Rowan's hand found mine in the dark, his calluses rough against my scarred palm, and he pulled me past the boathouse toward the overgrown path I'd forgotten existed. The grass was wet against my ankles, the air thickening with something green and blooming before I saw the silhouette—glass panels catching the quarter-moon, a structure I'd walked past a hundred times as a child without ever entering.
He stopped at the door, his hand trembling against the rusted latch. "I haven't brought anyone here." His voice barely carried. "Not once."
The air hit me first—wet earth and jasmine, so thick it felt like breathing honey. Moonlight fell through the glass roof in pale stripes across rows of clay pots, ferns unfurling in the corners, something flowering against the far wall that I couldn't name. Rowan stepped inside and his shoulders dropped, the tension bleeding out of him like he'd been holding it since we left the dock.
He touched a leaf—broad and dark green, veined like a hand. "My mother started these." His fingers traced the edge, feather-light. "The orchids died the first winter after she left. But the jasmine, the ferns, this one—" He tapped a stem with tiny white blossoms. "I don't even know what it's called. I just kept watering it."
I didn't move. Didn't speak. He was trembling—not from cold, from something deeper, the terror of showing someone the only thing he'd kept sacred. His hand shook as he touched another pot, a cutting in a cracked ceramic container, the leaves small and new. "This was her last one. Fifteen years ago. It almost died twice." He swallowed. "I repotted it in the dark the night of her funeral. Didn't even know what I was doing."
I crossed the space between us. My hand found his wrist, felt the pulse hammering there. "Rowan."
He didn't look at me. "You could break this. You know that, right?" His voice cracked on the last word. "You could walk back to that house tomorrow and I'd still be here, watering these, pretending I never showed you."
I turned him. My palm pressed flat against his chest, the same gesture from the dock but heavier now, weighted with everything he'd just handed me. His heart was a bird under my hand, frantic and trapped. "I'm not walking anywhere."
His jaw tightened. "You don't know that."
I pushed him back—one step, two—until his shoulders met the glass wall. The pane groaned, a thin protest, and his breath caught. The moonlight caught his face, the fear and want tangled together, his hands coming up to grip my shirt like he needed something to hold.
"I know." I said it into the space between his lips and mine. "I've spent three years knowing. Every city, every bed, every morning I woke up somewhere that wasn't here—I knew." My forehead pressed against his. "I just didn't have the spine to do anything about it."
His fingers twisted in my collar. "Noah—"
I kissed him. Not gentle. Not asking. The glass shuddered behind him, the jasmine thick in my lungs, his mouth opening under mine like he'd been holding his breath for fifteen years too. His hands slid up my back, pulling me into him, and the estate, my father's voice, the paperwork waiting on the desk—none of it existed. Just this. Just him, trembling against the glass, saying my name like it meant something he'd never spoken aloud.
His hand found the scar. Not the kiss breaking—just his fingers sliding from my jaw, down my neck, past my collarbone, until they wrapped around my left palm. The calluses dragged across the raised tissue, tracing the line where the nails had torn through fifteen years ago. The kiss stuttered. I felt him feel it, his thumb pressing into the center like he was reading something there.
I pulled back just enough to see his face. The moonlight caught the wet on his lower lip, the dark of his eyes gone soft in a way I hadn't seen before. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking at the scar, his thumb moving in slow circles over the roughest part.
"I never asked," he said. His voice was hoarse, half-broken from the kissing. "After that night. I never asked if it hurt."
I couldn't answer. The air was too thick, the jasmine pressing into my lungs, his thumb still moving on my palm. I remembered his hands on me in the water that day—carrying me, his shirt wrapped tight around the wound, blood soaking through to his skin. He'd carried me up the hill, shouting for someone, anyone, and I'd watched the terror on his face through the haze of shock and rain.
"It healed," I said finally. "It just looks like that now."
His jaw tightened. He lifted my hand and pressed his mouth to the scar—not a kiss, just a press, his lips warm and dry against the old tissue. I felt it in my chest first, a crack spreading through the ribs I'd been holding closed for three years. His breath came slow against my palm, and I watched the way his shoulders dropped, the way his fingers curled around mine like he'd been waiting to do this since he was twelve.
I let him stay there. Let him hold my hand against his mouth in the dark greenhouse, the condensation dripping somewhere behind us, the jasmine thick and sweet and suffocating. When he looked up, his eyes were wet.
"I dreamed about this," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "The greenhouse. You. Me. Your hand in mine." He laughed, a broken sound. "Stupid, right?"
I pressed him back against the glass. The pane groaned, and his head hit with a soft thud. His eyes didn't leave mine. I lowered my mouth to his, slow this time, tasting the salt on his lips, and I felt him open under me like he'd been waiting for permission to break.