Chapter 2: Thorns and Bandages
The bell above the door of Petals & Thorn jingled, a sound too cheerful for the tight knot in Eli’s chest. He hadn’t planned to come. He’d driven aimlessly after morning training, the memory of roses and a quiet voice looping in his head until his car was parked outside this sun-drenched storefront.
Inside, the air was a soft punch to the senses. It was warm, humid, and thick with the scent of blooms—sweet jasmine, something peppery, the green smell of stems. But underneath it was something else, earthier, like old wood and damp soil. The light poured through the front window, catching motes of dust that floated like gold. It was chaos, but a quiet, living chaos. Buckets of flowers crowded the floor, vases overflowed on every surface, and on the worn velvet countertop, half-made bouquets spilled from their paper sheaths.
And there she was.
Hadley stood in a patch of sunlight, barefoot on the dark wood floor, her back to him. She was wearing faded overalls over a white tank top, her hair twisted up with a pencil. She was humming, a low, tuneless sound, as she worked on a bucket of roses. Her hands moved with a quick, certain grace, stripping leaves, trimming stems, her fingers deftly avoiding the vicious-looking thorns.
Eli just stood there, feeling gigantic and out of place. A man built for roaring stadiums, suddenly afraid of disturbing the peace in a room full of flowers.
He must have shifted, or his shadow fell across her work. The humming stopped. She glanced over her shoulder, the same direct look from the locker room. No surprise. Just assessment.
“You’re lost,” she said, turning back to her roses.
“I know where I am.”
“Do you?” She snipped a stem. “This isn’t the sports clinic. Hand looks better, though.”
He looked down at his bandaged knuckles, hidden under the cuff of his jacket. He’d changed the dressing this morning. “Yeah. Thanks for the… supplies.”
She made a non-committal noise, placing a cleaned rose into a fresh bucket. “Don’t thank me. They were just there.”
He took a step further in, his eyes adjusting to the density of the place. It was beautiful, but not in a pristine, arranged way. It felt like the inside of a garden after a rainstorm—wild and specific and slightly overwhelming. “You work here alone?”
“Mostly. It’s mine.” She finally set her shears down and turned, wiping her hands on a cloth tied at her waist. Her feet were dirty, the nails unpainted. She looked real in a way people in his life never did. “Can I help you with something? Or did you just come to loom in my doorway?”
The question hung there. Why had he come? He couldn’t say I couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that you didn’t know who I was. It sounded pathetic.
“I, uh.” His eyes scanned for an excuse, landing on the roses. “I need flowers.”
One of her eyebrows lifted, just slightly. “Okay. What for?”
“Just… to have.”
“Right.” She didn’t call him on the obvious lie. She just walked to the counter, brushing past a spill of baby’s breath. “Who are they for? A girlfriend? Apology? Congratulations? ‘Just to have’ isn’t a category.”
“No girlfriend,” he said, too quickly. He followed her, feeling clumsy. “Not an apology. Not a celebration. Just… something alive that isn’t screaming. You said that.”
She stopped, her hands resting on the crushed velvet. She looked up at him, and for the first time, he saw a crack in her composure. Not vulnerability, but a flicker of genuine curiosity. “You remembered that.”
He shrugged, the motion feeling awkward. “It was a quiet night. Easy to remember things.”
She held his gaze for a beat longer, then nodded, as if deciding something. “Sit,” she said, gesturing to a worn stool in the corner. “If you want something that isn’t screaming, you don’t get to point at the pre-mades. You have to wait.”
He should have left. He had a media call in two hours. Instead, he walked to the stool and sat, the wood creaking under his weight. He watched her as she moved, gathering stems from different buckets—not just the blood-red roses, but spiky purple things, feathery green fronds, a few stems of something that looked like burnt-orange velvet.
“You don’t ask for a budget,” he said, just to fill the quiet.
“You’re Elias Bedfield. I googled you after I got home.” She said it without looking at him, layering the stems in her hand. “Figured I should know who I was telling to clean his wounds.”
A weird disappointment settled in his gut. So she knew. The one person who hadn’t, now did. “And?”
“And what? You kick a ball for a living. I put flowers in vases. We both have jobs that make other people feel things for a few minutes.” She brought the bundle to the counter and started wrapping the stems in brown paper, her movements economical. “The money is irrelevant. You’re paying for my time right now. Not the product.”
He was stunned into silence. He was paying for her time. No one ever put it like that. They sold him watches, cars, endorsements, his own image. They never sold him the quiet ten minutes in a sunlit room, watching someone’s capable hands make something from nothing.
“Why don’t you watch the games?” he asked.
“Not interested in the theater.” She tied the bundle with twine, pulling it tight. “All that performative anger. The staged pain. The cameras in everyone’s faces when they’re crushed. It feels… indecent. Like watching someone cry in their bedroom through a window.”
His breath caught. That was exactly what it was. He’d never had the words for the violation of it. The performance was a shell he lived inside, and she’d seen its shape immediately from the outside.
She slid the finished bouquet across the counter toward him. It was nothing like the symmetrical, bland arrangements sent to him by sponsors. This was wild, textural, a little unbalanced. The roses were there, deep and velvety, but they were framed by the spiky thistles and the soft, fading velvet of the orange blooms. It was beautiful and slightly dangerous-looking. It felt true.
“It’s not pretty,” she said, studying her work. “It’s interesting. It’ll last about a week. Change the water every two days. Recut the stems at an angle.”
He reached for it, his bandaged fingers brushing hers as he took the paper wrap. A static charge, small and sharp. “What do I owe you?”
“A hundred.”
He pulled out his wallet, extracted the bills, and placed them on the velvet. She didn’t immediately pick them up. She was looking at his hand again.
“You punch a lot of walls?”
“Only when I deserve it,” he said, the old defensiveness rising.
“What did you do that was so bad?”
He could have given her the media answer. I let the team down. I failed the fans. Instead, the truth, raw and simple, came out. “I was careless. I got arrogant. I assumed I would succeed because I always have. And I was wrong.”
She considered this, then nodded slowly. “Carelessness with something you love. That’ll do it.” She finally took the money, tucking it into a metal cash box. “The thorns on those roses are still sharp. Maybe don’t grip it too tight.”
He stood, holding the bouquet awkwardly, like it was a found object he didn’t quite know how to carry. He was at the door, the bell ready to ring, when he turned. She was already back at her bucket, shears in hand.
“The delivery,” he said. “The Thursday roses for the locker room. Do you… bring them every week?”
She snipped a thorn. “Yeah.”
“I’ll be there.”
“It’s a big room. You can be wherever you like.” She didn’t look up, but he saw the faintest, almost imperceptible curve at the corner of her mouth. Not a smile. Just a acknowledgement.
He pushed the door open, the bell jingling again, and stepped back into the world of noise and concrete. The scent of the flowers rose to meet him, a green, spicy promise. He looked down at the bouquet in his hands, a splash of unruly life against the grey sidewalk.
He had no vase. No place to put it. But he knew, with a certainty that unnerved him, that he would be back in that sterile locker room next Thursday. Not for the ritual. For the quiet defiance of the person who brought it.