things changing around here. Half of them are afraid of you, and the other half—” He cut himself off, scratching his forehead.

“The other half what?” Jack demanded. He knew a few of the girls filmed him around the grounds but wasn’t sure what to make of it.

“I just think it would boost morale.”

“If you’re hoping to boost morale, I’m not the guy you want.”

Ian shook his head and then frowned, “I mean, is there, like, a policy against it?”

“Against what?”

“Upper management and the rest of the staff…fraternizing or whatever.” He glanced furtively into the courtyard again.

“No. No policy.” Which meant Jack sounded like an asshole who just didn’t want anything to do with his staff. “Look, I’m thirty-seven. I can’t go out late and recover like I used to. I need a full eight hours of sleep to function.”

Ian laughed. “That’s it, huh? You’re too old? Greta came out last month.”

“She did?”

“Yep.”

Jack shook his head. He was going to have to say it. “I prefer to keep things uncomplicated, you know? Separation of church and state. Don’t shit where you eat. All that. Clear boundaries. Hell, I’m the guy they’re probably complaining about over those drinks anyway, right? I don’t need relationships with them, and they don’t really want that from me anyway. We don’t need some deep emotional bond here.”

Margie interrupted, drawling, “Theeeere she is,” her voice low and silky, just as footsteps scuffed up the walk behind Jack and Ian.

Jack turned and came nearly face-to-face with Tansy, whose slipper shoes were stealthy-quiet on the pavers. She was wearing a lavender dress with bright orange piping and a pinched, annoyed expression. Already mad at him. He immediately wondered how much of his speech she’d heard and just how dickish he’d sounded. Maybe this was just her default setting when it came to him.

“Come on out, babygirl,” Margie purred. “Don’t be coy.” And Jack realized now that she hadn’t been weirdly announcing Tansy’s arrival. She’d found the queen.

“Hey, Tansy,” Ian offered affably.

She was briefly distracted by the spectacle of Margie flirting with bees but soon turned a genuine smile on him. “Hello, Ian. Nice to see you.”

A long, deliberate pause pulsed around them as she intentionally didn’t acknowledge Jack. Then, she continued into the courtyard.

The breeze danced with her skirt, reminding Jack yet again how good her thigh had felt in his grip last Friday. She’d laughed, too, and that had done something unsettling to him. He’d liked it far too much.

He’d read far too much into it as well, he guessed, because she was right back to her usual mode with him—annoyed and vaguely hostile.

Movement snagged Jack’s attention back from her retreating form. A bee danced in front of Ian’s face, and he lurched sideways, stumbling to his hands and knees and then throwing his arms protectively around his head. With an embarrassed huff, he came back up, his pale cheeks blushing fiercely, glasses skewed, and explained, “I’m actually super allergic to bees.”

“Then what the fuck are you doing here?”

A dopey smile stretched across his face before he cleared his throat and said, his voice deeper than usual, “Yeah, so, I’m gonna…” He hitched his thumb after Tansy then jogged to catch up to her and Kai.

“How much longer is this gonna take?” Jack asked Margie.

“It takes as long as it takes,” she said. Then, under her breath she added, “Men.”

11

Tansy

“I don’t think that’s right,” Briar said, peering down into the bucket between Tansy’s knees.

Tansy stopped stirring the thick, gray mixture and brushed her hair out of her eyes with her forearm. Her butt was falling asleep from sitting on another overturned bucket. “What’s wrong with it?”

Briar presented Tansy’s phone screen to her. Preferring to read instructions rather than touch the dubious mixture herself, she’d pulled up a wikiHow article on finishing your own drywall. “It says it should look like creamy mashed potatoes.”

“Doesn’t it?” Tansy muscled her stirring stick through the mud again, grunting with the effort. She’d already broken two of these wooden sticks, which were made for stirring paint, not joint compound. The guy who had helped her at Home Depot had suggested an attachment for a drill to make this part easier, but Tansy didn’t own a drill, so here they were. Her arms were going to be sore before she even reached the application stage of the process. “Should it be runnier?”

“I don’t know,” Briar said, scrunching up her nose. “I don’t like mashed potatoes.”

Tansy laughed. She added a little more water, which made stirring easier, but she honestly had no idea what this stuff was supposed to look like.

When the mixture seemed reasonably creamy, Tansy removed the plastic packaging on the roll of tape that would go over the joints between the sheets of drywall. “Where did the experts land on wetting the tape?”

Briar scratched her head. “Some say always get it wet, but some say never.”

“Cool,” Tansy said on a sigh.

“Are you sure we should do this by ourselves?” Briar asked, casting an uncertain frown at the empty living room around them. Every single wall in their house needed to be finished. “Seems hard. And messy.”

“Hey,” Tansy said, tossing the tape back onto the pile of supplies. She lifted Briar’s chin and slipped her phone from Briar’s hand, tucking it into the back pocket of her overalls. “We are perfectly capable of doing this. And nothing is too hard when you take it one step at a time. What are we?”

Briar’s eyebrows bunched together in thought, and Tansy gave her chin a little jostle. “Come on. We’re not damsels waiting for some prince. We’re…”

Briar’s eyes sparked with recognition, and she recited with gusto, “Independent women!”

“Exactly. We solve our own problems.” Tansy squared herself to the bare slabs of sheet rock, which were thankfully already attached to the studs. “And today, we finish our own drywall.”

“Well, today and tomorrow and the next day,” Briar said, ever a stickler for facts. “It takes three days because you have to let the mud set and then sand it and then do it again.”

“Okay, yes,” Tansy said, her shoulders sagging a little. She did not feel particularly confident about any of this, but if there was one lesson she was determined to teach her daughter, one thing she wished she’d learned at a much younger age, it was this: Never put yourself in a position where your only hope is for someone to rescue you. So she cast aside her many doubts, scooped some mud into the container that looked like a bread pan, grabbed the wide metal spatula, and slapped the first glob of mud along one of the seams. “What does ImYourDadNow say about wetting the tape?”

Briar shook her head solemnly. “Never.”

“Then it’s settled. Dry tape.”

Twenty minutes later, Tansy couldn’t imagine how wetting the tape would have helped anyway. The mud was so slippery, the tape kept sliding down the wall every time she went to smear more joint compound over it. She tried to pull the tape back into place but succeeded only in creating ridges where it twisted and bunched up. Finally, she peeled off the whole strip in frustration, scraped off as much mud from the wall as she could, and started over.

Briar had lost interest and was back to reading a book about luna moths in the beam of sunlight spilling through the front window but paused when the familiar ringtone of her new tablet reached them from the bedroom. As she ran to answer it, Tansy called out, “Stay back there while you—” But she stopped because she wasn’t going to ask her daughter to hide things for her.

“I know!” Briar shouted back as she rounded the corner. “I don’t want to get mud on my tablet.”

Tansy hadn’t been worried about that. For one thing, Briar had steered well clear and wasn’t in any danger of making direct contact with the joint compound. Unlike Tansy, who had it on her arms, clothes, and somehow in her hair. But if she brought the tablet out here, Charlie would see the state of their house. There was no safe angle to hide the exposed concrete floor, the unfinished walls, the lack of furniture, or the gaping hole that was the kitchen.

And yeah, maybe she shouldn’t actively hide all this from Charlie. But he would say she should have told him sooner, remind her of how many times he’d offered her money in the last several months, point out that she’d insisted over and over that they were back on their feet and everything was fine. Because they were fine. Maybe they weren’t thriving, but there were plenty of folks who were way worse off, and considering all the things that bothered Briar, from clothing seams to food textures to interacting with strangers to any weather that wasn’t cloudless and sunny, the state of the house didn’t seem to bother her at all. She still thought sharing the one finished room with Tansy was a sleepover and that it was funny to cook in the bathroom.

Tansy would tell Charlie eventually. She just wanted to get a little more of the work done before she did. Like the walls. And the floor.

She strained at first to hear if Briar was giving the whole thing away, but she couldn’t make out more than murmurs.

As Tansy returned to her task, a familiar white Jetta with a Saint Francis figurine adhered to the dashboard pulled up out front, and Marianne, Kai, and Irma spilled out. For the second time, Tansy’s heart jumped at the thought of exposure. She ducked back from the window. What were they doing here? She’d never invited them to her house, even before the storm, but she really did not want them here now. She paced back and forth out of sight in the corner, holding her muddy spatula and unbuckling and re-buckling her overall strap, wishing she looked more put together than her house.

When she didn’t answer the first knock, Marianne pressed her face to the window. Tansy had misjudged the angle because she made direct eye contact and waved.

Reluctantly, Tansy opened the door just enough to fill the opening with her body. “Hey, what are y’all doing here?”

Kai lifted two bags of supplies. “We came to help with your walls.”

“My— What do you know about my walls?”

“All-purpose joint compound?” Kai said slowly. “I saw it in your backseat and googled it. You are DIYing your drywall. Which is interesting because when I asked how things turned out with your house a long-ass time ago, you said everything was basically back to normal.”

Tansy’s face burned. She opened her mouth to speak—to deny it even now, or else turn this into some kind of joke. But Irma stepped forward, placed a firm hand on her shoulder, and said, “I need to pee, so we’re coming in now.”

No one gasped at the sight of Tansy’s house or exchanged pitying glances. They just opened their bags, pulled out spatulas of their own, a stack of carpentry books, a platter of assorted cookies, and a Bluetooth speaker. Within two minutes, they were all spread out around the room, shimmying to Irma’s music and scraping mud into seams.

An hour later, Tansy’s entire living room, kitchen, and breakfast nook were complete. Briar had even joined them after her brief call with Charlie—he hadn’t immediately texted or called Tansy to demand answers, so she assumed their project hadn’t come up—and she’d let Irma guide her in smearing one brave swipe of mud onto the wall.

Now they were eating pizza for lunch, which Kai refused to let Tansy pay for, sitting on drop cloths in the living room. Tansy opened and closed her mouth to speak twice but couldn’t voice even a simple thanks through her mounting overwhelm. How could she adequately thank them for the hours—the days—they’d saved her?

They all insisted they’d stay after lunch to finish the rest—Briar’s bedroom and bathroom and the back hallway. It was all so much. Too much, really. As much as they waved off her assurances that she could finish it herself, she knew Irma would be sore from this tomorrow, and that spot of mud wouldn’t come out of Marianne’s skirt. Or just…

They’d expect something in return one day, and who knew if she’d have her head above water by then? That open loop of obligation would hang over her. She loved them, and somewhere underneath the anxiety about never making this up to them, she was grateful they’d come. But that gratitude was easily swallowed by the urgency to make them leave. To limit the strings that could wind up attached. To reclaim a smidge of self-possession and at least the appearance of competence.

“Thank you all again,” she started.

Kai jabbed their slice of pizza at her and exclaimed, “Oh my God, tell Marianne what her weird friend did during Movement and Meditation.”

Tansy blushed. Kai’s delight in her recap about the grass-eating woman and the very serene expressions on all the other participants’ faces had validated how absurd it had felt to Tansy at the time.

“It was all a little weird. I was expecting more yoga.”

Kai told the story for her, embellishing the details Tansy had told them yesterday.

“I wonder what Jack was thinking during all that,” Irma said, wiping her fingertips with a napkin and pushing up slowly from the floor.

“Jack?” Tansy echoed, warmth climbing up her neck.

“I saw him come out of the greenhouse and stand there for a long time at the beginning of the class.”

“At the beginning?” She’d only seen him at the end, when he’d cursed at the discovery of bees in the greenhouse wall. “Scowling?” she guessed.

She couldn’t help replaying the start of the class, trying to remember what she’d been doing, if she’d just handed him more evidence that she and her library and her programs were absurd and annoying.

“No, not scowling,” Irma drawled knowingly.

“What’s that tone?” Tansy asked.

Irma laughed and waved a dismissive hand. “I don’t think you really want to hear it.” Her eyes darted to Briar, who was eating with one hand and holding her book open on the floor with the other, and that quick glance said there was another reason not to speak too plainly.

Tansy slid her overalls buckle open and closed, open and closed. Her friends’ eyes were on her, and, aside from Marianne, who was waiting for someone to spell it out, they all looked rather pleased with themselves.

She’d intended to send them on their way before they could get back to work, but now Irma was lifting a container of mud and a spatula and taking them into the back hall. Kai jumped up to follow.

Tansy couldn’t let the comment go. She tossed her plate and followed, trailed by Marianne. “Jack would never— He sees me as—”

“A pornographic Magic Eye poster?” Kai teased, their voice low for Briar’s sake, although Briar was deeply engrossed in her book on the other side of the wall. “Like he can’t quite see it yet, but he’s sure it’s gonna be worth it when he does.”

Tansy barked a laugh. “If that’s true, and I’m not saying it is, it’s clear that he’d lose interest as soon as he saw me. I overheard him saying he doesn’t do relationships or emotional bonds, like those are the worst possible things someone could want from him. He’s a gross cliché.”

Kai lit up, a sure sign of dirt to share. “I actually heard he was married once.”

“Do you have a side gig as a private investigator?” Tansy asked. “How do you know that?”

“It’s called stalking, and it’s honestly a little scary at this point,” Marianne said.

Kai rolled their eyes. “It’s literally our job to find information.”

“Oh, kid,” Irma said, “I don’t judge, but it’s straight-up gossip. Call it what it is.”

“I can’t help it if his interns are obsessed with him,” Kai said, raising their hands in defense. “Two minutes with the Madisons, and they just offer up this shit. Apparently, his marriage ended horribly. That’s why he doesn’t do relationships.”

“Well, there you go,” Tansy muttered. Whether he had a reason or not, he was still some no-strings-attached, perpetual-bachelor type who probably slept with women once and discarded them. Although the marriage part did surprise her.

“He seems very interested in you,” Irma added, nodding at Tansy.

“This is what I’m saying. Dude’s always claiming he’s so busy, but he managed to hang around doing nothing for that class, and suddenly he’s gone from putting off that first festival meeting to springing another surprise meeting on you yesterday?” Kai scooped a massive glop of mud, murmuring, “Wax on, wax off,” as they smeared it across a horizontal seam and scraped it away.

It was true. Jack had requested—demanded—another meeting after Greta’s retirement breakfast yesterday, pulling in Ian and Kai for note-taking, although it had felt oddly like he just didn’t want to be alone with her. And after their short, awkward meeting the week before, when she’d fully jumped him and then couldn’t stop laughing, she hadn’t fought him over it because any chance to get more involved could only be good for the library.

“He only wanted that meeting because he’s too uptight to let me do anything without his approval.” Tansy unpeeled a few inches of tape from the roll, smoothing it as she followed the seam. “Trust me, I’m the worst part of that guy’s day.”

Kai laughed but then frowned and said more seriously, “Come on. Not really. You’re just, like, the release valve on everything else that makes his day bad. He’s the same for you. You guys bicker like it’s some kind of weird emotional purging therapy.”

Yesterday, they’d fought over the bird migration game Tansy wanted to run behind the library. He didn’t want guests trampling an overgrown area which, as far as she could tell, was nothing more than a dumping ground for fallen trees, and by the end of their spat, she’d snapped, “Ugh, you should migrate!” By that point, Kai and Ian were fully ignoring them, sketching goofy animal doodles back and forth in their notebooks.

“A,” Tansy began, “that sounds incredibly toxic, so thanks for giving me something new to feel bad about, and B, what other things make his day bad? What does he honestly have to complain about? The county reopened his park with a full ribbon-cutting ceremony and press coverage.”

“Well,” Kai said, head tilting and eyebrows drawing together. They scraped the excess mud off onto the edge of the container. “I mean, they’re open, but it’s hard to operate with no budget.”

“What are you talking about?”

Kai let out a nervous laugh, hesitating to say more, eyes darting over Tansy’s shoulder to the others, who were starting on the opposite wall. That hesitation made Tansy straighten. It wasn’t like Kai not to speak their mind. Tansy suddenly felt the weight of her interim titles.

“Really,” she said, tearing the tape free from the roll. “I want to know.”

“They were supposed to start this expansion project this year, but instead, the commissioner froze their operating budget. They can’t buy plants or supplies of any kind, can’t contract out specialized work. In fact, Jack paid for the bee removal out of his own pocket. And the greenhouse is so old, when the mechanical shit in there got damaged, they couldn’t find half the parts needed to fix it. Now, when they get access back to their expansion funds, a huge chunk is going to flood projects that the county won’t cover. They cut a ribbon, yeah, but there’s still a shit ton of red tape.”

“This came from the interns?” Tansy asked.

Kai shrugged. “And Ian.”

“Ian,” Tansy repeated. Her mind was circling around the new information like a toy boat in a bathtub-drain whirlpool. If all of it was true, then she could relate to the stress Jack probably felt, the frustration of trying to do the same job with his hands tied and legs kicked out from under him. Even if the cards she’d been dealt were objectively worse.

But she didn’t want to empathize with Jack. He was an ass and the person she’d funneled all her frustration at every day instead of at the nebulous web of library board members, admin, and county politicians who were responsible for the library’s situation.

“You two are getting close,” Tansy said, still wrapping her mind around this development.

“I mean…not like really close.” Kai resumed laying the mud, this time far more carefully, with all their focus.

“It’s okay if you are. Just because Jack and I don’t get along doesn’t mean—”

“Please,” Kai scoffed. But color bloomed across the apples of their cheeks, and they picked at their chipped black nail polish. “Ian’s like a…a goldendoodle. Too nice.”

“What’s wrong with nice?” Marianne piped up.

Kai looked to Irma for backup, who was—God, climbing the stepladder to mud the top of a vertical seam.

Tansy quickly traded places with her.

As Irma passed up her supplies, she said, “You know I’m all for a walking red flag with great abs in fiction. But in real life…there are valid reasons they genetically engineered the goldendoodle. Even-tempered, loyal, intelligent…”

“Simple,” Kai argued. “Vanilla.”

“Stable,” Irma countered. “Different might be good.”

Marianne nodded in agreement, primly adjusting her skirt while she waited for her turn to climb up the ladder with the tape. “They’re hypoallergenic, too. Although, really, people should adopt instead of buying designer breeds.”

“Actually…” Tansy said. “Irma has a point. Not just about Ian. We’ve been trying to do everything the same as we used to, but maybe we can’t expect everything we did before to work in the gardens.” It burned that Jack’s words came so easily to her now, and that they felt true. “Maybe we need to figure out how to work with the new environment instead of against it. We had issues in our building, too. It wasn’t perfect.”

“The air-conditioning was always too cold,” Marianne pointed out.

“Exactly. Yes,” Tansy agreed, although they couldn’t regulate the temperature now either. In fact, she already worried about how they’d handle the warm spring weather with just the one door, which would let in mosquitoes and do little to cool their cramped shed.

“Teen Art Club couldn’t use any supplies with strong fumes inside,” Kai said.

“The fluorescents gave me headaches,” Irma said. “And sometimes, we had to turn away people from popular programs because the meeting room was too small.”

They certainly were not at risk of having too many participants right now. But the courtyard gave them significantly more open space for story times, and the Movement and Meditation class worked better on the lawn.

Tansy had asked herself several times what Rashida, their old branch manager, would have done in her shoes, but maybe that had been the wrong question. “What if we figured out what we can do here that we couldn’t do there?” Tansy asked.

“Alcohol ink painting,” Kai said immediately.

“Gardens bingo,” Marianne added, climbing up the stepladder once more. “All the plant species are labeled. We could give people cards to mark off species as they found them, like a self-directed tour.”

Kai stabbed their spatula into their mud mixture with an air of victory. “Or a bookish scavenger hunt. We could make our own signs with popular characters and mix them in with the regular ones. Little Pete the Cats and Wings of Fire dragons peeking out from behind the ferns and shit.”

The hairs rose on Tansy’s arms, lifted by a zing of excitement, of genuine hope.

—

It was nearly five when Tansy washed the last of the joint compound out of the buckets and came back inside for a shower. The librarians had departed after making good on their promise to complete the entire house. She would still have to let the mud set overnight and add another layer tomorrow, but she wouldn’t have to lay any more tape, and she’d gotten pretty good with the mud spatula. She could prime and paint the walls soon. Maybe even next weekend.

“You need anything before I hop in the shower?” Tansy asked as she entered the bedroom, where Briar was…wearing a dress and checking her appearance in the flimsy mirror hanging on the closet door.

“Shower?” Briar parroted in alarm. “Mom, there’s no time.”

“What…is happening?” Tansy gestured at the sky-blue dress, which Briar had begged for and then refused to wear because Tansy had failed to cut out every last sliver of its tag.

“The ceremony is soon.”

It didn’t come to her until Briar stomped across the room and grabbed her by the hand, towing her back out the way she’d come.

The flyer on her windshield days ago. The rescuer recognition ceremony.

Tansy stopped short halfway across the living room. “Wait, honey. I wasn’t planning on— I’m not remotely dressed for—”

Briar tugged at her hand again. “I told you I want to go.”

“But why?” Tansy asked, legitimately baffled. The last thing she wanted to do was face the people who’d had to risk their own lives to come pull them from their homes—any of them, not just Jack. Although she was at least pretty sure this would not be an event he’d bother to attend.

“What if we don’t go, and they don’t know how we feel?”

“How do we feel?”

Briar dropped Tansy’s hand and tugged at the back of her collar. That tag was going to aggravate her so much, she’d change her mind about this whole thing in two minutes. “We feel—” Briar huffed.

“You don’t have to wear the dress,” Tansy said gently.

“We feel—” Briar repeated, louder and more agitated.

Tansy waited.

Briar squeezed her eyes shut. Here it came. The shutdown. Or the tantrum. Either one meant they were definitely not going to that ceremony. Exhaustion set in from all the manual labor today, and from reining in every impulse to shout, “Don’t look at me! Don’t look at my house!” the whole time her friends had been here. She didn’t have the energy to regulate her own frayed emotions so she could help Briar regulate hers. But there was some relief in knowing that they’d have to stay home because of it.

Except, instead of spinning out or shutting down, Briar opened her eyes and said, “Dr. Sharon thinks it could be good to say thank you.” Her eyes were wide and clear, imploring Tansy to understand. “It’s called…” She scrunched her face, looking for the word, and finally said, “Closure.”

“Closure,” Tansy said, her voice thin in the face of Briar’s determination. Damn it. How could she possibly argue with that?

12

Jack

“I can’t believe you lied,” Jack grumbled, shifting in the hard plastic chair reserved for him.

Omar grinned and leaned in to whisper, “How else was I gonna get you here?”

He’d claimed he needed help picking up a new dresser and fed Jack the driving directions one turn at a time until the final right into the Legacy Woods subdivision, where the rescuer recognition ceremony Jack had already clearly declared zero interest in attending was happening, right now.

“Joke’s on you,” Jack muttered back, “because don’t think for one second I’m driving you home after this.”

Omar’s shoulders shook with a silent laugh.

Behind the podium within reach of their front-row seats stood the subdivision’s HOA president, a woman with a gem-encrusted brooch of a snail on her blazer lapel and bracelets that jangled every time she pressed an emotional palm to her chest, as she was doing now. Her gaze darted to the two of them, distracted by their whispering, and Jack refrained from checking his watch, although if her speech went on much longer, he was going to have an aneurysm.

The ceremony had started with a long-winded prayer out front, where a new bench had been installed, a shiny plaque dedicating it to Houston’s Angels. Which had made Jack think first of Charlie’s Angels and then of that Sarah McLachlan song that played during those overwrought ASPCA commercials. Now it was stuck in his head. He’d tried to bail when the group of twenty or so residents and the handful of honorees—a few of Omar’s fire department buddies and some other random do-gooders with boats—shuffled into the small clubhouse, but Omar had boxed him in at the back, forcing him forward. It had been too congested to make his way back out without causing a scene, so he’d sat reluctantly, judging all the other guys who’d willingly turned up to be publicly lauded for their good deed.

The only silver lining in all this was that Tansy wasn’t here. He’d looked. He was human. Not that he expected her to go out of her way to recognize his role in her rescue, because she seemed more put out by it than grateful.

When the HOA president found her place in her speech again, Omar murmured, “You could take a minute to appreciate something nice, you know.”

“This is nice?” Jack said, nodding at the single platter of Costco cookies and the dispenser of coffee that no one had partaken of yet, so no one else would either.

“Yeah, man. It’s nice that you did a nice thing. It’s nice that these people want to acknowledge it.”

“I did what anyone would have done. Not like I risked my life or something. I drove a boat.”

“Or,” Omar offered, “you could see this as proof that, despite all the crap at work you can’t change and all the obstacles popping up in your way right now, you still have the power to make a difference for people. These people. And, I don’t know, maybe take a minute to see the evidence of some good in the world.”

It was a speech straight out of Amy’s mouth if he’d ever heard one, which both shut Jack up and filled him with restless tension.

When he’d agreed to help with the nonexistent dresser, Omar had promised they wouldn’t talk about it. Amy. The pregnancy. Still, Jack had tried. He’d congratulated him, asked if he was excited or nervous about having a girl. Omar had studied him a long time across the cab of the truck and then said simply, “I couldn’t be happier, man.”

Jack knew it was killing Omar not to bring it up, though. For all his big, brawny physique and ability to morph into a CrossFit-loving, macros-counting adrenaline junkie at a moment’s notice, Omar was surprisingly forthcoming with his emotions. The guy still snuck handwritten poetry into Amy’s planner and her glovebox. He cried when he was happy, right in the open. So it absolutely went against his nature to hold back way too much information about ultrasounds and Amy’s cravings and his own feelings about becoming a dad.

The guilt of this settled into Jack’s gut, a new layer of gritty sediment covering the layers that were already there. He wanted to be the guy they deserved—the guy who didn’t flinch at the word baby and could separate his own tangled feelings from the happiness he wanted to share with them. But apparently, even after six years, he wasn’t that guy yet.

The men around Jack rose and shuffled to the ends of the two front rows, and Jack again had no choice but to follow. They lined up in front of the podium, turning to face the crowd for applause. The HOA president began shaking their hands and attaching, with some struggle, commemorative pins to their shirts. This was hell. At this rate, it’d be a solid five minutes before she made her way to his end, and the whole time, he’d have to stand here, looking like he thought he deserved all this fuss.

He searched the room, wondering if he’d even recognize any of the other people he’d helped, aside from Tansy and her daughter. Most had been covered in rain ponchos and hats, and it had been dark. Plus, he was terrible with faces. He wasn’t sure which was worse, standing up here taking credit for rescuing people he didn’t even remember, or accepting applause from folks he hadn’t even helped.

But then his eyes landed on a face he did recognize. He’d missed her earlier somehow, or she’d shown up late. Tansy was standing at the back of the room, next to the door, looking a little like he felt, like she wanted to bolt. But she lifted a hand in a tiny wave and offered a small smile. It caught him off guard. He would have expected her to be annoyed to see him.

He would have expected himself to be annoyed to see her. Maybe being somewhere else, outside work, softened the agitation she usually inspired. He averted his eyes, but now that he knew she was there, he could feel her across the small room, that tiny smile a lingering afterimage.

Shoving his hands into his pockets but then pulling them back out, he chanced another glance at her. She was bending to speak to her daughter, who was seated in the back row. The kid waved enthusiastically at him, and his hand lifted of its own volition to return the gesture, incapable of leaving her hanging, surprisingly warmed by her joy. She beamed a broad grin and twisted to whisper excitedly back to Tansy.

When the woman came to attach the pin to Jack’s shirt, he blocked her attempt, holding his palm out instead, grunting a firm, “Thanks.” Finally, it was all over. Everyone rose from their seats to descend upon Jack, trapping him at the front of the room. Strangers pressed their palms into his, clutched his forearms, and thanked him profusely. Some even wrapped him up in sudden hugs. He felt his blood pressure rising with every new touch, every new face. Eventually he slipped through the crowd and nearly out the back door when a voice cut through the din. “Jack, wait!”

He didn’t turn, just gestured at the door as he continued to stride toward it as if to say, Sorry, can’t stop this train. He couldn’t think in here.

He pushed outside. It had been a warm day for late January, and the lingering heat coupled with the stuffiness of that crowded room made him unbutton his collar and shove up his sleeves.

The door squeaked open behind him, a burst of voices spilling out. “Hey,” Tansy said again, this time with an annoyed edge to her voice.

He clutched his hips and breathed deeply, looking up to the evening sky.

“Hi,” came a softer voice, and his face turned like a magnet to metal. Tansy’s daughter stood on the step next to her, fiddling with the hem of her shirt.

“Hey.” His voice was raspy from stress. He cleared it and tried again. “Briar, right?”

She smiled shyly up at Tansy, whose severe expression softened for a beat of connection before hardening on him once more. There was something in her eyes, something imploring and tight and cautious. He didn’t get the exact message, but he registered that it was a warning as much a plea. Don’t fuck with my kid, maybe.

“Are you leaving?” Briar whispered.

“Just getting some air.”

“Okay, good.”

“Yeah?” he asked.

She nodded, looked to Tansy again, and then stepped forward. “Because we came to say…” She closed her mouth, twisted her lips, scrunched up her nose.

He waited. He didn’t always know how to say things either.

She drew in a big breath, then blurted, “Thank you for making us safe from the flood.”

His hand lifted to the back of his neck. “Ah, you don’t have to—”

Tansy cleared her throat pointedly, and now her eyes were wide and even more intense as she pressed a protective hand to Briar’s back.

“Uh,” he said, releasing his neck. He lifted his brows at Tansy, uncertain what exactly she thought he was going to do here or what she wanted from him, and she dipped her chin down toward Briar. He squatted down and met the girl’s eyes, saying honestly, “I’m glad I was there.”

“Us, too.”

Tansy shifted her hips, but he didn’t look up to see if she was silently protesting that collective reply.

“How’s…uh, Beans, was it?”

Briar’s eyes lit up. “Good!”

“Good. That’s good to hear. And you’re back at your school now? It’s open again?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good.”

“Okay,” Tansy cut in, sounding a little breathless. Her eyes were soft and warm on him. “We won’t keep you.”

He rose, his hand itching to massage the tension from his neck again. “Right. Sorry.”

“Mom, wait.” Briar lifted on her tiptoes and tugged down Tansy to whisper in her ear.

Tansy looked confused, then surprised, then wary. “Are you sure? You want to think about it more before you decide? Because if Dr. Sharon—”

“It’s my idea,” Briar insisted with a determined lift of her chin, an exact copy of what Tansy looked like when she did that, although otherwise, their features were opposites. Briar had dark, wild curls and bright blue irises to her mother’s golden-blonde hair and amber eyes.

“If you’re really sure,” Tansy said uncertainly to Briar and then fixed him with a warning glare that could freeze Lake Houston in August.

Briar shrugged off her backpack, dug around in it, and pulled out…his hat. She hugged it to her chest, maybe having second thoughts after all. Then she held it out to him. “This is yours.”

Jack looked to Tansy for some kind of direction. Take it? Don’t take it? All he was getting from her was a very clear, very scary message to not be an asshole.

He knelt back down, reaching for the hat but not pulling it from her hands. “I have a few of these,” he said, sensing that the offer was a big deal. “If you want to keep this one…”

“Oh.” Briar frowned, her shoulders caving in a little.

Tansy mouthed, Take it, even though he could have sworn she’d just tried to talk Briar out of offering it back in the first place.

He gently lifted the hat from Briar’s hands, studying her reaction. Her fingers twitched as if to grab it back, but then she clasped them together and offered a firm nod, as if to say, There. It’s done.

Jack fished into his pocket. “How about a trade?” He pulled out the pin and let it rest in his open palm, extending it to her. He gave her an encouraging nod when she hesitated.

Finally, she picked it up, studied the engraved boat at the center of the circle, and asked shyly, “Can you put it on me?”

Tansy seemed fine with the request, although now he really couldn’t read her expression. Her lips were parted, eyes soft. She looked slightly shell-shocked.

The door opened behind them, and out came Omar. “There you are. Thought you were really gonna leave my a—” He stopped himself from swearing, catching sight of Briar, and flashed a big smile at them. “Hi. How are y’all doing?”

Tansy blushed and clung to Briar’s shoulders, steering her out of his way so Omar could jog down the steps.

Jack was still trying to figure out what that look of hers had meant and why it made him reluctant to part from her suddenly. “Would you like dinner?” he blurted. “Both of you. With me?”

Omar’s eyes made a slow sweep from Jack to Tansy and back, the corner of his mouth lifting. He didn’t wait for Tansy’s reply before turning on his heel, heading back toward the door, and calling over his shoulder, “I’ll catch a ride. Later.”

“Can we, Mom?” Briar begged, tugging on Tansy’s hands.

She shook her head at Jack, clearly confused and maybe annoyed that he’d put her on the spot like this. One of her hands drew up to the buckle of her overalls strap, prompting him to take her in fully. Buckles instead of ties. That seemed like progress on the risk of her clothes unraveling in front of him. He forced his eyes up from her chest to her hair, piled chaotically on top of her head, but he could have sworn she had dirt streaked down one side of her throat, and, well, his eyes were apparently no longer under his control, lingering on the smooth skin there.

Luckily, she was focused on her daughter, a silent conversation happening between them until Tansy sighed and said, “Fine.”

—

“What is this place?” Tansy asked, walking up to meet Jack in line.

“Best tacos in town. They have kid food, too,” he added, suddenly aware that he had no idea what the two of them liked to eat.

“Never heard of it,” she said, surveying the place.

Letty’s was a food truck that had been parked just off the historic part of this suburb for several years. In that time, the owners had added a canopy structure with picnic tables and fans and then some playground equipment and lawn games. It was a short hike from a shallow, beachy stretch of the creek. During the summer, families would venture down onto the sandy banks, play in the water and build castles, then trudge up the hill here for lunch. Right now, though, only a handful of adults sipped margaritas in clear, plastic cups while their kids ran around the play structure.

“Mom, I know her,” Briar whispered, pointing at one of the kids.

“Do you want to go play?” Tansy asked.

Briar gave it serious thought but said, “Maybe later.”

They ordered and carried their paper plates of tacos to one of the tables, where Briar promptly pulled out a book about cicadas and tucked in.

“Big reader, huh?” he commented. Because he had no idea how to talk to this woman or her kid and wasn’t entirely sure why he’d invited them to dinner in the first place.

Tansy looked fondly at her daughter. “I guess it’d be weird if she wasn’t.” She gestured at herself.

He chuffed a laugh. “I never really read much as a kid. Still don’t,” he confessed.

She nodded slowly, like she was trying to parse whether this was a subtle barb against her job or just a completely random thing he’d blurted because he was terrible at small talk.

“Your last name is literally Reid,” she pointed out, her mouth curving into a smile.

Heat spread across the back of his neck. Something was shifting between them lately. He couldn’t tell if she genuinely despised him, or if she was…flirting with him. “I don’t have much time to read.”

“Oh,” she laughed. “Yes, I’ve heard how busy you are.” She took a bite, and half the contents of her taco spilled out onto the paper plate.

“Jesus, have you never eaten a taco before?”

She swatted at his hand reaching to—well, he didn’t know what. He’d simply reacted with his usual inappropriate sense of urgency, as if some spilled lettuce and cheese were a crisis. He put his hands back on his own side of the table but grumbled, “Turn your face instead of the taco.”

“Don’t tell me how to eat.”

“Like this, Mom,” Briar piped up, turning to chomp into her own hard shell with minimal casualties, all while keeping her eyes glued to the book open on the picnic table beside her plate.

“Now you’ve turned my kid against me,” she told Jack, but she said it with a good-natured laugh. She glanced down at Briar’s book, which was open to an illustration of a cicada nymph mid-transformation into its adult form. “Yikes. What is that?”

“Cicada,” Briar mumbled, pausing to wipe her mouth.

Tansy shot a squeamish grimace at Jack but said to Briar, “Pretty cool.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You know you can catch them in the summer and watch them molt?” Jack asked.

Briar peeled her eyes from the page, interested.

“When they come up out of the ground, their first instinct is to climb. I used to catch them when I was a kid and hook their feet onto my window screen. It happens pretty fast after that. Their exoskeleton cracks open, and they kind of trust-fall out of their shell. They’re soft and squishy, and their wings are curled up until a fluid pumps into them and they expand and harden. The whole thing is pretty…” He was going to say miraculous. Especially since he’d witnessed several transitions gone wrong—cicadas not making it out of their exoskeleton quickly enough and their wings hardening too soon, deformed and flightless, or wind blowing them to the ground to be swarmed by fire ants. But instead, he cleared his throat and finished, “Pretty interesting.”

“Cool,” Briar said reverently. “Mom, can we—”

“Put alien bugs on our window screens all summer?” She laughed, shooting Jack a silent look that said, Thanks a lot, asshole. “Sure.”

But again, there was something softer in it now. Jack wanted more of these private looks from her. They seemed to signal a shift from them being enemies to quote-unquote enemies, like on some level they were playing at it now.

What he wanted to tell them—what always struck him about cicadas—was that if they survived the transition, they would hang around their empty shell for a while, like they needed time to recover from the whole violent and sudden ordeal. They would sit with what they’d just been, where they’d come from, until they were ready to move on.

But Briar was already back to her book, and instead of making the conversation weird with his profound cicada thoughts, Jack said to Tansy, “No wonder we don’t get along. I don’t read, and you hate the outdoors.”

“We don’t get along because you know that, yet you brought me to an entirely outdoor restaurant.”

“Maybe you’d like nature better if you didn’t insist on seeing it as your enemy.” He hadn’t meant it the way it sounded, like he was talking about himself.

One curious eyebrow arched, and she took a bite of her taco, mulling it over, spilling more lettuce. “I heard something today.”

He waited.

“I heard your budget is frozen.”

“Ah.”

Jack peered past the kids to where the ground sloped down toward the creek. The water wasn’t visible from here, only the wide break in the trees where it passed through.

“Given the grand reopening,” she said, with emphasis, “I assumed you guys had your recovery handed to you.”

Jack scoffed, and she raised her palms to ward off his protest.

“I realize now that’s not true. And I guess I get why you might not want extra people in your space, using such prime real estate as the…bathroom-adjacent shed.”

He nodded slowly.

She looked completely earnest, but he felt he must have missed some undercurrent, some thinly veiled criticism. She looked like she wanted to say something else, but instead she nudged Briar’s half-empty plate. “You done? You want to go play?”

Briar didn’t look up from her book. “I don’t know.”

“You can read any time, but you can’t always play with your friends.”

“They’re not really my friends.”

“Not yet. But they could be, right?”

“I guess.” Briar looked longingly at the other kids but hesitated.

“How about you try it for five minutes? And then if you aren’t feeling it, you can come back to your book.”

Briar weighed this silently and finally dragged herself across the playground.

“She can be slow to warm up,” Tansy explained, eyes fixed to her daughter’s retreating form. “Sometimes I worry she’s too attached to me and, like, not attached enough to other people.” She covered her face, shaking her head. “God, you do not care about my child’s antisocial tendencies. Sorry.”

He shrugged. “No, she’s right. Other people are terrible.”

Tansy snorted and finally faced him. “Well, maybe I don’t want her to grow up to be a surly grouch.”

“Like me?”

A smile warmed at the corners of her mouth briefly. “You’re kind of great with her, actually. With the cicada stuff and the hat thing earlier. She’s been overly attached to it since the…”

“Hurricane?” he supplied when she trailed off.

“Yeah. Not to keep grossly oversharing our personal business, but she’s been struggling a bit. That hat—your hat—has been like a shield for her. But her school has a strict policy against them. Apparently, four months is the time limit on accommodating a child’s strug—” She shook her head and amended, “Quirks.”

“She could have kept it. I have three more.”

“It was a big deal for her to give it back.”

“All right. Offer stands, though. If you want it just in case.”

She tilted her face, studying him quietly. He stopped chewing under her scrutiny, somehow more uncomfortable when she kept her thoughts to herself than when she lobbed insults at him.

Finally, he asked, “What?”

She picked up her own disaster of a taco but didn’t bite into it. “Just trying to reconcile this guy with the one who doesn’t do relationships or emotional bonds.”

“So you heard that.” Jack opened his hands on the table. “I was talking about my staff. Keeping things professional.”

“Oh, okay, you do do emotional bonds, just not with your staff? My mistake.” She was teasing him, but there was an edge to it. He couldn’t imagine why it bothered her, why she cared at all.

“I don’t enjoy all the unnecessary talking involved,” he said.

“In relationships?”

“In…” Jack shook his head. He sensed she was ascribing some extra weight to his replies, some deeper meaning. Which was exactly why he didn’t love talking. “Yeah, fine. I don’t really do relationships. I prefer uncomplicated. Quiet.”

“Is that why you aren’t married anymore?”

Jack choked, and a sharp bit of shell lodged in his throat. He coughed violently for several seconds, eyes watering.

“What was it? The kid thing?” Tansy asked.

Jack’s insides went leaden. The loosened piece of shell scraped painfully down his throat when he swallowed some water. “What kid thing?” He was trying to catch up with her knowing he’d been married in the first place.

“You said you don’t like kids, so I thought maybe she wanted them and you—”

“Did I say I don’t like kids?”

“You balked at the idea of story times.” She curled her fingers into air quotes. “They’re loud, and they can’t read. That vein under your eye pops out any time they so much as look at the ferns in the courtyard.”

“Yeah, and those ferns have seen much better days,” Jack pointed out. “Kids, as your story times have proven, don’t stay on paths, and the grounds are fragile right now. Everything’s under stress.”

“You say that like the plants are people.”

“Plants experience stress just like any other living thing.” Jack’s shoulders were tense, his heart still knocking against his rib cage from her left-field question. She was so confident his divorce had resulted from his shortcoming. His skin felt suddenly too tight.

“You know what? It was the kid thing,” he said abruptly, “but not like you’re assuming.”

She paused chewing.

White-hot righteousness surged in his chest. He didn’t want to tell her about his divorce, but more than that, he did want to see her face when she realized how wrong her assumptions about him were. “We were actually trying to have a baby. For about two years. But it turned out it was probably never gonna happen. With me, I mean. I was the problem. She filed for divorce.”

And there it was, the exact reaction he expected. Her eyebrows lifted, mouth parted in surprise, and then she set her food down, looking contrite. “I’m sorry,” she said immediately, sober and quiet. “I shouldn’t have assumed.” Then, she closed her eyes and shook her head, and her chastened expression shifted. “She left you over that?”

He wasn’t prepared for the spark of ferocity in her eyes when she met his directly. He was the one who had to look away now, immediately regretting how much he’d exposed just to get the upper hand.

“What about you?” he asked, needing to shift their focus. He nodded at the absence of a ring on her hand. “Were you married to Briar’s dad?”

She tucked both hands into her lap. “Engaged, briefly. We were waiting until he finished law school and I graduated from college, but it didn’t work out.”

“Because of…” he said, glancing across the playground at Briar.

“No,” Tansy said sharply, straightening. “His dad died right before she was born. Things just…fell apart.”

There was an elephant-size gap in this explanation. Jack knew firsthand that losing a parent was a major upheaval, but he couldn’t figure out how that accounted for breaking off an engagement, especially with a baby in the picture. Unless she’d left him. Or the guy hadn’t known she was pregnant. Then again, these assumptions were no different from her snap judgments about him.

Tansy twisted to check on Briar, who was already engaged in a game of tag. New tension pulsed between them, walking back some of the progress they’d made, and Jack both regretted and welcomed the familiarity of it.

“I suppose you’re probably counting down the days until our time is up and you and your plants can be less stressed,” Tansy said to her plate.

Jack didn’t respond because, yeah, the thought had crossed his mind. Despite what she’d intimated to patrons and her colleagues, there was no promise on the table, as far as he was aware, to reevaluate the fate of her library. In Jack’s experience, once the county pulled funding, it was next to impossible to claw it back.

Of course, she’d already delayed her library’s closure once. He wouldn’t count her out.

“It’s not even just that I don’t want to lose my job,” she said. “Our branch is the only library for fifteen miles. Which might not seem like a lot, but we’re a low-income community. Many of our patrons don’t have reliable cars, or their work hours make it impossible to get across town before another branch closes. If we shut down for good, so many people will lose access to educational and career-building resources, technology, social connections, and most importantly, a safe, accessible, free space. Do you have any idea how few places there are like that left in this world?”

Jack hadn’t thought of all that. But he understood her last point. “We’re one of the only botanic gardens in the state that doesn’t charge admission. If we did, our recovery would be farther along, and we wouldn’t be at the mercy of the county. Just seems criminal to put a price on what little natural green space we have left around here when we’re all just breathing in smog, suffering the effects of thousands of miles of freeways and parking lots, mindlessly eradicating native species without any thought to the long-term consequences…”

She nodded slowly, her eyes going wide at the force behind his monologue. “See? You get it.”

He sat back, forcing out the tension that always gripped him when he dwelled too much on the urgency of the gardens’ mission. “Yeah.”

“So, this festival…”

“What about it?” he asked.

“You’re launching a fundraiser?”

“Yeah.”

“And despite your personal stance on other people, you’re hoping for a good turnout?”

He nodded.

“And I,” she said, pressing her palm to her chest, “am hoping to register new card holders and introduce our programs to new patrons. Many of our old regulars are starting to find us in the gardens, which brings visitors to you. And some of yours might give the library a try now that we’re in a space they’re already familiar and comfortable with. As much as you want us gone, and as much as I want to be back in our building and back to our full operations, our success is kind of tied together right now, isn’t it?”

Jack shrugged then nodded once.

She rolled her eyes at his reluctant agreement. “I think, purely for personal gain, we might get farther as allies than as enemies.”

“We’re working together,” he pointed out. “What more do you want?”

“I don’t know. A truce? A genuine effort to make the most of the situation?”

He could have pointed out that he didn’t need to help her to get her out of his space when the library board was most likely going to abandon their experiment in a few months anyway. But she was looking at him with sincerity, her eyes open and warm, and even if their jobs—and they—were at odds, they were surprisingly in line with their values. He felt her passion for her job, determined but suffocating under the boot of bureaucracy and shitty circumstances. It was exactly how he felt.

He reached across the table. “A truce. All right.” She took his hand, and he held it an extra beat, adding, “I have a question, though.”

“What?”

“That day during the storm. You didn’t want to get on my boat.”

“Is that a question?”

“Why? Because I disapproved of the birds before?”

“Disapproved?” She made a buzzer sound. “We’ll accept scolded. We’ll accept chastised. But not disapproved.”

He raised his hands. “It was a tense situation.”

“And your attitude definitely made it less tense,” she said sarcastically.

“All right. Fine. I’m sorry. But that’s why? I was mean to you, so you didn’t want to get on my boat?”

She groaned into her hands. When she pulled her palms away from her face, she shook her head helplessly. “I was…”

“What?”

“It was embarrassing! I wasn’t proud, okay?” she blurted, a blush burning across her cheeks. “I screwed up. Again. And this time, it was, like, really dangerous. If anything had happened to Briar—” She cut off that thought with a hard shake of her head. “You were right about the birds, that I shouldn’t have taken that risk, just like I should have known better, done better to protect Briar—”

Jack leaned across the table, grabbing her hands before he could think better of it. Her amber eyes snapped to his, wild and wary. “Are you serious?” He leaned even closer, forcing her to hold his gaze, to really hear him. “You think it’s your fault that an unprecedented, catastrophic hurricane caught you unprepared? You think you could have made some simple other choice that thousands of other people also didn’t make?”

“We could have left town before—”

“Yeah, people did that during Rita, and it was a complete disaster. Cars ran out of gas on the freeway.”

She shrugged. “I could have packed a go bag before there was water inside my house. I forgot underwear, Jack.”

He felt his own cheeks burn at that.

But she was on a roll, oblivious to the montage suddenly screaming through his mind—her wet shirt that day, her bare thigh. “Or I could have kept our important documents all in a designated place in one of those safe boxes like a responsible adult instead of having to run around finding them. Or, God, I could have realized my house was in a freaking floodplain and purchased flood insurance.”

Jack swallowed. That meant she’d probably had to foot the bill for her repairs herself. He stopped her. “And all the other people who wound up in the same situation as you,” he said. “Do you think they screwed up? Made the wrong choices? Should they have been ashamed?”

She narrowed her eyes at him but finally said, “No.”

“No. Because it was a natural disaster. I mean, unless you think you’re smarter than everyone else who made the same choices as you?”

“Of course I don’t think that.”

“Then knock it off with thinking you somehow had more control over the situation than anyone else. It was a thousand-year flood. As in, that’s how infrequently a disaster like that happens. No one knew it was gonna be that bad.”

“It’s just—I don’t want to be a…” Her eyelashes lowered and then she twisted to look again for Briar, who was running hand in hand with another girl her age.

“A what?”

She drew in a shaky breath but kept her face turned away. “A victim.”

He waited until she finally peeked back at him. “You’re really gonna make me say this?”

“Say what?”

“The woman I saw in that library,” he told her firmly, “and later on her flooded porch, keeping other people safe, carrying those damn birds again, was the farthest thing from a victim I know.”

She blinked, then huffed, obviously wanting to argue. But something prevented her from speaking. Her throat worked on a swallow twice, and he understood then. Emotion was blocking her voice. This victim thing was probably a bruise she pressed again and again, wishing it didn’t hurt. He knew plenty about that. But he meant what he’d said.

“Listen,” he told her. “We’re not friends, right?”

She expelled a dark laugh. “I guess not.”

“That means I have no reason to lie. I’m not blowing smoke up your ass.”

She studied him a minute, then said in a voice barely above a whisper, “Thank you.” She shook her hair, her face scrunched as if the words were tangled up in something filthy, and added, “Apparently, you don’t even like people. What on earth made you go out to rescue strangers?”

He shrugged. “I had a boat.”

She barked a laugh. “That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“You’re a bit of an enigma, Jack.”

“Not really.”

“To me, you are.”

He shifted under her quiet scrutiny, like she was actively puzzling him out. It made him nervous. “What the hell is on your neck?” he asked, deflecting.

Her hand rose to the streak of mud there. “Ugh. I need a shower. That is drywall joint compound.” She looked down at the bib of her overalls, finding another spot there and scratching at it with her nail.

So she was doing her home repairs herself. Finishing drywall wasn’t the simplest project. His chest tightened with the impulse to offer her help, even though they’d only just agreed not to actively work against each other. But she’d probably balk at the insinuation that she couldn’t tackle her walls herself.

“Anyway,” she said, “now that we’re allies, I guess I can mention that you should add a QR code to your fundraiser banner linked to an online payment system. People are more likely to pay on their phones than carry cash or cards with them.”

“QR code,” he repeated dumbly. A nagging sense of guilt globbed up his insides like a lava lamp. She must have sat on that suggestion before the truce, but now she was putting action behind her words, and he wondered if he owed her a heads-up that he’d applied for the Fullton grant.

But moments passed without him finding the right approach and then Tansy was clearing their trash, saying, “You were right. These might be the best tacos in town.”

He grinned. “Just imagine if you’d managed to get more than half of their contents into your mouth.”

13

Tansy

Tansy couldn’t deny a building sense of optimism. Festival planning with Jack wasn’t suddenly easy, but it was less contentious. Story times and other programs were gaining bigger crowds, and Tansy’s new commitment to working with the environment had opened her eyes to its resilience as winter shifted into spring—vibrant, green growth on the tips of trees and bushes and bluebonnets opening up right on time, despite the recent ruin.

One week before the festival, Tansy led Briar the long way to the library so she could show her a big orb-weaver spiderweb that had recently been constructed in the formal garden where she sometimes ate her lunch now. Dottie, their old neighbor who still watched Briar after school, had forgotten about today’s school holiday and scheduled a doctor’s appointment.

“Can I come to work with you every day?” Briar asked when Tansy finally tugged her along to the library.

“What about school?”

“I could just learn stuff here,” Briar said. She pointed at a sign. “Like, that’s a yaw—yow…”

“Yaupon,” Tansy said, nudging her past the tree. “And we’ll see how you feel after eight hours in our shed. I bet you’ll be begging for school.”

Kai hung back at the Little Green Library with Briar during Tansy’s story time, and by now, the environment was less exciting for the regular kids, so Marianne alone was enough to help Tansy keep them corralled and safe. For the rest of the morning, Briar sat at her elbow while she took care of administrative tasks, dutifully laminating book character illustrations for their new scavenger hunt and then pulling animal books off the rack and reading under the desk.

The only hitch was when Sheila, Tansy’s supervisor from library admin, moved tomorrow’s video call to this afternoon. She had to use a small meeting room in the admin offices because the Wi-Fi in the shed couldn’t reliably support Zoom, and she couldn’t take Briar with her because she didn’t want admin thinking she regularly brought her child to work. But everyone else was busy.

Kai, on their way to running a program for teens, snapped their fingers. “You should ask Ian. He likes kids.”

But Briar didn’t know Ian, and Tansy’s call was in five minutes, which was not enough time to track down the guy in the park somewhere, beg him to babysit, and gauge Briar’s distress level.

“What do you need Ian for?” Jack asked, emerging around the side of the shed.

“Where did you come from?” Tansy replied.

Briar beelined to his side, grabbing his hand. “I could stay with Jack.”

“He can’t watch you,” Tansy said gently, bending down to Briar’s level and slipping her hand from Jack’s. “You’ll just stay here. I’ll only be thirty minutes.”

“I can’t?” Jack pushed his sleeves up his strong, hairy, weirdly beautiful forearms. “Why can’t I?”

“Because,” she sputtered. “Oh, come on, don’t tell me you don’t have a to-do list a mile long right now.”

He shrugged. “Nothing she can’t tag along for.”

Tansy squinted at him, trying to figure him out. He didn’t like kids in the gardens. He wasn’t a patient person.

But Briar seemed strangely comfortable with him.

And she needed to leave right now to make her meeting.

“Please, Mom?” Briar begged.

“Okay. Fine. But be careful,” she told her daughter, shooting Jack a threatening glare to be sure he knew that instruction applied to him as well.

—

She was going to kill him. She was going to murder Jack and dump his body in the creek.

Twenty minutes ago she’d returned from her meeting—Sheila wasn’t outwardly enthusiastic about her festival plans but had approved her request to fund a pipe-cleaner antennae craft—and instead of finding Jack making Briar pull weeds in the herb garden or doing whatever he did in his defunct greenhouse, the man and her child were nowhere to be found. Marianne was no help, claiming she’d been inundated with calls so she hadn’t seen which direction they’d gone. So now, after completing the inner loop and the outer loop of the park, Tansy was bypassing caution tape and forging into the trees.

She’d worn sandals today, and little rocks and grit kept slipping into them as she crunched along the sandy path. Just when she stopped to shake them out, a sound pierced the air—a shriek.

Briar.

Tansy didn’t think, just raced up the slope toward the break in the trees. She stumbled into the clearing, slowing before the edge of the ravine, and looked down into the shallow creek where Briar was in the water. She shrieked again, hopping from one foot to the other and twisting her shoulders to avoid each splash. Jack was on the opposite bank, a good ten feet away—too far to help her.

“Hey!” Tansy bellowed from her vantage point well above them.

Jack lifted a hand to shade his eyes and pantomimed a big shrug, not understanding her.

From the middle of the creek, Briar turned and waved.

“I’m coming, honey!” To Tansy’s left was a narrow foot-worn path that went down a few yards to another lookout point, but when she reached that ledge, there was nowhere else to go. She returned to her original spot, and by then Jack had waded back across. The water hit about mid-shin on him and just below the knees on Briar, but adrenaline pumped through Tansy’s veins nonetheless.

“Over there!” Jack called up to her, pointing to her right.

She wanted to scream at him that this was the exact opposite of being careful, but she didn’t want to alarm Briar. She fought overgrown shrubs, hissing when a thorn snagged her wrist, and finally discovered a set of wooden steps installed right into the side of the ravine. She made her way down, and when Briar came running across the narrow, sandy beach, she fully expected tears.

“Mom! Come look!” Briar exclaimed instead, snatching Tansy’s hand and dragging her across the sand.

Tansy planted her feet and turned Briar by the shoulders, smoothed her wild hair back from her flushed face. “I heard you. Are you okay?”

Jack was standing a few feet back, his khaki work pants rolled up to his knees, scratching his beard.

“The water’s really, really cold,” Briar said, eyes bright and excited. “But you get used to it. Come on, come on.”

Tansy let her daughter tow her past Jack but pulled her hand free as Briar splashed back into the water, shrieking with delight, not alarm. “Dig your toes under the sand,” Briar told her, rooting her own feet under the water. “It feels so weird!”

Tansy shot a sidelong glare at Jack. He had the decency to look contrite even before she hissed, too quiet for Briar to hear, “You don’t take a kid down a ravine without their mother’s permission.”

“Sorry.”

“Never mind the fact that, after everything, she is terrified of this creek.”

His gaze swung slowly to Briar, who was shuffling through the creek bed, churning up clouds of sand. The water was slow-moving and shallow, more brown than clear. He kept his voice low. “Is she?”

“Yes. For God’s sake, she will only take a bath one time out of ten. I had to cut her hair short because she wouldn’t let me wash and detangle it for weeks after—” She cut herself off. “This stupid creek is the source of the worst thing that ever happened to her, and you just threw her right in it.”

“The worst thing to happen to her?” he asked. “Or to you?”

Tansy floundered for a response, indignation burning in her chest. He didn’t know the first thing about her or Briar or what their lives had been like these last several months. And yet, she didn’t have an answer to his question. She had blamed this creek for those awful days of flooding and Briar’s heightened anxiety since, but here Briar was, seemingly unfazed by it. If she wasn’t locked into a fight with this man, Tansy would have rejoiced.

“You shouldn’t have brought her down here. Not without my permission. It’s dangerous, and you had no idea how she might have reacted.”

Briar threw two fistfuls of colorful, polished pebbles in the air, laughing as they rained down near the far bank. “Mom, there’s, like, a million pretty rocks in here. Rainbow colors. I already picked my favorites.” Her pockets, Tansy noticed now, were bulging.

“She wasn’t scared,” Jack murmured, close to Tansy’s ear. “She asked to go in. For what it’s worth.”

Tansy’s eyes snagged on his and then on a wild, loose wisp of his hair blowing in the soft breeze. It danced across his cheek, catching in his beard. She wanted to tuck it back. He was too loose, too unkempt.

His eyes remained steady on her. He nodded, wordlessly insisting that she look again at her daughter, who, no, was not scared, wasn’t even the slightest bit agitated. Tansy expelled the breath she’d had lodged in her throat since that shriek.

“I’m still mad,” she told him, but the anger had drained from her voice and from her muscles.

“Come in.” His big hand wrapped around her wrist and tugged.

She looked at his hold on her, startled by the touch, but also intrigued by the little rush of warmth it injected into her veins. She hopped on one foot to reach down for her sandal and then switched feet. Stepping in, she hissed, “Holy sh—shoot.”

Just ahead of her, Jack’s shoulders shook with his low chuckle, that rockslide rumble. “Your toes will go numb in a minute and then you’ll be fine.”

“I don’t want my toes to go numb,” she argued, hugging her sandals to her chest and shivering pathetically.

But he was right. Soon, the stabbing pain from the cold leveled off, and she waded into a sunny spot where the murky water glimmered in the bright midday light. The sunshine warmed the back of her neck and her bare arms. Her heartbeat remained slightly frenzied—first in response to her child going missing and then in response to something less tangible, something related, she was sure, to the fact that this creek had destroyed everything. But she drew in slow breaths and felt her throbbing pulse settle.

At the sound of a distinct caw, she looked up to see a big black crow soaring along the length of the creek. “We have crows here?” She couldn’t remember ever seeing one in town, only the disconcerting, scragglier grackles that invaded the Walmart parking lot like a Hitchcock movie.

“Yep,” Jack answered.

She’d lost tabs on him for a few minutes, focusing all her nervous attention on Briar. With his pants rolled up under his knees, she now knew that in addition to beautiful forearms, he had defined calves covered in dark hair. It fit with his rugged aesthetic. She remembered Kai suggesting he probably bathed in this creek, and her mind immediately supplied images of an equally furry chest. She wasn’t sure when she’d become someone who found beards and chest hair attractive.

“I’m going to make friends with a crow one day,” Briar declared. “They have really good memories. They’ll bring you presents if you feed them.”

“I’ve heard that,” Jack said, picking up a rock and skipping it upstream. And that was another unfairly, bafflingly sexy thing, the loose, nonchalant way he sidearmed that rock across the surface.

Tansy didn’t care about brawny muscles or wilderness skills. Her romantic fantasies included smart conversation, doing the crossword over breakfast with someone, and reading before bed under matching his-and-hers bedside table lamps. Not that she’d ever really had that before. Charlie was always a night owl and late to rise, and in the last stretch of their relationship, they’d gone entire days without talking.

“Will you show me how?” Briar asked, peering curiously at Jack’s handful of flat rocks.

Tansy watched him wordlessly position Briar’s fingers around the curve of the rock, guide her through a few practice swings, and then stand back.

Briar’s rock skipped twice, and you’d think she’d won Olympic gold for the enthusiastic cheer that Tansy let out. In her excitement, she dropped the sandals she was still hugging to her chest, lunged to retrieve them, and slipped, catching herself somewhere between downward dog and a bear crawl. Her skirt dipped into the water, and her hands and feet were too far apart to simply push herself back up, her fingers and toes sinking slowly into the sandy creek bed.

Jack’s arm looped under her stomach and hoisted her upright. “My God, watch your step,” he grunted, his front pressed way too close to her back as the water eddied around her calves. He’d caught her sandals and offered them to her.

“I’m indoorsy,” she defended with a huff.

She should have moved. She should have taken the sandals and put a normal distance between them. And for that matter, he should have released his arm from her waist. But neither of them did those things.

For a fleeting moment, she let herself go loose in his hold, lean into it just a little. She kept finding herself accidentally pressed against this man. It worried her how much she liked it. Any man, she supposed, would have this effect on her. It had been so long since she’d been touched in any way that didn’t position her as a friend or a mother.

Pathetic.

“You all right?” Jack asked, his knee-jerk sharpness softened and his warm breath tickling her neck.

She knew he was only asking because she’d fallen, but the question felt bigger. Like he’d felt that loose shift in her, how she would let him shape her like putty if he wanted to. She shivered at the thought. “Probably going to end up with an infection from some flesh-eating creek bacteria,” she said, checking the thin scrape on her wrist.

“Here.” He pressed the sandals into her stomach, removing his arm, and then he stepped back and unbuttoned his shirt. He had a threadbare white T-shirt on underneath, which Tansy at once appreciated and despised because she was now quite interested in the exact topography of his chest. He shook out the sleeves he’d rolled up and draped the shirt over her shoulders. Because he thought she’d shivered from cold. Well, that was a much less embarrassing explanation than the fact that his warm torso pressed to her back and his strong arm banded around her waist had made her viscerally aware of every cell in her body.

His shirt smelled like him: sunscreen, herbs, dirt, and sweat. Summer. There was absolutely no logical reason she should want to tuck her nose into the collar to breathe it in more deeply, which meant maybe this attraction she felt was a chemical thing. It was science. Inevitable.

And impossible. Her life was already too messy to invite a guy like Jack into it, even if he’d dialed down his hostility since their truce, even if his generous reframing of her hurricane decisions had been the first thing to actually ease her mind.

Jack had told her himself that he preferred uncomplicated. He didn’t do relationships. Between Briar, the library, and the house, a casual arrangement was all she had room for in her life anyway. But Tansy knew herself. And she could tell from how stirred up she felt merely brushing against him, merely smelling him, if she acted on this attraction, she’d be utterly lost in him. Responsible people didn’t throw themselves to the wolves.

After threading her arms through his long sleeves, she wrung out her skirt and twisted it into a knot above her knees.

Jack abruptly marched several paces upstream, muttering something that sounded a lot like, “Your fucking skirts.”

It was time to head back. She was supposed to be working right now, and so was Jack. But Briar was hunting for another smooth rock to skip, and the excited spark in her eyes, the looseness in her shoulders, made Tansy hold off.

Together, the three of them waded downstream. They watched a heron lurch along a bluff on the opposite bank and dive gracelessly into the water. Again and again it did this, climbing up, diving down, and coming up empty. Every time, Briar giggled the infectious, full-bellied laugh Tansy so rarely heard from her anymore. The sound pushed laughter up her own throat, but with it came sudden emotion that she had to fight to swallow back down. She was afraid to breathe, afraid to spoil this unexpected stretch of Briar so unrestrained and carefree.

“Never seen that guy catch anything,” Jack remarked.

“How do you know it’s the same one?” Briar asked.

“You spend enough time in one place, you start to recognize the regulars.”

“Does he have a name?” Briar asked.

Jack shrugged. “Never thought to name him. What do you think it should be?”

“Harry,” Briar said immediately. “Because he’s shaggy like he has hair, and Harry sounds like heron.”

“Harry it is.”

They went on like this, with Jack identifying animal tracks (deer, coyote, no bobcats) and trees (American sycamore, loblolly pine, magnolia). He answered Briar’s questions like he was speaking to an adult. Tansy supposed it was a lack of experience with kids rather than a particular skill with them, but it was exactly the right approach with Briar, who knew when she was being talked down to. Jack didn’t overexplain, giving her just enough information to ask another question or make her own observations. For long stretches, the two of them were lost in their own little world, Tansy an unnecessary, trailing chaperone, able to simply enjoy the gentle shush of water and the sun on her skin.

After a while, their quiet murmuring receded into the background, and Tansy really looked at the deep scar in the earth and the harmless, shallow water meandering lazily through it that had once overflowed and destroyed so much. She watched the pine trees sway up along the ridge, still standing, although so many others had toppled over in the sodden ground. Every time a crow or egret soared overhead—birds she didn’t even know lived here—she felt the same electric spark of wonder. To be surprised in this way felt hopeful and expansive. Even something as simple as a half dozen turtles sunning themselves on a log felt like a gift.

She turned her face to the sunshine. This place that had made her palms sweat and her heart race less than an hour ago now felt almost holy.

And as Jack guided her and Briar through it, naming all the species, acquainting them as one might introduce old and new friends…well, maybe she was starting to see him differently, too.

14

Jack

With each step up the staircase back out of the ravine, the muscles in Jack’s back clenched more tightly. The urgent drumbeat of his to-do list had faded under Briar’s infectious, free laughter, and the vague, nagging sense that he was always running out of time was smothered by the reverent calm emanating from Tansy. For this past hour and a half, he felt like they’d stepped outside time, or more fully into one suspended moment of it.

They were a third of the way up the staircase when Briar tugged Tansy to a stop and complained, “My legs are tired.”

For the briefest moment, weariness slipped through Tansy’s smile, but she came down the few steps to piggyback her.

Briar turned to him. “I want Jack.”

The sunshine glinted off the boat pin he’d given her, golden and bright. He liked that she wore it, that it seemed to give her some sense of security.

Tansy was gearing up to gently redirect Briar, just like she had back at the library earlier, but he headed it off, crouching low before Briar and turning his back to her. “Hop on.”

Briar wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her cheek to the back of his shoulder, completely loose-limbed and trusting. He stepped up just below Tansy to resume their climb, but she didn’t move.

“This okay?” he asked.

She reached out, and for a moment, he thought she was going to touch his cheek. His heart kicked up, wanting it. Instead, she threaded her fingers through Briar’s curls over his shoulder. She was looking at her daughter when she said, “As long as it’s okay with you.”

It surprised Jack just how okay this was. “Wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t.”

For the first time, he noticed a dusting of freckles that spilled across the apples of her cheeks and her nose. As if sensing him studying her, her eyes slid to his, open and shining in the afternoon light, steady on him so long that he whispered, “What?”

She shook her head a little, as if she couldn’t believe whatever she was thinking. Then, she leaned into the opposite side from where Briar’s head rested heavily against him and said, low and soft, “You’re really great with her. Not everyone gets her. But you make it look…easy.”

“It is easy,” he said immediately.

Tansy’s eyes shone in the afternoon light, something like awe in her expression. It caught him off-guard. She started up the steps again, and he followed, wanting her to say more, wanting her to spell out the exact meaning of that expression for him. He shifted Briar a little higher on his back, and a sick-sweet feeling of déjà vu washed over him, although he’d never done this before. He wasn’t glimpsing a memory of something real, but of something he’d imagined once, a long time ago. Something he’d wanted. A person he’d wanted to be.

But he’d never gotten to be that guy. He literally was not made for it. He’d given up ideas like that a long time ago.

Tell that to his heart, though, which felt like it was pulsing straight through his back, reaching for the comforting heft of Briar there, while also spiraling out forward to Tansy. She glanced back as though she felt it. But he knew better. She was simply tethered to Briar, always gently orbiting her and managing her tides, like a moon to Briar’s planet. He supposed that made him some clunky meteor, drifting into their pull, hoping to get sucked in.

When the hell had that happened?

At the top of the stairs, Tansy wove through the dense trees, holding back branches for him, until they reentered the main park. He felt like he was coming out of a dark movie theater expecting it to be night, only to emerge into blinding afternoon sunlight. It was disorienting.

At the library, Tansy hugged Briar to her side and said to him, “I know this wasn’t how you wanted to spend your afternoon, but thank you.”

As it turned out, it was exactly how he wanted to spend his afternoon. It was how all afternoons should be spent. The inexplicable certainty of the thought rattled him.

He tried to tell her it was no trouble. But his mind was staticky, buzzing like that beehive in the greenhouse wall. “Right,” he mumbled. “Or…not right—it wasn’t a…”

And then he bolted.

“Okay. Bye then,” he heard her say. “Sorry, I guess.”

If his abrupt departure put her right back to being annoyed by him, that was probably for the best.

—

When Amy called a little after five, Jack was alone in Greta’s office—his office now—punching the same button on the printer with increasing force as the computer announced it was having trouble communicating with the printer but offered no additional context for why the two machines wouldn’t sync up.

“Hey,” he muttered into his cell, scrubbing his face in frustration.

“Oh, you answered,” Amy said.

“Was I not supposed to?”

“I just figured it’d go to voicemail like the last ten times.”

“It hasn’t been ten ti—”

“I need a favor.”

Jack gave her his full attention, abandoning the printer and turning to look out the narrow vertical window into the park below. He’d been inexplicably agitated all afternoon, and catching up on office work, so he could avoid Tansy after that awkward departure earlier, had only exacerbated the tension spooling at the base of his neck.

“I was hoping to borrow your truck. I’m picking up something that won’t fit in my car.”

“What are you picking up?”

“Can I just swing by in a bit? I’ll only need it for, like, an hour.”

“Hold on. If it won’t fit in your car,” he said, “does that mean it’s heavy? Something you shouldn’t be lifting?”

“Here we go,” she said on a weary sigh. “Never mind. I’ll just ask someone el—”

“Where are you picking it up?”

“Costco.”

He smiled. “You getting a truckload of toilet paper or what?”

“If you must know, it’s a grill for Omar for our anniversary. It’s a surprise.”

Jack turned off the computer monitor. Any excuse to get out of this office. “I’m on my way.”

—

The first thing he noticed was Amy’s baby bump. She was wearing a stretchy knit dress that hugged her stomach, and as they walked through the store, she kept caressing one palm over the curve of it. She caught him noticing, and he looked away. She didn’t say a word, just led him to a grill in a huge box and let him muscle it awkwardly into their cart.

On the drive here, she’d blasted his AC and angled the vents at herself, telling him if she got remotely overheated she’d puke in his truck. Then she’d popped a couple hard candies that were supposed to settle her stomach and closed her eyes for the whole drive. They hadn’t talked. And Jack had been pretty proud of himself for not voicing his concerns about her health.

Now that they were headed back to her house, she seemed to be feeling better despite them hitting bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway, Jack’s truck stopping and going in annoying spurts. She turned to him, her belly pressing against the middle console, and said, “How are things without Greta?”

He shrugged. “About the same. Although I had no idea how many damn emails these people were sending her. Now, they’re all coming to me.”

Amy laughed softly, palming the top of her belly. He clenched the steering wheel and changed lanes, only to have to slam on the brakes when someone else cut in right in front of him. He growled in frustration.

“I’m not in a hurry,” Amy told him gently. “We’ll get there when we get there.”

Jack discreetly rubbed at the sharp spot in his chest, the place that had constricted in waves all afternoon and was back at it with even greater force now. He felt caged in this truck and in his own body, his ribs too rigid around his lungs, his skin too tight all over. He hadn’t managed a full breath in hours—not since he’d been shin-deep in the creek with Tansy and Briar—but it was worse now. And he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Couldn’t burn it off with exercise like he preferred. And he couldn’t breathe through it without alerting Amy.

“Jack,” she said softly, knowingly, and hell, he couldn’t hide this from her even without doing the stupid breathing exercises.

“What?” he asked anyway, playing dumb.

She reached over and squeezed his wrist, making him loosen his grip on the wheel. “It’s not just the traffic. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

“But it’s anxiety?”

He shrugged and then nodded, embarrassed.

“Because of…”

He glanced at her when she trailed off, and she was looking down with a frown at both hands on her belly.

“No,” he said forcefully. Even though he felt like if he looked directly at her, he was too aware of her body, and if he didn’t look, then he was being weird, and that mental contortion probably meant he wasn’t managing his worry as well as he wanted to.

“I’ve had a bad day,” he said. But his body rejected the sentiment immediately. “Actually, it was a pretty great day for a while.” He huffed a bitter laugh. “But I’m too fucked up to just have a good day and leave it at that.”

Amy’s mouth pinched to one side.

He didn’t let her push back, adding, “Tansy said something to me today. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“What’d she say?”

“It’s a long story.”

Amy gestured out the front windshield to the congested traffic. “We’ve got time.”

So he told her about Tansy’s meeting and Briar asking to go with him and the panic he’d felt about fifty yards from the library when he realized he didn’t know what to do with a kid. It had been quickly dispelled when Briar noticed the big live oak branch he’d braced with bolts—tree surgery—instead of cutting it off because he hadn’t been able to stomach hacking apart one more tree in the park. She’d asked all about it, genuinely curious.

“Does ImYourDadNow have YouTube videos for tree stuff?” Briar had asked. “That’s who my mom watches when she has to fix something.”

“Your mom’s pretty resourceful, huh?”

She’d replied matter-of-factly, “We’re independent women.”

“Next thing I know,” he told Amy, “we’re down in the creek, and Tansy finds us, and she’s pissed because she thinks Briar’s gonna get hurt or melt down or something. Supposedly, she’s been struggling since the storm—Briar—but I didn’t see any of that. Just this smart kid who’s kind of cautious until she’s sure. She’s observant and curious and brave. I thought Tansy was gonna nix the whole situation. But she stayed. And we all just…” He shrugged. “Hung out in the water and skipped rocks, and it was…perfect, Ames. I can’t explain it.”

“Sounds pretty nice.”

He nodded, dreading voicing the next part. For a long stretch, he focused on driving, on slow breaths through his nose, on unclenching his jaw.

“Briar asked me to carry her up the steps when we left,” he said after a while, eyes straight ahead. “And Tansy said…” He swallowed. “She said some people don’t really get Briar, I guess because she’s shy at first and interested in bugs and nature and stuff, but that I’m good with her.”

Amy hummed, and for some reason, that simple sound of surprise made Jack’s throat constrict and his sinuses burn. He hadn’t even confessed the next part yet, which had lit the fuse he’d spent all afternoon trying to put out.

“That meant something to you?” she observed.

He swallowed against the tightness. “Amy, I was thinking this kid is impossible not to get. Not to fucking…care about.”

He looked at her then, needing to see if this hit her as hard as it had him. Her eyebrows lifted, but she also smiled softly. Not shocked. Simply pleasantly surprised.

“And it’s not just Briar. You should have seen Tansy today. She was so different—quiet and sweet and so there. She went from hating that creek to, I think, seeing what’s beautiful about it. I mean, she lit up over some fucking turtles.”

“You like her.”

Jack couldn’t respond to that. His jaw wouldn’t open to let him.

“It’s okay to like her,” Amy said. “And Briar.”

“Doesn’t feel okay,” he admitted, his voice a hoarse whisper. He blew out a ragged breath, cleared the emotion from his throat, and clenched his hands more tightly on the wheel. He didn’t understand where this was even coming from.

“What’s wrong with me?” He laughed, trying to break up some of the tension in the quiet cab, but the question came out too raw and honest. He had to blink his vision clear.

“Oh, Jack,” she murmured. Then, “Have you thought about going back to therapy?”

He laughed harder this time. “Shit, I’m beyond your pep talks?”

She didn’t laugh. She studied her hands on her stomach. “I’m just worried I’m not the best person to help. Maybe I’m part of the problem.”

“If you are, then I am fucked up.” He had to hit the brakes too hard again and threw his arm across her on instinct. He pulled it back, aware that, like usual, he’d overreacted. “Jesus,” he bit out, frustrated with himself. “That’s not how I want to be with you.”

“I know, and maybe I’m painting it with too broad a stroke.”

“You are.”

“Okay, fine. I just think…” She angled herself more fully toward him. “You had this great day with a kid who sounds a lot like you, actually, and her mom, who seems like she’d fight the whole world for her people and trusted you today with the most important one. And maybe you’ve had this sideways glimpse of what you gave up. And that hurts because…maybe you didn’t have to give it up.”

“I didn’t give it up. I didn’t choose—”

“Not when Sophie filed for divorce. But after. God, you thought it was tough seeing me after my surgery, but you didn’t see yourself after she left.”

“Not remotely the same,” he insisted.

“Agree to disagree.”

He remembered the look on her face the day she’d stormed into his house, turned on all the lights, ordered him into the shower to sober up, and cleaned his kitchen, too. He’d been in a bad place.

“I know you pulled it together then,” Amy said, “but I don’t think you ever meaningfully recovered. I think you just cut off anything that could hurt you in the same way again and told yourself you never wanted more. And I get it, but it kills me to see you rewrite your story based on Sophie’s shitty choices. And now I’m having a baby, and I can see how uncomfortable it is for you, and other than Omar, you’re my most important person—”

“I’ll be fine, Amy. I’ll be better. Fuck, I shouldn’t have dumped all this on you.”

She pressed herself even farther across the center console and firmly squeezed his forearm. “That’s not what I’m saying. It’s good that you’re feeling things again. But there’s a lot that you stuffed down. You should deal with it this time, for real, and you should have support from someone who doesn’t complicate that. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I’m happy for you and Omar,” he insisted. His pulse hammered at the thought that she was this concerned about him. He merged into the exit lane, impatient to get out of this traffic and to look Amy in the eye instead of having this conversation half distracted.

“I know,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make it about me. You wanted to talk about Tansy, and I just…”

Jack rubbed his face, weary. “I don’t even know what this is with her. If it’s even anything. We had one nice afternoon.”

“That’s about all it took for me to fall for Omar,” Amy pointed out, her voice warm with affection, lighter again.

“It’s complicated.”

“Yep. And scary. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. I mean, do you think I wasn’t scared when I had my operation? I kept thinking, what if I elect to have open-heart surgery to save my life and it kills me?”

Jack swallowed. He’d had that fear, too.

“But I took the risk. And look at what I get now.” She palmed her stomach affectionately, tearing up. “I mean, I’m sick all the time, but I’m so happy.”

Jack thumbed the corner of his eye discretely. “The fucking heart card, huh? You always gonna have that over me?”

She laughed. “Probably.”

They rode in silence the last mile and a half to her house. Jack unloaded the grill and helped her tuck it behind boxes in the garage. Then she pulled him into a tight hug.

“Take your time, Jack,” she said, into his shoulder. “Omar and I will give you space or support, whatever you need. But this is an opportunity to rebuild the things that broke with Sophie. Whether that leads to something with Tansy or not, it’s worth doing the work.”

“Yeah,” he said gruffly.

Then she pulled back, jostled his shoulders playfully, and added, “In a way, you’re doing heart surgery, too. Just a different kind.”

15

Tansy

The day of the Pollinator Festival, the weather was perfect and Tansy felt, for the first time since the storm, like the library was back in its prime.

The gardens were full of families and other visitors, meandering comfortably from the educational tables at the front entrance to the horseshoe and mega-size Jenga games on the main lawn, story time sessions in the courtyard, the bird migration game along the back path, and finally to the Little Green Library, where a feast of titles borrowed from other branches were on offer on two long tables under a temporary canopy. Tansy rotated between leading short, hourly story time sessions, registering new card holders, assisting with the pipe-cleaner antennae craft, and applying temporary insect and flower tattoos on people with wet sponges. Her cheeks ached from smiling all morning at all the excited kids running around with butterfly-wing capes and paper-flower crowns. This was the best version of library energy, and she wanted to bottle it up and keep it forever.

Briar hung close to Tansy in the morning, but after their brief lunch break, she was ready to go explore other parts of the festival. Tansy had ten more minutes before her one o’clock story time, so she agreed to wander with her before resuming her duties. She shouldn’t have been surprised that Briar’s real interest was in finding Jack. She headed directly for the endpoint of the guided tour, where he was finishing up with a small group.

“And finally, we have this climbing rose,” he said, presenting a tall, unwieldy bush with reddish-pink blooms. “Following the hurricane, volunteers came from all over Texas and Louisiana to help us with cleanup and repairs. We had plants ripped from the ground and washed into the woods, for example, and those folks helped us retrieve and assess them and replant the ones we could. Some came with donations, which helped a lot because our budget has been tight.”

Tansy realized the commissioner was among the group now as he pushed forward in his politician’s suit and tie, alligator skin boots, and big black Stetson to clap a chummy hand on Jack’s shoulder. “I’m not a numbers guy, but it’s clear the budget, paired with a little creativity on park staff’s end, has enabled a miraculous recovery here in the gardens. To my eye, it’s been restored to its former beauty and then some.”

Jack’s jaw clenched, and he eyed the commissioner’s hand still gripping his shoulder.

“Now, I know this rose has a special story. Maybe you could share that with us,” the commissioner prompted.

“When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans,” Jack said, sidestepping subtly out of the commissioner’s grasp, “a gardener there named Peggy Martin had a rose garden with about four hundred fifty species in it. Out of all of them, only one bounced back after the prolonged exposure to the salt water Katrina brought. She’d grown it from a cutting and couldn’t pin down its origin, so it’s now known as the Peggy Martin rose, or the Katrina rose, and this one was grown from a cutting from that original plant.”

“Katrina rose,” the commissioner echoed with the soulful emphasis of a preacher. “A symbol of hope and resilience. And, boy, is she a beauty.”

“As you can see,” Jack said, unaffected, “it’s also well suited to our zone, if you happen to be looking for something new in your own garden.”

The tour dissipated with the commissioner snagging someone who looked like a reporter and saying, “Let me clarify some of what he said.”

Jack answered questions from a few people, oblivious to the intense flirtatious energy of the final woman who lingered. She touched his forearm and slid in closer to ask on a giggle, “Do you offer house calls to help a clueless gardener get started?”

Tansy’s face must have given away the flash of annoyance that burned through her. Jack followed her beeline glare at the woman’s hand on his arm, his lips twitching into a quick grin. He clutched that spot he routinely squeezed on the back of his neck, making her let go. “Not at this time,” he said.

“Well, shoot,” the woman pouted.

“Hi, Jack,” Briar cut in, shifting from one foot to the other impatiently. Her pipe-cleaner ladybug antennae bobbed with the movement.

“Hey, Briar.” He shrugged apologetically at the woman. “If that answers your questions…”

“If I think of anything else, I know where to find you,” she said.

Was this how he got women, by looking like he walked straight out of an REI catalogue and talking knowledgeably about plants? Tansy couldn’t even be that bitter about it because she herself had become about ten percent more attracted to him during their afternoon at the creek two weeks ago. That thought stirred a heavy feeling in her stomach, though. After his abrupt departure that day, she didn’t know why, but she was pretty sure he’d been avoiding her for the last two weeks.

“It’ll be someone else here in a few minutes,” Jack told his admirer, “but anyone on staff can answer your questions.”

Then he turned his full attention to Briar. “Hey, sorry about that. You having a good time?”

“I’m bored from helping Mom.”

He laughed, and his eyes crinkled in a way that made Tansy’s heart clench. “You two on a break?” he asked, turning his lingering smile on Tansy.

“Only for a few more minutes.” She couldn’t help but add with a hint of sarcasm, “But don’t let us get in the way of anyone’s pressing gardening questions.”

He grinned knowingly, bigger this time, which made her cheeks burn with embarrassment. She was acting jealous and petty, which was bad enough without him clocking it. He tilted up his chin at the bee version of Briar’s headband on Tansy’s head. “Nice antennae.”

“Can I hang out with you?” Briar asked bluntly, singularly focused on her own agenda.

“Uh…” Jack scratched his beard roughly, something barely perceptible shifting in his posture. The warmth from that crinkly smile cooled.

Tansy felt like someone had dumped ice water over her. She’d turned this over a million times in the last two weeks. Hadn’t he enjoyed their afternoon down in the creek? He’d seemed so open and engaged that day. She thought she’d seen a gentler side of him. But then he’d left so awkwardly, and she’d barely spotted him since. She’d told herself not to read into his absence. But now…

He was clearly stalling. “He might be too busy,” Tansy told Briar, edging herself between them.

Briar didn’t pick up on the subtle maneuvering and asked him point-blank, “Are you busy? Because I can be a good assistant. Just ask my mom.”

“I’m sure you’re a great assistant,” he mumbled, glancing helplessly at Tansy.

She didn’t know what had changed since they’d come back out of the ravine that day. But then, maybe her mistake was thinking what she’d seen in him at the creek was a fuller picture of him, a new layer underneath his gruff exterior, rather than an anomaly. Maybe he hadn’t changed back to this. She’d just given him too much credit, seen gentle patience and softness in him that weren’t really there.

“Please?” Briar pressed.

Tansy had opened her mouth to let him off the hook when something changed like a switch had been flipped. He crouched down, smiled genuinely at Briar, and said, “You know what? Yeah. I’d like to hang out with you. Sorry, I was thinking about something…Doesn’t matter. But we have to make sure it’s okay with your mom first.” He looked up at Tansy, earnestness shining from his face.

Tansy had no idea what to think. But she was due in the courtyard in a few minutes. “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Absolutely.”

“No ravines this time,” she warned.

He raised his palms.

“Fine. Briar, I’ll be back at the canopy after my story time. You’ll come back there when you’re done?”

She nodded.

That settled, Jack asked Briar, “You ever seen butterfly eggs before?”

“No.”

“Want to?”

“Yes,” she said with a firm nod. Then she slipped her hand into his, and Jack took a deep breath before leading the way.

Tansy had a few minutes yet and couldn’t help but follow.

They stopped in the first garden beyond the main entrance and sat on the edge of a raised bed together. Jack began lifting leaves, and Briar marveled at them, smiling broadly, checking with him before ducking her face closer to the plants. He was smiling back, reaching to show her something else.

Tansy wasn’t a hundred percent satisfied, but it was enough for her to head to her one o’clock toddler story time.

She was able to keep an occasional eye on them as she read to toddlers from a picture book in the courtyard. To her surprise, Jack and Briar slowly drew a small crowd of older children. Like the library, this was an environment that felt safe enough for parents to give their kids free rein to wander. They were less vigilant, doing periodic scans of the park, checking that their kid was still around or with someone in a staff shirt, and returning to their conversations.

After showing them the butterfly eggs, Jack seemed to be talking about other plants in the same area, inviting them one at a time to touch things. Briar remained by his side the whole time, taking her role as assistant very seriously. He allowed her to interact with the plants first, and then she helped direct the other kids into a line to take turns looking. Both of them—Briar and Jack—looked surprisingly at ease. Tansy had a hunch it was because Jack could talk easily about plants and the park, even though at other times he was reticent and vaguely rude, and although Briar didn’t have the same plant knowledge, she had an encyclopedic memory for facts about bugs and reptiles and enjoyed instructing people. Being deputized undoubtedly made her feel special. Whatever the reasons, it made Tansy smile to see them both playing well with others.

After she finished her story time, she was due to help patrons under the canopy, but on the short walk over, the sky darkened as a mass of gray clouds crowded out the sun. The hit of anxiety was Pavlovian. It was also secondhand—not her own anxiety originally, but Briar’s. Only, she supposed she was splitting hairs. The dread was in her stomach now, tying her insides in knots.

“Hey,” she greeted Irma, out of breath. “I’m supposed to relieve you, but I think I need to go find Briar. It looks like rain is rolling in, and—”

“Go. I’m fine here.”

“Thank you!” She walked at a quick clip back the way she’d come, lurching into a jog as the first, fat raindrop splattered on her nose.

“Whoa, what’s up?” Kai asked, turning as soon as they passed each other on the path and jogging back alongside Tansy. Ian was with Kai, and they exchanged a quick, wordless goodbye that was so blatantly intimate, if Tansy was less preoccupied, she’d have asked where exactly they’d just come from and what they’d been doing.

“Briar,” she panted.

“Right. The rain.”

Together, they jogged to the garden where Tansy had last seen Briar and Jack. A crowd of maybe twenty children surrounded them now. She slowed to a walk and carefully wound her way through the group to reach Briar, who lit up at the sight of her and said, “Mom, they have pitcher plants here! They’re carnivores!”

“Wow,” Tansy panted, gulping back her worry. “That is so cool.”

“Why are you breathing hard?”

Tansy laughed tightly. “Well, I—” The conundrum: get ahead of the panic and calmly guide her to a place where she would feel secure, or wait and see how Briar handled it when she noticed the change in weather.

A raindrop fell on Briar’s cheek, and she blinked up at the sky. “Oh,” she said, “it’s starting to rain.”

“Right.”

“There was a forty percent chance,” Briar declared reasonably. “I checked earlier.”

The sparse drizzle turned to a soft patter that everyone around them noticed at the same time. It wasn’t an urgent rain. But the clouds seemed to darken overhead by the second.

“Would you like to get somewhere dry?” Tansy asked.

“Okay,” Briar said, but she turned back to the tall, tubelike plants she’d been looking at, distracted by the new discovery. “Do you think they’ll fill up with water?”

“I don’t know. We could come back and check after the rain rolls through.” Tansy mentally patted herself on the back for this response. Dr. Sharon had said that emphasizing the temporary nature of storms was one way to remind Briar that they, like her feelings about them, would pass.

Lightning pulsed like a weak strobe light in the clouds. Briar clocked it and immediately ticked off the seconds on her fingers silently. One, two, three—she was braced for the boom of thunder, but no one else was. Several children shrieked, startled by it.

“Still okay?” Tansy asked Briar.

Briar nodded, finally pulling herself from the plants. “Yes, but I don’t want to get wet,” she said calmly.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

The area was congested now with parents returning for their kids, realizing the light sprinkle was turning to rain, but Tansy and Briar soon reached Kai near the edge of the crowd.

Another rumble of thunder broke over the din of voices. Somewhere a child began to cry, pulling Tansy’s attention back into the fray. She saw Jack off to the side now, deep in a tense-looking conversation with the commissioner, and her step stuttered. Someone needed to help these kids find their parents.

“I’ll take Briar,” Kai said, clocking Tansy’s hesitation.

Tansy started to wave off the offer. Briar was her first priority. But she made it only a few more steps with them before she was pulled back by a child’s warbly cry of, “Mommy?”

“Briar, can you go with Kai while I help these kids?”

Kai, bless them, was removing their outer button-down and draping it over Briar’s hair to keep her dry. Briar nodded and charged ahead, tugging the shirt tight around her face.

Tansy recognized a few kids from her library programs and offered them big, reassuring smiles. The girl who had called for her mom threw her arms around Tansy’s neck when she reached her, and Tansy lifted her to her hip, scanning the crowd, spotting the girl’s mom almost immediately. It took only a couple minutes to reunite the other kids with their families, who then migrated to the covered courtyard to escape the rain. It looked to be a quick shower, blue skies still bright to the north, but it was gaining intensity, already slicking Tansy’s exposed shoulders and dampening her dress and hair.

She was about to head after Briar and get out of the rain herself when the commissioner’s big black Stetson drew her eye back to the men. The commissioner was gripping Jack’s forearm, pulling him in close so he could speak directly into Jack’s ear. The energy of it was confrontational and tense, so she wasn’t surprised when the commissioner made pointed eye contact as he stepped back, as if to confirm understanding or compliance, and then strode off.

Jack turned around and then just stood there, rooted in his spot, his mouth a tight line, his face…stricken. When he finally registered the steady rain pelting him, he ducked his head and bolted for the greenhouse.

And against her better judgment, Tansy followed him.

—

The door creaked as she let herself into the greenhouse. It was a long space, about half a football field, and end-to-end tables with various pots and tools and a smattering of plants ran in three lines all the way to the far side. Although the walls and ceiling were glass, the panes were covered in a grimy film that made them opaque, making the interior not quite dark, but dim enough that her eyes had to adjust.

Jack was about halfway across the space, bent over a table, his hands braced on its surface, his broad back tense, and his head low. Overhead, the rain drummed loudly on the glass ceiling and ran down the sides of the structure in rivulets. Humidity hung in the air. She took a few quiet steps toward him but caught her toe on a pot sticking out from under a table and cursed, and his face half turned.

“This area’s restricted,” he said tightly.

“What was that back there?” she asked, continuing toward him. “With the commissioner?”

“Tansy,” he warned, “you can’t be in here.”

“Too bad.”

He shook his head, but he didn’t move a single other muscle. A frantic energy vibrated from him, like he was literally coming out of his skin.

“Jack.”

He still didn’t look. She came close enough to hear his shallow, panting breaths and see that his back was rising and falling with the effort. He flinched when she touched his shoulder, pushed up to his full height, and strode three big steps away, keeping his back turned the whole time.

“What is this?” she asked. “A panic attack?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he snapped. “I’ve had panic attacks. This is just—”

She wasn’t surprised to hear that he’d had them before. “Just what?”

He bent, clasping his hands to his knees, and breathed shallowly at the cement floor.

“Are you going to be sick?”

“I’ll be fine. Just stop fucking talking, please,” he said gruffly.

And because Tansy truly did not want him to throw up in front of her, she shut her mouth.

For long seconds, he stayed bent over while the rain continued to beat down on the glass. When he finally pushed up to standing again, he dragged a hand down his face and sighed. Tansy swallowed, relieved.

She moved toward him again. “What’s going on, Jack?”

“It’s fucking embarrassing.”

“More embarrassing than getting rescued by boat in a hurricane?”

“It’s a…speaking thing. Publicly.”

“Public speaking?”

He nodded.

“Oh,” she said, truly thrown. “I…don’t understand. When are you speaking in public?”

“In half an hour. The commissioner just dropped it on me. And threatened my job if I go off-message again.”

“What message is that?”

“That this place is fully recovered, even though it’s not.”

Tansy frowned. At the end of his tour earlier, Jack had mentioned their tight budget, and the commissioner had immediately redirected the conversation and then chased down the reporter in the group. She wondered if this speech Jack would now be making was an effort to undo whatever else he must have let slip on that tour.

He was determined not to look at her, or not to let her see him in his agitated state, but she couldn’t keep talking at his back. She slid around in front of him. As soon as he tried to turn away, she grabbed his shoulders firmly and matched his side step, keeping herself directly in his path. He immediately looked to the ceiling. But she could still see the tension notched at his jaw. He was still barely breathing and yet his chest heaved.

“Look at me, Jack.”

He took his sweet time about it. First, he side-eyed her hand on his shoulder. Finally, he cast a pointed glare down his nose at her that said, See? I can look at you.

“What do you usually do to manage this?” Tansy asked.

“Easy. I usually don’t give public speeches.”

She smiled at that bit of snark. “And when you can’t avoid them? Then what?”

He shook his head, and underneath the anger he wore as a near-constant mask, she saw the helplessness gripping him now. “I don’t know,” he said harshly. Then, quieter and palpably weary, “I don’t know. Greta used to do this part.”

“And now you’re the director.”

“Not because I can talk to people.”

“You can talk to people, Jack.”

He frowned and looked to the far end of the greenhouse, where tools lay out on one of the tables.

“Okay,” she said, placating. She slid her hands down his arms to grip his wrists tightly. With a tug, she got his eyes grudgingly back on hers. “Let’s just deal with the next couple minutes. This is your space. You’re in control. No one else is coming in here. Because it’s restricted.”

He huffed, and one corner of his mouth quirked, even though she knew he didn’t want to find her funny.

“We’re alone,” she assured him as the rain continued to thrum loudly, falling around them like a veil. “No public in sight.”

He tipped his face, his hazel eyes finding hers, like he was looking into her now instead of just complying. Quiet as a confession, he said, “You’re the last person I should be alone with in here.”

She laughed. “Because I stress you out?”

He licked his lips, released a shuddering breath, and dropped his gaze to her hands squeezing his thick wrists. “Yeah, something like that.”

“Fine. That’s fair. But I can help you. Briar has attacks like this.”

“It’s not a panic attack.”

Tansy tilted her head back and forth. “Regardless of what we’re calling it, I can help. Are you familiar with box breathing?”

“Yeah,” he groused, “I know about box breathing.”

“Cool. Have you tried it?”

He rolled his eyes.

Tansy drew in a long breath, counting in her head. When he didn’t join her, she arched an admonishing eyebrow and started over. This time he matched her. They each held the air in their lungs until she nodded. His exhale gusted out like he’d been holding it for a minute, not just four seconds. His cheeks flared pink with frustration or embarrassment.

Without a word, she ran through the cycle again, breathing in, holding, and breathing out. He shifted uncomfortably on his feet but gave it another effort, eyes locked intensely on her mouth. After two more rounds, he managed a full breath without gasping. His shoulders visibly relaxed, and the tendons in his wrists went lax in her hands as he released his fists.

“That’s good. You’re good. Now, tell me, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”

He frowned, looking from her mouth down to her neck, to her rain-dotted dress. Something landed, heavy and surprising, in her stomach with that quick sweep.

“During the speech,” she clarified, uncertain what exactly he’d thought she meant.

Jack cleared his throat. “Worst thing? I stand up there like a fucking chump and throw up on that reporter. Or swear in front of a bunch of kids. Lose my job.”

She rolled her eyes. “Okay. I think all that’s pretty unlikely.”

Jack lifted a shoulder.

“What’s the best thing that could happen?” When he scowled, she shook him roughly, knocking him off-balance.

“Jesus,” he huffed. “I…get through it without fucking embarrassing myself.”

“That’s the best thing that could happen? Come on, Jack.”

“I don’t know. People donate.”

“Even better than that.”

“Fine. Fuck. You’re relentless.”

She beamed at him.

He took a deep breath. “People don’t just buy plants and enjoy the park for one day. They come back. They see this place recover for real. They see past all the commissioner’s surface-level bullshit projects to what we’re really trying to do here. Conservation. Responsible land management. Because what happens here, with the creek in particular, affects the rest of the area. And maybe I get a few of these people to plant more natives in their own gardens.”

Tansy hesitated to point out that he was standing taller now, more at ease. That his eyes were no longer wide and wild but sharp and full of conviction.

“What?” he asked, catching her staring.

“You know how to talk about all this,” she said. “It might be one of the only things you talk about so easily, other than how terribly busy you are.”

“Fuck you,” he said with no heat.

“I’m serious, though. You were fine on that tour. That was talking to a group of people, in public.”

“I was just telling them what was right in front of their faces, not asking for their money.”

She ignored his interruption. “On the fly earlier, you taught all those kids about butterfly eggs and pitcher plants and whatever else is in that garden.”

“I was talking to Briar. The other kids just showed up.”

“You lead staff meetings.”

“You’ve seen how I am at those.”

“What I see is that this place is special. Because, that day in the creek, you showed it to me. And before that, at the taco truck, you explained it very clearly—why your work here matters, why it’s more than just a bunch of trees and flowers and photo ops.”

He didn’t have a response to this one. In fact, something softened in his eyes, relieved by her words. Tansy suddenly sensed that coming in here after him was reckless somehow, another choice she hadn’t thought through.

“How’s the nausea?” she asked.

“Gone.”

She let go of his wrists, and when he shot her a confused look, she explained, “There’s a pressure point in your wrist that helps with nausea. That’s why I was holding you.”

He huffed a laugh. “So you just managed me like a fucking baby?”

“Well, you weren’t going to do what I told you, and you seem like the kind of guy who doesn’t believe in acupressure.”

To her surprise, he said, “Thank you.” And instead of taking advantage of their broken contact to retreat like he’d wanted to do this whole time, Jack took a small step closer, the toe of one boot scuffing up against one of her flats. “But don’t expect me to do a grounding exercise next.”

Somehow, that tiny move, an almost imperceptible narrowing between them, made it feel like the warmth and humidity in the greenhouse had just been dialed way up. Tansy’s hands found the security of a table behind her back, and she leaned against it. “I won’t,” she breathed. “Seems like you’re coming back down anyway.”

He didn’t move into the space she’d reasserted between them, but he didn’t move back either, and the seconds stretched while he just looked at her, each one elongating like the moments between a flash of lightning and the answer of thunder, the air crackling with an electric charge.

Now. Or now. Or now.

When he moved, they both watched his hand reaching for her waist. His touch was confident, his hand broad and warm through her cotton dress. She didn’t stop him, pretended not to notice the questioning lift of his eyebrows. He crowded into her space, watchful and steady, invading the last inches, pressing his other hand to her other hip, his temple to hers, his mouth near her ear, where he whispered, “I think…” He swallowed. “I’m still feeling pretty worked up, actually.”

The hairs on the back of Tansy’s neck and arms stood on end. She swayed involuntarily forward, no longer braced back against the table but leaning into every point of contact with him, scraping her cheek across his stubbly beard and bringing her mouth right to the corner of his.

“Tansy,” he said on a sigh.

She felt what he wanted. And suddenly, their roles were flipped, and he was steady and calm while she was vibrating within her skin, so on edge now, so aware of the pull of their mouths, of his strong hands on her body. She ached to give in.

On the count of three, she would step back. She would say the right things. On three, she would extract herself from this greenhouse and from another almost-terrible decision.

One. She looked him in the eye.

Two. She put her hand on the center of his chest, over his pounding heart.

On three, Tansy did not press Jack away from her. Instead, she found purchase in the front of his shirt and yanked his body, finally, urgently, into hers.

His hand pushed roughly from her waist to her neck, fingers catching in her hair and tilting her face up to his. As his mouth crashed greedily over hers, his other arm banded tightly around her back. He groaned into the kiss, and her hips stuttered forward, chasing the pressure of his body and any way to make him make that sound again.

Jack nudged her backward until she met the table. Then he grabbed her thighs and hoisted her onto it.

16

Jack

Jack pushed into the open bracket of Tansy’s legs, and she immediately hooked her ankles around him, tugging him so damn close to her. He pressed his palms to her warm thighs, trying to steady himself as an all-consuming riot barreled through his bloodstream. Any calm he’d regained from her gentle direction was out the window now, but in a way that felt like flying instead of falling. He barely refrained from answering the ache to drive his hips into her. If he let himself, he would go from zero to sixty in two seconds.

Tansy apparently had no such concern. Her teeth caught his lip, sending a jolt down his spine, and then her tongue swept into his mouth. Jack’s restraint snapped. He shoved his hands under her dress, slipping between the table and her thighs and pulling her to where he was already hard for her.

“Oh my God,” she breathed, breaking from the kiss.

He dipped his mouth to her bare clavicle. “Tell me if it’s not okay,” he said before sucking at her skin.

“It’s not just okay,” she panted. “It’s— I want—” She captured his face in both hands to pull him back up and kissed him again, messy and hard and desperate.

Jack didn’t know which was hotter—how viciously she kissed, or her utter inability to string together a sentence. Her nails scraped up the back of his neck and into his hair, and a moan escaped him.

“That,” she said, “that sound.”

Fuck. Five minutes ago he’d been splitting apart, and she’d held him together. But it was starting over again, the buildup of pressure, the threat of combustion. He kissed her hard, relishing towering over her, surrounding her. She gasped and held on, totally at his mercy. Except that gasp was like wind to a brush fire, and he was absolutely the one at her mercy, had been since she’d followed him in here.

He slipped one hand free and palmed from her knee up her smooth, strong thigh, pushing her dress up as he went. “What are you doing to me?” he asked, genuinely wanting to know as he reached the crease of her hip.

“What am I doing?” She squirmed into his touch, impatient, digging her heels harder into the backs of his knees and nearly buckling them.

“Want me to stop?” he countered, swiping one fingertip across the sensitive skin just below the lower hem of her underwear.

She shuddered. “No.”

“Good, because I don’t know if I can.”

Just as his fingers ventured over that line, across the smooth cotton to her center, thunder struck, loud and sudden, and Tansy shot off the table, colliding into his chest. He stepped back, hands knocked loose from her. She covered her mouth, surprise fully dispelling the lust-drunk look that had just been there.

“Just thunder,” he assured her, breathless.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, head shaking now. She looked spooked, but he sensed it wasn’t from the noise.

“What?” he asked. “Was that too much?”

“No, not that. We are in a glass building, Jack. At a family festival. We’re at work.” She tried to sidestep him, smoothing down her clothes, but he caught her arm and made her meet his eyes.

“Fine. Yeah. But other than that…You’re okay?”

Color washed over her cheeks. “I’m fine. I’m just— God, I turned your crisis into—” She rolled her hand over at the wrist a few times, no words coming.

“You think you took advantage of me?” He couldn’t help the twitch of a grin.

“Don’t give me that crinkly smile right now,” she snapped. “You were in the middle of a—”

“Not a panic attack,” he cut in. It was embarrassing that she’d seen him like that. But he also didn’t want his spinning out then to make her spin out now. “I was handling it.”

“I lured you into a sense of—”

“A sense of what?”

She stammered and finally spit out, “Misplaced arousal.”

He laughed because arousal was so clinical and didn’t come anywhere close to describing the genuine heat still thrumming in his veins. “Well, hell, Tansy, you’ve been luring me into something for fucking weeks. It wasn’t the damn box breathing.”

“What are you talking about I’ve lured you for weeks?”

“With your combative little attitude and the flimsy ties on those skirts. I mean, do you own anything with a zipper, or is it all just fabric haphazardly draped around you? That yoga tank top? This?” He gestured accusingly toward where today’s dress tied around the back of her neck, exposing her shoulders and the upper half of her back. “You have any idea how many times I’ve wanted to pull those ties and watch you unravel? My God, Tansy.”

Her mouth fell open. Her cheeks were so pink now, she looked sunburned. He expected her to deny any awareness or intention of driving him crazy with her clothes, but instead, she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin, and said, “Well, I’m not the one who traipses through the woods with my shirt off.”

The memory of that day when she’d found him in the back property repairing that oak branch brought with it a swell of satisfaction. He raised an eyebrow. “Liked what you saw?”

She shook her head but didn’t say no. She was still worried about the glass walls, people seeing them in here. But between the downpour outside and the filmy, fogged-up windows, he was certain they were obscured.

“Are you upset that I kissed you?” he asked carefully. He didn’t want her to have regrets, but he’d rather know if she did.

“I’m not upset. I’m embarrassed. I was trying to help, not confuse you.”

Jack groaned, dragging a hand down his mouth and beard. “I wasn’t confused, Tansy. I knew what I was doing. But I’m gonna feel like a real jackass if you didn’t want it, too. If that”—he gestured at the table—“was pity.”

For a beat, she looked genuinely offended, and hell, he loved that angry scrunch of her nose and the narrow squint of her eyes. “Is that typically how people who pity you kiss you?”

“Nobody kisses me like that,” he confessed, unable to mask the rush of feeling that came out with it.

“Well, then,” she said, as if this was his answer. She smoothed her dress again and frowned up at the glass ceiling, where the rain eased into a gentle patter now, the storm already passing. She shook her head at it and said, almost to herself, “God, I’m a mother. What is wrong with me?”

He didn’t mean to keep laughing at her, but he couldn’t help it. “Moms don’t kiss?”

She glared at him. “Moms kiss. I’m just remembering my child, whom I shouldn’t have forgotten in the first place. I need to go check on her. And you need to give your speech soon.”

“Of course,” he said, sobering at the reminders of both.

“You should find a friendly face in the crowd and just look at them if you feel overwhelmed,” she offered. “Ian. You could look at Ian.”

“And if that doesn’t work?” he asked. “Should I picture someone naked?”

Everything from her cheeks down to her heaving chest flushed pink. “Probably depends if you have a podium to hide behind.”

His chuckle rumbled through him. “Go,” he said, shaking his head. “Check on Briar.”

She backed toward the door. “You’re okay now, though?”

Jack was painfully hard and more than a little disoriented, but he figured that wasn’t what she meant. “Right as rain.”

She continued slowly backing away. When she caught her hip on a table, she yelped, and the black-and-yellow antennae on her head pitched down. She yanked them off with a sharp curse, embarrassed, and shoved them in her pocket. “I’m going now,” she announced.

But instead, she drank him in with a thorough once-over, biting into her kiss-swollen lip, her eyes openly burning. She straightened her dress and then her hair.

“You’re going,” he reminded her with a grin.

She laughed, breathless and dazed. “Don’t follow me out looking like that,” she warned, a flirty smile lighting up her face. Then she speedwalked out of his greenhouse.

17

Tansy

“Are we really not going to talk about it?” Kai asked, interrupting Tansy’s review of the festival. The librarians sat in the sunshine for their morning meeting on Thursday, enjoying the two-week window of perfect spring weather before humid summer heat would descend.

Tansy had finally sorted through all the data from the festival and compiled her report to admin. They’d hit every goal they’d set for new card registrations and on-site checkouts, and already program attendance this week was up, with several new patrons they’d met on Saturday. But all Tansy’s colleagues wanted to talk about was the mysterious, incremental facelift their shed had been receiving each night this week.

Monday morning following the festival, they’d arrived to find a new seating area with a picnic table and umbrella, two benches, and a hammock in the empty space just beyond their building, where they were sitting now. Tuesday, the weeds around the building’s perimeter had been pulled, and raised flower boxes adorned the side facing the path, little pink and purple flowers sprouting out of fresh soil. Wednesday, their The Little Green Library sign that kept listing to one side since Saturday’s brief downpour was upright again, and a larger one that looked hand carved, its neat letters filled in with a darker stain, hung above the door. The single window had been freshly cleaned.

The latest eye-grabber was the pair of large pots overflowing with cheery, golden flowers on either side of the welcome mat that had turned up this morning. They looked like tiny pompoms, dancing in the morning breeze.

Tansies.

“My money’s on the goldendoodle,” Irma said.

“Couldn’t have been Ian,” Kai said from the hammock and then quickly snapped their mouth shut.

“And why is that?” Marianne asked in a singsong voice.

Kai rolled their eyes. “Ian was with me two nights this week, and he would have mentioned if he’d done this.”

“Oo-ooh,” Marianne sang. She shrieked as a chunk of Kai’s coffee cake sailed just past her face.

“It was obviously Jack,” Kai said.

“Jack?” Irma exclaimed. “Why? How?”

“Those flowers are tansies,” Kai said simply, nodding to the doorstep.

Everyone looked from the clusters of yellow pompoms to Tansy, and within two seconds, the flush of heat creeping up her neck gave her away.

“Why is Jack leaving tansies at our doorstep?” Marianne demanded.

“Good question.” Kai’s eyes sparked with delight.

“It’s a common flower,” Tansy replied too nonchalantly, scouring her agenda for anything to redirect the conversation.

“Nuh-uh. Something happened,” Kai said, giving her a scrutinizing up-and-down. “What was it?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Look us all in the eyes and tell us that,” Irma said.

“I can’t look at all of you at the same time,” she pointed out.

Kai jumped to their feet, flipping the hammock and dumping their books into the dirt. “Aha! You’re blushing! I ask again, why is Jack flirting with you via plants?”

“We don’t know it was Jack,” she hedged.

“Who else around here is flirting with you then?” Irma cut in.

“Honestly, this just makes the gardens look nicer,” Tansy said. “I’m sure someone decided to spruce up the area, and it had nothing to do with—”

“If that were the case,” Kai said, “it would have made more sense to do it before the festival.”

“Just answer the question,” Irma demanded. “I’ll be dead before you come out with it at this rate.”

Marianne blanched and reached for Irma’s hand.

“Fine,” Tansy said on a resigned sigh. “We might have had a moment at the festival.”

“Define a moment,” Kai pressed.

“A…kiss,” she choked out under a cough.

“I knew something happened!” Kai declared. “When? During the rain?”

Marianne turned up her nose. She’d never gotten over Jack’s disregard for the birds or the kittens he’d removed.

Irma gave an approving nod. “A kiss in the rain. That’s some steamy romance material right there.”

Tansy cut off Kai’s next question with a raised palm. “We are not going to talk about it. We have business to finish.”

Kai booed and flounced back into the hammock, making it swing.

“For example,” Tansy went on, frowning at the one dark spot on her itinerary, “the food bank is trying to pull out of serving meals during spring break. Apparently, they can’t just give people the food. They want them to consume it within an enclosed facility on the premises, which we don’t have.”

“That’s bullshit,” Kai muttered.

“I agree. So let’s focus on solving that problem rather than worrying about why someone did a nice thing for us.”

“Don’t mind me. I need to pee,” Irma announced, pushing up from the picnic table. On her way next door, she mused, “Flirting via plants.”

—

Tansy had avoided Jack all week following the festival, stuck between how embarrassing her behavior had been…and how badly she wanted to do it again. Best not to tempt herself.

She’d watched his speech from the back of the small crowd to make sure he was okay before taking Briar home early. He kept his remarks brief and straight to the point, but if she hadn’t seen him panicking about it, she never would have known he was nervous. He also found her among the crowd more times than she could count, which was why she hurried Briar to the car immediately after. She could tell he would come looking for her, and she had no idea what to say to him.

And then on Monday and Tuesday, he’d dropped by her story times, clearly waiting to catch her, so she’d struck up the most important conversations of her life with the kids and their parents and convinced them to walk back with her to check out some books, closing any window for Jack to slide in. She took her lunches in the shed rather than finding a quiet spot in the gardens, just in case.

But now…well, the tansies could not be ignored. If he was sending her a message here, publicly, in front of her staff, she needed to nip this whole thing in the bud.

She walked a brisk double loop of the park, and just when she was about to give up, she finally found Jack in the gated garden, hoisting thick stumps from a sectioned tree trunk and arranging them upright in a semicircle by the rock wall. He grunted as he dropped the current one into place and wiped sweat from his forehead with his forearm. Tansy hesitated at the gate, torn between announcing herself before he could do something dangerous, like take off his shirt, and waiting for exactly that.

“Was wondering when you’d come find me,” he called, tipping his face up to look at her. That particular angle, his eyes peering from under thick eyebrows and a loose lock of hair, the pushed-up sleeves, that little smirk on his lips, and the physical labor—it was all some kind of rugged fantasy she’d never known she wanted, come to life.

She gripped the gate, caught. “It’s been busy since the festival.”

He sat with a heavy sigh on the smooth surface of the stump. “So you’re not panicking about kissing me?”

Okay, so they were going to talk about it. Great. She pushed open the gate and crunched her way across the sparse grass, stopping in front of him.

He gestured at the stump beside him, and she sat. Before she could settle on the right way to say it obviously couldn’t happen again, he asked, “Briar okay? With the rain? I didn’t get to talk to y’all after…”

Tansy couldn’t help but soften at the question, that he’d thought to ask, that he seemed to genuinely want to know.

When she’d hurried back to Briar from that mind-blowing kiss, she’d found her daughter safe and dry under the canopy, horrifying Marianne with her encyclopedic knowledge of venomous snakes and the ones most likely to live in this very park. Tansy had given in to the nervous fawning she usually restrained, asking repeatedly if Briar was okay until finally her daughter asked, “Are you okay, Mom?”

And…no, she had not been okay. That kiss had done something irrevocable to her. She was jittery and had a tangible sense of having narrowly escaped danger while still bracing for it to hit. The mere flash of memory—the way Jack had groaned into the kiss, his strong hands squeezing her thighs—sent her heart right back into overdrive. She hadn’t been able to focus on anything, which was a problem because she’d spent the afternoon on Sunday painting the living room and more than once stepped in the paint pan.

“Briar was fine,” she told him. “Thanks for asking.”

“Good.” He scratched his cheek, staring at a spot of dirt on his knee. “And you?”

“If you’re asking if I just bounced right back from the totally unprofessional act of making out with you during a work function,” she said, huffing in frustration, “no. I’m mortified.”

He grinned. “Mortified. Well, that’s a new one for me.”

“Don’t joke. I’m being serious.”

“Don’t be mortified that you liked kissing me, Tansy. That’s a waste of time.”

“My feelings are a waste of time?”

“No, the feelings you think you should have are a waste of time. Avoiding me and pretending it didn’t happen is a waste of our time.”

She shook her head slowly. He’d avoided her after their creek day together for two whole weeks. But rather than point that out, Tansy admitted, “Fine. I liked it.”

His large hand found her knee, and they both watched the tendons in his fingers and wrist flex as the pads of his fingers swept lightly across her skin. “Been thinking about it all week,” he said.

A relieved breath rushed out of her. “Me too.”

“Yeah?” The corner of his mouth tipped up. “And it wasn’t just…misplaced arousal for you?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think so.”

“Unfortunately,” he echoed wryly, his smile flashing full and wide now. Damn it, she really liked his smile. He squeezed her knee, drawing her attention back to the pleasing, warm weight of his palm and the subtle scrape of his callouses.

“Misplaced arousal would be easier for me,” she explained. “We could chalk it up to the rain, the whole box breathing thing. Which is totally on me. I didn’t know how weirdly erotic that was going to be.”

He chuckled, thumb swiping circles around her kneecap now. “Like I told you before, it wasn’t the breathing, Tansy.”

The brazen, loosely flirtatious, younger version of herself wanted to tell him to prove it. Kiss her now, in the middle of the day, when neither of them was in distress. But that younger version of Tansy had made many mistakes, so instead, she said, “My library looks especially nice this week. Was that you?”

He glanced away but gave an answering nod to some point in the far-off distance.

“Why?”

“It needed doing.”

She laughed. “Oh, like, ‘Because I had a boat.’ Sure. So what exactly are you working on out here?” She looked down at the stump she was sitting on and felt the rough bark down its side.

He pulled his hand from her knee and looked at the work he’d been in the middle of. “Thought the kids could sit in the grass once we get it back in shape, but you’ve got a lot of older folks who have a hard time getting up and down. They could sit at the back here on the stumps.”

Tansy gaped at him. “Wait. What?”

“For your story times.” He shrugged. “This makes the most sense.”

“But you said—” She shoved his shoulder, fizzy energy bubbling up inside her with nowhere to go. “This is your special garden.”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t say ‘my special garden.’ ”

“All this from one kiss?” she teased, but her heart felt like it might genuinely burst.

“You need a better space, and I don’t know when I’m gonna be able to restore this how I want. Rather it be useful in the meantime.”

“You’re giving me your special garden?”

“Don’t make me change my mind.”

She beamed at him. “Thank you, Jack. This is going to be so much better.”

“Yeah. Good.”

“Yeah. Good,” she mocked.

“I actually thought…” He scratched his eyebrow, glanced at her cautiously.

“What?”

“All right, listen. Kai told Ian about your food bank problem. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that the two of them are…”

Tansy laughed. “Crushing on each other? Yeah, I’ve noticed.”

“Well, he asked me to help figure out a solution.”

Tansy perked up, but he raised a tempering hand.

“We looked at the staff cottage, the visitor’s center, even considered an empty office they’ve been using for storage in the admin building. Thing is, the cottage isn’t structurally sound, and FEMA’s got us under all this red tape on the visitor’s center.”

Tansy deflated.

“Long story short, I called the food bank.”

“You called them?”

“Asked if they’d go for hanging tarps around the courtyard instead of actual walls.”

“Did they?”

“Didn’t want to. But Greta’s always saying you’ve gotta scratch people’s backs to get them to scratch yours, so…” He blew out a sigh. “I suggested that once our budget’s restored, we’d grow some produce for them, as long as they keep their agreement with y’all.”

“You—” Tansy shook her head. “You bribed the food bank for us?”

Jack panned his hand along the open area behind them. “With kids in and out of here, bringing back the endangered and rare species doesn’t make sense, but there’s native stuff that’s not hard to get that they’d be into, like the pitcher plants. I’ve been thinking about interactive species, too—lamb’s ear, cool stuff that responds to stimuli…And if we’re gonna grow food, might as well do that here, where the kids could get involved, at least until we can move it into the expansion. It could be a…I don’t know, a learning garden, if that’s a thing. Hell, some of those kids couldn’t tell you where a strawberry comes fr— Where are you going?”

Tansy had jumped to her feet and was now beelining toward the waist-high rock wall to put some space between them. Without it, she was about two seconds from climbing into his lap and embarrassing herself again. “You want to teach my library kids how to garden?”

He shrugged. “You’d have to help manage them. And we still don’t have money. It would have to start pretty simple.”

She laughed tightly. “Who are you?”

Jack shrugged again, as though he was merely letting her take a front-row parking spot rather than casually solving major problems she’d failed to fix on her own.

“Come on,” she bit out. “Why? You said yourself, we have nothing to offer in return.”

He grimaced. “I thought y’all moving in here was gonna get in my way and use up resources. But I’ve seen the festival numbers, Tansy. We hit our goals—still a long way off from paying for the expansion, but we made a dent—and it wasn’t because people woke up Saturday and suddenly felt like supporting us. They showed up because they were already coming here for your programs, because they’re connected to you. They donated using the QR code that you told me to set up. I didn’t lose my shit giving that speech because of you.”

Jack pushed up from the stump and walked toward her. “As far as I can tell, we owe you for the extra visitors y’all have brought to us lately. And growing produce to feed people is a good move. Teaching folks how to garden and getting your library kids involved at a young age supports our mission as much as yours. We could have been doing stuff like this before now. Just never thought to.” He stopped a couple feet from her and shoved his hands into his pockets, a curious smile lifting the corner of his mouth. “Now, why are you way over here?”

Tansy pressed her backside against the rock wall and held up a hand. “Don’t come closer.”

“I thought you’d be happy…”

“I am. Jeez, I really am. But you need to stay right there.”

He took another step. “Why?” he asked, his voice low. He placed one hand on the wall beside her left hip and leaned a few inches closer.

“Because when you’re nice to me, it’s very…”

“Very what?”

“Hot,” she bit out, frustrated.

He laughed. “And that annoys you?”

“I’m a librarian,” she said weakly. “And a mom.”

“Why do you keep saying that like it means you can’t have…” He shook his head self-deprecatingly as he finished, “Pleasure, for lack of a better word?”

“Pleasure?” Her laugh was incredulous.

Did she want pleasure? Of course she did. But when? And how? Where was there room for it in her life? She hadn’t gone out with a man in more than three years, and even then, she’d spent the entire evening thinking about Briar, weighing the dwindling prospects of the awkward date with the unspoken strings attached to her parents’ babysitting even though they’d set her up on it. She’d felt absolutely alien in her own body when it was just her, no background program constantly processing and responding to her child’s every move, no huge bag filled with backup clothing and snacks to hide her body behind.

Never mind the fact that, currently, she was sharing not only a room but also a bed with her kid.

“I’m serious. You’re attracted to me.” At her arched eyebrow, Jack quickly added, “And I’m extremely attracted to you.” He crowded her even more, bringing his mouth to her ear to rasp, “You were so fucking hot in the greenhouse.”

She’d never been so relieved for a sturdy support as her knees melted under her.

“Your brain,” he said, swiping his thumb across her temple and down her cheek, “might believe this not for me bullshit, but your body didn’t get that message on Saturday. The way you kissed me? You knew exactly what you were doing, exactly what you wanted, and hell, I wanted to give it all to you. Still want to.”

Jack drew back to look at her. Shame burned under her skin. But his eyes held no judgment, only unfiltered, intense desire. His tongue poked out to wet his lips, and that little swipe plucked a tight string low in her belly. His other hand found the wall beside her right hip, caging her but deliberately not touching her yet. “The question is, are you gonna let me?”

She tried to play it cool and lifted a shoulder in a shrug, but before the groan of impatience left his throat, she was grabbing his face and pulling his mouth to her own. He stumbled into her, sandwiching her between the wall and his body—a rock wall and a hard place, she thought—and it struck her that she’d been only twenty-two when she’d last had a consistent sex life, before Briar was born. Surely that explained the immaturity of her brain in this moment.

It pained her, too, that Jack was right. Her body did know what it wanted. Her hands wanted to rip open his shirt and grope his broad chest, and her mouth wanted to taste his skin, even as her mind screamed at her to be reasonable. She shoved her fingers into his hair, pulling at the nape of his neck, making him gasp as her mouth broke from his so she could kiss down his stubbly throat.

He squeezed her hips, urging her against him while also pressing her backside into the hard wall. It was so rough and urgent, feverish and thrilling. She worked his top shirt button free. His fingers dug into her waist, impatient but cautious, and she dragged one of his hands up to her breast.

“Tansy,” he groaned, part unfiltered want, part warning, as he thumbed her nipple through her dress and made her thighs clench together. She could think of nothing but how good his body felt all over hers. It was this abandonment of thought that made her slip her palm down the front of his pants.

He sucked in a breath and braced her shoulders, holding her still.

“Sorry,” she breathed, embarrassed, immediately pulling away her hand.

“Nope,” was all he managed, the tendons in his neck pulling so taut it looked painful. When she went to squeeze herself free from her pinned position, he dropped his forehead against hers, keeping her there. “Don’t. I only stopped because,” he started, licking his lips and drawing a steadying breath, “we’re at work, and someone could wander by, and you were already mortified—”

“But it’s a restricted area,” she protested, hearing the impatient whine in her own voice.

“Hasn’t stopped you,” he pointed out, dropping a quick kiss to her forehead.

That easy affection, firm and sweet, made her melt again. “Yes,” she sighed. “You’re right. This is wildly inappropriate.”

“I still want to do it,” he said, the corner of his mouth kicking up. “When can I see you somewhere else?”

“I don’t know. I have Briar…” Tansy said.

“Babysitter?”

“I have one, but she already goes after school every day.”

He nodded, but she wasn’t sure that he understood. It probably sounded like she was making excuses, like she didn’t really want this. She was surprised by how badly she wanted it. But she felt selfish putting Briar anywhere except first in her life. And she wasn’t sure what this was. He wasn’t a relationship guy. And although she didn’t have space in her life for a relationship anyway, she wasn’t practiced at casual sex either.

She could do that, couldn’t she? Scratch this itch with him and put it to rest?

“Spring break,” she said, suddenly remembering. “Briar will be in Dallas with her dad next week.”

“Yeah? I could…come to your place?”

She absolutely could not let Jack come to her house. She didn’t have a couch. Or a bed. Not only was the state of her house incredibly embarrassing, but she also required furniture for the things she wanted to do with him.

“I’m still painting,” she lied. “And finishing some other projects. It’s a mess.”

“I don’t mind a mess. If you need help with your house—”

“I don’t,” she said immediately.

“Just saying, I have tools. I can lift things. I’m decent with a paintbrush.”

“ ‘I had a boat,’ ” she muttered.

His offer was tempting. She’d just had all but the kitchen flooring installed this week, and a set of discounted kitchen cabinets was coming tomorrow. She’d balked at the store’s installation fee, and now putting them up was going to be her spring break project, but she feared she’d taken on more than she could handle with only ImYourDadNow tutorials and her own two, inexpert hands.

“Fine. We’ll do it at my place.” Jack shook his head at the suggestive double meaning. “We’ll go to my place. When does Briar leave?”

“I’m driving her up Saturday morning.”

“I’ve gotta wait two whole days, huh?” He made a disapproving sound, swiping a finger down her arm, but nodded like he’d take what he could get. “Saturday night then…it’s a date.”

A date. Obviously, this was just a thing people said. It didn’t mean an actual date. But Tansy couldn’t deny her relief that, even though this whole conversation was essentially her scheduling a hookup like a teenager whose parents were going out of town, at least he wasn’t calling it that.

He pressed another kiss to her forehead, and after everything he’d offered her today, the revelation that Jack was a forehead kiss guy was almost too much to bear.

“Now get out of here, so I can get some work done,” he said gruffly, as if reading her thoughts.

She took a left out of the gate, and he immediately called out, “Wrong way.”

“It’s a nice day,” she called back. “Think I’ll take the rest of my break by the creek.”

“That’s still restricted. You really don’t heed any signs ever, do you?”

She laughed, throwing a jaunty wave over her shoulder at him.

“Be careful,” he hollered as she entered the trees.

—

Two minutes later, she was on her way up the incline to the lookout over the creek, when a distinct rattling sound stopped her dead in her tracks. Movement flitted in the leaves and pine needles at her feet. And then she saw it, the diamond pattern, the flickering tongue, the beady eyes trained on her as the snake lifted its head to strike.

18

Jack

Thirty minutes had passed, and Jack was getting antsy. Out here in the gated garden, where no visitors besides squirrels and birds ventured, it should have been impossible to miss Tansy returning from the creek. But either he had missed her, or she hadn’t come back yet.

“Ian,” he barked into his radio.

“Look whose radio suddenly works again. What’s up?”

“I need you to see if Tansy’s at the library.”

“I’m in the formal garden right now.”

Jack growled. “I need you to go to the library and tell me if she’s there.”

There was a delay, and Jack was about to charge back to the shed himself when Ian said, “Sure, boss.”

A few minutes later, Ian reported that she wasn’t there and, actually, the librarians were worried that she hadn’t come back from her break yet and wasn’t answering her phone.

Jack didn’t respond, just shoved his radio back into its clip and marched into the trees. She’d said she was going to the creek, so he went to the overlook. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t on the staircase or down by the water either. A sick feeling churned in his gut. He bellowed her name into the ravine, and it echoed back faintly.

For what felt like an hour but was, according to his watch, barely ten minutes, he stomped deeper and deeper into the dense woods, shouting her name, equally convinced that he’d missed her body in the ravine and that she’d snuck past him and was sitting on a bench somewhere in the park, oblivious to everyone’s concern. Either way, he’d give her a piece of his mind for the stress she was putting him through.

When he reached the bridge to cross to the expansion property, he turned back, winding through the trees a different way than he’d come, his breathing heavy with worry. And finally, suddenly, there she was, sitting on a log, holding her ankle and panning her phone back and forth overheard for a signal.

“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, reaching her in four quick strides.

She fumbled her phone onto the leaf-strewn ground in surprise. “You scared me.” She reached for it, but he beat her to snatch it up.

“I scared you?” he bit out. Part of him wanted to hurl her phone into the trees, his muscles itching with tension.

She cleared her throat and held out her hand, and he slapped the phone into it, immediately turning his attention to the ankle she was clutching, the bloody scrape on her knee, and the vine caught on her skirt.

“What happened to you?” he demanded.

Tansy sighed and made no attempt to explain, slipping her phone into her pocket.

“Tansy,” he barked, bending to get a better look at the bloody knee.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I fell.”

“Why? How?”

“Well, it wasn’t on purpose,” she said, huffing a humorless laugh. “There was a snake—”

He shoved her hand free from her ankle, expecting a bite wound, already gathering the breath to say she needed boots if she was going to hike around out here.

She hissed as he jostled her, and although the lack of puncture marks was a relief, her swollen, purple-bruised skin jolted fresh alarm through him. “Christ, Tansy. When did this happen? It’s already swollen.”

“About forty-five minutes ago. I tried to go back to the path, but I got turned around.”

“You shouldn’t have been out here in the first place,” he muttered. “Especially not in fucking sandals.”

“Hey,” she snapped. “I realize that concern translates into this whole stomping, barking production for you, but don’t make me feel worse about this.”

He swallowed. He didn’t want her to feel bad. But what was he supposed to do with the sheer force of energy burning through him? “I’ve been yelling your name for ten minutes.”

“Obviously, I didn’t hear you.”

“Obviously.” He reached for her ankle again, and this time, she yanked her foot away, wincing at the sudden movement and glaring up at him with a storm of pain and indignation in her eyes.

“Stop moving and let me check it.”

“No. Not if you’re going to keep lecturing me.”

“Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack. Which you might have if you don’t take a breath and chill out.”

He threw his hands up in the air, turning and stomping away from her.

“You’re being an ass,” she added.

“I’m being—” He clutched his chest, whirling back around. “Let me see your goddamn ankle, Tansy.”

“No.” She lifted her chin for good measure. “It’s not going to get worse while you calm down.”

He clutched his hips, shaking his head at her. She wasn’t wrong that he was being a bull about this, stamping around, blowing steam. He could see that. But it wasn’t fair to ask him to be a goddamn butterfly instead.

She drew in a long, slow breath, raising her eyebrows at him.

“Swear to God, if you try to coach me to breathe right now, I’m gonna lose my shit.”

But then he remembered what Amy had said about the old feelings he hadn’t dealt with. He wasn’t angry at Tansy. He was worried. And the magnitude of that worry was fueled by things that had nothing to do with her. The fact of this loosened the vice around his chest enough for a slow breath.

She finally gave him a nod and pulled her hand from her ankle.

His eyes flitted from the bruised, swollen joint to her face as he turned her foot. Again, she sucked in a pained breath and squeezed her eyes shut.

The single word that escaped his throat was rough, laden with something between agony and apology. “Sweetheart.”

Her eyes shot open, snagging him, exposing him.

Jack cleared his throat. He didn’t know where that had come from. “Lift your arms,” he said. “I’m gonna carry you.”

She did the exact opposite, crossing her arms over her chest. “No way.”

“You can barely stand me touching it. How else are you going to get out of here?”

“I was looking for a walking stick before—”

He let out a frustrated laugh. “My God, Tansy. I might be an ass, but you are pathologically incapable of accepting help.”

“I don’t need you to carry me. That would be humiliating.”

“Fine.” He reached for his radio at his hip. “Ian, I need you to bring the Gator out to the back property. I’m about a two-minute walk into the trees south of the creek access. Drive in as far as you can.”

She flailed for the radio, eyes wide, but he easily evaded her reach.

“Did you find Tansy?” Ian asked.

“Yep. And she can’t walk. She hurt herself.”

“Be right out.”

“You’re the worst,” Tansy snapped.

Jack clipped the radio back onto his hip. “Come on. We’ll have to meet him closer to the trail.” He went to wrap one arm around her back and the other under her knees.

She stiff-armed him. “You are not carrying me like that.” Like a bride.

“You prefer piggyback?”

She looked down at her skirt and then up at the tall pine trees towering over them and shook her head.

Jack couldn’t understand why this was such a problem for her. But she clearly was not going to budge on this, and although he could exert his will here and she couldn’t stop him, he didn’t actually want to piss her off. He scrubbed a hand down his face. “All right. Fine. Put your arm over my shoulders.”

She eyed him warily.

“It’s gonna be a lot slower,” he warned, “and if you trip, that’s it, I’m carrying you.” He raised his eyebrows, questioning and threatening in equal measure.

She let him wedge his shoulder under her, and he stood, pulling her up with him. He was about a head taller than her and had to stoop to keep her elbow hooked around his neck, but she quit complaining, so he decided he could endure the uncomfortable position.

After testing her weight on the injured foot and collapsing against him, she tucked her foot behind her calf and resorted to hopping. It took tremendous effort for Jack to say nothing and just hold her steady as she went. She made it about twenty yards before she pressed her palm to his ribs, stopping him. “Sorry,” she panted.

“You’re doing great,” he said into her hair. “You’re a beast.”

She laughed, breathless, and then cast him a conflicted glance. “If you hadn’t come looking, I don’t know how I would have gotten myself out of here.”

He squeezed her hip reassuringly. He didn’t want to think about that or lord it over her now that she was finally admitting the severity of the situation. But he was also sure she’d have crawled out on her hands and knees if she had to. “You okay to go again?”

“Yeah, I— What’s that?” She squinted into the trees and hopped, pulling him sideways.

A small, green tent blended into the trees, nearly obscured by overgrowth.

“Wait here.” He unlooped her arm from his neck and guided her to a pine tree. He ignored her protests as he approached the tent and unzipped the flap. No one was inside, but there were two sleeping bags laid out side by side and stacks of supplies lining the perimeter—Ritz crackers, peanut butter, toilet paper, water bottles, clothes, flashlights, and some books with library barcodes on them.

He heard Tansy grunt and turned to find her right behind him. He glared at her. “I told you to wait.”

“Is someone camping out here?” she asked in surprise, poking her head in through the flap.

Jack rounded the back of the tent to find two folding chairs, a small firepit, a clothesline stretched between tree branches, and a trash bag strung up on a rope from a higher limb. He hadn’t spent as much time in this part of the property lately, but whoever this was seemed to have been here at least a few days, if not longer.

“Jack?” Tansy called, her voice muffled. She was all the way inside the tent now.

He paced back around, his mind already reeling with the logistical headache of reporting and dealing with this.

She held up a pair of pipe-cleaner butterfly antennae and the library books. “I know them. They come to every toddler story time. Stella and her mom, Lena. She checked out all these hummingbird books. Why are they camping here?”

“I don’t think they’re camping. I think they’re living out here,” he said grimly. He raked a hand through his hair, gripping the back of his neck.

“Are you serious?” Tansy asked, new distress in her voice.

“Don’t know how I missed this,” Jack muttered.

“How did I miss it?” Tansy countered, clutching the antennae to her chest. “They come to every story time, even the ones for older kids. I talk to the mom every week. She always seems tired, but toddler parents are always tired. I had no idea…”

The sound of approaching footsteps pulled Jack around. A young woman halted several yards away, a look of panic on her face as she protectively tucked her daughter behind her.

“Are they homeless?” Tansy went on from inside the tent.

“Don’t know, but they’re here,” he said, quiet enough for only Tansy to hear.

The woman looked like she wanted to bolt, but instead, she lifted her daughter to her hip, ducked her head, and narrowed the distance as Tansy struggled to back out of the tent with her bad ankle. Jack pulled her up, saying in her ear, “I’m gonna have to call the constable.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s illegal to camp out here. Not to mention the firepit. They could have sent this whole place up in flames.”

“If they’re living out here, they’re obviously struggling,” she hissed. “What will happen to them if law enforcement gets involved?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s a liability for the park, and that falls on my head.”

“Okay, but we’re probably the only ones who know. We can just get them to leave, and—”

“It’s still—”

“Lena, hi!” Tansy called out brightly. “I’m so sorry we intruded.”

“We intruded,” Jack muttered.

Tansy spent the next few minutes speaking cheerily to the child, complimenting her shoes, marveling at the spring weather, and asking if she was enjoying her hummingbird books. Finally, she addressed the mother, who looked to be barely in her twenties, asking simply, “The hurricane?”

The young woman burst into tears.

Teetering on her one good foot, Tansy hugged her tightly and murmured into her hair, “It’s okay, Lena. It’s going to be okay.”

“Our place flooded, and we had to stay in a motel for six weeks. It took all my savings,” Lena said, sniffling. “My landlord got FEMA money, but because I was just renting, I got nothing. The daycare where I used to work let me bring Stella, but they closed because of flood damage. I haven’t been able to find work where I can take her, too, and I don’t have enough for childcare, let alone a deposit and first and last month’s rent—” She broke off, ducking her face into Tansy’s shoulder and trying to hide her quiet sobs from her kid, who was still perched on her other side and marveling obliviously at a squirrel. “I’m so sorry. I know we’re not allowed here. I’m a good person. I just didn’t know where to go.”

Tansy pulled her in for another hug and caught Jack’s eye over Lena’s shoulder, agony written all over her face. “I’m going to help you,” she said. “I have resources. I’ll help you find a safe place to stay tonight—”

“I’m so embarrassed,” Lena whispered.

“Lena, listen to me. A lot of people are struggling right now. You are not the only one. This was a major hurricane, not a personal failure. Let me tell you something that I don’t share with anyone.” Tansy’s voice went thick with emotion, her eyes catching his and then flitting away, color rising in her cheeks like she was uncomfortable with him seeing her and hearing this conversation.

Jack shoved his hands in his pockets and tried to shrink back, but he was hanging on whatever she was about to say, and he wanted to be closer, in contact with her, not five respectful paces away.

“I’m back in my house, but it’s unfinished,” Tansy confessed. “I ran out of money. I’m just trying to keep my kid safe, just like you. We share an air mattress. I cook on a hot plate in the bathroom. Until this week, I had no floors. I still have no kitchen appliances, no HVAC, no water heater. I’m terrified my car will die. I can’t afford to fix it. And before the hurricane, it took me almost seven years to get out of my parents’ house and make it on my own, so I understand how hard this all is—how you feel like a failure as a mom—without the added burden of a natural disaster. You are a good mom. I see you every week with Stella”—she smiled at the kid, her voice lifting briefly as she interrupted herself to say, “Right, Stella Bella?”—“so I know. You’re doing your best. And I’m going to do whatever I can for you, okay?”

Lena sniffled and nodded.

“We need to pack up your things,” Tansy said. “Is it all right if we help you with that?”

She nodded again. “Thank you.”

Tansy ignored the laser stare Jack had trained on her. “Tans—”

“Not now. Please.”

Jack threw his frustration behind the physical tasks of lowering the trash bag and taking down the clothesline and the tent, all the while, his chest filling with the pressure of unasked questions. He’d had no idea how she’d really been living, and how deeply ashamed she felt about it. Hell, she sounded only a few steps removed from camping out here in the woods herself. And when he’d offered to help with her home projects earlier, not even realizing the extent of the burden, she’d immediately shut him down.

Soon, Ian found them with a worried Kai in tow. Maybe Jack could have been less dramatic about saying Tansy was hurt and let them know it wasn’t an emergency. But Kai ordered Tansy to get off her feet and helped her back to the Gator to sit, so he didn’t feel too bad.

When he and the rest of the group arrived at the Gator, Jack climbed into the driver’s seat and stared at the side of Tansy’s face until she glanced warily at him. There was so much he wanted to say.

“You’re mad,” she guessed quietly.

He shook his head.

“Please, don’t report this,” she whispered, trying not to let Lena hear as she climbed into the back seat with Stella. “I’ll find a place for them for tonight, even if they have to come to my house.”

Jack shook his head again. He wasn’t going to report the trespassing. But that wasn’t what had him speechless right now, what had him wishing there weren’t three other people arranging belongings on the seat behind them, making the conversation he wanted to have impossible.

“You need to get your ankle checked out,” he said. There. That was calm and objective, not scoldy.

“I’m sure it’s just a sprain.”

“Tansy.” He closed his eyes, immediately feeling that buildup in his chest again. “I know someone who can help them tonight. I will personally drive them. You need to see a doctor.”

“If it’s still swollen tomorrow—”

“God damn it, Tansy,” he snapped, quiet but sharp.

Her eyes went wide, and she glanced over her shoulder, where Ian was putting the last bag next to Lena.

Jack grabbed Tansy’s hand on the seat between them and squeezed it, apologizing, begging. “I will make sure they’re okay. But I need to know you’re okay.”

She opened her mouth to speak but must have seen in his eyes that he was two seconds from driving her to an urgent care himself because she closed it and nodded.

“Someone will have to take you,” he added. Because it was her right foot.

She narrowed her eyes in irritation. “Kai already offered.”

“Good. And for our date,” he said, throwing the Gator into reverse, “I’m coming to your house.”

19

Tansy

“You. Will. Open. Now.” Tansy growled in frustration, using all of her strength to peel back the impossible plastic packaging on a container of screws. She was half dressed, half drunk, and wholly immersed in an angry Olivia Rodrigo banger at max volume in her kitchen.

She resorted to biting the packaging. When the plastic edge cut into the side of her mouth, it was the final straw on a day so shitty she’d already all but given up on her impending date with Jack before it could even start. She grabbed the screwdriver off the top of one of her new, uninstalled cabinets and stabbed repeatedly at the package. When it punched through the plastic, Tansy hooked her fingers into the gash and pulled, letting loose a feral yell…as well as the entire contents of the package.

Screws flew everywhere, skittering across the cement floor of her unfinished kitchen and around the new cabinets, unmounted and scattered throughout the room, crowding the space. The sudden release made her knock over her child-size plastic Solo cup of wine and then bang her funny bone on the corner of a set of open shelves.

For one heart-pounding breath, she took in the mess, a knot pushing up into her throat. She was going to cry. She’d already done that on the drive home after taking Briar to Charlie’s today—deep, gut-wrenching sobs—until she switched to shouting along to angry girl rock for the last sixty miles. But now, instead of a sob, what came out of her mouth as she dropped to her knees with a paper towel was a watery, venom-filled, “Oh, make my fucking day, you absolute piece of horseshit.”

“Hope you’re not talking about me.”

Tansy yelped at the sudden, deep voice and scrambled back to her feet, graceless with her bad ankle. Jack was here, closing her front door and then crossing into her kitchen.

He reached to steady her when she wobbled, and she jerked away to stand on her own because he’d been so smug seeing her ankle wrapped at work yesterday, so sure he’d been right to push her to the doctor, even though the X-rays had proven nothing was broken. In her haste, she knocked the wireless speaker off the top of a cabinet. It clattered down after the screws and the wine, her music abruptly cutting off.

Jack set down a big metal toolbox by the wall and bent to retrieve the speaker. He turned it over, and something inside rattled. “You should see the other guy,” he said to it, casting a glance her way that was both teasing and a bit concerned.

She probably did look rough, her face flushed from frustration and the wine. Also, she’d forgotten to change out of the sweats and slouchy, long-sleeve shirt she’d put on after her ice-cold shower earlier. She’d had to stay in there longer than usual to shave, shivering and covered in goosebumps, because in the months since the hurricane, she’d let nature rewild basically everywhere. She was more determined than ever that her next big purchase would be a water heater.

Tugging down her shirt self-consciously, she asked, “You make a habit of letting yourself into other people’s houses?”

“Heard you yell,” he said pointedly, setting down the broken speaker. Then, he openly took her in, from the damp pile of hair atop her head to her fuzzy-sock-covered toes. He licked his lips, his voice dropping deep and silky when he said, “Wow, Tansy. You…look…” But his intense gaze broke, and he finished on a chuckle, “Comfortable.”

Of course he looked good. His hair fell loose around his face, clean and brushed for a change, and he’d trimmed his beard short. His earthy, orange-and-green pearl-snap shirt was tucked into faded jeans that hugged his thighs.

“I lost track of time,” she muttered, frowning at a new dark stain from the wine on the knee of her hot pink sweatpants. “But you know what? Maybe this is what you get for refusing to have our date somewhere else.”

“Protest sweats?” he asked, amused.

She was wearing her best (okay, only) lingerie under these sweats, bought specifically for tonight and the sex she’d very much wanted to have with him. But after his pushiness to help with her house, she reserved the right to keep the simple black satin panties and bralette to herself. Letting him see her home in all its messy, unfinished glory was exactly as unnerving as she’d anticipated.

She dropped another layer of paper towels over the wine puddle and tamped it with her foot.

Jack watched her, his amusement shifting to something uncertain. Probably because she was radiating hostility, the origins of which she couldn’t even begin to explain. She was about to suggest they try this tomorrow instead, when she wouldn’t be such an emotional and physical mess, but he started plucking errant screws from the floor. His head swiveled from the cabinets crowding her kitchen to the empty living room and back to her. “You did a good job on your drywall. Can’t see a single seam.”

She tossed the soiled paper towels into the trash. “I don’t need your approval of my drywall.”

“Because you’re an independent woman?” He grinned.

Tansy stuttered over her retort to his knowing dig. But how had he known it?

“Briar,” he said simply, grasping her hand and molding it into a cupped position to receive the screws he’d gathered. His hand was warm and calloused, and he didn’t ask first. She hated that it thrilled her on some base level.

The stinging response she meant to sling back was interrupted by her loud hiccup.

“Had to get drunk for this, huh?”

“Screw you,” she said without heat, clenching her fistful of screws.

He leaned back against one of the cabinets and rubbed his knuckles against his beard, just looking at her. She crossed her arms, uncrossed them, and then braced herself against another cabinet, mirroring him. She raised a combative eyebrow, nervous under his scrutiny of her now. “What?” she finally demanded.

“You’re having a bad day.” It wasn’t a question or an accusation, just a gentle statement.

She scoffed. No shit, she wanted to say. But her attitude wasn’t about him. At least, it mostly wasn’t. He seemed to sense that instead of taking her negative energy personally.

“Must be hard,” he added. “Being away from her.”

Stinging pressure pushed behind Tansy’s sinuses. His gaze on her was steady and soft now. She swallowed but couldn’t speak past the lump that formed in her throat. She could only shrug helplessly. How he’d read right through her hostility to that she didn’t know. But it also chipped something free from the walls she’d erected around herself this afternoon. “It’s the actual worst,” she confirmed, voice tight. “Every single time.”

“Because you miss her, or because he’s…” He trailed off, scowling, and Tansy wasn’t sure what descriptor he was thinking about Charlie, but protective energy practically pulsed off him.

“Charlie’s not a bad guy. He’s a good dad, now.”

“Now?”

“It took him a while to get there.”

Jack crossed his arms. “What does that mean?”

“I told you his dad died before Briar was born?”

“Yeah.”

“It was unexpected, and they were really close. Charlie was a mess, only he hid it from me. Stopped going to work and his law school classes. He’d leave the house in the morning and then come back and sleep all day while I went to school and work. I didn’t know he lost his job until Briar came—three weeks early, by emergency C-section. I missed my college finals and didn’t graduate. And then, between the hospital bills and him not working for weeks before he told me, we were suddenly in this deep financial hole. Our utilities got shut off, and we lost the apartment. His mom was struggling, too, and he felt like he should be with her. Honestly…I think he just wanted to be the kid getting cared for again instead of one of the responsible adults dealing with the mess.”

“What the fuck?” Jack muttered.

Tansy waved a hand. “I’m not explaining it right. He truly was not in a good place.”

“So he abandoned his wife and baby?”

“Fiancée,” she corrected, lifting a shoulder.

“Same difference.”

She opened her fist of screws, pressed them to the top of a cabinet, and corralled them with the sides of her hands into a neat square. “Well, it was a cleaner break anyway. Briar and I moved in with my parents, which was about the worse decision of my life.”

“Why?”

“They never let me live down my mistakes—living with Charlie, not using better birth control, going through with the pregnancy.”

“Jesus.”

“They wanted to be grandparents when it suited them,” she said with a harsh laugh, the first break in her careful, neutral delivery, “but the minute I needed childcare for work or classes to finish my degree, I was taking advantage of them. They would agree to watch her but then something would come up at the last minute, and I’d have to scramble or miss a shift, lose another job. It was so demoralizing. I was in debt because of the hole Charlie and I dug, and I couldn’t hold down a job, let alone save up and get back on my feet. And I guess I was waiting for Charlie to come back and fix everything. I wasted a lot of time waiting to be rescued.”

Jack’s jaw ticked, and she could feel his protest of all this, his anger on her behalf. She rarely let herself dwell on it because she could so easily get sucked back into that familiar state of helplessness and despair, crying, It’s not fair! but never doing anything about it.

“You’re wondering why I let her go with him now,” she guessed, and he nodded. “Because I can’t really hold his grief against him. And because he went to therapy, and he did a lot of work on himself, and he has never once let her down since he came back into her life.”

“Which was when?”

Tansy sorted the pile of screws into a circle and then split it down the middle. “It took him a few years to figure out what he wanted and then it took me a few years to trust it. I didn’t go easy on him.”

“Good.”

Tansy laughed through her nose and looked back up to see Jack gripping the cabinet, his fingers tight on its edge, his shoulders straining against the seams of his shirt.

“Anyway, we usually meet halfway for visits, and it’s civil and fine. But today, I had to take her the whole way to his house, and it’s beautiful, and he’s stable, and…I’ve never needed fancy things, but her room there is so big and bright. It looks like a Pottery Barn catalog. His hand towels alone probably cost twenty bucks apiece.”

Tansy took in her home again, just like she had this afternoon—how far from a real kitchen this room was, how even once the cabinets were installed, she would still need countertops, a sink, and all the major appliances. Thousands of dollars.

Jack followed her gaze, silent and sober, as if he was now calculating the same costs, understanding the weight of it all.

“He asked again today if I needed money,” she said quietly, because this was the part that stung the most. Charlie had insisted she come in before hitting the road again and asked her to stay through lunch, watch a movie, even stay the night in his guest room. And she’d politely declined again and again, until he tried to give her gas money. Three hundred dollars. She’d shoved the discrete handful of cash back at him, pulled Briar into a too-tight hug, and tore out of the house.

“Then, I came back here, where she doesn’t even have a room…I saved up for years to buy this house after digging myself out of the hole. And here I am, still digging.”

“You won’t be digging forever,” Jack said.

Tansy pressed her thumb to the corner of her eye to hold back the tears brimming there.

“You won’t,” he said again. “And it’s admirable as hell, Tansy. Everything you’ve already fought for.”

She didn’t have the energy to tell him she was so fucking tired of fighting.

“So he figured out he wants to be a dad way too fucking late. Does he want you back, too?” Jack asked then, point-blank.

She shook her head, not in answer but because that question overwhelmed her. “I honestly don’t know. Sometimes I think he does. But I can’t see myself ever being that serious with anyone again, not just him. It’s been just Briar and me for so long. She’s my first priority. I would never want to feel like I had to choose between her and some man. It’d always be her.”

He nodded slowly, and Tansy’s cheeks burned with the realization that he was here on a date with her, and she’d just cavalierly shut down any long-term possibility with him. Not that he did long-term anyway. It was probably a relief.

He scratched his eyebrow then expelled a heavy sigh and drummed his fingers on the cabinet. “So you wanna get trashed?”

It surprised a watery laugh from her. “No.”

“You sure? I can hold your hair back later.”

She lifted her hands out to her sides. “This is already a bigger mess than I wanted you to see. We definitely don’t need to add me, drunk, to the list.”

He made a face at the “mess” like this was nothing, but true to his nature, he didn’t smother her with positivity. He just pushed up his sleeves and said, “So we’re hanging cabinets?”

She supposed it was pointless to resist his help now and fetched the paper she’d already sketched the layout on. He let out a low whistle at the neat floorplan and the marks she’d already put on the walls over the studs. Despite claiming she didn’t need his approval, she stood a little straighter with it. “I haven’t put up the ledger yet,” she said, “but it’ll go there at that line.”

He found the long, one-by-four wood strip the bottom edge of the cabinets would rest on. Then he retrieved a level, a hammer, and nails from his toolbox and mounted it along her line without another word.

When he began measuring and marking the back of the corner cabinet, she finally made herself useful, bringing over the rest of the supplies—the pile of screws and screwdriver, shims, and clamps. She fetched the stepladder, and he said, “Please tell me you weren’t gonna do this without a drill.”

She crossed to the outlet, where her new small drill was plugged in, fully charged, and waved it at him.

“All right,” he said, raising his palms, “but I’m curious how you were planning to get these up on the wall by yourself.”

She flashed a smile. “Spite.”

“Even with your ankle?”

“Oh, that’s part of my motivation. Because now instead of getting a new water heater, I’ll be paying off the X-rays I didn’t need.”

“Ah, so it’s spite for me?” he clarified. He bent to predrill holes in the cabinet before finally pushing up and tipping his chin at her ankle. “Just because they didn’t show a break doesn’t mean you didn’t need them. It obviously wasn’t nothing. Does it hurt?”

“No. But thank God I have a man here to manage my medical choices and my cabinets for me.”

Jack threw his head back to laugh. “Listen to your attitude today.” He immediately cut off her reply, adding, “I love it. Everyone thinks you’re this cheery, sweet children’s librarian, but you’re actually vicious.”

She couldn’t fight her own smile. “Shut up and make yourself useful, Jack.”

He slipped three screws between his lips and mumbled around them, “Yes, ma’am.” Then he effortlessly hoisted up the cabinet onto the ledger, grabbed the drill, and had the whole thing secured to the wall in under thirty seconds.

She was not prepared for his casual efficiency or the way his broad back flexed under his shirt. And now that she could breathe a little more freely after getting some of the weight off her chest, she wanted to find out how efficient Jack could be with his hands on her.

He moved on to the next cabinet, measuring and predrilling holes, lifting it into place, checking that it was flush with both the first cabinet and the wall. Tansy was determined to be useful in her own project, but that mostly amounted to her bracing an extra hand under the cabinets while he did everything else—clamping the units together, fitting shims behind them where the wall bowed, and drilling in the screws.

He muttered that she should sit, get off her sore ankle, but quickly realized she wasn’t going to listen to that nonsense. Still, even though this was surely a two-person job, she found herself almost exclusively in Jack’s way. He had to keep nudging her over with a hand at her hip and reaching around her, caging her body between his own and the cabinets, the delicious smell and heat of him enveloping her.

If he knew the effect his closeness was having, he wasn’t smug about it, and his focus never strayed from his task, even as it became harder for her not to put her hands on his shoulders just to feel them flex.

Increasingly, she felt like she’d stumbled into a home renovation porno, and the long stretch as they worked in silence dulled her irritation and leveled off her wine buzz, leaving her relaxed. Pliable. She let her fingers linger on his every time she passed him something and openly stared when he wasn’t looking and then even when he was. She was mesmerized by his throat, right there at her eyeline, the bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed, the sound of it in the too-quiet space. They were inches apart, yet no matter how her needy gaze bored into him, silently willing him to look at her, he maintained his focus straight over the top of her head.

Until she licked her lips, and his gaze stuttered down, snagged by the movement and probably by the unrestrained lust pooling in her eyes. His next screw slipped from his grasp. He huffed a tiny, frustrated breath—finally a crack in his restraint that told her she wasn’t alone in her lust haze.

She squeezed down between his solid, strong body and the cabinet he was bracing behind her. Her face dropped a breath from his belt buckle as she reached between his boots for the screw. Then she came back up and waited for him to meet her eyes, her heart thrumming wildly in her ears. She held the screw to his lips, and after a long, agonizing moment, they parted, and he dipped to take it and her fingertips into the warm heat of his mouth. His eyes were so dark and full of fire at the same time, pinning her there as he swiped his tongue against her thumb and then caught the screw between his teeth. He pulled back to rasp, “Tansy.”

“Hmm?”

He had one hand braced on the cabinet above her head, the drill in the other hand, and the screw still dancing between his lips when he spoke. “Could you not make me drop this cabinet on you?”

She wanted to kiss the screw right out of his mouth. Instead, she slid back a step and braced her shoulder blades against the cabinet, her face and neck hot.

He tore his eyes from hers to drill the screw into place and then dug two more from his pocket to finish securing it.

Finally, he turned her by her shoulders, walked her back against the opposite kitchen wall, and said, “Now put your hands on me.”

20

Jack

“You’re so bossy,” Tansy said but pulled his face down to hers anyway, catching his mouth in a bruising kiss. She broke it off abruptly and stiff-armed him, keeping him from moving back in like he wanted and matching her kiss with one of his own. “I shouldn’t like you when you’re like that,” she panted, “trying to tell me what to do. I shouldn’t find your bossiness even remotely attractive.”

Jack reached for her face, but she held him off again, eyes dancing from his mouth to his eyes and back. He raised his hands in surrender, desperate for the right approach for her to approve getting them on her body. She’d been teasing him for the better part of an hour, and he’d kept his hands dutifully occupied with her cabinets as long as he could stand it, but he couldn’t take it anymore. “Tansy,” he pleaded, gruff and impatient.

She eased the press of her palm, dragging it from his shoulder down over his chest, coming to rest against the lower part of his stomach, just above his belt. She gave him a tentative push, as if checking the structural soundness of him. He wanted that pressure lower, wanted to guide her just a few inches down so she could feel what she was doing to him. Instead, he stepped into her space, and this time, she let him crowd her and duck his mouth down to her ear. “You’ve proven your point.”

She untucked his shirt and pulled it open, one snap at a time, and then pushed the halves out of the way to drink him in. He flexed involuntarily, desperate for more than her eyes on him.

“What point?” she asked.

“That you’re calling the shots here.”

“Am I?” She caressed his face, her thumb sliding across his lower lip and dipping into his mouth just like when she gave him that screw back. Fuck, he needed to kiss her. He was ready to beg but settled for biting her thumb, her palm, and the tender skin inside her wrist.

“You know you are,” he said. Then, he hooked a tentative finger into the looped drawstring of her pants and gave it a gentle tug, asking, “But do you actually want to be? Because I think you might like it if you let me take over here.”

Her gaze fell to the drawstring, her chest heaving now, and when he brushed his fingertips along the warm skin just above her waistband, her eyelashes fluttered closed. She leaned back against the wall like it was too much to hold herself up, and Jack moved in closer, wedging his thigh between hers. He slipped both thumbs inside her waistband, brushing satin that he couldn’t see yet, and slid them around to her backside, pushing her sweats down her hips to expose the top of that satin underwear and palming the incredible swell of her ass in both hands. He pulled her to him, dragging her core up his thigh, and finally caught her mouth with his when her lips parted on a moan.

Her arms flew around his neck, and she hooked a foot around the back of his leg. He boosted her, one hand clutching her thigh, the other still squeezing her ass, and pressed his body into hers to hold her against the wall. But he was much taller than her, and the angles were wrong, his erection pressing into her belly. He could probably manage the physical demands of wall sex for long enough to get them over the edge, but he wouldn’t be able to touch her how he wanted.

“You got a single table or countertop anywhere in this place?” he asked.

“Now you get why I didn’t want to do this here.”

He clutched her hips, urging her to continue her undulating grind against his thigh, and then pushed her shirt up and over her head, revealing her breasts in a thin, black bra that puckered over the points of her nipples. Immediately, he covered one with his mouth, sucking hard through that smooth material, licking the firm peak and pulling a sharp cry from her throat. He searched for a clasp at her back, but the bra was all one smooth, stretchy garment, so he shoved that up, too, catching her hair as he yanked it off. He breathed an apology, trying to calm himself down, trying to be as tender with her as she deserved, but Tansy shook her head and pulled his mouth back down to her bare breast, urging him to continue. He palmed the other one, her stiff nipple pushing into the creases of his hand.

“God, your mouth,” she said. “Of course it feels like this.”

“I can use my bossy mouth for good,” he agreed.

He felt the press of her fingers hooking into the front pocket of his jeans and tugging, and that touch so close to his dick had him suddenly as breathless as she was and rethinking how he could get inside her. He could turn her around and put her hands against the wall, but even in his frenzy, he was mindful of her bad ankle.

He grounded himself in the solid handhold of her hips, in the give of her body to the needy press of his fingers. Then he found her core, rubbing slow circles over her sweatpants, which she immediately chased, swiveling and angling her hips. “Oh God,” she breathed.

He slipped his hand inside her pants, meeting that smooth satin and then immediately pushing behind her panties, too, and finding her already slick. He stroked just wide of where she wanted him and down her folds so gently she tried to push herself into his touch, huffing in frustration. He gave her the pressure she wanted, circling her firmly before dipping just barely into her entrance.

“Jack,” she bit out, as much a complaint as a plea.

“You close already?” he asked, fully in awe that she could get this turned on for him so quickly.

“It’s been so long,” she breathed, her arms cinching tight over the tops of his shoulders, her face tucked into his neck. He was supporting nearly all her weight now, and he loved that she’d entrusted that job to him. She kissed his skin, hot and open-mouthed. “I can’t—I can’t slow it down.”

“I don’t want you to slow anything down. I want you to fucking get there.”

She expelled something between a laugh and a scoff. “So freaking bossy.”

Maybe it was bossy, but Jack knew she was getting close, and the last thing he wanted was her reining herself in, remembering her bullshit line about being a mom and a librarian. “If you don’t want me to boss you around, then take what you want, Tansy.”

He felt her flutter around his fingers. “Come on, sweetheart,” he murmured. “It’s yours. Just take it.”

When she came, she stifled her cry by turning to bite into the meat of his shoulder. That sudden sting and the uninhibited movement of her body and the way her breathing hitched with her breaking point were almost enough to bring him to the edge himself. He was painfully hard and rocked against her hip, next to where his hand was drawing the last of her orgasm out of her.

She loosened her hold and slid down his body, her feet flat on the floor again, sated and wobbly and perfectly wrecked. “We need a bed. Or a couch. I want you on top of me, and we can’t—not in my room. I share it with Briar.” Then she lowered to one knee and reached for his belt buckle.

Jack grabbed her arms and hauled her back up. “What are you doing?”

“It’s your—”

“I don’t even want you standing right now. I definitely don’t want you kneeling on concrete. Christ, Tansy. Get up. This isn’t some transaction.”

She blushed. “I don’t know how this works. I haven’t ever done the casual hookup thing.”

Was that what she thought this was? He’d called it a date. He was wearing his fucking date shirt.

“You’ll have to walk me through it,” she went on. “We just…scratch the itch, get it out of our systems before Briar comes back?”

Before Briar comes back. Next week. She was giving him one week?

Jack dragged a hand down his face. He didn’t want this to have an expiration date before it had even really started. But she’d just told him she didn’t want something serious, that she didn’t want to choose between Briar and a man. He’d just figured there was some middle ground between the kind of commitment he’d thought she meant and one week. Now that he knew what she felt like, what she sounded like when she let herself go, he wanted more of her. All of her. Next week was nowhere near long enough.

“Does that usually work?” she asked. “Because I have to admit, what we did just now does not make me want you less.”

“Is that what you want?” he asked, cautious. “To stop when Briar comes back?”

“I mean, I don’t know how to do this with her home. We share a bed, Jack.”

“No, yeah, I get that.”

“Isn’t this what you want? You don’t do relationships.”

He usually didn’t. And that had been for good reason.

“So…this works for both of us,” she said when he didn’t answer.

He nodded slowly, suppressing the part of him that wanted to negotiate, to beg even. “A week? Do I at least get full access?”

“I mean, not at work. But otherwise, I’m all yours.”

He swallowed. She wasn’t all his, not like this. But if one week was all she would give him, he wasn’t going to leave it on the table.

Jack smoothed her hair with both hands and kissed her, soft and slow. She immediately deepened it. Her attraction to him, if not something more, was palpable. He saw a flash of their next move—him spinning her around, taking her from behind, up against the frame of one of those empty cabinets. But he wanted what she’d said a moment ago—to cover her body with his own and feel her breasts pushed up against his own bare chest. Better fucking angles. He wanted to look at her. He wanted to take his time.

“Come to my place later,” he said, stepping back.

“Later?” She frowned. “Let’s go now.”

He blew out a tense breath. As badly as he wanted to get her somewhere with more functional surfaces, he couldn’t leave her to deal with these cabinets on her own. “It’ll drive me nuts not to finish this.”

“Yeah,” she said slowly with a strong undertone of Duh. “Me too.”

“The cabinets, I mean,” he corrected, clearing the lusty rasp from his throat.

She eyed the bulge in his jeans pointedly. “The cabinets are what you don’t want to leave unfinished?”

“Tansy.”

“You’re serious,” she said, pressing her lips together in surprise. “Fine. If that’s what you want.”

“I want you.” He said, a little too honestly. He covered it up by kissing her perfect, pouty mouth again. “And I want this done for you. Please.”

She softened and then teased, “Is that the first time you’ve used that word? It came out kind of weird.” Then she slipped the folded-up layout sketch from his back pocket, tucked his pencil behind his ear, and sighed, “If you must.”

21

Tansy

The lower cabinets took a lot longer than Tansy had hoped. By the time they were bouncing along a narrow dirt road, cutting through the dark curtain of towering pine trees to Jack’s house, she was as hungry as she was desperate to pick up where he had stopped them earlier.

Before leaving her house, she’d ducked into her room for a quick makeover—something closer to how she’d wanted to look for their date before that half cup of wine had steered her wrong. She’d brushed and loosely braided her hair, which had dried wavy and kinked in weird places from the messy clump she’d piled it into after her shower, and emerged from her room in a casual cotton dress. Jack had licked his lips as he looked her up and down, and in a sudden flare of embarrassment about having freshened up for him, she’d grabbed his toolbox to move them more quickly out the door, only to nearly drop its surprising weight on her good foot.

Ten minutes later, with trees encroaching on either side of the narrow road, branches seeming to miss his truck by mere inches, Tansy said, “This is…rural.”

“Almost there.”

Soon, a small brick home appeared at the end of the lane, and Jack killed the engine under a carport.

She made her way slowly after him to a side door of the house, careful not to step wrong on the patchy lawn. Although she couldn’t see much in the dark, she could tell the exterior of his place was modest and a bit dated, a brick single-story from the seventies or eighties, surrounded by trees and shrubs that she suspected were natural to the property, not planted there or meticulously maintained—wild like the undeveloped back property of the gardens.

Jack removed his boots inside the utility room, and she did the same, stepping out of her flats. Before he opened the next door, a chorus of drawn-out cries met them through it. “What—”

As soon as he led her into the kitchen, three kittens swarmed them—one orange, one gray tabby, and one tortoiseshell.

“You kept them?” Tansy asked, surprised, as the same orange kitten that had climbed up her skirt that day in the gardens stretched up her leg with an impassioned yowl.

“Sorry,” Jack muttered, ducking back into the utility room. “They’re hungry.”

“You kept them,” she repeated, this time almost an accusation. She bent to pet them, but they all darted after Jack at the sound of kibble hitting a ceramic bowl.

He came out rubbing the back of his neck, embarrassed maybe, and God, that sent a shot of bubbly joy through her.

“Marianne might actually let go of her grudge,” she told him.

“Grudge against me? For what?”

“We thought you dumped them somewhere.”

Jack grunted, offering no defense or explanation, and Tansy realized this was part of the reason they’d gotten off on the wrong foot. He gave only the information he felt was necessary, even if a smidge more would help contextualize his actions.

“What are their names?”

“Haven’t gotten around to that.”

Tansy laughed. “They’ve been here for weeks. You really haven’t named them?”

Jack shook his head, crossing his arms.

“So you come in, and they greet you at the door, and you say, ‘Well, hello there,…’ ” She raised her eyebrows, waiting for him to fill in the blank.

He hooked a thumb over his shoulder to the other room, where the cats were crunching noisily. “You saw them. They want food, not conversation.”

“They should have names,” she told him seriously.

“Yeah? Go for it.”

“Okay. Sunny, Dusk, and Moonpie.”

He chuckled. “That was quick. Not sure how I feel about Moonpie.”

“Jam, Bacon, and Toast.”

“You do like a theme.”

“I do. Darcy, Tilney, and Dashwood?”

“What are those?”

“Jane Austen characters.”

“No.”

Tansy took in the large kitchen they were standing in and the view into the living room. He’d upgraded the appliances fairly recently. The flooring was a darker version of the expensive slate tile she couldn’t afford. But the living room had old wood paneling on the walls, a microfiber couch in no-frills navy, a tan recliner, and a wood-burning fireplace that took up most of one wall and still had soot and ash inside from the last cold snap weeks ago. It was tidy and inviting, if a little minimalist and nondescript. A closed laptop sat on the coffee table beside a paper pad with notes scribbled on it, but no TV, no knickknacks, no art on the walls. She smiled at the small cat scratcher next to the fireplace.

“How long have you lived here?”

“Yeah…” he said, taking in the room as if for the first time. “I don’t spend that much time here.”

“You work a lot,” she remarked.

He nodded. “I do, but I also don’t hang out as much in this part of the house. Hardly at all before the cats, anyway. They’re kind of demanding.”

Tansy imagined him grudgingly playing with his three cats that he hadn’t bothered to name, just to keep them from destroying his couch. It was so achingly endearing she had to bite the inside of her cheek to rein in her smile.

She wandered farther into the living room and saw, on the other side of the cat scratcher, a box containing a video baby monitor and a pair of the tiniest hiking boots she’d ever seen. “Oh my God, Jack. What are these?” She picked up the boots and hugged them to her chest, reminded of when Briar was so tiny and cute she’d had to fight the wild impulse to bite her.

Jack scratched his beard. “They’re not mine.” He shook his head—because they were obviously not his shoes—and added, “They’re a gift.”

“I can’t even picture you standing in a baby aisle.”

His face fell, and Tansy felt that sudden shift in her stomach. She knew instantly she’d said something insensitive, something that truly bothered him. She shut her mouth. He’d told her he and his ex-wife had tried for a baby, that it was his fertility that had been the issue. But with his general surliness and antisocial behavior, and his many negative comments about kids, she didn’t think she’d fully understood until right now that the loss of his marriage and the family he’d planned hurt more than he let on.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean…”

He dismissed her concern easily, lifting the shoes from her hands and offering a sheepish smile. “Baby shoes are impractical, I know.”

She didn’t want to laugh. She wanted to hug him. But he clearly wished keep it light, so she said, “And hiking boots, no less.”

“The monitor is the real gift. These were just so fucking cute.”

She did laugh at that. “So fucking cute,” she confirmed.

Jack jerked his head toward a hallway, and she followed him to the back of the house. He switched on a lamp to reveal a spacious bedroom with two entirely glassed-in walls opposite the door. An additional three or four feet of the sloping ceiling were also glassed in.

It felt like a greenhouse.

Tansy loved it immediately, both for how Jack it was and for how open it made the space.

Although he’d claimed before that he didn’t like to read, he had a big, comfy chair tucked into the perfect reading nook, facing out into the dark woods. She could see the moon above the black mass of trees, big and bright and nearly full.

“You have a real bed,” she said, cocking an impressed eyebrow. It was neatly made, too, with pillows that didn’t look a decade old. “Not that I’m one to talk,” she admitted. “Just another thing on a long list of stuff I need. After a bed for Briar, of course. When I get her room finished.”

She didn’t know how to sit in the quiet like Jack clearly did. She felt her cheeks heat and pointed at two more doors to divert his attention from her.

“Closet and bathroom,” he said, gesturing for her to go ahead.

“Sometimes I look at houses for sale online even though I can’t afford to move. It’s weirdly addictive. But I check first to see if they flooded. The ones that didn’t flood always explicitly say so. I assume the ones that don’t say anything definitely did.” Babbling. She offered it over her shoulder as she turned on the lights in his bathroom but cut herself off with a gasp at the massive bathtub and the separate walk-in shower.

Jack cleared his throat, right behind her now, and she jumped.

“Had to see what that sound was for,” he murmured, hands slipping around her waist, chin pressing into the top of her head.

“I haven’t had a bath in forever. Not a real one, anyway.” Her tub was a replacement of the basic, shallow prefab shell that had come with the house, and she could submerge only her legs or her upper body with her neck at a painful angle, but not both at the same time. Before the hurricane, she hadn’t bothered, opting to shower exclusively. But until she could replace the water heater, she was stuck with quick, freezing showers or the lukewarm baths she made for Briar by heating pots of water on the hot plate to add to the cold tap water. Looking at Jack’s multiple shower heads and that deep soaker tub, Tansy felt genuinely torn about which she wanted more.

“Take a bath,” he said, nudging her forward. “I’ll make dinner.”

She turned around. “No, that’s weird.”

He didn’t back up, his face close above hers. His beard was short and neat, and she wanted to rake her nails up into the coarse hairs. He licked his lips, seeming to see that thought right on her face. “What’s weird about it?” he asked softly.

“I can help cook.”

“I don’t need help cooking.”

“I’d just be sitting in here feeling guilty about not helping then.”

“Let someone else do something for you for a change, huh?” He slipped past her, turned on the faucet, and then opened a cabinet. “I think I have some bubble bath around here, some fancy stuff that Greta had made from lavender in the gardens a few years ago.”

“Jack,” she laughed.

He waved a bottle of something that looked artisanal and added a heavy pour to the water. “Be a shame to waste it.”

And that was how Tansy found herself naked in Jack’s bathtub, a heaping cloud of lavender-scented bubbles piled high on the water’s surface. The fresh smell slowly mixed with the savory scent of chicken and warm bread from the kitchen. Her stomach rumbled. Contrary to his claim about the cats not looking for conversation, he kept up a running monologue, punctuated with occasional admonishments that she assumed were directed at them, his low, velvety voice reaching her dreamily through the walls.

Tansy closed her eyes and dropped her head back against the lip of the tub. Then she sank down lower, letting the water lap at her neck. It was so nice to be fully enveloped, her body held a little lighter by the water. She wanted total immersion, a cleansing of the earlier part of this day and all the stress she carried, so she held her breath and slipped all the way under. There was a loud quiet, a seashell shush in her ears, a long stretch of…almost nothing.

Until something wrapped around her calf. She gasped in a mouthful of bathwater and bolted upright, sputtering and coughing.

“Shit, sorry,” Jack said, smothering her face with a towel.

She batted away the towel, coughing violently, her sinuses burning, and her eyes leaking tears. “What are you—doing—in here?”

“I knocked first. I— Sorry.”

She coughed again, and little puffs of bubbles went flying.

“You didn’t answer. And then you were under,” he explained, crouched by the side of the tub, plucking a wet strand of hair off her cheek and tucking it behind her ear. “I thought—” He shook his head, as if however he meant to finish that sentence was too stupid to say.

She caught his hand. “I’m fine. I was just…” But she didn’t know how to finish her sentence either. Enjoying a little oblivion didn’t sound super stable.

“I was coming to tell you dinner’s ready.” Jack’s gaze dropped to her hand, still holding his wrist, and then lower, at the bubbles obscuring her. Only, time and her flailing had resulted in a good portion of them dissolving, leaving her exposed to him. He cleared his throat. When his fingers flexed, she felt the minute movement in the tendons cording his wrist. He made no move to leave the room or pull the large bath sheet from the bar for her.

She couldn’t pinpoint exactly how the next thing happened. Maybe her movement in the water, crossing and uncrossing her legs, had started it. Or maybe it was the responsive catch in his breath or the flare of heat in his eyes, fixed on her hand tightly clutching his wrist. It happened like that Ouija game, how you’d watch your own hand and a partner’s slide the planchette over the board to spell a message, never quite knowing who or what was controlling the movement. Whether it was Tansy’s doing, Jack’s, or the work of some other force entirely, their hands slowly descended into the water until his palm covered her breast.

Tansy held her breath, as if any disturbance would wake them from this dream. She watched his hand caress her, then glide down over her stomach, feathered with faded white stretch marks, her C-section scar. She swallowed the impulse to explain or apologize for her body, partly because he was looking at her like she was his first drink of water after days in a desert, and partly because her body, scarred and soft as it was, came undeniably alive under his touch. And that responsiveness, that quick readiness after years of relative dormancy, like it still knew what to do even if she didn’t, sent a wave of relief and gratitude through her.

Finally his hand delved between her thighs, which she opened for him. She was still clinging to the knobby part of his wrist, still unsure if she was guiding his movements or readying to stop him or heightening her own arousal by feeling every flex of his tendons. His sleeve was submerged in the water, the thin plaid clinging to his forearm. “Your shirt—”

A sudden point of gentle pressure behind her jaw brought her eyes to his face. His free hand settled at her neck, warm against her drying skin and the hammering of her pulse under it. His lips were parted and his eyes were dark, capturing hers, as his other hand cupped and teased her. He didn’t give a shit about his shirt right now, that much was clear.

The swelling pleasure of his touch made her eyelashes flutter closed, but there was that light pressure again, a swipe of his thumb across the front of her throat, silently imploring her to stay connected with him.

“You already did this earlier,” she pointed out in an embarrassingly breathy voice.

His jaw flexed as her hips lifted to his touch. “It’s not a box to check once and move on.”

“But I want more this time.” She felt herself blush.

His mouth twitched in an almost smile, but his amusement couldn’t push the dark need from his eyes.

Didn’t he want more, too? She was completely naked before him, wet and writhing, while he was still completely buttoned up. She let his wrist go, drawing her arm up over her breasts. “Our dinner will get cold.”

Jack shook his head firmly and then put her hand back on his own, on his hand on her, her palm covering his knuckles, her fingers curled around his. Now both of his sleeves were in the water. “Don’t care about dinner. Show me what you like,” he rasped.

Tansy huffed a frustrated breath, too worked up to genuinely press him about their food and too desperate for more of him to abide this drawn-out pace. She didn’t need foreplay. She was more than ready. As if he couldn’t tell that by touching her.

“Show me,” he repeated, bringing his mouth to her ear. His beard scraped her cheek, and she nestled into the rough scratch of it.

Bossy Jack. Tansy pressed two of his thick fingers into her entrance and rocked herself against the firm pressure of his palm.

The water stirred at the movement, ebbing and flowing across the tops of her breasts and up over her collarbones. It lapped at the sides of the tub. The room filled with rhythmic sloshing, with their breaths. Her back arched, her hips lifting off the basin, but she couldn’t get herself any closer.

“The way your body moves,” he marveled, holding her jaw, firm but tender, so she couldn’t duck from the compliment. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”

“More,” she gasped. She didn’t even know what she was asking for more of—his fingers, his body, or his words.

She didn’t have to know, though, because Jack growled into her hair then slipped his arms behind her knees and back and lifted her out. “Jack!” she gasp-laughed, water soaking his shirt and jeans and splashing onto the floor. She reached for the towel slung over the bar behind him and barely yanked it off as he marched her into his bedroom.

“I’ll get everything wet,” she warned, twisting to try to spread the towel on his bed before he dropped her right on top of the covers. She abandoned the task entirely when he pushed her knees apart and up, tucked his shoulders under her legs, and brought his hot mouth directly to her core.

She came before her wet skin lost the heat from the bath.

“Please tell me we’re not stopping there,” she panted.

Jack kissed her thigh, fanning his palm affectionately over her stomach.

“Come up here.”

“I love it when you make demands,” he said, his lips brushing the sensitive skin of her inner thigh.

“More than you like bossing me around?”

He chuckled as he climbed over her to reach for his bedside drawer. “Guess I like both.”

She took the condom he produced and turned it thoughtfully. “We should use this because I’m not on birth control, but just for the record, I haven’t been with anyone since my last test…”

“Same,” he said. “I’ve also…”

“What?”

He dragged his palm down his face and looked down at her chest instead of her face. “I had a vasectomy a few years ago.”

“Oh,” she said in surprise. “Okay. Aren’t you—” She stopped herself from bringing up his fertility issues right now, especially after how he’d reacted earlier with the baby shoes.

“Just needed it entirely off the table.”

“That’s fine,” she said quickly. “I think I’d still feel better if we use the condom, though.” She hadn’t considered a circumstance when protection wasn’t needed. It felt reckless to make the decision in the moment, even if there was essentially no real risk. “Is that okay?”

“Of course.” He nodded for her to open it.

“Take off your clothes, Jack.”

He sat back on his heels to unsnap his shirt. Tansy yanked the last few snaps apart herself and then went for his belt buckle. They both shoved at his jeans, which were wet enough to stick to his thighs. He had to stand beside the bed to get out of them.

She’d seen his chest already, but she took a moment to really marvel at him in the soft glow of the lamp. His skin was tanned, with dark hair across his pecs and another soft trail bracketed by the distinct V of his pelvis and disappearing into his boxer briefs. He was so solid. Solid and broad and thick, his muscles shaped by the work he loved.

He was about to unceremoniously remove his black boxer briefs, but Tansy scrambled to her feet and hooked her thumbs into his waistband. As she pushed them down, he pulled her flush against him so his coarse chest hair lightly scraped her nipples.

“Been wanting you right here,” he said, voice rough. “Just like this.”

22

Jack

He took the condom from her and rolled it on while she stepped back to watch, her cheeks and neck flushed pink and her eyes as dark as the nighttime woods surrounding them. He stroked himself once under that hot gaze of hers—he couldn’t help himself—and then he squeezed the base to stem the pleasure, drawing in a deep breath.

Tansy lay back on the bed, and he covered her, his elbows propped on either side of her head but letting the full weight of his hips press into hers.

“Your ankle okay?” he asked before dropping kisses on her forehead, her jaw, and the corner of her mouth, deliberately forcing himself to go slow.

“It’s fine,” she breathed.

“You don’t have your wrap on.”

“If you’re worrying about hurting me, then you won’t—” She huffed a breath against his cheek.

He pulled back to look at her. “I won’t what?”

Her teeth pressed into her lower lip, forming a word. Fuck me, he thought—that was what she wanted to say. But she abandoned it with a shake of her head.

Her fingertips feathered lightly up his back. He twisted at the too-light pressure, his hips pinning her down harder, which he realized, from her contented sigh, was her intention. She rewarded him with firmer pressure, smoothing her palms back down to his ass and then squeezing as her shoulders and head lifted to kiss him. This kiss wasn’t a slow, languid warm-up. This was a full-court press, and fuck if he was going to fight it.

Jack lifted his hips for her hand to slip between them and bring him to her entrance. In one thrust, he pushed deep, all the way in, the warm, soft clutch of her so fucking perfect his vision blacked out at the edges. He braced his hands by her shoulders a moment, controlling himself, and then he began to move. Droplets of water had pooled from her hair into the dips of her clavicles and the base of her throat, and he lowered his mouth to suck it out of each hollow, tasting her greedily as she opened like a goddamn feast to him.

The thought hit him like a lightning strike: He was already running out of time.

He’d waited since the festival to be alone with her, had waited weeks before that to act on the rising tide of his attraction. One week wasn’t nearly enough time for all the ways he wanted her. The more he touched her, the more disquietingly and desperately he needed her. More time with her, more of her vicious kisses. He needed her every frenzied and gasping release, each one rushing into the next, spilling through one another indefinitely.

He shoved his hand between them to thumb her clit, his palm pressing her thigh open.

“I’m not ready,” she panted, pushing at his hand. Her body told a different story, her muscles clenching around him, her back arching off the bed.

“You sure? I think you are.” He sounded as raw as he felt, desperate for her to get there so he could start working her up all over again.

“It was too fast earlier. I was—”

“You were fucking perfect.”

Fire burned through him, jumping off his skin, surrounding her from all sides, but she was stubbornly smothering the sparks, refusing to catch. And for what? Despite saying she wasn’t ready, her moans and whimpers became more urgent. She slid her hand up to palm her own breast.

“Let me get you there,” he begged.

She whimpered in agony, and he understood: She wanted it, but she didn’t want this to end yet. Just like him.

But she didn’t know that he planned to do this all night and every free minute of the week he had with her. “As soon as you give me this one, we’re starting on the next one,” he promised. “Let go, sweetheart.”

“Fine,” she gasped. “Yes. Touch me.”

He wasted no time, pinning her hand to the bed so he could draw that nipple she was teasing into his mouth, his tongue matching the quick flick of his thumb on her clit.

She threw her head back with a cry of pleasure, her fingers clenching tightly around his hand on the bed just as she collapsed around him. He fucked her hard through it, murmuring a mindless monologue of curse-laden praise against her skin, until her whole body spasmed at the overstimulation and she pushed his hand away with a breathless laugh.

His dick twitched impatiently, but he fought his need, buried it deep, her aftershocks fluttering around him.

It was maybe seconds, or maybe a whole fucking lifetime, before she framed his face in her hands and began to roll her hips again, her eyes bright and open and fixed on his. “Jack,” she whispered, shaking her head a little, like she couldn’t believe this electric pull between them. She wasn’t denying him or herself anything now, but still, from somewhere deep, deep down, he felt compelled to beg her. For what, he didn’t know.

His heart clamored for hers in his chest, his sweat mixing with the water on her skin. He kissed her to stop himself from saying something reckless and irretrievable and matched her movement, a deep, slow grind that soon returned to quick thrusts until he couldn’t hold himself off anymore. His release barreled through him, ruthlessly uprooting pieces of him he’d thought were safe and secure and carving out a deep, jagged path that he knew, even in this endless, skittering moment, would leave his inner landscape changed forever.

—

In the morning, Tansy found him in his home greenhouse. She was swimming in his pearl-snap shirt from last night and a pair of stretchy shorts, and if he’d had half an imagination, this would have been his top fantasy of the last three and a half months.

“Morning,” he said, reaching from where he was kneeling to draw her to him by her waist. He kissed her stomach through his shirt, and she threaded her fingers into the hair at the back of his neck, scratching lightly. It sent a jolt of pleasure straight down his spine.

“You have a big greenhouse,” she said.

“Thanks for noticing.”

She playfully swatted his shoulder, then slid from his grasp to meander down a row of tables, around the far end, and back across from him on the other side. She looked at the pallet of flowers between them. “What is this?”

“An experiment.”

One curious eyebrow lifted.

“They’re pansies. I’m selecting for a darker color. Trying to get to black.”

“Goth pansies?” she asked. “Kai would love that. What else are you cooking up in here?” She walked to the end of the row and then around to the next. He followed, smiling as she bent to smell various plants, murmuring, “Nope. No. Not it.”

“What are you looking for?” he finally asked, sidling up behind her and brushing her hair to the side of her neck so he could kiss that soft slope, settling his hands at her hips, his fingers slipping under his shirt to the warm, soft skin of her belly.

“I have a theory,” she said, squirming when his touch tickled her.

“I’m listening.”

“If you can select for a specific color of flower, you must know other science-y plant stuff.”

“The word you’re looking for is horticulture.”

“Whatever.” She slipped from his grasp again, and once more he followed like some lovesick dog. “My theory is…you smell insanely good to me. Like, crazy good. So I figure you must have some secret plant in here with powerful sex pheromones that you’ve extracted into an oil or something.”

He laughed.

“It’s unnatural, Jack.”

“Your attraction to me could only be due to sex pheromones? From a plant?”

She shrugged, turning to wander again, trailing her fingertips across leaves and taking in the structure overhead. “There are as many plants in here as in the greenhouse at work.”

“I’ve brought some things home,” he said. “The greenhouse there was barely limping along before the storm. We were supposed to be building a new one on our expansion property by now.”

“But the commissioner froze your budget,” she said with a shake of her head.

“The new one’s bigger and state of the art. Everything about it will be a huge upgrade, especially its energy efficiency. A good portion will run on solar. And it’s fully automated and customized. Name a condition, and you can control it to the finest degree. Plus, it has all this built-in feedback through sensors and data collection. It’s a ‘science-y plant stuff’ person’s dream.”

“Okay, nerd,” she laughed.

“I’ve been waiting for this greenhouse since I came on a decade ago.”

“What about the money you guys raised? Will that help?”

“Some, maybe. We raised a fraction of what we need to make up for the flood-mitigation stuff.”

She frowned. “I hate that literally everything costs so much money.”

“Most of the plants I’ve managed to get for the park lately have come from trades.”

“You can trade for plants? With who?”

“I’ve got a greenhouse network.”

Her brow lifted. “That sounds secretive.”

He chuckled at her sudden intrigue. “Things used to be a lot more isolated, but in recent years, there’s been a push to share more, trade, send out backups of rarer species so they don’t die off in the one place cultivating them. We got back a few things that way. Even though we lost a lot of mature plants and many of our own backups, I secured our seed bank, which has some things of interest I can trade for pricier stock when the grounds are more stable.

“But if you wanna talk secret, espionage shit,” Jack said, dropping his voice, “there are some species we all keep under wraps, even from our own staff, because they’re so rare people try to steal them. It’s all off the books. I’ve got a few things in here right now that some folks would kill to see, let alone get a cutting of.”

She whirled around. “Where? Which ones?”

“Not gonna divulge my secrets that easy, Tansy.”

She narrowed her eyes in disapproval.

He nudged her back a few steps, offering instead, “This one’s not a secret, but it is my favorite.”

She touched the cinnamon-colored branches of the shrub and cupped one of the velvety flower clusters in her palm. “Why is this your favorite?”

“Probably because I’ve killed it twice already.”

She glanced from the shrub to him and back as if to point out that it was not, in fact, dead.

“Not this one, obviously. It’s called Edgeworthia—paper bush. Everyone’ll tell you it needs some shade, but after I lost it the first time, I moved the next one into full sun, and it was much healthier there until a hard freeze killed it. I should have pulled it out ahead of time, but they also don’t tolerate being moved well. With this one, I finally had the right light, soil, and moisture—everything figured out—and then a damn hurricane barreled straight for it.”

“Oh, that was because of this one plant?” she teased.

“The only reason I was at the library so late that afternoon,” he told her, “was because after I secured as many structures as I could and moved things up to higher ground—not that that mattered in the end—I went back for this one. Took a while to know if transplanting it killed it anyway.”

Tansy’s eyes went wide with righteousness. “Hold on. You left late during the hurricane because you were saving a plant? You made me feel like an idiot for going back for those birds.”

Jack sighed and shook his head. “I had a truck. I knew how to drive in high water. And I understood how much time I had before the creek was gonna overflow.”

She shook her head at him. “Unbelievable,” she said, but she was smiling all the same. “So this plant is a handful, huh?”

“The pretty ones tend to be,” he murmured, brushing her hair back from her face. He kissed her.

“You really do flirt via plants,” she murmured against his mouth.

“I what?”

She laughed. “Nothing. It smells amazing,” she said, leaning back into the shrub. “It’s almost familiar.”

“Like gardenia, but spicier.”

“Mm-hmm,” she agreed.

The bush was only a few feet tall, half its mature height if he kept this one alive long enough to get there, with a wide, intricate branching system and clusters of tubes that each opened into buttery-yellow blooms. It was nearly finished flowering, and he was gratified she was seeing it right now, at its most spectacular.

She gingerly lifted one cluster to inspect it and then blushed and said, “Sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t touch it?”

“It’s not fragile,” he assured her. “Actually, the branches are flexible, almost like rubber. Supposedly, it used to be given as a wedding gift, and the couple would tie one of its stems into a knot every anniversary as kind of a living record of their time together. Not sure how true that actually was in practice, but you technically can do it.”

“Your favorite plant,” she mused, turning to meander some more. Then she smiled over her shoulder, and said, “Tell me more, Jack.”

So he did, until her stomach growled, and he offered to make her breakfast. Tansy insisted on helping, and they moved around each other in his kitchen, scrambling eggs and frying bacon and making coffee. They ate at the table he never used, her with one foot on her seat, her knee drawn up casually, and her arm looped around it. Her bare leg competed for his attention with the skin exposed by the deep V of his shirt, which was closed by a single snap below her breasts.

“So I’m going to need a few hours to get some things done,” she was saying, catching him staring distractedly at a faint freckle below her collarbone. She smiled and tipped her face down, into his eyeline.

“What? No, you said I get full access this week,” he said.

“I did,” she conceded, amused, “but I need clean clothes.”

“What do you need clothes for?”

She grinned and blushed. “We have work tomorrow. And with the festival and getting Briar packed for Dallas, I have seriously neglected my own laundry, which means I need to take a trip to the Laundromat.” She sighed, and a deep frown dragged down her mouth.

“Laundromat,” he huffed. “Don’t waste your time there. Do your laundry here.”

She considered the offer, but then shook her head. “Jack, you’ve already fed me, given me a bubble bath, practically single-handedly installed my cabinets—”

“So?”

“So, no. I’m not looking for someone to swoop in and rescue me from two hours at the Laundromat. I will survive.”

“Two hours? Of just sitting there waiting for your clothes?”

She rolled her eyes. “I can finally read a book while I wait.”

“Or you can read a book here, save your money, and not have to deal with the weirdos who will talk to you or the assholes who monopolize all the dryers.” He interrupted her next complaint. “We both know you’re perfectly capable of doing your laundry at a Laundromat, just like you can obviously feed yourself despite not having a stove or a damn fridge, and you can endure cold fucking showers and sleep on a shitty air mattress with no central air. My God, Tansy. You don’t have to prove to me that you’re a badass. I see it.”

“It’s not about proving it to you.”

“Then who’s it for? Because it’s just you and me here, and I don’t need the lesson.”

“It’s about…” She shook her head, frustrated, fumbling. “It’s about balance. And although, yes, it’s nice to have a hot bath and sleep in a real bed, that’s not going to be my life next week. I don’t want to get—”

“Used to it?” As if a hot bath and a real bed were luxuries rather than a baseline. He wanted to ease her burden because he could. And he wanted someone helping her to not be so rare that she mistrusted it.

She didn’t reply, but just bit at her thumbnail, eyeing some spot on the table between them.

“You said you’d give me this week because it’ll be complicated when Briar comes back. And I get that. I respect that. I also get it if you just want a few hours to yourself. That’s fine, Tansy. You can say that, and I’ll back off. But if you don’t need space, if you’re just holding back because this week is gonna end, then what’s the point? When are you ever gonna put yourself first if not now?”

“Wow, Jack. You make shacking up all week sound practically noble.” She laughed. “Besides, isn’t all this, like, way more complicated than you usually do? You can’t honestly want me around this much. We can’t have sex all the time.”

His ears burned at that because after their night together and flirting with her this morning and her looking so relaxed and comfortable in his house, he’d kind of forgotten this week was supposed to be just about sex. But was it so wrong that he enjoyed just being around her? That he wanted to give her pleasure in every possible way, not just in bed? Was it so impossible for her to be cared for without having to earn it first or pay it back later?

But she’d called it shacking up, so he swallowed these questions and put on a grin that he hoped read as just casual. “I just think you’re not giving us enough credit for how much sex we can have. And you need to be here for us to do that.”

She shook her head at him, a wary smile stretching across her mouth.

He reached across the table to take her hands. She let him. “I’m offering use of my washing machine because the alternative is unnecessarily annoying,” he said. “It doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.”

She huffed a laugh. “Fine.”

“Good. Now come over here.”

“Why?”

“Because the way you look in my shirt is doing things to me.”

She played with the collar, sliding it just over her shoulder, all innocent and sweet. “What kind of things?”

Jack shook his head. He loved her like this, playful and a little brazen, leaning into the sexiness she otherwise tamped down.

He pushed up from his chair and came around the table, standing over her so she tilted her face up to look at him, eyes dancing with anticipation. He held her cheeks in his hands, drawing it out. Then he brought his mouth to her ear and whispered, “Come find out.”

23

Tansy

“You coming?”

Tansy shot up from behind the circulation desk, heat climbing her face. All day, she kept mentally replaying the part of last night when Jack had flipped her onto her stomach and covered her back in agonizingly slow, open-mouthed kisses while his hand snuck between her hips and the mattress.

It was closing time, and Kai was returning the rolling cart from outside. They looked her up and down as she squeezed by to leave, a knowing smirk on their lips. “It’s getting hot in here,” they sang under their breath, closing the door to lock up.

“I’ve put in a request for a portable cooling unit,” Tansy mumbled. Sheila from admin had said she’d pass along the request, which didn’t mean they’d get it, but she also hadn’t brought up their dwindling borrowed time in the gardens—three more weeks.

“Babe, I’m not talking about the weather. You look like you need a cold plunge.”

Tansy laughed, embarrassed, and then muttered, “I guess not having a water heater isn’t always bad.”

“Oh, shit, wait. Speaking of which”—Kai snapped their fingers—“I heard about this thing you should check out. Have you ever heard of Ernie’s Emporium?”

“No.”

“It’s this weird place deep in the woods that’s, like, a flea market, a drive-in movie theater, an arcade, and maybe some other things, too. The guy who ran it just died, and his family is selling off all the stuff for dirt cheap. Hang on.” Kai dug their phone out of their pocket and thumbed the screen before turning it to Tansy. “Look at this list. Right there—water heaters for a hundred bucks.”

“Okay, but do they actually work?”

“That’s the thing. The guy used to buy up inventory and equipment when businesses went bankrupt, so some of it’s used, like pizza ovens from restaurants and industrial washing machines, but some are straight-up floor models and sale stock from old department stores. His family is selling it off cheap because they don’t want to keep the business going.”

“I’d need a truck.”

A flash of movement pulled Tansy’s attention down the path toward the back property. Jack was returning from whatever he’d been doing back there all day, his mouth immediately quirking up at the sight of her.

“Something tells me you might be able to find help from someone with a truck.”

—

The drive to Ernie’s Emporium—after work on Tuesday—took two hours. Jack didn’t listen to anything when he drove, which made Tansy antsy for the first half hour, but he humored her questions about his day and listened to her ramble on about her own. All the while, he left his hand on her thigh, drawing circles with his fingertip over her kneecap. She could still feel the sensitive buzz in her skin when he parked the truck in a field that faced a compound of several outbuildings set in the dense pine trees.

“I’ll meet you in there,” he said, nodding at a bathroom sign over a side door.

Inside the main office, Tansy walked up to the counter, where two men had their backs to her. Following a baseball game on a small TV, they didn’t hear her approach, so she cleared her throat. The area behind the counter was cluttered with small appliances, sports equipment, and about a dozen traffic cones. She couldn’t tell if they were stored there or pulled for people to come pick up. She’d been told the water heater would be pulled ahead of time for her, but she didn’t see it.

“Excuse me,” she finally said.

The guys turned around slowly, their eyes the last part to peel away from the TV as the game finally broke to a commercial. They were young, early twenties maybe. One was tall and trim, wearing shorts and a muscle tank that exposed his stark farmer’s tan and one flat nipple. The other guy was his odd-couple counterpart, short and thick, fully covered in pants and a sweatshirt, its hood pulled up over his messy hair.

“I’m here to pick up a water heater,” she said. “My name is Tansy.”

“System’s down,” the trim one said, already turning back.

“What?”

“The system ain’t working right now,” the second kid told her, looking her up and down with interest that didn’t thrill her but which she figured made him slightly more likely to help.

She flashed him a bright smile. “I’m not following what exactly that means. The system is…” she began, wondering if he meant a point of sale system, a computer inventory, or something else.

“Down,” he finished confidently, as though he’d just aced a pop quiz.

“Okay.” She rolled her lips between her teeth. “What is the system?”

“The computer?”

“Are you…asking me or telling me?” she asked in exasperation.

“Dude,” he said to the first kid, pulling him back to face her. “Tell her what’s wrong with the system.”

“And we’ve already established that it’s down,” Tansy cut in.

“We got locked out of it because we got the password wrong.”

“Okay,” she said patiently. This was getting her nowhere, so she tried a new tack. “Yesterday, I called for an electric water heater, and the guy who answered said there were at least five on the premises and that he’d pull one for me to pick up today.”

“Who’d you talk to?” Before she could answer, the muscle tank kid turned to the hoodie kid. “Did you talk to her?”

“It was someone named Greg,” Tansy said.

“Freaking Greg,” they both said. Then, the kid in the hoodie added, “That’s our uncle. He’s a dick. Thinks our dads shouldn’t sell this place, but he wasn’t even Grandpa’s blood kin,” as though this was crucial information. It was not.

She waved a hand. “Is there a water heater here or not?”

The first kid said, “I mean…probably.”

“Probably?” Tansy breathed deeply through her nose. “What does that mean?”

“If Greg said there was, then yeah, there probably is. It’s just that Greg ate some gas station sushi last night, and he’s been home on the can all day,” the one in the hoodie said, breaking into a laugh at the end and low-fiving the other guy.

The amount of detail she was getting about Greg right now compared to the complete lack of actual, relevant information was enough to make her scream. “Can someone else get the water heater?”

“Normally, yeah. Problem is, the system’s down, so we can’t find it.”

The game came back on, and both of them turned.

“Wait. Please. I drove two hours. Why can’t you find it?”

“Because Grandpa liked to put lawnmowers with freaking harmonicas and rocking chairs with soccer balls. There’s seventeen buildings of crap thrown all in together like that. Luckily, everything’s in the system with exact locations, but unluckily, after Greg ate the gas station sushi, he told us the wrong freaking password and got us shut out.”

“So…” Tansy huffed, at a loss. “You don’t know which of the seventeen buildings it’s in.”

The door opened, and Jack came in. He joined Tansy at the counter with a quizzical look, glancing from her tense face to the guys already turning back to their game and then around the room. “What’s the holdup?”

Tansy gestured helplessly, unable to even begin to explain this to him.

“Hey,” he barked.

The guys turned.

“Where’s her water heater?”

“Like we just told your wife,” the trim kid started.

Tansy’s eyebrows shot up.

Jack didn’t even flinch at the assumption. He did, however, slide closer to her side and settle his palm at her back.

“The system’s down, so we can’t help her.”

“What does that mean?” Jack barked.

“Oh my God,” Tansy groaned. “They don’t know where it is because everything is mixed together, and the map is in the system, which is down, so they can’t look up where it is.”

“Y’all ever consider printing out the map?” Jack asked with a searing glare.

The boys looked at each other and shook their heads.

“All right,” Jack said. Then he turned to leave. “We’ll find it ourselves.”

“There’s a lot of stuff,” the one in the hoodie said. “Could take you all night.”

“My wife came for a water heater,” Jack said, throwing Tansy a wink—an honest to God wink. “So we’re gonna get her damn water heater.”

—

The first building was jam-packed with small appliances—toasters, kitchen mixers, stereos, standing fans. Bizarrely, there were also poker tables and pallets of birdseed and a section with buckets full of neon golf balls and several dozen rubber-coated putters—an entire mini-golf place’s supply of them, probably. They took a quick tour of the space, but it didn’t look like there were any water heaters.

In the second building, they found an explosion of Christmas decorations and arcade games.

Building three was a smaller, single-wide trailer that held filing cabinets and bicycles, and when they left to head to the next, a six-foot-tall inflatable rooster dancing in the evening breeze cock-a-doodle-dooed mechanically at them, startling a swear from Jack that made Tansy laugh.

“Who collects this much crap?” he grumbled.

“Hey,” she said, opening the door to building number four. “One man’s crap is another man’s—” She spun back with a shriek, shoving Jack back outside. “Nope! Immediately, one hundred percent no.”

He chuckled and tried to catch a glimpse before the door closed, but she grabbed his arm and dragged him after her, explaining, “It’s all dolls.”

“This guy was a nut.”

They were winding their way through a more promising building that had lots of small and medium appliances—window air-conditioning units, microwaves, bread makers—when Tansy stopped and watched Jack ahead of her, peeking behind tarps and moving heavy objects out of the way. He was so focused on their task, so determined to find her water heater, even though this was beginning to feel like a fool’s errand.

She thought back to their conversation at breakfast on Sunday, the kick of panic she’d felt over what it would mean to do her laundry at his house, to fully immerse herself in the comforts of his place, of him. This week was just supposed to scratch their attraction itch—something she already felt skeptical about achieving by Briar’s return on Monday. But she hadn’t expected Jack to be so caring beyond the physical part of their agreement. He was still bullish and bossy, because of course he was, but he also pushed her to accept rest and care and, yes, pleasure—but not just in bed. He’d taken seriously her claim that she would have read a book at the Laundromat and insisted she find a cozy spot in his house to read between loads. She’d gone straight for that big chair by the window in his room. Although she hadn’t had tons of free time before the storm, there had been pockets around caring for Briar when she could squeeze in a chapter here and there. Tansy didn’t realize how much she’d missed something so simple, something just for herself. If you’re holding back now because this week is gonna end, then what’s the point? When are you ever gonna put yourself first if not now? She hadn’t even realized what she was doing. Trying not to get too comfortable, like maybe if she didn’t fully give into this thing with Jack, she could limit the sense of loss that surely awaited her at the end of it.

The more time she spent with him, though, the more holding him off felt like a loss right now. And maybe just because they didn’t have a plan past this week didn’t mean they couldn’t figure out how to still…

She didn’t even know how to finish that thought.

The most surprising thing about this week so far with Jack was that, for his claim that he didn’t do relationships, he actually seemed sort of natural at it. The way he’d softened. The way that, ever since they’d kissed in the greenhouse, she’d felt his constant consideration of her.

Then there was that wink he’d thrown her earlier in the office. That my wife.

“What is running through your mind right now?” Jack asked, returning to her around a set of shelves crammed with printers and French horns.

She turned her shoulders to hide the blush creeping up her face, suddenly very interested in a shelf of silverware. “When I was younger, I thought adulthood was going to involve a lot more dinner parties.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. My parents used to have them all the time. They’d get dressed up and go to my dad’s boss’s house in the middle of the week or have their friends over and use the fancy china. And the number of holiday parties they went to…There’s a lot about my parents’ lives that doesn’t make sense to me, but that part seemed kind of nice. Of course, the only people I really know here are my coworkers, and a dinner party with them would be—” She snorted at the thought of all of them in Marianne’s apartment with her animals and Irma sharing way too much information about her irritable bowel syndrome at the dinner table.

“My sister’s always trying to get me over for dinners. ’Course, she can’t cook to save her life.”

“A sister,” Tansy said. She couldn’t imagine Jack with a sister. But she was beginning to realize she’d assumed a lot about him that hadn’t been entirely accurate. “Tell me about her.”

Jack sighed as though summarizing his sister was a big, tiresome undertaking, but he was also smiling. “She’s not my biological sister. Our parents met at this church support group for single parents. My mom passed when I was four, and Amy’s dad was never in the picture. I think it was more of a companionship thing or a practical thing for them. Or, I don’t know, it was the nineties. Maybe they just bought all that bullshit about the supremacy of the nuclear family and cobbled together an approximation for us. We lived together from when I was nine until twelve. Then they split up and married other people with other kids who were terrible. Too loud in my case. Fucking cruel in hers. And, I don’t know, we kind of rejected them and chose each other, I guess.”

“What’s she like?”

“She’s a social worker. She’s the one who helped out Lena.”

“Oh,” Tansy said in surprise. “I’d love to thank her for that.”

He nodded. “She married my best friend, Omar, who was on the boat with me.”

“He was at the recognition ceremony, too,” Tansy recalled.

“Yep. We met in college, before he left to start running into burning buildings for a living. When he and Amy met, I pretty much became an immediate third wheel.” He said this with no trace of bitterness, but something shifted in his eyes as he added, “They’re having a baby in about a month.”

“The tiny hiking boots are for them?”

“Yep.”

“So you’ll be an uncle,” she said. “Congratulations.”

He nodded, quiet. After a pause, he explained, “She had heart surgery not that long ago. She’s all clear now with that. But I guess I’ll breathe easier once the b—once she’s on the other side of this, too.”

Baby. Tansy had her own way of talking around the things she couldn’t say and couldn’t help but wonder if this was also true for Jack. She believed now that he’d wanted it back then—a family—but it seemed that the loss of his marriage over not being able to conceive had shoved him in the opposite direction entirely. Hell, the guy had gotten a vasectomy. Just dropped that casually on her their first night at his place—needed it off the table. Whatever he’d once wanted or planned for, that obviously wasn’t still the case.

It reminded Tansy of their terms for this week—no strings and an expiration date. She knew that. She hadn’t forgotten. But it stung as though she had.

“I think this one’s a bust,” Jack said, stopping to broadly scan the building.

They made their way outside. It was darker now, moths circling the big floodlights overhead. Tansy stopped at the sight of the dozen buildings still left to search.

“What’s up?” Jack asked, doubling back to her.

She nodded past him at the massive compound and then twisted back to see how far they were from his truck. He clocked her waning energy and clamped a warm hand on her shoulder, shaking her playfully. “You giving up already?”

He was like a dog with a bone when it came to his to-do list, which now included her to-do list. Yet very soon, too soon, they’d separate it all again. And it was just very confusing.

“What is going on, Tansy?” he asked softly.

She blew out a frustrated breath. “I’m just trying to figure you out.”

“What’s got you so confused?”

She decided just to say it. “Well, despite what you say, you are so obviously a relationship guy.”

He clutched his chest, smiling even wider. “I’m a what?”

“You’re thoughtful and attentive and connected and, okay, also bossy and overbearing, but in a way that’s actually, deep down, kind of sweet. You like to cuddle. You cook for me. You made me take the most amazing bath I’ve had in years. You’re here on this crazy errand. If you were just in this for sex, why would you do all that?”

“I’m not just in this for sex.”

“What?” she breathed.

He must have seen the surprise on her face because he raised his palms and doubled back. “I meant, I like doing those other things, too. So what?”

“Those are relationship things, Jack. Why aren’t you in a relationship?”

He was shaking his head, still smiling, but in a way that looked incredulous, caught off guard. He scoffed, his shoulders lifting in a shrug. Then he pressed his smile away, his head going still, that wild look in his eyes focusing to an intense stare that made her work to swallow. He came one step closer. “Why are you asking me that, Tansy?”

She bit her lip, wishing she’d kept this whole thing to herself. She knew where they stood, and yet here she was, pushing at the limit they’d agreed on, fishing for any sign that there could be something here beyond Monday.

“I’m not asking you to be in a relationship with me,” she assured him, but she could barely get it out, embarrassed to have to clarify and hurt by the relief it must bring him.

He studied his boots in the grass for a beat, dragging in a long breath and blowing it out before saying, “Okay. Let’s just…” She heard him take a step closer. Then he tilted her face up to look at him, and she put on a last-second smile.

He searched her eyes for a long moment, zeroing in on the furrowed spot between her eyebrows. With a sympathetic frown, he smoothed it with his thumb and then hooked her in tight under his arm and kissed her hair. “Let’s keep going. Yeah?”

And just when Tansy felt like all hope was lost, they opened the door to the next warehouse to find a dozen water heaters.

24

Jack

On Saturday night, Jack was coming in the back door after turning the steaks on the grill when Amy and Omar entered through the front, carrying six-packs of Shiner and a store-bought cake. Amy quickly passed off the cake to Omar, whose hands were already full, to pet the cats. Tansy had been calling the cats Cece, Schmidt, and Winston from New Girl, despite Jack’s protest that he’d never even seen that show. Still, he’d relented because they were the least-ridiculous names she’d come up with so far.

Amy laughed at the persistent orange one—Schmidt—finally picking him up and carrying him through the living room. She was hugely pregnant now, wearing a stretchy, summery dress through which Jack could clearly see the outline of her belly button. She didn’t notice his surprised and vaguely embarrassed reaction because she was eagerly scanning the living room and kitchen, finally asking, “Where is she?”

“Tansy’s on the phone. Should be out in a minute.”

After managing his armload and hers, Omar slid two longnecks from their carrier, unscrewed their caps, and passed Jack one. “ ’Bout time you had us over for a change.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Amy put the cake and the rest of the beer in the refrigerator, eyeing the mashed potatoes going on the stove and the salad ingredients Tansy had been assembling before Briar called. “How very domestic,” she remarked, giving him an impressed look. “I have to admit, I’m intrigued by this whole development.”

“It’s not a development. We’re just…getting to know each other.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Omar washed his hands, slid into Tansy’s spot at the counter, and began dicing tomatoes. The guy couldn’t leave a cutting board unattended. “How’s work?” he asked.

Jack filled them both in on the week, surprised to find he had a lot to say. Spring break and the extra library programming had brought a surge of visitors through the gardens. Tansy had been announcing their new children’s gardening club at all her story times, and there was a lot more interest than they’d initially anticipated, so after assessing the park’s supplies, Jack suggested a tool donation drive to ensure they had enough shovels and gloves for the kids. Tansy had taken that idea a step further. She wanted to start a tool-lending library, where people could check out basic lawn- and home-maintenance equipment for jobs like she’d been doing at her house—tools people didn’t need fifty weeks of the year and shouldn’t have to splurge on just to complete a weekend project. He’d dug through his own shed for duplicates to add to the collection.

He only realized how long he’d been talking when he heard his bedroom door open down the hall, and soon Tansy came around the corner, freshly showered, in an emerald green dress it had taken her half an hour to choose. She looked so fucking pretty. She also looked unworried, like her call with Briar had gone well and like, even though he knew she was nervous to meet Amy, she wasn’t stressed about it. He had come to enjoy her feisty, combative side, but he really liked her like this—comfortable, relaxed.

After their awkward moment at the crazy hoarder’s palace in the woods, he half expected her to pump the brakes on their arrangement. He’d thought—hoped—when she asked why he wasn’t dating anyone, she was trying to say what he’d been feeling, too. That a week wasn’t nearly enough. That there had to be something else between scratching the itch and him trespassing into her carefully protected life.

But whatever tension had bubbled up in that moment burned right off. She’d been here with him, connected and open. Relieved, maybe, after that gut check. Whatever the explanation, it was a double-edged sword because the more she settled into his home and his life, the more he panicked internally at the clock ticking away on all of it.

Tansy glanced across the room at him, a quick wordless check-in, before Amy squealed with excitement and yanked her into an aggressively tight hug.

“Tansy, Amy. Amy, Tansy,” he unnecessarily introduced them from the kitchen.

“Wow, you are very pregnant,” Tansy said, laughing when Amy kept holding on to her.

Amy blew a weary sigh between her lips. “Tell me about it. I got the fun, all-the-time sickness that has only just started to lift, at eight months, just in time for the constant heartburn and sciatic pain.”

“Ugh, I’m so sorry,” Tansy said. “I do not miss that.” She came into the kitchen to officially meet Omar and then slid an arm around Jack’s back, giving him a quick squeeze.

“Everything good with Briar?” he asked, holding her there long enough to press a kiss to her hair.

“Yep,” she said. “What else can I help with?”

“Go sit,” he told her, nodding at Amy. “Make her take a load off with you.”

“I don’t appreciate my body being referred to as a load,” Amy said.

—

“Hold on,” Omar interrupted, laughing at Tansy’s slack-jawed impersonation of the guys at Ernie’s Emporium. “Please tell me that after all that, y’all found the water heater.”

“We did,” Tansy said, slipping her hand into Jack’s under the dinner table. “We got it installed last night, and the water in my pipes is now steaming hot.”

“I’ll say so,” Amy said suggestively, making them all laugh again.

Jack had invited Amy and Omar over in part because he wanted Tansy to have one of those dinner parties she’d imagined, but he hadn’t realized how nice this would be. All night, Tansy had chatted comfortably with Amy and Omar, a casual touch here, a smile there that said she was enjoying this, too. He wasn’t the sad third wheel anymore. He belonged to her. And that thought didn’t even spook him. It felt good.

Amy kept touching her belly, even pulled Omar’s hand over at one point to feel a particularly strong kick, and anything that Jack might have felt about that was soothed by the anchor of Tansy’s hand on his thigh.

“How’s your reno going?” Omar asked Tansy, pushing back his finished plate.

She shrugged, not losing her smile. “Slow but getting there. We hit up a garage sale this morning, and I found some furniture for my daughter’s room. I’m hoping I can get it all set up tomorrow and we can finally sleep in separate rooms again.”

“That’s good. And your neighbor who was with you? She recovering okay?”

“Dottie took a buyout. The county tore down her house to make an overflow depression. But she’s doing well. She lives a few miles away now.”

Jack shifted closer so he could put his arm across the back of her chair and give her shoulder a comforting squeeze, but the tension she usually showed when talking about the hurricane and her house didn’t appear. She turned to Amy and said brightly, “I can’t believe I haven’t asked yet, but how did you two meet?”

“Oh boy,” Amy said on a laugh. “Well, like y’all, we met during a hurricane.”

“Really?”

“Yep. This story stresses out Jack so much.”

Tansy turned to him, delighted and curious.

“You’ll see,” he grumbled, pulling her closer into his side. She was all the way at the edge of her chair now, their thighs pressed together.

“So Jack was on this super-nerd plant-finding trip—”

“We were harvesting critically endangered species in Costa Rica,” Jack clarified.

“Like I said, a super-nerd plant-finding trip,” Amy continued. “He was gone for weeks. It was the summer after my sophomore year at U of H, and I was, shall we say, more book-smart than street-smart…”

“Or weather-smart,” Omar chimed in.

“Yeah, like, I didn’t realize there was a hurricane coming until about six hours before it made landfall.”

“I’m the one who told her, from Costa Rica,” Jack said.

“Yes, his mother-henning cannot be hindered by geography. So anyway, I was living in an apartment by myself. I had no hurricane supplies and no idea what to do. I went out to try to get some food and batteries and stuff, but the stores were totally ransacked.”

“Been there,” Tansy said.

“I never cooked, so I was thinking, if the roads were bad and I couldn’t get out, I literally had no food to get by. I’m driving around, freaking out, and the only place still open is a Taco Bell, so I buy like twenty burritos, thinking I’ll just reheat them for days if I have to.”

“Oh my God,” Tansy laughed.

“I take them home, eat one, and put the rest in the freezer, and I’m feeling pretty proud of myself…until about two hours later when the first band of winds hit, and the power immediately goes out.”

“And she finally realizes she can’t keep nineteen burritos cold or reheat them without electricity,” Jack said.

“Okay, but it was only a category one,” Amy argued, “so it was totally possible that the power would come back on after the storm passed, and the food would keep if I didn’t open the freezer.”

“Sure,” Tansy said.

“Except that’s not what happened.” Omar smiled at Amy with so much affection, it radiated off him. And as much as Jack complained about this story and acted like his sister getting with his best friend had been a huge hardship, it genuinely moved him how Omar looked at her, still. It was hard to remember right now why Amy’s pregnancy had felt like a force field, shocking him back from them.

“No,” Amy agreed, “what happened was that the power was out for four days, and for the first two, I ate stale peanut butter crackers and sweated my ass off in that hotbox of an apartment until I couldn’t stand it anymore and drove to Jack’s place to see if his power was on. Plus, I knew he had a generator and probably six months’ worth of nonperishables. I got over there, raided his pantry, and tried to start the generator, but first of all, the directions were very confusing, and once I figured them out, I could not for the life of me pull the cord hard enough to get it going.”

Tansy was smiling so wide, her eyes shining, fully entertained by Amy’s story, even as she hummed sympathetically.

“For a full hour, I yanked on that damn cord. And it was so incredibly hot and humid. I was drenched in sweat, and I hadn’t had enough water, and I had this heart thing…” She touched her chest, where her scar was. “I needed to cool off, so I came back inside, stripped off all of my sweaty clothes, and just starfished on the kitchen tile, naked as the day I was born.”

Tansy was laughing so hard now, she had to swipe tears from the corners of her eyes. Even though Jack had heard this story a dozen times, he couldn’t hold in his own chuckle at Amy’s dramatics.

“So at this point, I should tell you that Jack had a roommate.”

Omar raised his hand, sending Tansy into another fit of giggles. “No,” she gasped.

“He had been on long shifts with the fire department since the hurricane made landfall, so by the end of day three, he was exhausted and filthy—”

“Desperate for a cold shower,” Omar said.

“As in, he was already pulling off his clothes as he came in the door, thinking no one would be there.”

Tansy turned and buried her face in Jack’s chest, laughing so hard she snorted and then laughed harder at that. He pulled his arm around her tighter, smiling into her hair, until she gathered herself and returned her attention across the table. “Okay, oh my God,” she sighed. “Continue.”

“So I’m tits up on the kitchen floor, possibly about to pass out, contemplating all of my life choices, and suddenly this naked man walks right past me, doubles back, and dives over the couch into the living room, where he crashes through the coffee table. I thought I must be hallucinating, so I didn’t even react.”

“Which made me think she was severely injured or possibly dead. So I go over to assess her condition—”

“Still naked,” Amy added.

“And she says—”

Amy covered her face as if she was embarrassed, but she also beat him to the punchline, wailing, “Don’t tell Jack about my tattoo!”

“What was the tattoo?” Tansy gasped, absolutely beaming with delight.

Amy couldn’t get it out for a full minute, finally squeaking, “The Disney Robin Hood. On my hip.”

“What? The fox?”

“It was a dumb, drunken dare thing my first semester of college that I fully intended to take to my grave. That damn cartoon fox was my sexual awakening, okay? I’m sorry.”

“Ah, come on,” Jack muttered.

“No, you’re not wrong,” Tansy whispered conspiratorially. “That animated Robin Hood was way hotter than he had a right to be.”

“On that note,” Jack said, pushing up from the table and then dropping a kiss on Tansy’s head.

“See?” Amy pointed out. “He gets stressed.”

Jack ignored her, gathering the plates from the table and taking them into the kitchen. Omar followed with the empty beer bottles, and Jack rinsed them for recycling.

“This is good, man,” Omar said, leaning back against the counter. His gaze was directed back to the women at the table. “Been a while since I’ve seen you like this.”

“Like what?” Jack joked. “Traumatized by one of Amy’s stories?”

Omar chuckled. “Nah. Happy.”

—

Later, after Amy and Omar went home and Tansy helped Jack gather and load the dishes into the dishwasher, she closed the dishwasher door, slid in front of him, and lowered to her knees.

“What are you doing?” he asked, catching her cheeks in his palms but not stopping her hands on his belt buckle.

“Tonight was perfect. And I don’t want to go the whole week without getting to do this,” she said.

She was beautiful, her golden-brown eyes big and rich, looking up at him through her lashes. Her cheeks flushed from laughing all evening. On her knees for him, wanting him.

“Tansy, you don’t have to…”

“I want to.”

He wanted to tell her there didn’t have to be a time limit. She didn’t have to fit this in before the deadline.

But how could he say that when he didn’t have an answer to any of the practical questions she’d ask next? When could they be alone again? When would she not only be able to make that time, but also want to—at the expense of Briar?

She opened his belt and undid his pants, and when she glanced up at him again, silently asking for permission, he nodded, swallowing audibly in the quiet kitchen.

25

Tansy

On Sunday evening, Tansy was putting the finishing touches on Briar’s bedroom before her final night with Jack. He’d helped her set up her new garage sale finds—a bed, nightstand, and lamp—but he’d left ahead of her to buy groceries for dinner.

Seeing Briar’s beautiful room at Charlie’s house had compelled her to get this done. She’d be lying, though, if she said this last week with Jack hadn’t also provided a push. Being back in her empty house after practically moving in with him had her entertaining hypotheticals. If Tansy had her own room, her own bed, if she had some healthy separation from Briar…

She recognized that she and Jack had been playing house these past few days, swimming in the deep end of lust and comfort. She was tempted to play out the fantasy a little longer, to ask if he’d consider continuing on in a similar way. Still no strings. Nothing to spook him. If she were a little braver, she’d do it.

But regardless of all that, Briar needed a bedroom. Even if Tansy never invited Jack or anyone else into hers, this was still an essential, overdue step toward normalcy.

She turned off the lamp and repacked her overnight bag. She was already a half hour later than she’d meant to be, already feeling the rushing loss of time with Jack, which was so at odds with the part of her that couldn’t wait one more day for Briar to come home. She packed and unpacked her laptop, deciding that work could wait. She would just check her email once and put it out of her mind.

Dear Ms. Perkins,

Thank you for your application for the Fullton Recovery Grant. We know how much this funding is needed by so many deserving nonprofits across Houston, and we wish we could fund every project submitted. Unfortunately,…

—

“Hey. Where’ve you been? I was getting worried,” Jack said, stooping to block the gray tabby cat, Winston, from darting out the door.

Tansy didn’t answer. She was numb. She’d sat on her deflated air mattress, reading and rereading the email, looking for an explanation for how she’d failed to present her case, an avenue for appeal, a consolation opportunity. But it was a form rejection. Her application hadn’t even made it past the first round of consideration.

She almost hadn’t come at all, gripped with urgency to throw herself into damage-control mode, to formulate a new strategy. Library admin would review her branch’s stint in the gardens in just two weeks and potentially call off this whole experiment. But every time she’d scrolled to Jack’s name in her phone, she couldn’t bring herself to call and cancel. She wanted to be with him.

Jack closed the door behind her and leaned in for the casual kiss he’d begun to greet her with. He stopped short. “What’s wrong?”

Tansy burst into tears.

He immediately pulled her into his arms, wrapping them tightly around her, resting his chin atop her head. He stroked her hair, her back, and pressed a kiss to her cheek, every gesture a question, a worry. “Tansy, sweetheart…”

“I didn’t get the grant.” Her voice broke, and she buried her face in his shirt. She tried to slow her breaths, to regain control of her voice, to maintain the steadiness she’d had to have all these months. But every attempt ratcheted her up further. She couldn’t fight it. Weeks of frustration, of worry, of feeling inadequate and unworthy, of doing her best and failing. It all broke over her at once.

“Breathe,” Jack said in her ear, his voice low and steady. “Tansy, come on. Take a breath. Do it with me.”

That made her cry harder.

She had let herself get complacent. Yes, she’d busted her ass these last few months. She hadn’t given up on the work. But with so little agency to change the library’s circumstances, Tansy’s mental game had shifted. The festival numbers hadn’t impressed admin. Their increased program engagement, despite the location challenges, hadn’t persuaded them. The turnaround in patrons’ feedback, the hits on their socials, the near miracles she and the other librarians and even Jack had achieved hadn’t moved the needle at all. In the face of a total lack of power, she’d realized the money was the only thing that could possibly change their fate. So she hadn’t entertained the possibility of not getting it. It was essential and, therefore, went her logic, inevitable.

But it wasn’t inevitable. And her foolishness in counting on it—counting on a rescue, once again—filled her with the familiar leaden weight of shame. Every bit of fortitude and resilience and hope crumbled around her.

“Tansy,” Jack pleaded, smoothing back her hair from her eyes and holding her face in his steady hands.

She could barely see through her tears. She didn’t even care that she had snot running from her nose, that she must look like an absolute mess. She was an absolute mess.

He bent to lift her in his arms and carried her down the hall into the bathroom. He placed her on the side of the tub, turned on the shower, and quickly returned. She only vaguely registered him undressing her and then himself and then she was under the warm spray, his arms around her, her tears and snot washing away down the drain. She had no idea how long they stood like that, how long she cried and he held her.

“There you are,” he whispered when her sobs subsided. He kissed her cheek and then tucked her face into his chest once more. “Had me worried.”

“It’s over,” she whispered. “They won’t renovate without that money. You know they won’t. And our four months are nearly up.”

“No one is kicking you out of the gardens.”

“They can pull what little support they’ve given us. All our books are on loan. The fact that they even funded us for this long…”

“We’ll fix it, Tansy.”

She believed he believed this, and although she didn’t have nearly the confidence he did, Tansy didn’t argue. There was a convincing security in his arms. The warm water cascading down her back and his voice murmuring into her hair slowly soothed her.

Eventually, Tansy regained enough awareness to know that she should put an end to this—to letting him care for her. Just like she shouldn’t have counted on the grant. The only person she could count on was herself.

Except…Jack had cared for her. This week, he’d cared more and better for her than anyone ever had.

Tomorrow, they’d go back to some version of before. She’d have to swallow down this hunger that she’d let grow out of control. She’d resume her role as the mom, the manager, the steady one keeping calm, putting everyone else’s needs first.

But damn it, she wanted him. For herself.

Fresh tears burned the backs of her eyes. She wanted him.

“What can I do?” he asked.

“Kiss me.”

He didn’t hesitate. He kissed her so tenderly but then whispered against her cheek, “Just don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like this is the last time.”

She pulled back, blinking through the mist at him.

“I’m not ready for this to end, Tansy.”

She could have cried again from relief.

“I’ll give you whatever space you and Briar need. We can take it slow. Just—”

“I’m not ready for it to end either,” she blurted, pulling his mouth back to hers. She kissed him, hard and desperate. And then she was crying again.

Jack turned her and pinned her shoulder blades to the tile wall. He was hard against her hip, a fact they’d been ignoring until now. He touched his forehead to hers, water dripping off his nose onto her lips, and with an audible rasp in his voice said, “You won’t shut me out tomorrow?”

“I won’t.”

“Swear?”

“I promise. I want this,” she assured him. He had no idea how much. “I want you,” she added, sliding her knee up, pulling herself up his frame, trying to line up their bodies.

He groaned, smoothing his palm from her knee to her ass and back, holding her leg around him. He put her arm around his neck, and she held on so he could catch her other knee and lift her against the tile. His erection nudged between her legs, his length sliding along her folds. It was so good. He was so close. Part of her wanted them to just slide along each other like this forever.

But when he shifted their angle, and he pushed just inside her opening, stretching her around him, a needy sigh gusted out of her.

“I should get a condom,” he breathed.

But Tansy couldn’t bear him retreating now, not even just to fetch protection and come right back. “Wait. Just wait.”

He froze, maybe thinking she wanted to stop everything. Tansy wrapped her fingers around him, and she could tell when he understood what she wanted. She wanted all of him, nothing separating them.

“You sure?” Jack asked, new desire sparking in his eyes, jaw tight with restraint.

“Yes. You?”

“Fuck, Tansy.” He swallowed. “Yeah.”

He pushed into her, slow but deep, and Tansy clung to his shoulders. Rivulets of water ran down from his hair, catching in his eyebrows and his beard. It seeped into her mouth when she kissed him, and the excess heightened their boundarylessness, their bodies and the water rushing together. It couldn’t be contained. She couldn’t be contained.

Knowing there was nothing between them, feeling every bit of him overwhelmed her. She felt him getting close, pulsing inside her, and that was almost too much.

For him, too—he let out a sigh that was agonized and impatient, clutching her ass so tightly in his hands, she was sure it would leave marks.

“Don’t wait for me,” she said on a rush of labored breath.

“I’m not fucking coming without you.” His hips stuttered. His back clenched under her hands. “Fuck,” he gasped. “Baby, fuck.”

And then he was coming, and she could feel it, and suddenly she was right there. He thrust into her harder, losing his rhythm but pushing deeper, using his hands on her ass to pull her into him, until she was tumbling toward that precipice. It was the look in his eyes, so unfiltered and raw, that sent her over the edge.

After, Jack kissed her, long and slow, and then steered her under the spray of the water and set about gently cleaning every inch of her with a washcloth. He washed and conditioned her hair, finger-combing it and pressing kisses to the back of her neck and her shoulders. Then he wrapped her in a towel and took her to his bed.

26

Jack

The next morning, Jack had his hand clasped on Tansy’s knee in his truck, his thumb circling lazily at a stoplight. She’d finally relented and let him drive her into work instead of insisting on strict professionalism in front of her colleagues, and he’d taken it as a good sign. She wasn’t walking back yesterday’s agreement, not shutting him out.

She opened her visor and frowned at the reflection of puffy eyes from last night’s tears, which she hadn’t quite concealed, and then closed it back up. “We should have stayed in bed.”

“Want me to turn around?”

But before she could answer, the light turned green. She shrugged as if that was their answer, and he turned into the parking lot.

What greeted them was a fifty-foot pine toppled over the roof of the old library building.

Tansy said nothing as they parked and got out. Some of his maintenance crew were already there, surveying the damage. Kai paced on the sidewalk. Jack watched Tansy, expecting round two of last night’s emotions, but she hugged Kai loosely and said only, “I’d better call admin.”

He ached to catch up with her all morning, but every spare minute he had, she was with patrons or on the phone. And then, when he knew she would be heading to her story time, after which he could steal a few minutes with her, one of the Madisons intercepted him to say there were a dozen messages on the office phone for him, and he realized he’d been shirking his office duties.

Grudgingly, he listened to the messages, none of which was pressing, and then he opened his work email. Which might as well have kicked him in the stomach. He sank into the chair and dragged a hand down his face.

His Fullton application had been selected for the final round of consideration. He was invited to give a presentation in twelve days.

His heart was a stampede, trapped inside his ribs. He felt sick.

All he could think of was Tansy. Last night, everything had shifted between them. Finally, he had her. He was still raw from it, like she’d hollowed him out, only to fill the empty space left behind with her.

He’d never told her he’d applied for the grant. Why hadn’t he told her?

And now, not only had he advanced to the final round while she hadn’t, but he’d potentially even knocked her out of the running. Meanwhile, she was facing the library board’s decision. They could call the end of it, of Tansy’s branch as she knew it. Without that grant, renovating the building was already a long shot. Now, Jack easily could see the board using that damned tree compromising the roof as the final nail in the coffin.

Maybe he could call the Fullton people, find out if Tansy was next in line, and give up his spot…

But this was all wishful thinking, a desperate attempt not to have to admit to her what he’d done.

He left the office in a daze.

When he crossed the courtyard to catch the end of Tansy’s story time in the gated garden, Ian fell into step with him. “You see the tree?”

“Yep.”

“What do you think this will mean for the library?”

“It’s not gonna help,” Jack said grimly.

Ian nodded, eyebrows and mouth tense with worry. “There’s got to be something we can do, though, right? It’s been good with them here.”

Jack grunted. He agreed, but he couldn’t talk right now. He needed to get Tansy alone, confess that he was a finalist for her grant, and then lay out the hazy plan he was desperately cobbling together.

“Come on. Even you can admit that it’s been good,” Ian pushed, a bitter note tingeing his words.

“Yeah,” Jack snapped.

Ian mumbled an apology that made Jack stop and look him in the eye. “Listen. I’m working on a backup plan, regardless of what their administration decides, all right? We’re in the running for a big grant, one that will allow us to resume our expansion. If we get it, maybe we’ll be in a better position to help the library.”

“Help them how?”

“I’m still figuring that out. I need to talk to Tansy.” Jack resumed his quick stride, but Ian stopped him.

“She got a call in the middle of her story time. Kai took over.”

Jack clutched his hips, deflated. “She’s not in the gated garden?”

“No.”

Jack marched back in the direction they’d come to take the fork to the Little Green Library, leaving Ian behind.

Tansy wasn’t in the shed when he arrived, only Marianne, who was squinting at the roof, under which a fresh cup-shaped mud nest was affixed to the siding. She held a large rock and a can of wasp spray and appeared to be working up the nerve to use them.

“Where’s Tansy?” he asked.

“She had to leave.”

“Leave the library or the whole park?”

“The park. She took my car.”

Jack cursed under his breath.

Marianne nudged her glasses up her nose with her forearm, silently casting him a disapproving scowl.

He turned to leave but stopped. “That’s not a wasp nest,” he told her.

“What is it?”

“Barn swallow.”

He nodded past the clearing where power lines marked the edge of the park near a bend in the creek. Small, angular birds darted erratically in the bright blue sky, hunting insects. “A pair builds its nest here every year.”

She set down the rock.

“Do me a favor? Tell Tansy I need to see her when she gets back?”

“Fine.”

He texted Tansy, too, just to be sure she got the message. He waited for her reply, but it never came.

27

Tansy

The manager’s office at the Rojas branch library had a sliding glass door to a small, paved patio with two rusty chairs, a pot with cigarette butts piled atop bone-dry dirt, and an empty bird feeder. As sad as the sight was, Tansy itched to suggest she and Rashida move their meeting outside into the sunshine slanting across the cement. She felt boxed in by the stacks of papers on the desk and the metal filing cabinets lining the walls, and she shivered under the AC vent, having forgotten the necessity of a library sweater during warm months since she’d been in the Little Green Library.

“So what’s going on?” Rashida asked, closing the main door and moving one of the paper stacks to the floor so she could see Tansy across the cluttered desk. “It sounded urgent.”

“There’s a tree on the library,” Tansy blurted. “On Grant Gellman.”

Rashida tapped the tips of her red acrylic nails together, just like she used to. Her eyebrows lifted and then she shook her head in sympathy and muttered, “Bless.”

“Yeah.”

Rashida waited, tap-tapping away. “What does that have to do with you coming to see me?”

Tansy shrugged. She honestly didn’t know what Rashida could offer. But Tansy had faked competency these few months as interim manager, and her library needed a real manager, someone who actually knew what the hell to do, to give her some direction. “I applied for a grant to pay for our building reno, and I just found out we didn’t get it. And now there’s a tree on the roof, and I just—”

The backs of Tansy’s eyes stung, and a thick knot pushed up into her throat. She could barely acknowledge this truth to herself, let alone admit it to Rashida, who had once steered their ship so confidently.

Before she’d jumped ship and requested to be reassigned here, anyway.

Tansy took a cleansing breath and chose her words carefully, swallowing down the emotion. “Why didn’t you come back with us?”

Rashida’s chair creaked as she pushed back into it, crossing her arms and studying the white ceiling tiles.

Everything in this office was new, replaced during their own renovation, yet after just a few months, it already looked lived in, messy.

“I told you,” Rashida said. “It was time for a change.”

“But why then?” When we needed you, Tansy meant.

Rashida tapped her nails on the desk now, a rapid succession from pointer to pinky and back. “When else? We were closed. We were all scattered across the city.”

“Until I got us into the gardens. You could have come back and—”

Rashida pitched forward, the chair creaking loudly once more, and she pressed her palms on the stack of papers near Tansy’s side of the desk, fixing her with a stern look. “You’re here now because it’s the end of the line.”

Tansy shook her head. “Not yet. They won’t decide for two more weeks.”

“Honey,” Rashida said, a note of miss me with that naive nonsense to it. “Two weeks from now. Three months ago. It’s all the same. They were never going to renovate. And frankly, it’s the right call. That place flooded four times while I worked there. Four times.”

Tansy’s hackles rose at the phrase that place.

“Did you know my sister, my mom, and I came to Houston on a bus during Katrina?”

Tansy knew Rashida was from New Orleans, but of all her old coworkers, Rashida had always been the most private. The information dampened Tansy’s righteousness a bit.

“Left the home that was in my family for three generations. Started over here, only to ride out Rita and Ike and now this, on top of flash floods that just get worse and worse.”

Tansy picked at her nails in her lap. They were short and ragged, and she’d aggravated a hangnail on her thumb, unable to leave it alone. Fresh blood filled in the raw tear in her skin, the sting mirroring the burning behind her eyes.

“Every time the library flooded,” Rashida said, “we lost so much. Too much. Materials. But more than that. Patrons who left and never came back. Stability and routine. My goodness, a basic feeling of safety. Even when you replace the damaged belongings and get back to some kind of normal, those losses stay with you. They stack up somewhere in the back of your mind, so it’s not just the new loss when it happens again. It’s all of them.” She sighed, and Tansy felt it in her own body, the heaviness of it. “I’ve done all the losing and rebuilding I can take.”

Tansy couldn’t very well argue against that. “But don’t you think that when people have lost so much, they need us more than ever?”

Rashida leaned all the way across the desk now to squeeze Tansy’s hands, stopping her anxious picking, before shifting back into her seat and tugging her chunky sweater closed across her chest. “You lost a lot, too.”

“This isn’t about me. It’s about the community.”

“Aren’t you part of the community? You lost as much as anyone else. Your home. Your belongings. Your kid’s school. Your work.”

The tears were coming, no matter how hard Tansy fought them off. She wiped at her eyes hastily. “The school is open again. My house is—”

“Oh, sure, it can all be recovered. Until the next act of God. I’m just saying, you’ve thrown yourself into this mission without stopping to acknowledge what you’ve lost. To feel it.”

Tansy didn’t want to feel her losses. That was wallowing, and wallowing was a black hole she never wanted to get sucked into again.

“I’m also saying, at a certain point, it stops making sense to rebuild something that’s going to get destroyed again. Isn’t that the exact definition of insanity?”

“So we should just give up? Let the branch close? Leave people without services? Go somewhere that’s already stable enough not to need them as badly?”

“You’re not letting anything, honey. This is what I’m trying to tell you. When you got them to move you into the gardens, you thought it was a real chance to save the branch, but it was PR. Too much attention on a library closing, so they kicked the can and let it fade out of people’s memories. Nothing was gonna change their mind. Except maybe that grant. Even then, who knows?”

The grant. She’d known how important that money was, but hearing Rashida confirm it was too much to bear. “I just don’t accept that. I can’t.”

“I’m sorry, hon.”

Tansy wiped her eyes again and then dried her fingers on her skirt.

“There’s an opening here,” Rashida said after a moment, gently. “Children’s services.”

Tansy huffed a bitter laugh and pushed up from her chair. She had come here for her library, not for a job for herself.

Rashida met her at the door, blocking it. “You did more than anyone could have expected.”

“Not enough.”

“You reached patrons these last months. You kept it going for them. That’s not nothing.”

But it felt like nothing. It felt like she’d not only broken her own heart all over again by holding out hope, but that she’d also inflicted the same pain on her friends who had followed her into that shed, and every patron who had come to her programs and worked around the less-than-ideal circumstances. Kai, Marianne, and Irma would have to relocate to other branches for good, maybe even move. Tansy would have to halt the tool drive she’d just announced, cancel the gardening club. They hadn’t even had their first meeting yet.

Their little shed felt so cramped and inadequate just a few months ago. But it was going to hurt to close it for good, just as bad as when they gutted their old building.

—

When Tansy returned to the gardens, Kai was waiting for her at the entrance fountain.

“What’s wrong now?” she asked grimly, sitting next to them.

“Actually, it might be good news?”

Tansy couldn’t work up any genuine enthusiasm but nodded for Kai to spill.

“Ian told me earlier that Jack was looking all over for you.”

“Yeah, he texted. I haven’t had a chance to get back to him.”

“Well, he has some kind of plan. Apparently, he applied for this enormous grant so they can work around their frozen budget and resume their expansion project, and he found out today that they’re a finalist.”

“A grant?” Tansy whispered. Her entire life force drained out of her body.

“Yeah, the Brisket King, of all people, is donating the money.” Kai laughed, but they clocked Tansy’s face and their smile faded. “It’s good news,” they said, but uncertainty bled into their voice. “Because Jack and Ian will make sure we can stay here in the park. What…am I missing? You look like you’re going to pass out.”

Tansy immediately pushed up to her feet, but her legs felt shaky. Her stomach felt shaky, too. She scanned the park for Jack’s green ball cap until Kai rose in front of her and angled their face directly into her eyeline. “Tansy?”

Ian came through the side gate by the visitor’s center, and Tansy shouted his name far too loudly.

“Hey. Jack’s looking for you,” he said as he jogged over to them.

“Good.” She snatched his radio from his hip, thrust it at his chest, and said, “Tell him to meet me in the greenhouse.”

—

It had barely been two weeks since the day Jack and Tansy had kissed in the greenhouse. So much had changed.

And yet, any progress they’d made had just been brutally cut back, like the crepe myrtles that she now knew most people over-pruned—crepe murder, Jack called it.

Part of her refused to believe it at all.

But when the door creaked open and he scuffed inside, head low, hand already rising to the back of his neck, she knew it was true.

“Hey,” he said, stopping a few feet from her. “Been trying to find you.”

“You found me.”

He licked his lips. There was a minute twitch in his cheek as her chilly tone landed. “I have to tell you something. I should have told you before.”

He cleared his throat and adjusted his cap, and Tansy felt she would burst through her skin if she had to watch him delay this another second. She raised her palm to stop him. “I know you’re a finalist for my grant. Kai just told me. Ian told Kai.”

She heard him swallow. It was stuffier in here than it had been last time. All these windows, but none of them were open, and the too-warm air hung heavy around them.

“I should have told you weeks ago,” he said.

A bitter laugh tripped out of her.

He took a step toward her, and she immediately took one back, bumping against a table. He stayed right where he was, sensing correctly that one wrong move would send her running.

He raised his palms. “If it makes any difference, it was before we became…before our truce.”

“It doesn’t,” she snapped.

“The grant was such a long shot, I didn’t even think there’d be a reason to tell you. I thought we’d get passed over and it wouldn’t matter in the end.”

“Wouldn’t matter,” she echoed. “That you applied for the same grant I needed to save my library?”

He swallowed again. “Tansy, I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“Because you wanted it, and you deserved it as much as anyone, and it probably seems like I—”

“Like you took it from me?”

He scratched his beard, studying her, probably trying to figure out if she was finishing his sentence or confirming that it was what she believed. “Yeah,” he said. “Something like that. I didn’t expect to make it to the final round.”

“But you still applied. And you didn’t say a word about it all this time.”

“And what if I had said something?” he pressed, although he remained calm and didn’t raise his voice. “Would you have been fine with it? Or would it have been just another thing for us to bicker over? A wrecking ball to a partnership that was barely stable until pretty recently?”

“I don’t know!” she exclaimed. “But let’s not forget that I was the one who suggested our truce in the first place. And I kept my word. I didn’t work behind the scenes to sabotage you.”

“That’s what I did here?” He clutched his shirt, and that uncharacteristic restraint he’d had was slipping now. “I sabotaged you? Christ, Tansy. I applied for a grant I didn’t think I’d get, and I kept it to myself. Just like you didn’t tell a single one of your friends you applied. Because you didn’t want them to be disappointed if you didn’t get it. How is that different than me quietly putting my name in among more than three hundred other applicants?”

“You know why it’s different. I didn’t want to disappoint my friends. You didn’t want to admit that you put your park in direct competition with my library, that you put your interests first.”

“The chances that I specifically knocked you out of contention—”

“They’re not zero,” she cut in. “And it’s not just that you applied. It’s that you didn’t tell me. Every time we were together, you were lying to me.”

“Because I cared about you by then. I didn’t want it to come between us. And I truly didn’t think it would.”

“Last night—” She hugged herself. “You comforted me, all the while knowing—”

“I didn’t know then, Tansy. I assumed I got the same email you did. I found out this morning.”

Tansy gripped the edge of the table behind her so hard her knuckles popped. She didn’t understand how any of this had happened, how she had gone from feeling so safe and cared for, so full of desire just last night, to being eaten alive by anger.

He came closer, and she closed her eyes, realizing if she tried to bolt now, he already had her well within his long reach and wouldn’t let her slip past. “If I could give you our spot, I would.”

“That’s a nice thing to say when you know it’s not actually possible.”

He blew out a frustrated sigh. “Tansy, please. I can’t undo this. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be a good thing for you.”

She looked at him, curious how he could possibly spin this as good for her.

“Our expansion budget is getting cannibalized to cover the flood mitigation, which is why we needed this grant in the first place, but that work will drastically reduce the flood risk to your building. It makes your case stronger for renovating.”

It reduced the threat of flooding from the creek, but not the more common flash flooding that had caused last year’s damage.

Rashida’s tough love echoed in her head. They were never going to renovate. Nothing was going to change their minds.

“But it doesn’t put a cent toward renovation,” she said. “And now there’s roof damage.”

“Okay.” She saw his mind scrambling behind those warm hazel eyes. “So first, we secure your space here. We convince your administration to keep funding you for now, just to keep you going. And then, when the commissioner unfreezes my budget, I get the staff cottage back in order, and you guys move there. Or into our office building once the expansion is underway and we move our offices to the new property.”

The cottage was the building she’d originally hoped for, and after making the tiny shed work all this time, it would feel like peeling off SPANX at the end of a long night. They could triple their circulation collection there. They could even bring in a couple computers for patrons to use, a photocopier…

“For how long?”

He shook his head dumbly. “For as long as it takes. As long as I’m here, I can keep you guys here.”

Jack finally reached for her, squeezing her upper arm. She didn’t shake him off, but she didn’t ease into his embrace either, which seemed to throw him. He just stood there, looking at his hand on her, like he’d fully expected his touch to break through this unbearable wall between them.

And oddly enough, it was that surprise on his face that did soften her toward him, that finally made her want to fold forward into his broad chest and strong arms, just like she’d done last night. As hurt as she was over the grant and his secrecy about it, she also knew him. None of this was the deliberate attack it felt like.

But knowing that and making her body let down its guard were two different things.

“The problem is,” she said slowly, carefully, “that leaves us entirely in your hands.”

“You’re safe in my hands, Tansy. You know you are.” He pulled her in and tucked her head under his chin. She didn’t fight it because, regardless of the massive ravine cracking open between them, something in her still wanted him. He kissed the top of her head. “I’ll fight whoever I have to to keep you here.”

She waited until she felt the tension leave his muscles before she extracted herself from his arms.

He smiled down at her and tucked her hair behind her ear. “It’s gonna be okay,” he promised.

Tansy returned his smile weakly. “Because you’re going to save me.”

His eyebrows drew together. He studied her face.

“You’re going to save me. And we’ll be allowed to stay here as long as things between you and me are okay, or until the commissioner places some new outrageous condition on your expansion, or until another tree falls on a goddamn building in this place, and—”

“No,” he said firmly. “It’s not like that. Look, I know my word is shit right now, but everything I’ve done since our truce, everything we’ve built together here must count for something. I should have come clean about the grant, but it was a single lapse in judgment among a hundred other ways I’ve put our partnership first.”

“When it benefitted the gardens, too.”

His nostrils flared and his jaw flexed, hurt darkening his eyes. “That’s really how you see me? Still?”

She immediately regretted her remark. He’d given her the gated garden and proposed the gardening club. He’d offered to trade produce for her food bank contract. Spruced up her building. But as generous as those actions were, they did still align with the park’s interests. They didn’t prove that he would protect her library if their aims were ever at odds. Or that, even if he wanted to, he could.

And if she was totally honest, if she’d spotted that grant application in his pile of papers when they were still enemies, she would have applied for it, too. She wouldn’t have thought twice. If it came down to her library or his gardens, Tansy would put her people above his. Even now.

She sagged under that realization. “I’m sorry.”

He swallowed, jaw still tight. She’d hurt him. And she was about to hurt him even more.

“But the library can’t be dependent on you or the gardens or anyone who could pull the rug out from under us again. We have to have autonomy, Jack. You have to understand that by now.”

“You mean you need autonomy,” he muttered. “Because you’re hell-bent on never relying on anyone else. But don’t you think if you could save your library all by yourself, you would have done it by now?”

She blew out a painful breath, surprised by his blunt honesty. “Ouch,” she whispered.

His face twisted in remorse. “I meant—” He turned from her, paced away, and came back. “Let me help you. Hell, let it be to make up for not telling you about the grant. Let it be me owing you. Not you in debt to me or a deal with strings attached. Let it be because I lo—” He cut off, scrubbing both hands down his face. “Fuck,” he bit out. “Just let me, okay? Please.”

Tansy checked her watch. “I’m due at the desk in a minute.”

“They’ll cover for you.”

“Jack. I’m all mixed up. We can’t resolve all this before we leave this greenhouse. And I still have to do my job, for as long as it exists. I just need to process all this, and my focus right now has to be my people.”

“Okay.” He raised his hands. “But don’t shut me out. Process it with me.”

“There’s just so much happening all at once, and Briar will be back in—” She checked her watch. Just a few hours.

“You said we wouldn’t end this today,” he pointed out. “I know that was about Briar coming back, not about this, but you wanted this—us—enough to change your mind. That means something.”

“Sure. It means something.” She raised her hands and let them fall to her thighs. “It means this hurts so much more than if I’d never…”

Fallen for him.

“Tansy.”

“Damn it, Jack, I’m telling you, if there is any chance for us to work this out, you have to give me a minute to catch my breath.”

He shook his head, clearly hating that idea, but he stepped back from her. She moved into the space he’d conceded, and he gave another step so her path to the exit was completely open.

She took the opening, and every step away from him felt heavier than the last.

28

Jack

What Jack needed was a good, hard hike around the back property. But he couldn’t bring himself to stray too far from the Little Green Library, just in case Tansy got that breath she needed and was ready to talk to him. After the first hour, he knew he’d have been better off fucking off into the trees, though. At least out there, he wouldn’t break his neck looking up at every new person coming around the bend, hoping it was her.

After the second hour, he knew the window was closing before Briar returned. Even if Tansy had come to her senses and realized he’d never meant to hurt her and that he was potentially in a position to help her, there was no time now for them to lay it to rest. He’d have to wait until she’d eased back in to having Briar home.

He barked his way through an intern meeting in the courtyard before dismissing everyone early, thinking he would take that hike after all, but a gardens visitor flagged him down to ask a million questions about how to recover various ailing trees and plants in his home garden, the answers to most of which were, You should have made different choices before, in the immediate days following the flooding, and You can’t.

When he finally ducked into the storage closet under the admin building, his patience was shot. The base of his skull felt like it was in a vice, with a band of tension pulsing around the back of his head. All the signs were there—agitation, headache, static, racing heart. He was going to have another goddamn panic attack, and he was just so sick of this shit. If he couldn’t fix things with Tansy today, and he couldn’t do his job without melting down in a storage closet, then he should just go home and lose his shit in private.

He peeked around the door to be sure the visitor and anyone else were gone before fully stepping out, determined to do exactly that.

So of course Tansy appeared then, coming down the walk on the other side of the courtyard, thumbing her phone.

“Mom!”

Briar raced toward her from the entrance fountain, followed by a man who lifted his own phone in a greeting. Tansy hugged Briar fiercely for a long time. Long enough for the man to catch up to them. Long enough for Jack to note his strong resemblance to Briar—same lanky build, same thick, wavy dark hair that Jack figured would curl wildly like Briar’s if it were longer. There was no doubt this was Charlie.

Jack hadn’t expected to see him. He also hadn’t expected that the clear, undeniable link to Briar—to Tansy—would hit him in the gut like this.

When Charlie pulled Tansy in for a hug as well, Jack could neither keep watching in silence, nor look away. They were a family. Even if they weren’t one right now, they’d started as one, and Charlie would always be in their lives because Tansy wanted Briar to have a relationship with him, because Briar deserved a father.

It wasn’t nothing.

It was a lot more something than Jack had realized when Charlie was just an idea to him, when he wasn’t standing right here, holding Tansy in that hug for far too long.

Charlie was saying something into Tansy’s ear. It was all too intimate. A swell of jealousy spread through Jack’s lungs like some kind of toxic algae bloom. The vice around his head cranked even tighter, along with a faint ringing in his ears.

When Tansy pulled back, though, she looked stricken by whatever Charlie had said to her. Her eyebrows were drawn together, her mouth tight. Her eyes darted down to Briar and back to Charlie. Whatever she replied to him was short and quiet, cautious.

Jack should have made his way to his truck. She’d wanted space from him, and he knew better than to think two hours had cut it.

But he had no willpower to walk away. And he wasn’t going to hide in the shadows like he was the one in the wrong place here. Hell, these were his gardens. He strode across the courtyard.

“Could we talk about this later?” Tansy asked Charlie through a forced smile, eyes cutting to Briar, who was catching every bit of the exchange.

“Later? When will that be?” Charlie shot back. He was standing too close to her. And now Jack saw his hand on Tansy’s wrist.

“What’s going on here?” Jack cut in.

They both turned in surprise, breaking their face-off, but then they ended up shoulder to shoulder, them versus him. Charlie didn’t let go of her wrist. Tansy’s face and neck were splotchy with stress, and Jack didn’t know if it was lingering emotion from her horrible day, or from whatever was going on between her and Charlie.

“Jack!” Briar exclaimed, throwing her arms around his waist. Despite the thick tension oozing around them like tree sap, the hug was sweet. He stooped to say, “Hey. Those caterpillars hatched. They’re munching everything in sight.”

“Really? Can I go look, Mom?”

Tansy shot Jack a grateful but wary look. “Sure. Stay where I can see you.”

Briar skipped down the short walk to the garden he’d shown her during the festival and began carefully peeking under leaves.

“What’s going on?” Jack asked again, this time without the ounce of warmth he’d put there for Briar’s sake. He edged close to Tansy and lifted his hand to her lower back. She shifted away.

“This is Jack, huh?” Charlie said, not so much as glancing Jack’s way. “The guy my kid’s been hanging out with without a word of his existence from you?”

Tansy closed her eyes. “It’s not like that.”

Jack swallowed. Not like that.

Charlie huffed a harsh exhale. “So you’re not fucking him?”

“Charlie.”

Jack didn’t think, just pushed between Tansy and her ex, using the few inches of height he had on him to his full advantage.

“Here we go,” Charlie said, throwing Jack a wild, gotcha smirk. “This just proves it, man.”

“Jack,” Tansy pleaded wearily, tugging his arm.

He didn’t budge. “Show some respect when you speak to her, or you won’t be speaking to her.”

“Jack,” Tansy snapped, yanking hard on his arm. “Jesus.”

He let her drag him back two big steps and come around to face him, hands on his straining biceps, eyes sharp on his face. “Please, let me handle this.”

She looked exhausted and weary, and rather than leave her to handle anything, he wanted to call a new truce, a time-out from their current impasse and from whatever was going on here with her ex, so he could smooth every new line of tension from her face.

Jack stayed put when she removed her hands from him, which she took as compliance, if tenuous. His actions depended entirely on Charlie’s next move. Jack could restrain himself. He could override the way concern led to him stomping and barking, as she’d complained recently. But he certainly wasn’t going to leave, so she’d better not ask him to.

To Charlie, Tansy asked, “What did Briar tell you about the house?”

“First, I want you to admit that you asked my daughter to lie to me.”

“I never asked her to lie.”

“Bullshit.”

Tansy reached for Charlie’s arm, insisting, “I swear I didn’t.”

Jack bristled behind her.

Charlie jerked his arm free but quickly clocked Jack’s displeasure and raised his palms in surrender. “Well, you sure as hell didn’t volunteer the information yourself. How many times have I asked about it, Tansy? How many times have I offered to help? Hell, it was bad enough to imagine you two in some fucking shelter for the night and then bouncing around people’s couches for days. Especially after I told you to come to Dallas. I can’t stop picturing you two in a boat in the middle of that storm. And the effect it’s had on her…”

“I know,” Tansy said quietly.

It felt like a knife in Jack’s side to see her capitulate to this asshole when he knew how hard she was working to move on. He drew in a breath to defend her, but she sensed him at her back and gestured for him to wait.

“I’ve always put her safety and well-being first. You know I wouldn’t let her live in an unsafe house. You know I’d go hungry before she ever missed a meal, give her my own clothes to keep her dry.”

Charlie nodded grudgingly.

“And, okay, the reno has been slow, but my room was completely finished and safe before we moved back in.” She crossed her arms and lifted her chin, finding new confidence. “I actually made a lot of progress this past week on so many things. Briar’s room is—”

“The point is,” Charlie cut in, “that you never told me any of this. If I’d known y’all were cooking meals on a hot plate in a bathroom, that your place didn’t have walls, you’d better believe I wouldn’t have just let you stay there with her.”

“Let me?” Tansy asked.

“Yeah. I have a right to know the state of the house my kid’s living in and to intervene if it’s not adequate.”

Jack heard Tansy swallow hard. Those crossed arms became a hug around her middle as she hunched inward. Her voice was small when she replied, “Intervene? What exactly does that mean?”

Charlie threw up his hands in an angry shrug. “I don’t know, Tansy. I’m not—” He glanced at Jack, huffed a frustrated breath. “I’m not threatening you, okay? I just— I would have helped. You should have let me help. Even if you won’t let me back into your life after all this time…” He licked his lips and shook his head.

Jack had made nearly the same exact plea to Tansy just two hours ago. Let me help you.

“You can’t keep me out of her life. You promised you wouldn’t.”

Jack mentally willed Tansy to hold her ground, to tell him that his offers were too fucking little, too fucking late.

But she said none of this. She hunched farther in on herself. “You’re right.”

“What?” Jack breathed.

“He’s right. He’s Briar’s father.”

“Now he is.”

Charlie pushed around Tansy to grab Jack’s shirt. “Hey, fuck you. I don’t even know who the hell you are, but—”

“Stop it! Both of you!” Tansy slipped back between them, a firm hand on each of their chests, and pushed them apart.

Jack’s heart thrashed wildly against her palm like a startled bird in its cage.

“Let me show you the house,” she said to Charlie. “You’ll see. Whatever Briar told you…I’ve fixed a lot more this week. Floors. Cabinets. Her room. There are only a few projects left and then it’s all cosmetic touches.”

“No,” Jack said. Like hell was he letting her take this guy to her house, let her waste her time trying to prove anything to Charlie. She owed him nothing. Jack was willing to give her space to process where she stood with him, but that didn’t extend to letting her asshole ex dismiss how she’d clawed back her home, piece by piece. He couldn’t do it.

But Tansy and Charlie both ignored him.

“Fine,” Charlie said. “Let’s go.”

“Wait here,” she said to Charlie.

Jack followed her as she went to get Briar from the near garden. “I’m coming with you.”

“Jack,” she said on a frustrated sigh.

“If you think I’m leaving you and Briar alone with that guy—”

“ ‘That guy’ is a lot of things, but a threat to me or Briar isn’t one of them. And he’s right about the house. I should have told him. If our roles were reversed, and he—”

“I don’t give a damn what he thinks you owe him. I don’t like the way he was talking to you.”

She whirled on him, her eyes flaring angrily. “Too bad! You don’t get an opinion on this. Now, please. I told you I needed space. That hasn’t changed.”

Tansy turned and marched into the garden, pausing to soften her posture and her face, and said with remarkably believable cheer to Briar, “Show me these caterpillars, and then I have a surprise for you at home.”

29

Tansy

Charlie was standing in her house, and although it looked better than it had in months, nearly back to something resembling a real home, Tansy couldn’t calm the fluttery fear in her chest. I’m not threatening you, he’d said. But he’d implied that if her house wasn’t up to his standard, he wouldn’t allow them—allow Briar—to stay here.

It rattled her. Not only because it was a threat, even if he wasn’t going to suddenly whisk Briar back to Dallas and fight Tansy for custody, but because she couldn’t hide from her choices. Looking back, no matter how fun an adventure she’d tried to make it seem when they’d moved back in, the house hadn’t been good enough. She’d just been too proud and scared to admit it.

God, she’d allowed her daughter to live here for months without basic essentials. She’d justified it to herself at the time, but now, Tansy couldn’t imagine what had been more compelling than keeping Briar as safe and comfortable as possible.

And then there was Jack. She hated the way they’d left things in the greenhouse. She knew it killed him to not resolve things. It killed her, too. As complicated as everything had gotten, she’d come to appreciate his steady presence these last weeks, his care and comfort. She hadn’t realized what was happening—she hadn’t just grown to want him but to need him. And yet, he was part of the problem.

And then when he stepped in with Charlie, it was like he’d heard absolutely nothing she’d said about not wanting him to rescue her. There he’d gone, in his typical bullish way, barging in to take control.

“You did the walls yourself?” Charlie asked, turning in a slow circle in the living room.

“Some friends helped. And Briar.”

“And the kitchen?”

Tansy wasn’t sure if he was noticing the new cabinets or the glaring lack of appliances. She hugged herself. “I’m still working on it.”

“You really had to replace everything, huh?” Charlie asked, and there was something heavy in his tone, like he was just now understanding that a hurricane had come through her house. “You should have—”

“Where’s my surprise?” Briar interrupted. “What is it?”

“It’s your room. We don’t have to share anymore,” Tansy said, glancing up at Charlie. He gestured for her to lead the way, forcing a smile, his eyes a little shell-shocked.

Briar’s bedroom looked too modest to Tansy, now that she’d built it up as a surprise, but Briar ran in and threw herself on the bedding set Tansy had found, naming all the dragons from her favorite book series on it with escalating excitement.

“I’ll get a real dresser soon. And a ceiling light.”

Charlie hovered in the doorway, watching their daughter. He spoke quietly, just for Tansy, without shifting his gaze to her. “I’m sorry if I came in too hot earlier. I was picturing…I don’t know, exposed electrical or something.”

“I hired professionals for the major stuff. Before money got tight.”

“I asked if you needed money.” He finally looked at her. His expression was more pained than accusing.

“I know.”

“I could have paid for whatever you needed. Months ago. It wasn’t an empty offer.”

“I just…wanted to fix the worst of it before I had to say something.”

“But then you wouldn’t have needed to say anything.”

Tansy felt an unsettling wave of déjà vu. Jack had said nearly the same thing about the grant, that he wouldn’t have needed to admit he’d applied for it if he hadn’t been selected as a finalist. As angry and hurt as she was, she understood his decision to withhold that information. In every other possible scenario—if she’d gotten to the final round, if he hadn’t, even if they’d both been rejected—she wouldn’t have held the application against him, nor his silence about it, as fiercely as she was holding it against him now.

Briar hopped off the bed and came to swing Tansy’s arms around like she was one of those windsock figures at a car dealership. She felt about as discombobulated. “Can we have pizza for dinner? Pleeeeease?”

Tansy looked to Charlie, not entirely to assure him that she fed Briar balanced meals most of the time, but a little bit. She also owed him a real conversation, though. Which meant…“Do you want to stay for dinner?” she asked.

Charlie barely got out the word “Sure” before Briar flung one of Tansy’s arms free to grab one of his, tugging them both around erratically and into each other. “This is the best day ever!”

They ate their pizza straight out of the box on cushions on the living room floor. Tansy and Charlie were occupied by Briar straight through brushing her teeth, putting on pajamas, and reading a book—an illustrated encyclopedia of South American reptiles, which would have taken hours to get through if Tansy hadn’t put a stop to it.

Maybe it was the disruption to their usual routine or the excitement of Charlie being here, but Briar forgot to ask for their nightly disaster check.

Tansy turned out the light, assured her she could come to Tansy’s room if she needed to for any reason, and squeezed her feet on the way out. After saying his goodnight, Charlie met Tansy in the kitchen, where she was shoving the empty pizza box into the trash can.

She turned to apologize for not having a couch just as he asked, “So what’s going on with work? I saw a tree on the building when I pulled in.”

Tansy sighed. With all the other drama, she’d managed to forget the tree. “It fell this morning. The soil has been oversaturated from rain.”

“I guess it’s a good thing they haven’t started renovating yet.”

Tansy laughed through her nose.

“What?”

She supposed there wasn’t much point in maintaining her mask of relentless positivity now. “I don’t think they’re going to renovate. In fact, I think they’re going to close the branch altogether.”

“Damn,” Charlie said. “Really?”

Tansy leaned on her new countertop, which Jack had helped install yesterday—butcher block instead of the quartz she’d wanted, but it was infinitely better than no counter—and sighed again into her hands. “It all kind of came out today, so I’m—” She was going to say she was still reeling from the news, but suddenly his hand pressed into her upper back and slid up her spine to squeeze her neck comfortingly, and she froze. It wasn’t that different from his greeting hugs, the ways he made casually friendly contact with her, but standing alone with him in her kitchen, it hit her all wrong.

“What does that mean for your job?”

“Um. I don’t know,” she said, distracted. “Probably a transfer to another branch. Or I’ll have to find something else. Charlie—”

His other hand got in on the action, and now he was massaging her shoulders, cutting her off with a sound of sympathy when he found the knots that permanently lived in them.

She pushed up to her full height, willing his hands to fall away.

Instead, she felt his body at her back, closer now as he said, “Move back to Dallas.”

“What?” Tansy whirled around, bumping her shoulder into his chest so hard it knocked the breath out of him.

He steadied her, cupping her shoulders and then her face. “If your job here is ending…” He trailed off, swiping his thumb across her cheek. The touch, and the entitlement behind the touch, like eight years and so many mistakes hadn’t happened at all, sent a white-hot jolt through her. “You barely have anything to move,” he was saying, his eyes on her mouth and his face lowering. “It’s the perfect time.”

She pushed his hands away. With the island at her back, she had to squeeze sideways to put space between them.

His cheeks flared with embarrassment, definitely not misunderstanding her rejection, and he fidgeted with his shirt cuff. “Sorry. I—”

“I can’t,” she stuttered. “I don’t want—”

He rubbed his forehead. “I got swept up with dinner and bedtime. All three of us. It was—”

“I can’t do that with you again.”

“I’m sorry. Shit.” He shook his head. “Why not, though?”

“Why not what?”

“Why can’t we…I don’t know, Tans. Start over. Try again. I’m different. You’re different. You’re about to lose your job. Your house is in okay shape—you could sell it now and maybe not even take a loss. And I could finally make everything right.”

“Make what right?”

“This,” he said, gesturing back and forth between them. “Us.”

“Charlie, I don’t need you to make us right.”

She’d made herself right.

“I fucked it all up before. I know I did. And I respect that you made me prove myself before you let me back into Briar’s life. But I never wanted back in with only her. I wanted—I want—my family back.”

Tansy closed her eyes. She didn’t know what to say. She was stuck on every detail his proposal glossed over—selling her house, pulling Briar from her school, moving…where, in with him?—when the truth was simple. He had abandoned her. When the shit had hit the fan, he’d chosen himself and his mother—his people, which had not included her and Briar. Although Briar deserved to know her father, deserved to have a relationship with him, and although Tansy had worked hard to put aside her past with him for what was best for Briar, she just could not forgive and forget that.

And why did men keep throwing their plans at her?

“I’ve worked on myself,” Charlie said, straightening to present his case.

“I know you have.”

“I’ve processed losing my dad. I’ve learned how to handle stress. I’m in a good place financially. I’m not going to fall apart again.”

“I didn’t think you were.”

“Well, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t do all that work for you, Tansy. To prove that I can take care of you, like I should have before.”

She put up a hand to stop him from approaching her. “I’m so proud of you for all that work. I really am. But—” She huffed through her nose, and when she spoke, it came out in a burst, her voice strained with irritation. “God, I’m not just looking for someone to take care of me. I’m looking for a real partner.” She waved her hand, flustered by her own words. “Actually, forget it. That’s not true. I don’t even want that.”

“I can be your partner now.”

She shook her head, unable to articulate all the ways he clearly misunderstood that word, misunderstood her.

“Never be a damsel in distress,” he said, as though he was reciting it. “Right? Independent women don’t need to be saved? They save themselves?”

Tansy swallowed.

Her righteousness faded as quickly as it had barged in. How many times could she receive this specific criticism before she considered whether there was some merit to it?

But what Charlie was proposing discounted everything she’d built for herself. Every way she’d made herself.

“I get it,” he said. “You’ve been let down. By me. By your parents. But look at your life, Tansy. You’ve been barely treading water for eight years. Aren’t you tired? Or, hell, lonely?”

Her ears burned. “I’m not lonely.”

“That guy is the first one I’ve heard about the whole time we’ve been apart. If you weren’t waiting all these years for me, which—” He shrugged heavily. “I mean, obviously you weren’t…then I guess you just gave up?”

“I’ve had Briar.”

“Nice excuse.”

Tansy scoffed. He had no right. He had never been solely responsible for Briar for longer than a handful of days. He didn’t know how hard it was to carve out personal time without reliable childcare or money.

“I don’t want to talk about Jack,” Tansy muttered.

“Yeah, fine,” Charlie said. He sounded relieved for the escape from that subject. After a long moment of silence he said, “I should go.”

“What about the house?” she asked. She needed to know where they stood, whether he planned to challenge her on keeping Briar here.

“I can see that she’s good here,” he said, pulling his keys from his pocket and heading for the door. “You’re a great mom. I never doubted that.”

“Thank you. So—”

He turned back from the door with a little shrug. “So let me know when she can visit this summer. Same as we agreed before all this.”

“I will.”

The door clicked shut behind him, and Tansy hadn’t realized until that moment how worried she’d been about him withholding his approval. She sagged against the counter with relief.

Her footfalls were loud in the silent house as she turned out the lights in the kitchen and living room. She got herself ready to sleep. Then she quietly opened Briar’s door and slipped into bed with her daughter.

30

Jack

Jack knew better but found himself nonetheless in front of the new retaining area the city had dug out where Tansy’s neighbors’ house had once been. A 4Runner with a Dallas Mavericks decal was parked in Tansy’s driveway. Still.

Jack didn’t know what specifically he’d planned to do when he turned into her neighborhood. He’d assumed Charlie had gone home hours ago, so maybe he’d been hoping for a light in her window? Or a lack of light, which might have indicated that she was exhausted by the day’s events and had gone to sleep early, and that was why she was ignoring the few texts he’d given in to sending. He honestly didn’t know. But he definitely wasn’t expecting the reason for her silence to be that her ex was still here.

He clenched the steering wheel to keep from charging up onto her porch. This—coming here—was a giant red flag, especially after she’d been so clear that she needed space.

“Go home, asshole,” he told himself sternly in the rearview mirror.

Reluctantly, he eased off the brake.

His phone rang through his truck speakers. It was Omar’s name on the display screen. He sent the call to voicemail and immediately drove out of Tansy’s neighborhood.

The ringing started again.

“What?” he answered impatiently.

“Hey,” Omar said, and there was something not right in that single syllable that sent the hairs up on the back of Jack’s neck.

“What’s wrong?”

“Amy’s…” Omar huffed a shaky breath right into the mouthpiece, sending a loud whoosh through Jack’s speakers.

“Amy’s what?” Jack demanded. He blew through a stop sign, only realizing when a car horn wailed.

Omar spoke, but he sounded distant, like he’d pulled the phone away to speak to someone else. Jack caught the tail end of him saying, “Coming right now.”

“Omar, Amy’s what?” Jack repeated.

“Sorry. She’s in labor. I’m getting scrubs now to go into the OR.”

“OR?” Jack’s stomach fell to the floorboard. It was early. He did the math—nearly four weeks early. “What hospital?”

“Memorial Hermann. Downtown. I gotta go.”

“Is she—” Before Jack could finish his question, the call ended, and the oldies station that Tansy had tuned his radio to resumed playing faintly.

Jack whipped a U-turn and sped toward downtown.

—

His mad dash to the hospital took thirty minutes and then he ran down endless corridors from the parking garage to the mother and baby wing, only to get roadblocked by security and stuck in the waiting area. It was after visiting hours. Omar wasn’t responding to Jack’s texts, which wasn’t very surprising if Amy was in surgery, but the lack of information about her status had him panic-pacing through the empty rows of chairs while a TV repeated the same twenty slides about the hospital’s innovative techniques and world-renowned doctors.

Shortly after he’d gotten to the hospital, Tansy had finally replied to his texts.

Tansy: Hey, sorry, I just saw these.

Tansy: I’m tired and about to go to bed, but I didn’t want to ignore you after…everything.

Tansy: I can talk if it’s urgent. Otherwise can we do this tomorrow?

He hadn’t known how to respond. He desperately wanted to talk with her about everything that had happened today. But his urgency had sharpened and redirected toward the current crisis. Amy. He couldn’t focus enough to tap out long text messages with his sweaty thumbs, couldn’t be on the phone in case Omar called with an update.

Jack: Tomorrow’s fine.

It was another hour before Jack’s head swiveled at the sound of steps coming around the corner into the waiting area. When Omar saw him, his step stuttered. “Jack,” he said gruffly. Then he caught the back of a chair, his face immediately contorting with emotion, and doubled over it.

Jack lurched. His body took him across the room, but he didn’t know how because his heart was on the floor where he’d been standing, along with all of his insides. His breath caught painfully in his throat. “Amy?” he croaked.

Omar stood and threw his arms around him. He clutched the back of Jack’s shirt in both fists, and he tried to speak, but his body convulsed with a sob.

A freight train roared in Jack’s head. Something terrible had happened. He was going to be sick. He was going to have a fucking heart attack right here.

“Omar.” The high strain in his voice must have short-circuited Omar’s outpouring because he pulled back to look at Jack, tear-streaked, but…smiling.

“Sorry. Shit. She’s okay, man. They’re both—”

Now Jack doubled over. Omar tried to pull him into another hug, but Jack had a death grip on his knees, and all Omar could do was clutch his shoulders tightly, anchor him, and repeat, “Amy’s good, man. She’s okay. She’s fine.”

“Fuck you,” Jack gasped after a minute, rubbing his chest over his galloping heart. “You and your fucking tears. I thought— Jesus.”

Omar chuckled. It was apologetic and a bit watery, like it might trip into another sob. He blew out a harsh breath, sniffled, and wiped his eyes. “I had to keep it together in there. I’ve been in all kinds of urgent situations, but…it’s different when it’s the love of your life. I think it all just hit me when I came out here.”

“She’s okay,” Jack repeated, as much to confirm as to get the message through to his body, which was still on a runaway train of panic.

“She’s good. Baby’s good. Didn’t even do the surgery because she came so fast. I’ll let Amy tell you about it. But you should go home for the night. Visiting hours don’t start back up until seven a.m.”

Jack had no intention of driving back home. “I’ll bring y’all breakfast. Something better than hospital food.”

“Yeah, that’d be good.” Omar hitched a thumb over his shoulder, and his smile broke wide. “Gonna get back to my girls.”

—

In the morning, Jack knocked before letting himself into Amy’s recovery room. There was a curtain just inside the door, and a wave of trepidation made him pause behind it.

From the other side of the barrier, he heard a pained hiss and then Omar’s gentle murmur. “I love you, baby. What can I do?”

Jack rounded the curtain to find Omar seated on the side of Amy’s bed, hunched toward her and stroking her hair.

And then he stopped so suddenly his boots squeaked on the floor.

Information came to him in slow motion. There was Amy, cradling a wrapped-up bundle of baby to her chest. And there was the open flap of her gown, Omar’s hand covering her. She was trying to feed the baby. Her baby. Jack’s niece. And Omar appeared to be helping.

Jack whirled around, cheeks burning, his head like a suddenly empty hamster wheel, its runner flung out the side. “Sorry,” he said, eyes shooting straight to the ceiling in case there were any mirrors or chrome surfaces that could possibly reflect the image of Amy’s bare breast to him.

“You’re really gonna be that guy?” Amy said. She sounded tired, but there was amusement there—Amy there. “I’m going to be feeding this girl twelve times a day for the foreseeable future. You’re going to have to get used to seeing my boob occasionally.”

Omar made a sound in his throat like, Well, does he have to, though? And Jack’s laugh burst out with everything he’d held in these last several hours. This wasn’t funny. It was awkward as hell. But awkward was miles away from the restless worry that had kept him from getting any sleep in a hard waiting room chair last night until it was time to go find breakfast tacos.

He couldn’t turn around, but it wasn’t because of the possible nudity. His throat felt tight, and the sound of Amy now cooing softly to the baby, and Omar joining in, pressed in on his chest so hard, he had to rub the spot over his heart to work out some of the ache.

“I guess she’s done,” Amy said uncertainly. “Okay, Jack, you can turn around.”

He heard the sounds of shifting on the bed and snaps being closed.

“I’m covered,” Amy said, laughing when he still didn’t move.

“I—” His voice came out too tight, and hell, his vision blurred. He blinked back the tears, just barely managing to keep them from spilling over, but he wasn’t hiding anything from Amy.

“Jack,” she said, softer.

He drove the heel of his hand into each stinging eye, set the bag of tacos on a counter, and finally faced her. Amy passed the baby to Omar and patted the spot next to her, grabbing a bottle of hand sanitizer and motioning for him to hold out his hands.

Jack wrung them longer than necessary because he didn’t know what to do with himself. She patted the bed again, and he perched on the edge, careful not to touch her, taking in the IV in her hand. Only now did he realize that he’d been half expecting the same image from her last stint here—the intubation tube and that terror in her eyes. She looked worn out, hair frizzing around her face, but she was whole and here, and a strange calm emanated from her that he felt as tangibly as if she was brushing soothing hands down his arms.

“Omar said you didn’t need surgery,” he said, aiming for casual, although he had to clear the tightness from his throat.

She snorted a laugh. “They tried, but she had other plans and shot out before the doctor could even get his gloves on.”

“I was in the hallway talking to you,” Omar said with a wry, playfully accusing edge, but he was smiling down at his daughter. “Nearly missed all of it.”

“Why did they want to do a C-section if she was coming that fast?” Jack asked.

Amy rolled her eyes. “My blood pressure was a little high.”

“So it was you, not her.”

“Yes, I was the problem. It was me.”

Jack sighed. “I meant, you were at risk.”

“Barely. And I’m fine now.”

“They know about your heart? They checked you out after?” He looked at the monitor to the side of her bed, the line of her heart rate dipping and spiking uniformly, and then he looked back at the curtain by the door, wondering why no one was here monitoring her now, just letting her sit in here potentially on the verge of catastrophe while also responsible for a baby.

Amy squeezed his hand on the bed. “They just checked on me before you came in. I’m completely fine. In fact, I feel weirdly great. Like I could go run a marathon.”

“You look tired.”

“Hey, watch yourself, sir. I just performed the miracle of life.”

It felt like a miracle.

“You want to hold her?” Amy asked.

“Oh, um…no, that’s okay.”

“Give her to him,” she said to Omar.

“Amy, I don’t—”

“You need to hold her. You just do. Trust me.”

Omar came around the bed and lifted his elbows to his sides, gesturing for Jack to make a cradle with his arms. Jack stood and did as he was instructed, sure that if he was the one hooked up to a monitor right now, alarms would start going off. He felt panicky, like when he’d bought his truck a few years ago and for the entire drive home felt sure he’d wreck it.

As soon as Omar passed the baby into his arms, Jack sat back down on Amy’s bed for extra safety. The baby wasn’t even a full day old. The weight of that required every bit of caution.

“Omar, my phone,” Amy whispered, reaching for it on a nearby table. “Take a picture.”

Omar tried to take the photo himself, but she grabbed for it until he passed it to her. She took at least thirty photos, finally setting the phone on the pillow in her lap. “I know I just made the perfect baby, and she’s pulling a lot of weight here, but this—” She circled her finger at him. “This is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.” And then tears were pooling in her eyes, and her voice was tight and high. “Oh God, here we go. Shit. It’s just—you, holding her.”

This hardly clarified why she was crying, but Jack didn’t need an explanation. He’d never officially sworn off holding a baby or anything, but there was a good chance he’d have quietly avoided it for the rest of his life. That he was holding Amy’s baby moved Jack as much as it seemed to move Amy.

And, hell, Amy’s baby was incredibly cute, her little mouth pillowy and pink, her eyes open and just quietly looking around, sort of only half seeing but not mad about it.

It hit him that he didn’t know her name. And then it hit him that Tansy would have asked first thing. Naming things was important to her. To Briar, too. “She got a name yet?”

“Jillian,” Omar said proudly, shuffling in close as if it physically pained him to have his baby out of his arms.

“And I know you’re going to hate this, but I swear it wasn’t on purpose, so you can’t be mad,” Amy said with a smile, “but you guys will be Jack and Jill.”

Jack laughed. “I’m not mad.”

“Good, because I already made matching shirts.”

“But it wasn’t on purpose,” he deadpanned.

“Legit coincidence. I’m not gonna waste good material, though.”

“Jack and Jill,” he mused. “Fine.” He turned to put Omar out of his misery and give him back his baby.

“Hold on. One more thing,” Amy said, stopping him. “We have something to ask you.”

“You’re Amy’s closest family,” Omar said. “And you’ve been like a brother to me. We know this is a lot to ask. It’s okay if you’re not there…”

“Just spit it out,” Jack said.

Amy set her hand on his knee. “We’d like you to be her godfather.”

Godfather.

Jack swallowed convulsively. The sting behind his eyes was back. He looked down at the baby in his arms, her eyes now closed peacefully, her lips twitching in a suck reflex. He’d wanted this at one time. In an entirely different life.

Except, it wasn’t an entirely different life. Because in the past few months, spending time with Tansy, with Briar, some invisible force had pulled him back toward this. Not a baby, like he’d once hoped.

But to be…maybe not a father. But something. Someone.

Yet even when he’d started to feel it, that glowing thread winding around his heart, connecting him to Tansy and to Briar, he’d struggled to quiet the memory of losing it all the first time—his marriage and the plans they’d never been able to make real. Maybe if he didn’t allow himself to want it again, he could avoid the loss of it, too.

“You sure?” he whispered.

He risked a glance at Amy, who nodded, blinking tears from her own eyes, seeing him wrestle with the last of that sticky, tangled mess he’d been mired in for so long. “Jack,” she said, her voice breaking, “You’re our family, forever. That’s why we want you to be her godfather. But I also think it can happen for you. I think it already is happening.”

Jack lifted the sleeping baby, tucking his nose into the soft, hospital blanket swaddling her. He breathed in the scent of fresh linen and baby, the sweetest smell he’d ever known, and let the fabric absorb his tears. “Yes,” he said, his voice so hoarse nearly no sound came out. He tried again. “Yeah, Ames. I’d be honored.”

—

Jack couldn’t wait to tell Tansy later, but shortly after eight, when she must have realized he wasn’t at work, she texted.

Tansy: Where are you?

Tansy: Are you okay?

And a few minutes later:

Tansy: Which hospital is Amy at? How is she?

He assumed she’d gotten the broad strokes from Ian, to whom he’d given a heads-up that he would come in after lunch.

Before he could respond, though, a nurse came to check on Amy and the baby, and he tucked away his phone to be sure the guy was good at his job.

After that, Amy’s endorphins and painkillers seemed to be wearing off. He ended up holding Jillian again, shuffling and bouncing to lull her back to sleep while the new parents dozed, Amy in the hospital bed and Omar on a very small, very hard couch.

They managed about a half hour of rest before a lactation consultant interrupted. Jack passed Jillian back to Omar, and Amy began to unsnap her top, saying, “I’m having this nipple pain,” which was Jack’s cue to leave if he’d ever heard one.

“I’m gonna…” he muttered, gathering their breakfast trash to get the lingering food smell out of the room. He wandered down the corridor, looking for a trash can, and wound up all the way back out in the waiting room…where, with a mug of flowers in one hand and her phone in the other, stood Tansy.

31

Tansy

She had just sent a text, telling Jack she was at the hospital, when suddenly he was standing in front of her. “That was quick,” she murmured, shifting her weight, second-guessing showing up at the hospital without warning.

This morning, she’d woken up less angry and hurt about his grant application and more…tired. Resigned. Her library would close. That seemed inevitable. She wasn’t ready to have that conversation with her friends. She wasn’t really ready to have the conversation she’d promised Jack today either.

But then she’d dropped off Briar at school and went to work, half expecting Jack to be camped out by the library, eager to resolve everything, and he hadn’t been there. Ian told her Jack was at the hospital—only, he’d first said it as though Jack was the one in the hospital. Later, she might laugh at the comedy of miscommunication in the ensuing couple of minutes, but she wasn’t there yet. Her relief that Jack was okay was immediately washed out by the news that Amy had had her baby early with some kind of complications that warranted Jack missing work to be with her. She hadn’t thought twice about it. She’d gotten Marianne to cover her morning story time and driven straight here.

Now, though, she felt uncertain. She’d said some harsh things to him yesterday. And then, when he’d been dealing with this crisis last night, she’d brushed him off. He hadn’t fought it.

“What are you doing here?” Jack said, his voice like sandpaper. He looked as rough as he sounded, with dark circles under his eyes and a heaviness to his face that made her feel tired by proxy. The sight of him pulled at her heart.

“Sorry. I should have called or—”

He crossed the last few feet between them and threw his arms around her. She hugged him back, feeling the tension in his muscles, the tangible need behind the embrace. He sighed into her hair like this was his first full breath in hours. Maybe it was.

“What are you doing here?” he asked again, although it felt rhetorical now, an expression of surprise and gratitude.

“How’s Amy? How are you?”

“I’m…fuck. Really glad to see you,” he said, finally pulling back enough to look at her. Only now did she realize he was holding a plastic bag of food trash. He left her to toss it into a garbage bin and then reached for her hips when he came back but dropped his hands at the last second. He gestured to the chairs, and they sat. She set the mug of flowers she’d stolen from one of his flower beds in the gardens on her way out beside her opposite thigh.

Seeming cautious, he set one hand on her knee. It didn’t come naturally to him to keep his hands to himself now, she could tell, and the part of her that had opened to him, that had come back alive in her body with his, wanted to tell him it was okay to touch her, that she needed it herself. But she sobered, realizing this was a boundary she should be the one to maintain. She didn’t know what it meant that she was here, if anything was different than it had been yesterday, only that she knew how anxious he’d be about Amy, and she’d had to come.

“Why didn’t you tell me this was happening last night?” she asked. “I would have talked to you.”

He shrugged. “Things between us were…are…”

“Yeah. But this is bigger than that.”

He licked his lips, maybe restraining a hopeful smile. “Well, Amy’s all right. The baby, too.”

“And you?”

“I’m…good,” he said, sounding surprised by it. “They asked me to be her godfather.”

Tansy saw the wonder in his eyes as he said this, the genuine pride. “Congratulations, Jack. They’re lucky to have you.”

He nodded absently, mulling something over. Then his eyes sharpened on her. “Look, I know this is the worst time to tell you this, but I only just worked it out for myself…”

“What?”

“When you tried to ask me about relationships, something more…when I said I don’t do them or don’t want them…I thought that was true, but it’s not.”

She swallowed loudly. She didn’t know exactly what he was trying to say, but she did sense that she wasn’t ready to hear it. “You’re tired,” she said, managing a teasing tone. “You’re not making sense.”

“Tansy, I want it all,” he said firmly, confidently. “I wanted it the first time, too. But after my marriage fell apart, I became too fucking much of the worst parts of myself. I didn’t even want to consider wanting all this again—to be a real partner to someone, to have a family. And I know it’s not fair to tell you all this right now. But I need you to know, without a doubt, that I want it. With you and Briar. Whatever that could look like. Whatever you’re willing to—”

“Jack…”

“I know. It’s a lot. Don’t say anything, okay? I know me saying this doesn’t fix everything else. It probably makes it harder. But just don’t decide anything yet. Please.”

He’d told her once that the best thing for most of the plants in the gardens after the storm was to do nothing to them—not move them, not cut away their damage. Just wait those first weeks and let the shock wear off. That was what the last couple days felt like—a shock.

And maybe she was just so tired of immediately figuring out her next step, of not falling into helpless despair, because she wanted this to be the answer right now. To do nothing—nothing that couldn’t be undone, nothing she’d regret. It felt like the only move either of them could handle.

“For the record,” she said quietly, “you’re not too much, Jack.” She understood that his bossiness and his moods, the urgency he felt about everything, came at least in part from anxiety. “That’s not what I need to think about.”

He looked like he couldn’t totally receive this from her right now, but he swallowed thickly and squeezed her knee.

Tansy remembered the mug of flowers she’d brought and handed it over. “Will you give these to Amy?”

He huffed a laugh. “Bluebonnets? You know you’re not supposed to pick these?”

“It’s not illegal,” Tansy said quickly. “I looked it up.”

“No, but it is the state flower. It’s protected in spirit, if not by law.”

Tansy laughed. “Well, I didn’t want to come empty-handed, and they were pretty and right there on my way out.”

“Wait, did you steal these from my wildflower garden?”

She covered her face, her smile opening too much inside her. “Yes,” she said, watery. “Yes, I did.”

“You do know theft is illegal, right? You really don’t read any of the signs in my park, do you?” His words, and even his emphasis, gave off his usual blustery bossiness, but something about his voice was also so soft. She could hear the ache in his throat around it. It sharpened the ache in hers.

She placed the mug of flowers in his hands.

When she stood, he rose in front of her, his eyes strained from exhaustion and emotion. She wanted to tell him when she’d be ready to talk, but she honestly didn’t know. She felt so confused, at once aching to hold him and desperate to protect herself.

“When you’re here in front of me, I can’t think clearly,” she told him. “I want to—” Her hands lifted to hug him, and she pulled them back because that was exactly her point.

Anguish flickered over his features, lightning quick. “That makes me not want you to go,” he admitted.

Her voice cracked. “I know.”

He came closer and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Please, come find me soon.”

32

Jack

He’d asked Tansy not to respond to his confession at the hospital, and she hadn’t. For four days now.

Jack didn’t want to push too soon. But the silence was killing him. Even though he and Ian spent most of their work hours putting together his grant materials ahead of Friday’s presentation, he managed to hang around shamelessly during her story times just to see her, pretending to fix the gate or distributing leftover seed packets from the Pollinator Festival to the kids’ parents, like that was his normal routine.

The Saturday morning of their first Garden Club meeting, which he was sure was still happening only because Kai and Ian had stepped in to coordinate, Jack was surprised and cautiously hopeful to find Tansy waiting for him at the greenhouse, where he’d been storing the tools they’d acquired in her tool drive. He unlocked the door and led the way in.

“It’s official,” she said to his back as he crossed to the corner where he’d put the tools. “The board is going to vote Monday to close the branch. Sheila gave me a heads-up. I’m not sure of our exact last day. They might let us stay another month or so. I’m telling the others soon, but I think they already know. I haven’t been hiding it very well.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

She winced at that endearment.

He kicked himself for it, turning to put the shovels and spades into a cart. “And then what?”

“Everyone will be offered placements in other branches, so that’s good. I’ll make sure they all land somewhere.”

“And you?”

“Same. Not sure where yet.”

Jack risked a glance at her. She didn’t sound upset, but it didn’t quell the ache he felt for her. Disaffected Tansy was just as alarming as angry or sad Tansy.

And us? he wanted to ask. He held it in.

“So I get to meet all these families today and tell them the club won’t continue past May. Seems pointless to even start. They won’t get to see anything grow.”

“I’ll keep it going,” Jack said immediately. “It doesn’t have to end.”

She shrugged. “If that’s what you want. Obviously, you can keep the tools.”

He wanted to keep going everything she’d started here. The story times. The Movement and Meditation group. The teen artists, tucked into corners of the gardens, sketching flowers. The families shouting that they’d found another scavenger hunt character hidden in the tropical garden.

Although the park wasn’t fully recovered and wouldn’t be for some time, the energy here was alive again. In fact, it felt more alive now than it ever had before the hurricane. It met Jack at the front entrance gate every time he showed up to work—a pulse in the air, like a force field protecting this pocket of paradise. The librarians and the new regulars came and went in patterns as predictable to him now as the camellias unfurling in January, followed by the azaleas and bluebonnets in February, the swallows arriving the last week of March and that pair returning to rebuild their nest above Tansy’s library door, and Harry the heron diving and catching nothing in the creek until the end of time, no matter how high or low the waterline.

“Tansy,” he said, her name a plea.

She waited, still outwardly unmoved.

He chickened out. “I thought Briar was coming today.”

“She is. She’s with Irma in the library.”

“Good. Thought she could be my assistant.”

Tansy’s mouth twisted. It was the first hint of any emotion from her, and he wanted just as badly to take back anything that upset her as he wanted to push harder, to break through the last of her barriers.

“I think it’s probably best if she doesn’t get too attached.”

“No,” he cut in before she could launch into the letdown speech he now knew she’d come armed with.

“No?” she asked.

“She can still come to the club, regardless of where you transfer.”

“I don’t know where that will be. If we’ll have to move across town, it may be too far to drive.”

“That’s an excuse. It’s not even a good one. Come on, Briar loves this place. She’s so happy here.”

Tansy crossed her arms. She looked over her shoulder, back to the door. He hated to see her this way. Reined in. Controlled. All logic and caution. He preferred her on the verge of unraveling in every possible way.

“She’s attached,” Jack pointed out, leaving the tools and coming toward her. “Not just to this place, but to me. And so are you.”

She bit her lip, still looking away.

“Something led me to you in the library and then your porch that day. Something made me put my hat on her head. It was like this invisible force, even then, pulling us to each other. It freaked me out before, but this whole thing has changed me, Tansy. What I want. Who I want to be.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “It’s not that I don’t want—” She broke off, closed her eyes, and breathed in deeply.

“You want this, too. I know you do.”

“I do,” she admitted, her mask finally coming all the way off. She shook her head helplessly. “For myself. But I don’t get to think only of myself. I can’t just dive headfirst into this thing with you. Briar needs stability. She needs my time and attention. Sometimes that means I have to give up the things I want, but that’s part of being a parent, Jack. It’s especially part of being a single parent.”

“I’m not asking you to choose me over her. You know I’m not.”

“I don’t think you know what you’re asking,” Tansy said.

He laughed harshly. “I do know what I’m asking. But I guess you’re still not ready to hear it.” He raised his eyebrows in a challenge, and she lifted her chin right back, so he went for it. “I meant what I said in the hospital, Tansy. I want everything with you and Briar. I want to be yours. I want to belong with you in every way that matters, and I’m not remotely afraid of what that means. I’m only afraid of losing you. If you quit this, I don’t think I’ll recover, Tansy.”

She laughed harshly. “No pressure.”

“Is it really pressure, or are you just scared because it breaks the rules you’ve set to keep your life safe and controlled, so you never make a mistake?”

“I’ve never brought a man into our lives.”

“Yeah? You never ran a library out of a botanical garden either, but look at everything you made here.”

“Because I had no choice. And it was a failure in the end anyway!”

“It wasn’t a failure, Tansy. It wasn’t a fucking failure. What you did here means something. And what we made in all this, you and me, is just as rare and and significant as a goddamn thousand-year flood. It’s once in a lifetime—in more than a lifetime. That’s entirely clear to me, even if it isn’t to you. Just—what exactly is your hang-up? What’s the excuse you’re holding on to here? Because if it’s not that you don’t want me, and it’s not Briar, and it’s not the grant or a drive across Houston, then what is it?”

“We started this whole thing with you saving me!” she shouted.

He huffed an incredulous breath. “That’s it? I saved you months ago, so you can’t be with me?”

“I know it doesn’t make sense to you.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t.”

She continued as though he hadn’t interrupted. “But it means something to me, how we started. I mean, God, you just compared us to a thousand-year flood, Jack. That flood destroyed my life.”

“No. You know what? I think it was actually regenerative. Like a forest fire. It made room for something new.”

“Can we please stop talking in metaphors?”

“Fine. Say it plainly, Tansy. Make it make sense.”

“I just—” She shook her head. “I swore I wouldn’t need—”

“But you did! You needed help. I had a boat. Hell, anyone else might see that as fate, not some impossible obstacle.”

“But it establishes a dynamic.”

“That I’ll always care for you? That I’ll always show up? Fuck it. I will. Because that’s what you do when you love someone. You come when they need you. You do it for the people you love all the time. You just did it for me at the hospital. But I don’t get to reciprocate? I don’t get to love you when you’re down, only when you don’t need anything?”

“I don’t want to need you, Jack. And I’m not going to be in a position to reciprocate your help anytime soon. That’s what’s impossible here.”

“I thought I could protect myself, too,” Jack said quietly. “By putting myself in a box from the start, making sure people knew I wasn’t a long-term bet, making sure I could never want more again. I wasted years believing my own lie. Years I’ll never get back. And if that’s how it had to happen for me to get here with you, then fine, but I didn’t have to be so goddamned afraid.”

“You’re saying I’m lying to myself?”

“I’m saying…” He sighed, rubbing his hands down his face. “I’m saying the stories that protect us the most always feel true, but that doesn’t mean they are.”

Suddenly, he felt exhausted going around and around with her on this. It was hopeless. He was terrible with words, could never make heads or tails of things as the conversation was unfolding, and Tansy was particularly agile, just like the barn swallows that swooped and veered in a blink. No matter what he said, she’d pivot. She would have crawled out of the back woods the day she’d hurt her ankle, and she’d do the same to get out of this conversation with her beliefs intact.

He knew this deep in his bones because he knew how fiercely he’d believed his own bullshit all these years. No one could have convinced him to give it up. Not until a little seed had lodged into one of his cracks and rooted down, against all odds, in the inhospitable environment of his heart. That seed had produced a delicate blossom from the most unendurable of circumstances. His own Katrina rose.

“It’s getting late,” he said. “We should get to the garden.”

She hesitated, surprised that he was giving up. Disappointed by that, maybe. But she nodded, smoothed her skirt, and led the way to the door.

33

Tansy

When Tansy entered Irma’s house Friday evening with Briar in tow, she was prepared for tears, for questions, and even for her friends to scrutinize her leadership during the last few months, wondering if there was something else she should have done, if she should have kept them better apprised of the situation before it was too late.

What she did not expect was to find her friends gathered around Irma’s kitchen table in party hats, arguing over who had a steady enough hand to pipe a message onto a large sheet cake. When they entered the kitchen, Marianne shouted, “Oh no! Surprise!” and then, for some reason, dove under the table.

Startled by Marianne, Irma knocked the party hat she was wearing down over her own eyes.

Kai broke into a burst of laughter at the two of them, slapping their palms on the table. Only, one hand hit a cake serving knife, which caught the edge of a stack of paper plates and catapulted it to the floor with a soft thud. When Marianne went to retrieve them, the two bumped heads, which made Kai giggle even harder.

Irma, now half choking herself with the elastic string of her hat as she corrected it too far back on top of her head, asked, “How is it a surprise party if she’s the one who planned it?”

To which Marianne replied, “She called a meeting, not a party. The surprise is the content of the gathering.”

Tansy surveyed the spread of finger foods on Irma’s kitchen island, the half-empty bottle of peppermint schnapps they’d clearly been drinking in the hour since work, and a banner hanging crookedly between one of the upper kitchen cabinets and the light fixture over the table that said CON-GRAD-ULATIONS!

“It was the best we could find on short notice,” Marianne explained as she followed Tansy’s gaze. She grabbed the piping bag that Irma was squeezing, her hands already shaking from the effort. “I’ll do it. I’m not as drunk as you two.”

This made Kai laugh and sling their arm around Irma’s shoulders, directing her away from the cake but also hugging her affectionately. “You’re so wasted, Irma.”

They were all a mess. A completely, heartbreakingly loveable mess.

Tansy’s already-low spirits fell to the floor. She hadn’t told them specifically what this meeting was about, but she’d thought they had basically put the pieces together. Now, she was going to crush them.

“What’s the cake for?” Briar asked, leaning against the table to see it better. There was a green building with flowers piped onto the center with a shaky, unfinished message written across the bottom. “What’s fare-we?”

Tansy pulled Briar back by the shoulders and cleared her throat. “I should have just said it at yesterday’s meeting, before you all went out and bought cake and…graduation decor? I thought I’d figure out a softer way to put it. But I didn’t.”

“Put what?” Irma asked, removing her hat entirely now.

“We’re closing.”

Everyone stared back at her. Probably in shock.

“In about a month,” she added. “I’m sorry.”

“And?” Kai asked.

“And…” Tansy frowned. They still weren’t reacting. “And, um, I’ve been assured you’ll all receive placements at other branches, so no one is losing their job. Again, I’m so sorry.”

She winced at Marianne, who not only did seem less drunk than the others and more capable of understanding what she was saying, but who also would have been the first to break down at this news.

Marianne rolled her hand at the wrist. “Is that all?”

“That’s…I mean, yeah. I guess that’s it.”

Irma expelled a dramatic breath. “Good God, I thought you were going to say someone was dying. We already knew about the closure. You left your email open on the computer, and Marianne overheard your call with Sheila the other day.”

Tansy slumped against a chair. “You knew?”

“Of course. That’s why we’re having cake,” Marianne said.

“I’m not following. This is bad news.”

“Doesn’t cake make you feel better?” Irma asked, as though this was the most obvious explanation in the world.

“Yes,” Briar answered seriously.

“Did I not say the mismatched decorations would be confusing?” Kai pointed out.

Marianne swatted their arm. “Well, it was better than your suggestion of ‘eighteenth-century Gaelic funeral vibes.’ ”

“Black veils over the picture frames. Bagpipes. Crows,” Kai argued. “What’s not to like?”

“It’s depressing.”

“But aesthetically cohesive.”

“I like crows,” Briar offered, and Kai lurched across the table for a high five, nearly knocking the cake over the edge.

An unexpected laugh bubbled up into Tansy’s throat. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save the library.”

Marianne came around the table to throw her arms around Tansy’s shoulders. Kai joined in on her other side. Then Irma, who said, “It was a damn fun ride while it lasted.”

—

Later, after indulging in a little too much cake and alcohol, Tansy switched to water and set about cleaning up the kitchen. Briar was reading about bearded dragons in the living room with the others. Kai hiccupped as they came in to help Tansy, saying, “Did we really just get trashed on peppermint schnapps? Irma’s literally passed out in there.”

Tansy sighed, smiling.

After a few silent minutes of them working around each other, Kai said, “We’re all going to be all right, you know.”

Tansy dropped paper plates into a trash bag. “I just thought I could do more, I guess.”

“We thought this was all over back in December. These last few months were like a bonus round.”

“And if I’d accepted it then, you’d all probably be settled in somewhere by now instead of looking at more upheaval.”

Kai toed the tile floor. “I wouldn’t have met Ian.”

Tansy paused before taking the cake server and forks to the sink. “I hadn’t thought of that. Ugh, I’m sorry you have to transfer away.”

Kai laughed. “You have got to stop apologizing. We’re not breaking up, regardless of where I go.”

“Well, that’s good. I’m glad for you.”

“What about you and Jack?”

Tansy leaned back against the counter and shook her head slowly. “I guess you all know about me and him, too.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kai said, smiling. “We had bets going over spring break. Believe it or not, it was sweet, innocent Marianne who took the pot on whether you’d get a ride into work with him.”

Tansy felt her cheeks heat. “Forget transferring to another branch. You should all go work for the FBI.”

“The only bet we couldn’t settle was when you fell for him. Marianne thought it was the day you sprained your ankle. Irma said it didn’t happen until last week, some random moment when she saw you two looking at each other across the courtyard. They thought I was crazy for my answer.”

Tansy swallowed. “What was yours?”

“That day he watched Briar and y’all went down into the creek. You were different when you came back. Lighter. Just…not stressed for the first time in forever.”

“That was before the festival. Before we even kissed.”

“I know.”

She had felt calmer coming back from the creek that day. Cleansed, even.

But months before that, a light had cut through the downpour like a beacon, bobbing toward her flooded porch, and suddenly, her load no longer rested entirely on her own exhausted shoulders.

“I think,” Tansy said, sniffling back sudden tears, “it was when he showed up in his boat.” She closed her eyes, sending two fat teardrops sliding down her cheeks.

Kai put a comforting hand on Tansy’s arm. “Then why aren’t you with him?”

“Because I’m afraid I’ll get too comfortable. I’ll let him cook me meals and fix my house and literally carry me. And do my laundry at his house so I don’t have to sit at the Laundromat. I’ll let him in, and I’ll get used to all the ways he makes everything easier, and then—”

“And then he’ll let you down,” Kai finished for her. “And you’re not sure if you’ll be able to do it all on your own again.”

Tansy clung to Kai’s arm, letting out a sob.

“I just don’t think that’s going to happen,” Kai whispered. “I really don’t. But if it does— Look at me.”

Tansy wiped her eyes.

“If it does, you will save yourself. You will be okay. Briar will be okay. You’ve proven that. But you know what you can’t save?”

“What?”

“Something you don’t let yourself have in the first place.”

Tansy buried her face in Kai’s shoulder. They were right. She felt it in her heart, an aching, throbbing answer of Him, him, him.

She pushed back suddenly and checked her watch. “Shit.”

“What?”

“His presentation. It’s tonight. He’s afraid of public speaking.” She grabbed her purse off the table, about to dig inside for her keys, only for Kai to snatch the whole bag.

“You can’t drive.”

“I have to be there, Kai. He needs me.” She pushed past them into the living room, her urgent footsteps startling Irma awake.

“What’s happening?” she demanded.

“Marianne, are you sober?” Kai shouted, following Tansy a beat later into the room.

“Yes,” she said, wary.

“Good.” Kai tossed Marianne’s keys at her. “You’re driving us downtown.”

“Us?” Tansy asked.

“You think I got so deeply invested in this all these months just to miss a grand gesture?”

“Grand gesture?” Irma slurred. “I’m coming, too.”

“Okay, whatever,” Tansy said, grabbing Briar’s backpack and motioning for her to close her book. “We just need to go. It starts in thirty minutes.”

“Can we even make it?” Marianne asked, doubtful.

Irma pushed her toward the door. “Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”

“Too soon, Irma,” Kai said on a laugh. “Too fucking soon.”

34

Jack

“You done yet?” Jack asked for the fifth time in as many minutes as he paced in the quiet meeting room.

“Almost,” Ian said, scrunching his face in frustration at his laptop screen. “There’s something wrong with these transitions.”

“But it’s all there? The graphs? The photos?”

Ian rubbed his forehead and turned an uncertain look on Jack.

“Keep clicking,” Jack told him, motioning to put his hands back on the keyboard.

Ian didn’t move. “Are you completely sure this is going to work?” His eyes fell to the stack of professionally printed and bound packets they’d put together last week, which Jack had declared all wrong on Sunday. In the five days since, they’d thrown that whole first presentation out the window and started over from scratch in a completely different direction.

The truth was, Jack wasn’t sure of their new plan, the PowerPoint for which they were still cobbling together five minutes before his presentation. That glossy packet contained his best argument for funding the gardens’ expansion. It included all of his expertise and experience, pages of data, and compelling projections. It could win this grant, he knew.

But it didn’t feel right.

Then again, nothing felt very good as their last minutes ticked down toward the hardest part. The grant committee and the rest of audience were just on the other side of the door, in a medium-size auditorium with a stage and lights and a microphone, and he was going to have to go in there and speak to them, whether Ian finished this slide deck or not.

“It has to work,” he said, jabbing a finger at Ian’s laptop. “Got a better chance if you get that finished, though.”

Ian got back to it, and Jack closed his eyes and drew in steadying breaths through his nose. He tried to remember how Tansy had held his wrists that day at the festival and jammed his thumb into a spot he hoped was close enough to relieve the churning in his stomach.

Then the door opened, a woman stuck in her head to say they were ready, and Ian yanked the flash drive from the computer.

The lights were bright and hot, and instantly, a wave of nausea made Jack turn his back to the crowd. He was going to be sick. Fuck, he was going to mess up this entire thing.

Ian gave him a thumbs-up from the side of the stage and then their first slide was projected before him onto the backdrop screen. He remembered why he was doing this. He swallowed down the thick coating in his throat, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and faced the audience. “Hello,” he croaked. “I’m Jack. I’m the director of Lerner Botanic Gardens.”

He blew out a shaky breath, and the microphone caught it, sending a roaring whoosh over the speakers and making everyone, including Jack, wince.

“Fuck,” he muttered. Then, “Shit. Sorry.”

Well, this was going fucking great.

The light from the projector screen flashed from behind him, and Jack twisted back to see that Ian had prompted him to the next slide. There was a collage of photos from the days immediately following the hurricane, the gardens completely submerged in a lake of muddy water, plants ripped from their beds, and fallen trees.

Someone cleared their throat from the front row, where the grant committee was seated. The auditorium wasn’t full, which should have been a relief, but all he could focus on was the sound of people shifting impatiently in their seats and his own long, panic-frozen silence.

“Um…” he began, blinking again at the screen.

A door at the top of the stadium seats banged open, making everyone turn in surprise. In spilled Tansy, Briar, Kai, Marianne, and Irma in a fit of giggling and shushing. They stopped abruptly, bumping into each other at the top of the stairs.

“Sorry!” Tansy whisper-shouted. “Can we— Are we allowed to watch?”

A woman with a sour face stood, motioned impatiently for them to sit, and then turned back to Jack. “Sorry, Mr. Reid. Please continue.”

But he was stuck on Tansy’s form as she took a seat in the very back row and shushed her friends again. When she turned to look at him, his knees nearly buckled. What did this mean? What was she doing here? He wanted to ask her right into the microphone, wanted to tell her he was so fucking happy to see her.

The projector screen changed again, another nudge from Ian, and Jack cleared his throat. “As you can see in these photos, we sustained significant damage at the gardens during the hurricane. In my proposal, I had a clear plan for this grant money. We lost our expansion budget to essential flood-mitigation projects on our property, so we hoped to recoup those funds to get phase one of the expansion back on track. That phase includes a state-of-the-art greenhouse and the conversion of an existing barn on the property to a storage facility and new administration offices.”

Some heads nodded in the front row.

“Since we submitted that proposal, though,” Jack said, looking past them, straight back to Tansy, “our needs have changed.”

35

Tansy

Jack was looking directly at Tansy as the committee members in the front made sounds of surprise and disapproval. She leaned forward in her seat, confused, nervous for him, but also strangely breathless, tingly. She felt like she was made of neon, buzzing and flickering with everything she couldn’t tell him yet.

“These past few months,” he said, his eyes still on her, “we’ve had the pleasure of hosting the Grant Gellman branch library in our park after their building flooded. You should already be familiar with their work because they also applied for this grant. What you may not know, though, is how the library’s presence has directly impacted the gardens. The librarians were an essential partner at our recent Pollinator Festival, and they’ve been running popular educational and enrichment programs in our space despite the challenges of the environment—wind, rain, disruptive lawn maintenance, ill-placed koi ponds…”

A ripple of soft laughter went through the small crowd. Tansy’s own laugh tumbled out, loosening something, possibly structural, inside her.

“But most importantly, they’ve forced us—me—to reimagine our own possibilities. They’ve reminded us of aspects of our mission that we’ve been neglecting—community engagement and educational outreach.”

He finally addressed the committee before him, his voice confident and commanding. “The gardens have always been a place of respite from Houston’s concrete, smog, and noise. We’ve never charged admission because we believe this space should be for everyone, just like public libraries. But our park can be more than an escape from city and suburban life. We should be an integral part of our community. And we should support that community in the ways that the library already does, with regular programming that connects people with both the natural environment and with each other. We should be teaching practical and sustainable gardening, water catchment, and native landscaping. We should be feeding people with the food we grow and teaching families how to grow it themselves. And in fact, these are steps we’ve begun to take, first prompted by the library’s example and now in collaboration with them.”

The projector clicked through pictures from the Pollinator Festival, the Garden Club from last Saturday, and various library programs—story times, Movement and Meditation on the lawn, and Teen Art Club.

“You might be wondering why I’m talking so much about the library. See, the thing is, in a short time, they’ve become part of our gardens family. In fact, they’ve become so enmeshed in our space, it’s hard to tell what’s them and what’s us at this point.”

Jack glanced at Tansy again and held her gaze.

Something swelled in her chest, pushing at her ribs, trying to expand as if to reach across the room to him. She heard what he wasn’t explicitly saying. His use of the word family brought her right back to his plea at the hospital and in the greenhouse. She was the library, and he was the gardens, and they were enmeshed now, too.

Jack cleared his throat and turned back to his PowerPoint, seeming to have lost his train of thought. “The library’s scavenger hunt signs are tucked among our plant ID signs all around the grounds. The new Garden Club is co-led by library and gardens staff, at least until their operations are cut next month.”

The projection screen showed before-and-after images of the gated garden with the half circle of tree stumps and the painted rocks and the raised beds, followed by images of Tansy surrounded by captivated children as she animatedly read to them.

“I intended to come here and argue that my park deserves this grant because, despite extreme austerity, we’ve seen compelling growth in our engagement numbers. But the truth is, our recent growth is absolutely linked to the library. It can’t be separated. And actually, my entire point is that the two entities shouldn’t be separated.”

“What is he doing?” Irma barked.

“I don’t know,” Tansy breathed.

“Which is why I’m proposing a new plan. If awarded the grant, we’d use the money to renovate a different structure on our expansion property. This one,” he said, gesturing to the large two-story house that appeared on the screen, a modest mansion tucked into the woods. “It’s approximately one and a half times the size of the old library. We’re proposing a larger renovation of this building, which would then house the library’s newly reopened branch.”

“What?” Tansy gasped.

“As you can see, the cost difference between the barn renovation in our original proposal and this one would come from the greenhouse, which we’ve accounted for with a smaller structure and fewer high-tech upgrades.”

His greenhouse. Tansy gripped her chair and leaned forward, afraid to miss a word, feeling as though she had already somehow misheard him.

“But the thing is, the library needs more than promises at this point. They need autonomy. Which is why I’ve spent the last few days in conversations with the library board and administration, our county commissioner Beau Burke, and others to ensure exactly that. Many of them are here tonight to show their support.”

Some hands went up in the audience, and Tansy spotted the commissioner, Sheila from admin, and other vaguely familiar faces of library board members.

“With this grant, we’ll pay for the entire renovation, which the library isn’t currently in a position to do themselves, in exchange for their board’s agreement to fully restore and fund their operations. Most importantly, thanks to the generosity of our county commissioner, who was instrumental in acquiring this property in the first place, the library will have a ninety-nine-year rental contract. It’s not co-ownership of the asset, but as far as we’re all concerned, it’s a secure agreement.”

The commissioner stood to receive his due, pulling off his enormous Stetson and placing it over his heart. “I saw the potential of this partnership back when I proposed moving the library into the gardens, so of course I’m pleased to sign off on this plan.”

Tansy saw Jack’s jaw tighten, but he nodded in acknowledgment.

A hand went up in the front row. “With all due respect, Mr. Reid, we passed on the library’s proposal, given that we have a robust library system with many other branches across Houston and extensive online services. Although your collaboration with them is certainly compelling, why should we fund your project, which shifts money from your immediate purposes to theirs?”

“Because, ma’am, as the commissioner said at our reopening, disaster can present opportunity. It forces us to see things with new eyes. Out of disaster, we can do more than just rebuild—we can build better. The gardens and library are greater than the sum of our two parts. We are more together. So your investment in this plan will reflect that. You’ll be making a far greater difference by supporting us together than you would have with our previous proposal.”

There were more questions about the logistics, the exact numbers, and the timeline, but all Tansy could hear was the echo of Jack saying, We are more together.

They were more together. Her and Jack.

But it wasn’t only that. He was giving up his state-of-the-art greenhouse for her. And he’d ensured the library would be as secure as possible moving forward. Instead of finding her some other building in the park, tossing her their leftovers, he’d given her and her branch the closest thing to autonomy he could.

He’d done what she never had for him—put her needs before his own.

He’d done it, knowing the last-minute change could have knocked him out of consideration for the grant altogether. It was a risk he probably shouldn’t have taken.

She was overwhelmed with a rising swell of respect and gratitude for him. With love for him. It sparked through her, making her antsy in her seat. She wanted to fling herself onto the stage.

“Any further questions?” one of the committee members asked from the front row. Then, to Jack, “Any further remarks?”

“Just thank you for your time,” Jack said.

“Then this concludes our presentations. Committee members will stay to convene. Thank you to all of our finalists.”

Tansy turned in her chair to ask Kai to stay with Briar for a minute, but Kai cut her off before she could say a word. “Go!”

She wove through the throng of people already pushing their way out and reached the steps to the stage just as Jack was coming down. He raised his hand to the back of his neck, uncertainty all over his face. “Tansy—” he started.

“Shut up and kiss me.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. He glanced to their side at the crowd still milling about. “You’re not mad that I did this without talking to you first?”

“You just used your best shot at funding your expansion to try to pull my library back from the brink. No, I’m not mad. I’m in love with you.” She slugged his arm, eager for him to put his hands on her, his mouth on her.

“Ow,” he deadpanned, smile growing.

“Kiss me,” she said again with an impatient stamp of her foot.

“So bossy.” He brought his hands to her face, lowered his mouth almost to hers, and said, “I love you, too, Tansy. So fucking much.”

Finally, he pressed his lips to hers. She went languid against him, melting into his broad frame and slipping her hands around his back to hold him tight.

When they parted, Jack whispered, “We have an audience.”

Now that she had him in her arms, she didn’t want to let him go, not even to leave the room. But the committee deciding Jack’s fate—and hers—were awkwardly trying not to stare as they waited to discuss the presentations.

She removed her hands, gestured at Kai to meet them out in the corridor, and pulled him after her.

36

Jack

Jack followed Tansy into her bedroom later that night, taking in the neatly made air mattress and the plastic sets of drawers holding her clothes. It wasn’t lost on him how big this step was—her letting him into this most private space.

Following the presentations, the librarians had headed back home, and Jack had driven Tansy and Briar—his girls—for ice cream and a walk around Hermann Park, where they’d watched the sunset and mimicked the calls of the birds in the trees. Briar had been nodding off by the time they’d reached Tansy’s house, but she’d insisted on bedtime reading. Jack had told Tansy he’d wait in the living room, figuring they’d finally talk after. But Briar surprised him by asking sleepily, “Can Jack do it?”

“Yeah.” He’d had to clear his throat to say, “Yeah, I can read to you.”

He’d sat on the floor beside her bed and rested his elbow on the mattress so she could see the book. It was a nonfiction guide to caring for bearded dragons, which apparently she was lobbying Tansy pretty hard to get. Briar had snuggled down, shifting to rest her head on his arm, and he’d widened his eyes to clear the sudden moisture blurring them. She’d fallen asleep before he quit reading, and he’d carefully extricated himself without disturbing her, startling when he realized Tansy had been watching from the doorway.

Now she was turning on the lamp in her room, pulling her earrings from her ears, and setting them in a dish on the stacked plastic drawers she was using as a nightstand. She turned and laughed at him still on the threshold. “You can come in.”

“Can I?”

She softened, understanding the question he was really asking—if he could come into her life, all the way, finally. “Yeah, Jack. I want you here.”

He closed the door with a soft click and then came behind her to circle his arms around her and tuck his chin over her shoulder. “I’m still good to do this slow. However you need it to go.”

She tilted her face back to look up at him. “Will you stay the night? Even though all I have is this terrible air mattress, and we’ll probably be rolling into each other all night?”

He huffed a laugh into her hair. “You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then, yeah. I’d sleep on a floor with you. And don’t act like you don’t already end up on top of me all night anyway.”

She turned in his arms and began to unbutton his nice shirt, the same one he’d worn on their first date. “No one’s ever persuaded multiple county officials to promise me resources before. When you go, you go big, don’t you, Jack?”

He shrugged. “For you, yeah.” Then, “What if we don’t get the grant?”

She pulled open his shirt and tugged it down his arms. She had to stop to deal with the snaps at his wrists, leaving him half bound by his own shirt while she did. “What about us?” she clarified. She shook her head. “If you don’t get the grant, and the library closes in the end, then at least we’ll know we tried everything we could. I can accept that. But Jack, those things I thought I needed—autonomy and you putting my needs first—I said all that because I was scared. I thought I needed proof that I could be safe with you. Maybe it was even an impossible bar I thought you wouldn’t clear. Because…I knew from the day we met that you were trouble for me.”

“I’m trouble?” he asked, unsure if she was joking or serious.

She got his shirt off and stepped back to look at him. She lifted her hands at her sides in an open shrug, a vulnerable offering. “You’re the one who showed up when I needed help. I know I talk a big game against the whole damsel-in-distress thing, but there’s this little part of me, deeply buried under my feminism and all the lessons I’ve learned the hard way and what I want for my daughter, that still secretly just wants to be taken care of. So when you rescued us that day, I think that part of me fell a little bit in love with you. And that scared me about as much as the hurricane. That’s why I pushed so hard to prove I didn’t need you. But I do. And I want you. And I don’t care anymore what that might say about me.”

Jack stepped forward and hooked a finger into the strings loosely tied at the side of her wrap dress. He tugged it undone and opened the fabric, revealing underneath her plain cotton bra and her soft stomach. “If you think you didn’t save me, too, you couldn’t be more wrong.”

She released a breath as he slipped the dress off her shoulders and it pooled on the floor. She worked at his buckle, then his fly, and soon he was out of his pants, too.

They laughed as they crawled onto her air mattress, jostling as it shifted. He tucked her back to his front, slipping his hand over her hip, circling there, dipping lower with each pass.

“I’m conflicted,” he said into her hair.

She frowned over her shoulder, a flash of worry.

“Because I know we have to be quiet, but I’m kind of addicted to the sounds you make when you come.”

She laughed through her nose, her amusement followed by new sparks of heat in her eyes. “God,” she said, slipping her hand around his neck, “you are trouble.”

—

Jack awoke to a doorbell and Tansy’s startled elbow jabbing into his ribs. She tripped getting out of bed, complaining, “It’s seven on a Saturday. Who on earth—” She stumbled into the plastic nightstand, toppling the glass of water he’d brought for her after their third round, which had been barely four hours ago.

He laughed and swung his legs to the floor. “Open your eyes before you walk,” he teased, adding, “I’ll get it.”

She threw him a glare. As he shuffled down the hall, he heard her in the bathroom, bumping into the wall and cursing.

Jack had grabbed his shirt and was snapping it up over his boxer briefs, planning to simply pop his head around the door and tell whatever Jehovah’s Witness or home security salesperson they weren’t interested, but he came around the corner into the living room just as Briar was pulling the door open for Marianne, Irma, Kai, and Ian.

“Christ,” he coughed.

Marianne raised a righteous eyebrow before looking him up and down and immediately averting her eyes.

Irma held out her palm and announced, “Everybody, pay up.”

“I’ll Venmo you,” Kai groused.

Jack would kill for a fucking couch right now to block his bare legs and boxers from these people. “What are y’all doing here?” he managed tightly.

“Where’s Tansy?” Marianne asked, cheeks aflame.

“She’s—”

“Who is it?” Tansy called, coming down the hall. “Unless they’re selling Girl Scout cookies, we’re not—” She skidded to a stop, nearly bumping into Jack, where he, too, had stopped abruptly. She had at least thought to put on sweatpants and a T-shirt, but her hair was an absolute mess, and she had beard burn down one side of her neck.

“Not Girl Scout cookies. But we brought doughnuts,” Irma said, offering up a Shipley’s box.

Briar perked up at that and followed her into the kitchen.

Tansy tried to detangle her hair with her fingers before giving up. “It’s seven on a Saturday,” she said defensively. “Why are you all here?”

Kai stepped forward, and Jack moved Tansy in front of him, blocking his half-dressed body. “Turns out, the vice chair of the grant committee is in Marianne’s cat rescue group, and they’ve been talking about medications for this feline skin disease for weeks. She passed along unofficial word to Marianne.”

“That’s right,” Marianne said, straightening a little. “For once, I was the first to know something.”

“The first to know what?” Tansy asked impatiently.

“We got the grant,” Ian said, grabbing Kai’s hand.

“We got the grant?” Jack asked.

“We got the grant,” he said again.

And then everyone in the room repeated it, again and again. Briar joined in, marching around the room, lifting her already-half-eaten doughnut in celebration. The others made an impromptu conga line, unencumbered by Tansy’s lack of furniture.

Tansy laughed and turned to Jack, tears in her eyes and the most beautiful smile on her face. “Nice work, partner. Now…when’s a good time to discuss decor for our building?”

Epilogue

Tansy

About One Year Later

Tansy’s phone was missing, and so was the commissioner.

Jack was off looking for the latter, and while Tansy retraced her steps, Briar was helpfully dumping Tansy’s massive bag onto her desk looking for the former, saying, “Maybe you should clean this out every once in a while.”

Her office at the new library had a wall of windows on one side looking into the circulation room—a big, airy space with nearly one hundred thousand volumes, twenty-five computers, a maker’s space with a 3D printer, a cozy Children’s Corner, and meeting rooms that they shared with the gardens’ educational outreach classes.

The windows on the opposite wall of Tansy’s office looked out at the entrance to this side of the gardens, complete with a sprawling Katrina rose bush, propagated from the one on the other side of the park. News crews were set up outside the building, swarmed by a huge crowd of families, fanning themselves in the warm spring sunshine with Pollinator Festival fans and pipe-cleaner antennae atop their heads, their faces already painted with butterfly wings.

As official branch manager now, Tansy was due to introduce the commissioner and hand him the scissors to cut the ribbon for the grand opening in about two minutes, but her speech was on her phone, which was nowhere to be found. At least she hadn’t misplaced the scissors. Apparently, the commissioner had his own pair for these events, large shiny ones with an alligator skin design printed on the handles, and they were already on the podium. She did grab the simple black ones from her desk as a backup, though.

“Any luck finding my phone?” she asked Briar, who was now shoving three pieces of gum into her mouth.

“Nope.”

“All right. I guess I’ll just have to wing it.”

An enormous Stetson passed by the exterior window. Jack followed the commissioner, pausing to cup his hands around the glass and peek in at her. He mouthed, Showtime.

Tansy and Briar slipped out the side door and jogged around to the front, where a red ribbon stretched across the entrance doors. Briar joined Amy, Omar, and little Jillian in the crowd of familiar faces, including Lena and Stella. The job Amy had helped Lena find last year conflicted with Tansy’s weekday story times, but they were dedicated weekend Garden Club attendees. Kai, Marianne, and Irma stood behind Tansy, ready to yank open the doors and let everyone explore the new building, and Ian caught Jack off to the side of the steps, passing him a radio and saying, “You forgot this again,” even though they all knew that had been no accident.

Tansy took her place to welcome everyone to the opening of the new branch and the new half of the park. “I’m so pleased to welcome our recently reelected county commissioner, Beau Burke, who gave our library a second chance,” she said into the microphone. “He spoke on a drizzly January day about the opportunity hidden in disaster. After this last year, I think Commissioner Burke must be one of those rare people with a clear and creative vision of the world because what we’re celebrating today seemed impossible to most of us back then. Let’s give him a warm welcome.”

Jack reached for Tansy’s hand as she joined him, turning to whisper in her ear while the crowd settled back down, “Some vision. He got lost on the green trail.”

“The one that loops around the pond?”

“Yep. No sense of direction whatsoever under that Stetson.”

Tansy stifled her laugh and nudged his shoulder.

The commissioner’s speech was as self-congratulatory as Tansy had expected it to be, but she couldn’t complain. Not when she had her dream library in one of the most beautiful hidden pockets of Houston. It was an utterly perfect spring day.

Following the ribbon cutting, Tansy and Jack took turns checking out all the demonstrations, crafts, and festivities with Briar, tagging out to run story times or the Ask-a-Gardener table.

Finally, as the sun cast a long shadow from the library across the transplanted Katrina roses, and the last of the visitors headed to their cars, face paint melting, and arms loaded with books, seed packets, crafts, and plants, Jack took Tansy’s and Briar’s hands. “One more thing before we head home.”

Five minutes later, they were standing over the creek, looking across at the old property. There were no stairs on this side, so they couldn’t go down to the water, but there was a big grassy overlook under a towering sycamore, its crown of leaves bright green and waving in the wind. They sat in its shade and followed the flight of two bright white egrets as they swooped into the ravine and back out, off into the sunset.

The breeze lifted Tansy’s hair off her neck, cooling the lingering heat on her skin from the long afternoon. The water was low now—too low, really, because there hadn’t been rain in weeks. It was hard to imagine that scar ever filling with so much water again. But it would. And now the banks on the opposite side were eight feet higher, the dirt that had been trucked in to build them up beginning to sprout with new grass.

“Can we go home now?” Briar asked. “I have to feed Draco.”

Draco was the bearded dragon that Tansy had held off getting for her until two weeks ago, right after their move into Jack’s house. Like the park, his place had needed a little bit of work. He’d offered to sell it, combine the money with what she got from her house, and find a new place for the three of them, but Tansy was kind of in love with that greenhouse bedroom.

They’d used some of the money from the sale of her house to decorate two rooms—Briar’s bedroom and the office, which Jack, ever an outdoorsman, had no use for. That room was now the coziest private library, complete with the rolling ladder of Tansy’s dreams.

The remainder of the money went toward some new furniture, new clothes for Tansy and Briar—no more thrifted hand-me-downs, although Tansy made sure to keep those wrap skirts Jack liked so much—and one bearded dragon. The rest gave her a comfortable cushion of savings.

“Shoot,” Tansy said, as they all stood to return home. “I never found my phone.”

Jack dug into his pocket. “This phone?”

She laughed. “Where was it?”

“You left it in my greenhouse,” he whispered into her ear, sending a wave of heat through her. They’d…christened the new greenhouse before the festival.

“Mom,” Briar whined. “Draco is starving.”

Tansy laughed. “Okay. We’re going.”

They returned to the parking lot, which was nearly empty now. Except for Marianne’s Jetta.

“I thought you left already,” Tansy called.

Marianne was pulling something from her back seat. She froze, half turned away from them. And although Tansy couldn’t see the item in her arms, the familiar chirps of birds gave it away.

“No,” she said immediately.

Marianne hoisted the bird cage with Peanut Butter and Jelly inside against her hip. “Now that we’re back to full operations, I thought I could bring back our branch pets.”

“Marianne, no,” she said again. But she couldn’t hold in her laugh at the defeated look on her friend’s face.

“Please,” Marianne begged with surprising force. “Don’t tell Kai, but the cats have nearly killed them more times than I can count. I can’t have their blood on my hands. It’s too stressful. Also, I think I’m actually allergic to them. I’ve low-key had hives for eighteen months.”

“Oh my God.” Tansy laughed into Jack’s shoulder. He wrapped his arm around her, chuckling, too. “Fine,” she relented. “But we’re establishing a protocol for hurricane retrieval.”

They watched Marianne struggle to carry the cage into the new building. Then, Briar and Tansy climbed into Jack’s truck. When he slid into the driver’s seat, he didn’t start the engine right away. He took her hand between them, kissed her palm, and then smiled into it.

“What?” she asked.

“Just thinking about that day. Meeting you.”

She nodded. She supposed those birds had been good for something after all.

“I had plants in the back of my truck that day. And now…” He reached into the back seat and playfully ruffled Briar’s unruly curls until she giggled.

Then he turned over Tansy’s hand and kissed it again, mumbling thickly into her skin, “You’re the best damn thing that ever happened to me. Both of you.”

His hazel eyes caught the golden-hour glow through the window, the sun making its way down behind the thick pine trees, those amber freckles in his irises lighting up. Something else sparked in them, too.

She’d spent the last year cataloguing Jack’s looks. There were his flirty, flickering looks. His crash-over-your-head, unmistakable firework looks that told her they needed to find a restricted area to duck into now. And there were his slow-burning, smoldering looks when he was in no rush, turning her on from anticipation alone.

But this one, this look was maybe her favorite. It was something like a wish whispered in the dark, written with sparkler smoke. Keep me forever.

And that was exactly what she planned to do.

Acknowledgments

To be honest, there were times during the writing of this book that I wasn’t certain I’d reach this part. Jack and Tansy’s story, and the bigger story of their community around them, required me to stretch myself as a writer. On top of that, sophomore books are notoriously difficult for many authors, and I did not escape that rite of passage. So, first, I’d like to acknowledge that this was a daunting book, but one I’m immensely proud to have written.

For book one, I thanked my husband last. This time, he gets top billing because I can’t imagine finishing this book without his endless patience as I talked (and cried) through various plot problems. His unwavering faith that I was up to the challenge and his committed partnership in all areas of our lives while I figured it out cannot go unacknowledged. Josh, you are the most decent person I have ever known. Thank you for the gift of your constant consideration. You are proof that fictional men written by women are not an unattainable fantasy.

Allison Hunter, my agent, thank you for your continued advocacy and enthusiasm as we’ve worked together on two books now—and more to come! Your support has been vital as I’ve stumbled my way through parts of this process. I’m eternally grateful to you and to the rest of the Trellis Literary Management team, especially Natalie Edwards.

To my editor, Kate Dresser, thank you for reminding me again and again that everyone struggles with book two! I am in awe of—and so grateful for—your skillful editorial eye. Your willingness to go deep into edits and to do the extra rounds of digging I needed to figure this one out made such a difference! Thank you to the whole team at G. P. Putnam’s Sons for your care and skill at every step of the publishing process—Tarini Sipahimalani, Nicole Biton, Shina Patel, Leah Marsh, Alexis Welby, Ashley McClay, Sofie Parker, Maija Baldauf, Almudena Rincon, Shannon Plunkett, Lindsay Sagnette, and Ivan Held, as well as copyeditor Christy Wagner and proofreaders Megha Jain and Ari Tyler.

Vi-An Nguyen, thank you for creating the most beautiful cover art for me once again.

Thanks to Olivia Robertshaw and everyone at Harper Fiction for bringing Jack and Tansy to readers in the UK.

I’m grateful to so many writers who have offered me guidance, friendship, and community, especially Ellie Palmer, Jessie Rosen, Jamie Harrow, Naina Kumar, Georgia Clark, Kelis Rowe, Jessica Joyce, Tarah DeWitt, Katie Naymon, Annabel Monaghan, Falon Ballard, Helena Greer, and others I’ll kick myself for missing. Thank you for writing and sharing your own beautiful books with the world.

One of the joys I’ve discovered during and beyond my debut has been getting to connect with readers! To those who have shared my books with friends and followers or slipped into my DMs with a kind word, thank you for caring about these characters I create and love. It is a pleasure to share them with you. Thanks as well to booksellers, librarians, reviewers, book clubs, bookstagrammers, and anyone else in the bookish community who has boosted my work.

I’m so grateful for all my friends, especially Heather Frankland, Rebekah Rydarowski, Cami and Shawn, Jenny Kujawa Green, Cassie Colville, Jessica Bodin, Jessica Sanchez, Kathleen Wilson, Joli Ammons, Laura Williams, and Cat Jonet. Adriana Wilson, you inspire me and never let my negative self-talk get out of hand. Mom, you are my best friend for life and my favorite reader. Payton Himes, you DMed me about Take Me Home when it was just an ARC, and now you are one of my favorite people on the Internet. And Cynthia Alverde, my beloved figure skating coach and friend, thank you for helping me live out my childhood dream of being an ice princess. One of my favorite things is laughing on the ice with you!

I must acknowledge the librarians at the Baldwin Boettcher branch library whose real-life story following Hurricane Harvey inspired aspects of this book. Victoria Alardin not only personally made a positive impact in my children’s lives with story times and Creature Features over the years, but she also spoke with me for this book. I also wish to thank the tour guides and other staff at Mercer Botanic Gardens, who provided many of the garden-related details I’ve used in this book. Anything I’ve gotten wrong about libraries or garden management is my mistake!

Finally, to all my family—parents, kids, and all my extended loved ones—thank you. I love you.

Author’s Note

Dear Reader,

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey hit my Houston-area community and beyond with major destruction, including the catastrophic flooding of two important touchstones for my young children and me—our local library, where we attended story times a couple times a week, and the adjacent botanic gardens, where we explored with friends just as often. We knew before the water had receded that it would be a while before either could reopen. What we didn’t realize was that our library, like the one in Where You’re Planted, would remain gutted and closed for years.

But this is not a sad story. Even though the building was not quickly renovated and reopened, we didn’t lose our beloved library entirely. After some months of limbo, the librarians moved into a cramped shed in the gardens, where they resumed much of their programming, kept a small collection of books and interlibrary loan access, and most importantly, preserved the services and intangible benefits libraries provide their patrons. Additionally, the librarians began to incorporate the environment of the gardens into their programs. For example, story times were held outside by necessity and included nature- and season-themed readings, marrying the best of our two favorite places.

Still, it wasn’t a great arrangement by any means. One of the key benefits of a library is the safe physical space it provides, and most of us patrons held out hope this was a temporary fix to carry us through until the original library building could be restored. (As I write this note seven years later, I’m pleased to report that the library has finally just reopened its doors after a complete renovation.) But I was grateful that our dedicated librarians adapted to the difficult circumstances so remarkably. When story times started back up in the gardens, my family’s weekly rhythm and a sense of normalcy were restored—a true gift after the hurricane’s overwhelming impact on our community.

Between this inspiring example of resilience and the incredible acts of service and selflessness I witnessed during the storm—of strangers rescuing people from their homes by boat, of people flocking to the worst-hit neighborhoods to help pull out carpet and drywall, of others coming behind them with free food and water, and so much more—when I think of Harvey, I remember the destruction and the fear, but I also remember a powerful sense of connectedness, social responsibility, and hope. In the epigraph at the front of this book and in her work, Rebecca Solnit notes this phenomenon, which is not uncommon in disasters—a renewed calling to be the best versions of ourselves, to remember we are one another’s keepers. I hoped to capture that sense of communal duty in Where You’re Planted as well as my firm belief that not only will there always be helpers amid disaster, but that we are, each of us, capable and eager to be the helpers when disaster is thrust upon us.

Hurricane Harvey was a core experience that forever altered me, and I felt pulled for a long time to write about it, but every time I started a manuscript, I felt overwhelmed by how big and deeply important the story was to me. Then, in 2022, I was sitting with my kids at a story time in the gardens courtyard when a park employee with a boyish smile brought a pallet of flowers to one of the librarians to give to the families. Their brief interaction caught my attention, partly because plant distribution was not something that had ever happened there before (maybe an excuse for him to hang around her?) and partly because their chemistry in a simple, thirty-second exchange had me already casting who would play them in a movie before I even left the park.

I don’t know what their actual relationship was with each other—possibly just acquaintances. Frankly, I’m somewhat mortified that either of them will ever find out they sparked my imagination in this way! So just to be totally clear, although I borrowed the initial setup of a library moving into a botanic garden following a hurricane, all of the characters, events, and conflicts in Where You’re Planted were created for the story, not based on real-life counterparts. But inspiration truly can come from anywhere—even the middle of a children’s program at your local library. And that seemingly tiny moment gave me the specific, human entry point to my hurricane book. It was a romance. Which just happens to be my favorite kind of story.

I hope in Jack and Tansy’s story, something human and hopeful shines through. We need uplifting books now more than ever, ones that remind us we are stronger in connection and partnership with one another. We also need our local libraries, some of our most essential democratic institutions, which strengthen our communities immeasurably. You can help protect them by utilizing their services, donating, and opposing book bans.

Thank you for reading,

Melanie

Discussion Guide

Where You’re Planted opens with Tansy desperately trying to rescue two parakeets in the middle of a category 4 hurricane. If it were you, for what non-human entity would you risk your life?

The book is told through both Jack’s and Tansy’s perspectives. Discuss to what extent this enhanced your read of Jack and Tansy’s brewing tension.

Sweeney concocts the ultimate rom-com in Where You’re Planted by drawing a tight perimeter around a library, a botanic garden, and a heart-tingling grumpy-sunshine romance. If you were a character in the novel, what role you would play in the larger community, and how would this inform your romantic trajectory?

Through Tansy and Briar, Sweeney captures the unique tenderness of the mother-daughter dynamic. How does Tansy’s role as a mother foster or hinder her ability to let her walls down?

The title aptly captures some of the story’s major themes. Discuss how the title’s botanical reference speaks to what it means to settle down, and the leap of faith that’s required to give your heart to a person and a place.

Jack and Tansy are the quintessential grumpy-sunshine pair. Discuss how they expand each other’s horizons. Share with the group your favorite “Jansy” moment.

Informed by author Melanie Sweeney’s experience living in Texas, Where You’re Planted pays homage to her home state, and is one of the few romances that touches on climate change. Discuss how Sweeney seamlessly weaves in this important, real-world subtext through the various relationship dynamics we see on the page.

A love letter to libraries and librarians, Where You’re Planted is perfectly primed for the bookishly inclined. In what ways, if any, were you pleasantly surprised by Sweeney’s rendering of Tansy as a children’s librarian?

Having finished the book, where do you see Jack and Tansy now?

Photograph of the author © Joshua Bowen

Melanie Sweeney is the USA Today bestselling author of Take Me Home. She writes contemporary romance in which ordinary people find extraordinary love, and she lives near Houston, Texas, with her husband, three kids, and too many cats. When she’s not writing, she’s figure skating, embroidering, or playing her ukulele.

Visit Melanie Sweeney Online

melaniesweeney.com

MelanieSweeneyWrites

What’s next on
your reading list?

Discover your next
great read!

Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author.

Sign up now.

_152035053_