Chapter Text
The greenhouse smelled like rosemary and damp earth, like something old trying to remember how to be alive.
Asil crouched over a pot of wintering herbs, his sleeves rolled up and his expression annoyingly peaceful. Lila watched from the doorway until he said, without looking up, “If you are trying to sneak up on me, mi sol, you’ve already failed.”
She smiled and stepped in, boots crunching on the gravel path between the benches. “Then I’ll settle for dramatic entrances. I’m getting better at those.”
He glanced over his shoulder, one brow lifting. “You have always been good at entrances. It is the exits that cause the trouble.”
She dropped onto the stool beside him and set a small brown paper parcel on the table. “From Montreal.”
He paused long enough to wipe his hands before untying the twine. Inside was a pair of leather gloves, soft and dark as river stones, the kind that would keep his hands warm even through an Aspen Creek winter.
“Gloves,” he said thoughtfully. “Practical.”
“I can be practical.” She tilted her head, the corners of her mouth betraying her. “Sometimes.”
Asil slid one glove on, then the other. His gaze flicked up, sharp for just a moment. “They smell like you.”
“Do they?” she asked, all false innocence, fingers tracing the edge of a leaf. “Must have happened in transit.”
He huffed a quiet laugh. “You have been sleeping with them.”
“Maybe,” she said, pretending to study a nearby rosemary plant. “It gets cold when you’re not around.”
Asil’s hands stilled on the bench. Outside, wind scraped the last gold leaves from the aspens. “You are dangerous, Lila Hauptman,” he murmured.
“Only if you let me be.”
And he, old enough to know better and soft enough to ignore it, did not take the gloves off.