“Are you coming?” he asked, motioning to the quad bike.

“Oh, no, it’s fine.” I smiled and stepped back. “I’ve bugged you enough.”

“I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t okay with it.”

“No, I’ll just slow you down. Plus, I need to find a home for my new friend over there.” I cocked my thumb in the direction of the dahlia then turned to get it. I picked up the pot and stopped.

I was going to ask him.

I had to know.

“Miles?”

“Yeah?”

I met his eyes, hugging the dahlia pot to my body. “This isn’t going to happen, is it? You and I.”

He stared at me.

There was no answer.

That, in itself, was one.

“Okay. It’s fine.” I forced a smile and backed out of the greenhouse, hitting the side of some staging on the way and quickly stopping a tray of small pots from falling. “I just needed to know.”

I barely waited three feet before I picked up the pace and speed-walked away from the greenhouse, clutching my flowerpot like it was grounding me. In all honesty, I just desperately needed something to hold onto and it was all I had right now.

I knew.

I knew this would be how it went.

I wished he’d walked away from me at the party. That we would have gone back to how it was before all this happened, where he was rude, and I was annoyed, and whatever I felt for him had no reason to go past a simple crush.

Anything but this.

Because my heart was hurting. Quite a bit.

“Gabriella!” Miles called from somewhere behind me. “Gabi!”

I kept going. Kept walking. Kept moving. He’d give up. He had to. This wasn’t going to happen.

He’d already given up without even trying, hadn’t he?

That was how this was always going to end up. Maybe I did need to let my father set me up with someone.

Clearly, my own heart couldn’t be trusted.

I quickly darted into a secluded spot and pressed my back against the wall. Had he seen me? He’d sounded quite far away. Hopefully the cypress trees that lined the path over here had saved me.

“I bet you were terrible at hide and seek when you were a child.”

I glanced over at him. “It wasn’t my favourite, no.”

“You didn’t let me speak.”

“You didn’t appear to have anything to say.”

“You’re right. I don’t.”

Slowly, I turned my attention to him and raised my gaze to meet his. “Then why are you here?”

“Because I don’t need to speak to answer you.” He stalked over to me and took the pot from my arms. He all but dropped it on the floor seconds before he kissed me.

But this…

This one wasn’t like the others. There was nothing nice or soft or kind about the way he roughly cupped my face and kissed me. It was desperate and dirty, needy, and he grazed his teeth over my lower lip, making me gasp.