It was as if she were composed of flowers. Roses, red and thorny, delicate and dangerous. And somehow, I’d eased my way through the brambles to lose myself in the velvety beauty of her.
We climbed the steps and walked through the door to the sound of the chaos that was my family. They were seated at the table, their faces swinging to us when we entered, followed by a chorus of cheering. Dinner was freshly on the table, and so we hurried to sit, somehow managing to simultaneously greet six people in the process.
“Well, I must say,” started my mother, “the sight of you two together warms my old, rickety heart. I can’t imagine why you kept it from me all this time.”
Kash snorted a laugh, shoveling a mouthful of potatoes into his mouth. “Sure, because you would have been so hands-off and kept completely to yourself, right?”
Mom made a derisive noise. “Don’t talk with your mouth full, Kassius. And I would have been the very picture of restraint.”
Laney laughed. “Your first item of business would have been nailing down a wedding date.”
Mom gave her a look. “One day, you will have a brood of children, and then you’ll understand. Can you blame a mother for wanting her children to be happy and find love?”
“Only if she’s incessantly nosy and makes you go on dates with Jenny Arnold,” Marcus deadpanned.
With a wave of her hand in his direction, Mom said, “Jenny Arnold is a sweet girl. Don’t you worry—I’ll see you all happily in love and on your way down the aisle sooner than later. If you didn’t think I had Tess saved for one of you, you don’t know me at all.” She met my eyes, flashing a wink I don’t think anyone else saw.
Tess smiled from beside me, reaching for my hand.
“Now, I wonder which of you will be next?” Mom said, smiling sidelong as she scanned the table.
“Not it,” Kash said around a mouthful of dinner roll.
Echoing not-its made the rounds. Pretty sure Jett was last simply for the look of warning he shot at Mom, which we all knew was as useful as an umbrella in a hurricane.
But I held Tess’s hand and met her eyes. Her smile pressed a kiss to my heart.
And forever began.
Epilogue
TESS
The pop of champagne sounded with a yelp and a chorus of whoops as we stood on the sidewalk outside Longbourne, the lot of us smiling up at the brand new sign.
The last six weeks had been a heady whirlwind of action along with a settling in of routine. And this—the raising of the new sign—seemed to mark the end as well as it marked a beginning.
Mrs. Bennet raised her glass. “To Longbourne and all the people who love and care for her. May she bloom eternal.”
Hear, hear! we cheered and took our sips of solidarity.
I leaned into Luke, his arm around my waist and a smile on his face. I smiled back up at him.
“Show her,” I said quietly.
With a nod and the briefest of kisses, he let me go to reach into his back pocket. “Mom, I’ve got something you might want to see.”
She looked down at his hands as he unfurled the latest edition of Floral magazine. One gasp, and she was crying, passing her champagne to Mr. Bennet with her eyes locked on the cover.
Longbourne stood tall and proud with that pop of vibrant blue that Luke had painted the door jumping off the page. The installation sang on the cover, the words Love happens in moments across the windows framed the top of the page perfectly. And in the middle stood me and Luke, my arms around his waist and his around my shoulders. We were laughing, as we often were, the candid moment setting my heart skipping in my chest.
Mrs. Bennet couldn’t speak, overwhelmed as she flipped through the pages to the spread for the shop. The article was titled “Coming Up Roses,” next to a full-page picture of Luke and me in the greenhouse, arms full of flowers and smiles boundless.
This was the point when she burst into tears.
Luke pulled her into his side as she turned page after page. The last page of the spread was the entire Bennet family with Mrs. Bennet in the middle, holding a bouquet of roses in shades of fuchsia. At this, she turned into Luke’s chest and cried openly and without an ounce of shame.
The article recounted the history of Longbourne, starting from its establishment and its legacy. Its decline and its resurgence. The work we had all done, the window displays and the innovative arrangements. And at the heart of it all was a theme no one could deny.
Love.
A family’s love. A love of growing and creation. The love Luke and I had found together, our partnership sparking change that tore through Longbourne like wildfire.
The Bennets watched their matriarch, their faces bent with emotion. Ivy and Dean stood off to the side, watching as I did, because the Bennets were their own entity, their own animal, their bond so strong and certain that everything else was left outside without intent. But we watched them with the love in our hearts as fierce as theirs.
And just beyond Ivy was Wendy, eyes shining and smile soft.
We’d had to work to convince her to come work at the shop. I won’t lie—I’d been more than a little worried about having her there. But she had been not only kind and brimming with deference, but eager and excited to learn. The extra set of hands left me more time to design the windows and come up with specialty seasonal bouquets, which had in turn blown up our deliveries.
My gaze moved back to Luke, my pride in him lighting me up from the inside. In a few weeks, he’d start trade school in the first step to getting his contractor’s license. He could learn new things, which was his favorite itch to scratch. And the second he’d decided, he’d thrown himself into a remodel of my bathroom in order to connect it to my bedroom, not even pretending like it wasn’t for his own benefit.
The second time my dad had busted him in a towel in the hallway was the last straw.
And as for me? Well, I’d proposed my book idea to Natalie, and she’d made me an offer last week—their parent company was interested in publishing a book on floral arrangements, and they wanted me to write it. It was my dream realized.
Things were coming up roses all right. And we all felt the effervescent joy and hope that came along with the success.
The Bennets converged around Mrs. Bennet, wrapping her up in a huddle of dark hair and brilliant smiles. And when they broke, Mrs. Bennet was in the center, swiping at her cheeks.
“I’m beginning to think you all enjoy watching me cry,” she said on a laugh.
Mr. Bennet smiled down at her. “Only when it’s with this much joy.”
She leaned into him, pressing her cheek to his chest as he kissed the top of her head.
Everyone began to chatter, the cluster breaking to head back inside. Everyone but me and Luke.
He snagged the last two of his boxes from just inside the shop, kissing his mom on the cheek as we passed. I wrapped her up in a hug of my own.
“Take care of him, Tess,” she whispered.
“Always and forever,” I promised.
And with a smile of understanding, we parted ways.
He carried the boxes like they were nothing, but I could tell by the hard bulges of his biceps that they were heavy.
“I think she liked it,” I said as if it wasn’t obvious.
“I don’t know, I couldn’t be sure. On the Mrs. Bennet scale, those waterworks were lackluster at best.”