Plucking Her Flower (The Man For Her) by Kate Hunt

Author:Kate Hunt [Hunt, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

5

MELANIE

It’s the silence that wakes me.

Not that I was all that asleep to begin with. An hour ago, when I came upstairs to my bedroom, I just laid in bed thinking about what I wanted to say to Dutch tomorrow morning. When I finally dozed off, it was only into a light sleep, my mind still replaying the day and trying to figure out why things went wrong.

But now, suddenly, I’m wide awake again. And I don’t know how I know, but I can sense that something’s wrong.

With a nagging feeling in my chest, I slide out of bed and pad down the stairs. It’s past midnight, and there’s no reason that the house should be anything other than quiet, but it’s the kind of quiet that means something.

As soon as I step into my kitchen, I see the note. It’s hanging on my fridge, pinned under my favorite magnet.

It’s strange seeing Dutch’s handwriting for the first time. It’s blocky handwriting, except for his name, which he’s signed in rushed cursive.

My eyes stumble over the words, their meaning not soaking in until I read it a second time.

Melanie—You deserve the world. I’ll never forget you. Dutch.

Fuck. Fuck. He made me fall for him, gave me the best orgasm of my entire life, and then called it a mistake and left without saying goodbye.

How could he do this to me?

I stand there, staring at the note, so stunned that I don’t even know what to do. The brief but meaningful time that Dutch and I spent together whirls through my mind over and over again.

I should hate him. I really wish I could hate him. I wish I could tear up his note and drown the pain searing through me with an entire bottle of wine.

But I can’t. Tomorrow morning the first round of summer campers arrives, and I also need to prune all the black-eyed Susans and figure out a payment issue with one of our vendors. I don’t have time to be a hungover mess tomorrow.

Feeling unsteady, I stumble over to the guest room. I swallow hard as I push open the door and find the room looking untouched. The bed doesn’t even look slept in.

I lay down on the covers, tears burning in my throat. The bed linens smell faintly of Dutch, but it’s a scent that I can tell is already fading.

The more I think about it, the less convinced I am that I even have a right to be angry at him. I knew from the start that Dutch was only passing through. He never promised me anything. He even stopped things from going further than we both wanted them to go.

It’s my own fault for falling in love with a man I can’t have.

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