Page 1 of Where the Roses Bloom

CHAPTER 1

Willow

The car diedtwenty miles ago. I was just too stubborn to admit it.

Now, I was stranded in the middle of nowhere, Georgia, sweat dripping down my spine and my heart wrecked six ways to Sunday.

The map had rerouted me off the interstate a while back, and I kept driving, even when the road narrowed to cracked pavement and oak-shadowed silence.

Because I didn’t have anywhere else to be…and I think my phone knew that.

You’re unloved, unwanted, and unknown, Willow Rhodes.

And home was three hundred miles behind me, along with a man who got someone else pregnant and called me obsessed for noticing.

The socks werewhat did it.

Pink. New. Still looped together by the little plastic hook. I found them in Carter’s glovebox while I was looking forgum. I turned them over in my hand like maybe they’d vanish. Like maybe if I stared hard enough, they’d belong tomy babyand not somebody else’s.

“You looking for something?” he called from the couch, lazy as ever.

I walked into the living room and held them up. “Whose are these?”

He didn’t even glance up from his phone.

“Jesus, Willow…not again.”

“Not what again?” I asked.

“The obsession. The baby thing. The—you digging through my stuff like a psycho.”

I flinched. He saw it.

Didn’t give a damn.

Carter and I had been together since college, though he never used words like together—never called me his girlfriend until we moved in, never talked rings. He said labels complicated things.

He used to say he wanted a big family—someday. Used to laugh when I’d light candles for full moons or rub oil on my belly like it might help us have a kid one day. Said I was dreamy. Said I was sweet.

Said just enough to keep me hoping.

And like a fool, I stayed. I told myself I didn’t need a diamond or a ceremony. I told myself love doesn’t have to look a certain way. But deep down, I wanted more.

I wanted a baby…I mean, I worked with pregnant women, for fuck’s sake.

I wanted to be chosen.

And now here he was—shrugging.

“You always do this,” he said. “Get worked up over shit that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Carter,” I said quietly. “Look at me.”

He sighed. But he finallylooked.

And the second he saw the socks, I saw it in his face.

A flicker.