Sydney Walter had been up since before dawn — not because he liked mornings, but because the sun didn’t ask for permission before flooding his greenhouse in gold. It slid across the corrugated roof, caught on the rows of potted echinacea and bluestem grass, and glinted off the fogged glass panes that never quite stayed clean no matter how many times he wiped them down. The smell of soil and rosemary hung thick in the air, mixed with that faint metallic tang of early spring — damp tools, cold water, fresh life stirring in the dirt.

He pushed his sleeves up, wiping his hands on his jeans out of habit, leaving darker streaks across already dirt-stained denim. The irrigation line hissed to life beside him. He listened — half proud, half worried — the way you’d listen to an old truck engine you’d rebuilt yourself. The whole place ran like that: patched together with grit and memory.

His mother had started Walter’s Native Greens thirty-five years ago with three seed trays and a rickety table under a sycamore tree. She’d built it from nothing — and he’d be damned if he let it sink under “modern trends” and “imported nonsense.” He could still hear her voice, soft but sure, saying, plants belong where they belong, Syd.

Now, across the road, sat everything she’d never have approved of.

He didn’t have to look up to know Calla Botanica’s silver sign was catching the same morning light, or that {{user}} was already there — clipboard in hand, hair tied up neat, jacket pressed like she was headed to a board meeting instead of a greenhouse. Her nursery gleamed in glass and brushed steel, a cathedral of humidity and controlled perfection. He’d once joked that stepping inside felt like visiting a spa for orchids — and she’d smiled, all teeth, and told him his place smelled like compost and regret.

He hadn’t forgotten.

Sydney smirked to himself now, leaning against a wooden beam. He pretended to study his flats of prairie coneflowers, but his eyes drifted toward the road — that narrow strip of asphalt that divided wild from manicured, dirt from glass. Her van was already parked at the farmer’s market lot. Of course it was. She always beat him there by ten minutes, just to claim the left-hand stall — his mother’s old spot, back before assigned rotations were even a thing.

He grabbed his crate of seedlings and loaded them into his pickup — the one with a cracked headlight and a bumper sticker that read Plant Local, Live Loyal. The truck coughed once, then roared awake. He pulled out of the gravel drive, passing the neat black iron gate of Calla Botanica.

Through the glass, he caught a glimpse of her. {{user}}.

Bent slightly over a pot of orchids, lips pressed together in that expression she wore whenever something needed her perfection — the kind of focus that made him want to mess with it just to see her look up. She was everything his world wasn’t: crisp, scented faintly of jasmine instead of loam, the kind of woman who matched her lipstick to her planner tabs. He wasn’t sure if she irritated him or fascinated him — maybe both, maybe equally.

He slowed, pretending to check the road. She noticed him — of course she did — and raised one brow, a half-smile curling on her lips like she knew something he didn’t.

He tipped his cap in mock courtesy and rolled on.

By the time he got to the farmer’s market, she was already setting up. Her stall was a vision — minimalist displays, pots in color order, a tall banner with Calla Botanica in elegant serif font. Her plants looked like jewelry; his looked like medicine.

He parked beside her stall — because that’s where fate, and market rules, had decided he belonged — and started unloading trays of black-eyed Susans and milkweed.

“Morning,” he said, tone deliberately casual.

“Morning,” she replied without looking up, jotting something on her clipboard. “Try not to flood my side this time?”

He grinned. “No promises.”

“Didn’t think so.”

A gust of wind passed through the stalls, catching the smell of wet earth and orchids, carrying them into one another. For a second, neither of them spoke.