Page 24 of Gardening and Gargoyles

“It’s tempting, but no. Don’t.” There is a roguish smile that passes between us, and my heart feels that strange squeezing again. The one I love and hate at the same time. “Okay. Until August. And I’m here until the end of July. Perfect. We can be roomies.”

“Roomies?” I repeat the strange word.

“Like roommates.”

The word mate passed her lips. My heart loses the steady rhythm it’s always followed, rushing and bounding. “That word is one I haven’t heard yet.”

“It doesn’t mean we share the same bedroom, but we live together. Like friends. Loyal friends. We can hang out together, have fun together. Eat together. Garden together.”

The only word I hear is “together.” Over and over again, and my heart follows the sound. “I would love to be together,” I whisper, trying to make my voice work.

June does something strange, at least to my senses. Her cheeks turn pink, and she squirms in her seat. The scent of sadness that clings to her lifts, and there is a new note in her scent, something warm and sweet, like the flowers she loves.

“Want to go for a drive before Daniel sends someone to collect his car?” she suddenly suggests.

“Ooh! Yes.”

Chapter Six: It Blooms

We ride around the mountains and down into the town until the night begins to wane. June is my teacher, protecting me from my ignorance about so many things.

It’s strange to need help and protection, and it only makes my loyalty to her grow deeper roots.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I murmur as we watch the stars fade. I test out my wings, running a little, jumping high—and feeling like the fibers inside my mended wing are stretching and ripping when I try to fly.

“Thank me? For dinner and the fudge? It’s nothing. Daniel still hasn’t cut off my account access yet. Well, he might have changed his login information, but he hasn’t closed my card. Everything is on the bastard,” June sighs, and raises something called a “smoothie” as a toast. “After you go to sleep, I’m going back to the garden center and see what else I can buy. Mr. Fenclan says I can landscape all the way up to the woods if I want.”

“It would be magical.” I’m thinking of June walking to me through a grand garden, eyes soft, hands outstretched to take mine.

“Can you help me put up arbors? I’m going back over my vision boards and all the stuff I’ve saved on my laptop and in my sketchbook. I thought we could put a gravel path here, and then arbors every ten feet, and then—”

She’s so happy in her garden, out here in the wilds.

She belongs in an untamed place, like Gilcreedy—or like Gilgreedy was one hundred and thirty years ago.

Yet she lives in a little box in the city, a flat the size of the lodge’s living room and kitchen combined, she told me. She works at a job where they often tell her to sit in a small room with angry children who just want to play and run, to be free—but since they are older, they get no playtime, and the school has no lawn. June says it only has a small fenced-in area called a “blacktop,” and there are no amusements like swings or sandpiles.

“I bet you would be most welcome at the castle. You could do up the grounds,” I say, interrupting and forgetting my manners.

June’s mouth pops open in surprise, and her face sours.

For a second.

“I wouldn’t be able to do that. Even if your grand-niece pulls some strings, I’m not some fancy floral designer. No council is going to hire a girl who has never had anything bigger than a window box to plan as their landscaper. I wouldn’t know anyone. I wouldn’t have a job.”

“Your jobs would be to make the castle beautiful again, and you would know me. My clan would love you.”

June stares at me for a long moment. “Would they? Why?”

Because I love you, I want to reply. I don’t even have to think of the words, and there they come, rushing to my lips. I’m only spared the embarrassment by the swooping of a rushing owl into the woods, distracting June and stopping me short. “Because you are a friend to the clan. An ally that has shown herself good and true.”

“Aw, Duncan. You big softie.”

“I assure you, I am not soft!” I pat my middle worriedly. If I keep eating and not having any hard physical tasks to do, I will get soft, that is for certain.

“Softie means that inside you have a... A tender, kind heart. I love it about you. You look kinda scary, but you’re not.”

“Oh, I could be, my lady. Let any man ever trifle with you again, and I will scare the shite out of him, begging your pardon.”