The air in the studio was a strange cocktail of cloying sweetness and sharp, green-stem bitterness, a scent that perfectly mirrored the atmosphere between me and Julian.
Every time my shears snipped through a delphinium stem, the sound felt unnaturally loud, a gunshot in the library of our silence.
We worked at opposite ends of our shared steel table, a space that had felt collaborative yesterday now feeling like a vast, empty continent.
The ghost of the kiss lingered on my lips, a phantom warmth that made my stomach twist.
It wasn’t a good twist. It was the kind that screamed imposter.
I’d spent my life cultivating an armor of spikes and leather, of cynical lyrics and chipped black nail polish, all to protect the soft, hopeful parts of me.
And in one impulsive, rain-soaked moment, I’d let Julian Thorne, the Floral Prince himself, walk right past the barricades.
Now, every time he moved in my periphery—the precise way he wired a fragile ranunculus, the crisp line of his jaw as he concentrated—I felt a wave of self-betrayal so strong it was nauseating.
This was selling out in its most intimate, humiliating form.
Julian was no better. He was usually a study in controlled grace, his movements economical and fluid.
Today, he was stiff, his shoulders tight beneath his linen shirt. He’d already re-organized his tool caddy three times, a sure sign his meticulous inner world was in turmoil.
The kiss had been chaotic, a messy collision of impulse and feeling.
It was everything his life was designed to avoid, and I could practically see him trying to file the memory away into a neat, labeled box that simply didn’t exist.
The tension was so thick, you could’ve cut it with florist wire.
That’s when the viper slithered in.
“Julian, darling,” Giselle purred, gliding up to his side of the table. Her own station was a pristine testament to classic, uninspired elegance—all white roses and baby’s breath.
She placed a perfectly manicured hand on his forearm, a casual touch that was anything but. “You look a bit stressed. Everything alright?”
Julian flinched, a minute reaction, but I saw it. He gently pulled his arm away. “I’m fine, Giselle. Just focusing.”
“Of course, of course,” she said, her voice dripping with faux concern. Her eyes, sharp and calculating, flicked over to me for a fraction of a second. “It’s just… well, I’m worried about you. We all are.”
I kept my head down, pretending to be engrossed in stripping thorns from a rose stem, but my ears were burning. We? The only person Giselle was ever worried about was Giselle.
“There’s nothing to be worried about,” Julian said, his tone clipped.
“Isn’t there?” Giselle lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, but in the tense silence of the studio, it carried.
“I just want you to be careful. People in this competition… they’re not all here for the art. Some are just climbers. They’ll do anything, attach themselves to anyone, to get ahead.”
My knuckles went white around the stem in my hand. A thorn pricked my thumb, a sharp, tiny pain that grounded me in my rising anger. She wasn’t even being subtle.
Julian stopped what he was doing. He slowly placed his wire cutters on the table and turned his full attention to her. The temperature around our table dropped ten degrees.
“What, exactly, are you trying to say, Giselle?”
“I’m just saying,” she cooed, feigning innocence, “that someone with a background like… hers,” she gestured vaguely in my direction with a flick of her wrist, as if I were a particularly unpleasant smell, “might see someone with a background like yours as a stepping stone. The Thornes are practically royalty in this world. An association with you is a shortcut to the top.”
My blood went from a simmer to a rolling boil. It was the oldest, most misogynistic insult in the book: the ambitious woman using a man for his power.
The fact that it was coming from a woman who probably had her entire career path mapped out by her parents since she was five made it even more infuriating.
I was about to spin around and tell her exactly where she could stick her perfectly arranged white roses, but Julian spoke first.
His voice was quiet, but it cut through the air like chilled steel. “Are you implying that Rev is using me?”
“I’m not implying anything!” Giselle said, her voice a little too high. “I’m just… looking out for a friend.”
Julian let out a short, humorless laugh.
“We’re not friends, Giselle. And let me be perfectly clear. Rev is one of the most talented, fiercely original designers in this competition. Her vision, her skill—it’s entirely her own. She doesn’t need a shortcut, and she certainly doesn’t need my name. The idea that she’s using me is not only insulting to her, it’s insulting to my intelligence. So please, take your manufactured concern elsewhere.”
My breath hitched. The world seemed to slow down.
He hadn’t just disagreed with her. He’d defended me. Not just me as a person, but my work, my integrity.
He’d seen right through Giselle’s venom and called it out for what it was. The fury inside me didn’t vanish, but it was suddenly joined by a powerful, disarming wave of… something else.
Gratitude. Shock. A strange, unfamiliar warmth that had nothing to do with the phantom kiss.
Giselle’s perfectly powdered face flushed a blotchy red. She stammered, “Well, I never—I was only trying to—”
“I know what you were trying to do,” Julian said, his gaze unwavering. “And it didn’t work.”
He turned his back on her, a dismissal so complete it was brutal.
Giselle stood there for a moment, mouth opening and closing like a beached fish, before she finally spun on her heel and stalked back to her station.
The silence that descended was different now. It was no longer awkward; it was charged.
Julian picked up his wire cutters, but his hands were still. I finally looked up, meeting his eyes across the table.
The guarded uncertainty was gone from his expression, replaced by a steady, quiet intensity.
He gave a small, almost imperceptible shake of his head, as if to apologize for the scene.
Then, he raised an eyebrow and tilted his head towards Giselle’s workstation. An unspoken question: Are we going to let that stand?
And in that moment, I knew. The principles I was so afraid of betraying—authenticity, fighting back against the phonies, loyalty—they weren’t about being alone.
They were about knowing who was in the trenches with you.
And Julian Thorne had just leaped into my trench without a moment’s hesitation.
A slow, feral grin spread across my face. I put down my thorny stem, wiped the bead of blood from my thumb, and nodded.
We moved as one, walking around the table and approaching Giselle’s station together. She saw us coming and her composure, already cracked, began to crumble.
She busied herself with a vase, refusing to look up.
We stopped in front of her pristine workspace. I leaned forward, planting my hands on her table, my chipped black nails a stark contrast to her polished white roses.
“Giselle,” I began, my voice dangerously sweet. “I just want to thank you for your concern. It’s so reassuring to know you’re looking out for Julian.”
She finally looked up, her eyes wide with panic. “I… I was just…”
“You were just what?” I pressed, my voice hardening.
“Spreading poison because you can’t stand the thought that someone might succeed on merit instead of pedigree? Or are you just threatened because my arrangements have more personality in a single broken petal than your entire sterile collection has in a dozen vases?”
Julian stood beside me, his arms crossed.
He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to. His presence was a silent, unshakeable endorsement of every word I said.
We were a united front.
Giselle sputtered, her face a mask of indignation. “How dare you! I have studied with the best—”
“And you learned nothing,” I cut her off.
“You learned how to copy, not how to create. You see a partnership, and your first thought is manipulation because that’s the only language you speak. You think I’m using Julian? Honey, the only thing I’m using is my own two hands and a brain that actually has original ideas.”
I stood up straight, my point made. The entire studio was pretending not to watch, but the silence was deafening.
Julian took a small step forward, his voice calm and final. “This conversation is over, Giselle. Stay away from my station. And stay away from my partner.”
The word hung in the air between us. Partner.
He’d said it before, in the context of the competition.
But now, it felt different. It felt personal. It felt like a line drawn in the sand.
We turned and walked away, leaving her fuming in a cloud of expensive perfume and righteous fury.
Back at our table, the vast continent between us had shrunk to a small, shared island.
The awkwardness from the morning had been burned away by the heat of the confrontation, replaced by a humming current of solidarity.
I picked up my shears, the metal cool against my skin.
“Thank you,” I said quietly, not looking at him. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did,” Julian replied, his voice soft but firm. He was standing closer now, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating from him.
“What she said was wrong. And I don’t tolerate people attacking my… my partner.”
I finally met his gaze. The blue of his eyes was clear and direct.
In them, I didn’t see a Floral Prince or a Thorne scion. I saw an ally.
I saw someone who had seen the real me, spikes and all, and had chosen to stand with me, not in spite of them, but because of them.
The secret alliance we’d formed out of competitive necessity had just been forged into something else entirely.
Something stronger.
Something that made my heart beat a little faster, not with fear of selling out, but with the terrifying, thrilling possibility of letting someone in.
A small smile touched his lips, and I felt an answering one on my own. We still hadn’t talked about the kiss, but maybe we didn’t have to.
Our actions just now had said more than words ever could. We were a team.
And for the first time since this whole thing started, that felt less like a complication and more like the only thing that truly made sense.