He Swore Flowers Would Kill Him, Then Came Home Smelling of Roses novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Teller Blooms

Clara follows Rhett to a florist shop, films him with Sabine, and hears that his mother picked her because she was easy.

Rhett left for patrol at seven on Thursday, in the same leather jacket.

I stood at the kitchen window and watched him cross the yard.

He did not go toward the border road.

He turned down Mill Road, toward town.

Last night I had put nothing on the table for him.

He had looked at the empty stove and said, "Rough day?"

I had said, "Yes."

He had not asked anything else.

I took the truck keys off the hook and pulled on my old boots.

I left the truck behind the feed store and walked the last block with my hood up.

The scent of roses led me down Front Street, getting stronger with every block.

It ended at a narrow shop with pink awnings and a hand-painted sign that said Teller Blooms.

The front was dark, and a light burned in the back.

I went around into the alley, where the delivery door stood open a hand's width for the heat of the coolers.

His voice came out first.

"She cooked nothing last night," Rhett said, and he laughed. "She walked around the house like I'd kicked her dog."

A woman laughed with him, low and warm. "Poor thing. Did you tell her it was a bad day?"

"I told her it was a bad headache."

I put my back against the brick beside the door and listened.

Eight years ago he had told me that same story, and I had held a cold cloth to his forehead for three nights.

I looked through the gap.

A tall woman with red curls stood at a steel table in a pink apron, trimming stems.

I knew her.

Sabine Teller sold the pack its funeral wreaths.

At the harvest fair she had once held out a free bunch of daisies, and I had refused them, and she had smiled so kindly and said she understood.

Rhett crossed the room and put his hands on her waist.

She leaned back into him, and he put his mouth on her neck.

My wolf made a sound inside me that I had never heard from her before.

I pulled out my phone with a hand that did not feel like mine and began to film.

"Say it again," Sabine said, and he did, into her skin.

"I'm the Alpha. I can have what I want."

"And what do you want?"

"This. Every Tuesday and every Thursday, and every other night I can get away."

His hands went down, and she said his name, and I heard the apron string come loose.

I did not stay for the rest.

I got the first minute of it and saved it twice, once to the phone and once to the cloud.

I was shaking so hard I nearly dropped the phone on the bricks.

Then Sabine laughed again, clear and happy, and the laugh carried through the whole alley.

"Does she still think you can't smell flowers?"

"She does," Rhett said.

"Your little herb mouse," Sabine said. "She gave up a whole garden for a man who walks through my shop every week and never sneezes."

"She's easy," Rhett said. "That's why my mother picked her."

I stopped breathing.

My mother picked her. That is what he said.

I had never heard that sentence in eight years.

They had known, both of them, and Maureen too.

My wolf wanted me to kick open the door, and so did I.

I stood there with my fist against the brick until the wanting passed, and I made myself think.

If I burst in now, Rhett would call it a mistake and Maureen would call it jealousy.

The council would call me a hysterical wife who had shamed her sick Alpha.

I needed more than a minute of film.

I needed the whole pack in the room.

I walked back to the truck without a sound.

I drove home with the heater off so the cold would keep me awake.

I was at the kitchen counter when he came back at eleven.

He smelled of roses, but not as strongly, because he had rubbed himself down with something.

"You're up," he said.

"I couldn't sleep."

"Is there any of that stew left?"

I turned and looked at the grey eyes I had loved since I was twenty-one, and I tried to find the man in them.

"There's a pot on the stove," I said. "Help yourself."

He frowned. "You didn't leave a bowl out?"

"No."

He stood a moment, then shrugged and went to the cupboard for a bowl himself.

It was the first time in eight years he had served his own supper.

I went upstairs and lay down on my side of our bed.

At midnight he came up and slid in beside me, and his hand found my hip.

I let it stay, because I was not ready to move yet.

Then he whispered, half asleep, "Love you, Clara."

I lay in the dark with the phone under my pillow, and I did not answer him.

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