Page 43 of Not a Friend (Crescent Light #1)

Now

For a man of many words, I’m speechless when I try to pen you. It’s impossible. Words fail.

L etting the monotonous process of de-stemming the flowers soothe me, I worked in comfortable, lonely silence. White, pink, and champagne-colored roses surrounded me on all sides of the picnic table, filling my lungs with their scent.

I grounded myself as I worked, inhaling all things calm and exhaling all things worrisome. Inhaling stillness and silence, exhaling restlessness and scattered thoughts.

Plucking roses out of their buckets one at a time, I snapped each thorn between thumb and forefinger, clipped the ends at an angle with shears, and placed them in a pile on my other side.

One after another after another, only the distant sounds of birds and the vineyard sprinkler system filled the silence. Therapeutic.

I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when feet crunching against the gravel walkway piqued my attention .

Coming into view around the corner into the beer garden was Nate.

He had both his hands buried in pockets, eyes trained on the ground, that black baseball cap still backward on his head.

His steps were unhurried and unsure, like he would have debated turning around and walking back to the ceremony space if I hadn’t noticed him.

I paused my rhythm to narrow my eyes at him, but he continued around my workstation, never looking up, and sank into the seat to my left with a sigh.

“You good?” I asked, eyebrows raised in mock concern.

He reached out to toy with the stem of a white rose, twirling it between his fingers. “Need some help?”

I hesitated. The solitude in my little pocket of the resort was too nice to pass up. But just as I opened my mouth to say No , the word, “Sure,” came out instead. Biting my tongue before it said anything else stupid, I slid a spare pair of scissors to him.

I showed him what I’d been doing, cutting the stems of the hundreds of roses into equal lengths, picking off each thorn, and trimming the wayward leaves.

He nodded silently, plucking a rose from the pile, and set to work next to me.

We worked in silence for a few minutes, the tension building thick in the air like it had at the welcome party, like it had a hundred times before. A stillness that filled quickly with all the words that sat unsaid on our tongues.

Anxiety, nervousness, butterflies—whatever it was, it bloomed in my stomach, making me fidgety. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling, just one I couldn’t shake.

Reaching for another flower, I took a deep breath through my nose, not missing Nate’s imperceptible glance at me from under his lashes before looking away again. Of course, he clocked my nervous tick as if it were his own.

I stuffed the bouquet-ready roses into waiting vases of water so they could stay hydrated until they were ready to be primped and primed for arrangements. I’d done at least a hundred already, but another full bucket of untouched florals sat on the other side of the table, staring at us.

“Alright,” I said, dropping a rose into a vase and standing with a wince.

His eyes followed me. “Where are we going?”

“I need you to stand and hold these. I can’t sit hunched over anymore.” I held two small vases out as he maneuvered his long legs out of the picnic bench.

He took them and faced me. Because of our height difference, the vases were at too high a vantage point for me to see properly to make the arrangements.

I wrapped my hands around Nate’s forearms, ignoring how they flexed under my touch, and lowered them gently until the vases floated chest height in front of me.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Hold still, just like that,” I ordered softly, reaching for a stack of roses and a few sprigs of greenery from the table.

“You got it.”

He swallowed thickly as I dropped green filler flowers into the vases, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the movement. I was distinctly aware that he was avoiding eye contact, but then again, so was I.

I shoved a stack of the nicest-looking roses into each vase, primping, fluffing, and adding greenery to any unfilled gaps.

But the stubborn flowers wouldn’t cooperate.

They looked… lumpy? Not at all what I envisioned, and certainly not what Gemma was hoping for.

I added mo re greenery to the already-tight bundle and kept making adjustments, brow furrowing.

This whole flower project is taking way longer than anticipated. It’s already been over an hour, and we’ve barely started. Who died and said I was a flower expert anyway? These are going to look like shit.

“You’re going to chew all the skin off your lip,” Nate teased.

I paused. Only then did I realize I’d rubbed my bottom lip raw with my teeth while we worked.

Nate regarded me, eyes scanning my face and settling on my swollen lip. Then, for the briefest moment, his eyes dipped to the neckline of my tank top before blinking back to the space over my head.

Caught red-handed.

Arching a brow, I grabbed his forearms again and raised the vases back up to chest height where they’d been.

“You’re letting the vases drop lower than I need them, Cassidy.”

“My arms are getting tired, McLaren.”

“Bullshit. You play piano and guitar. Your arms don’t get tired.” I gave him a pointed look. “You’re distracted.”

“Can you blame me?” He eyed me with a rare cocky expression, raising his brows in question. One semi-pleasant conversation in the vineyard, and he was already back to being a shameless flirt. He always did have a talent for doing it without making me feel icky, though.

I huffed a laugh, ignoring the blush that was probably working its way up my neck.

I should not be flirting with Nate Cassidy.

“Oh, shut up.”

Finally happy with how the first two bouquets looked, I took the vases he held and replaced them with two more, repeating the process and ignoring our extended proximity.