marked me like a bloodstain
Flora lets out a soft, incredulous huff, her shoulders rising beneath the too-bright silk as though shrugging off imagined splinters. "Sure—if you trip over lust in the middle of a moonlit grove and have to pin each other to the nearest tree, bark digging in and moss hiding your shoes, that’s its own kind of poetry," she concedes, voice lilting with reluctant amusement. "But there’s another sort entirely in building a world on purpose—laying out every detail like a banquet and saying: here, I thought of you while I dreamed this." She tips her head to look around the room with a soft sigh. "You could show Caly the room you grew up in—the posters, the scuffed floorboards, all your secret hopes stuck under the windowsill—or she could spin you some place she only ever sees when she blinks between waking and sleep. Planned magic can be just as romantic as impromptu bark-burn."
Flora steadies herself, bracing for the crisp sting of the salve across her skin when suddenly his words have her breath catching—sharp, alarmed—and she twists just enough to glance over her shoulder, the motion dragging pain across half-healed tissue and pulling a faint wince from her lips. "You...what?" Blinking, the corners of her eyes soft despite her confusion. "Why...were you even talking about me at all?" The question isn’t accusation—there’s no flare of anger, no defensive snap—only startled concern brightening her sea-glass eyes. How had it gone from your dad's an asshole and I hate him, to I slept with Flora.
And gods, at her birthday? With Jack around to hear?
"We're...we said nothing changed between us," she says, shakily but firmly, as if repeating a mantra she needs him to hear as much as Caly.
Flora steadies herself, bracing for the crisp sting of the salve across her skin when suddenly his words have her breath catching—sharp, alarmed—and she twists just enough to glance over her shoulder, the motion dragging pain across half-healed tissue and pulling a faint wince from her lips. "You...what?" Blinking, the corners of her eyes soft despite her confusion. "Why...were you even talking about me at all?" The question isn’t accusation—there’s no flare of anger, no defensive snap—only startled concern brightening her sea-glass eyes. How had it gone from your dad's an asshole and I hate him, to I slept with Flora.
And gods, at her birthday? With Jack around to hear?
"We're...we said nothing changed between us," she says, shakily but firmly, as if repeating a mantra she needs him to hear as much as Caly.
