mouth, the tears that were falling turned into laughter. Laughing. I was laughing from the memories. When the laughter died down, we both sat there quiet as the sky grew darker and darker.
He cleared his throat. “I have to go visit my father at the nursing home.”
“Oh, okay. Do you need anything? Is there anything I can do? If you need someone to talk to about—”
“Sun.”
“Yes?”
He gave me a sad grin. “I’m not there yet.”
I could respect that.
He stood to his feet and held his hand toward me. “Can I walk you home through the woods?”
I took his hand. The spark was there—it never left.
We walked in silence, and when we reached my house, I thanked him.
His hands were stuffed in his pockets, and swayed back and forth in his shoes as if he had something on his mind that he was trying to share.
“What is it?”
“Daisies were my mother’s favorite flower. I planted them out there for her and to hear that that was your daughter’s name makes it feel…” He snickered to himself and shook his head. “Kismet.”
I smiled ear to ear. “What is this? Is Jax Kilter believing in destiny as we know it?”
“Don’t hold your breath. I’m just saying.” He shifted uncomfortably as he stared at my yard. “I can help you with the landscaping at your place if you need a hand. I’m sure Lars pulling out made it tricky to find someone else. My mother was a landscaper. I used to help her when I was younger, and I did the work in the woods. If you need a hand, I can do the landscaping for you.”
My mother was a landscaper.
The word ‘was’ stood out more than I wanted it to.
Oh, Jax.
Let me hug you.
My lips parted in shock from his offer. “Really?”
“I don’t need the commission. Connor will help me out with the project.”
“I…that…” I fought the urge to wrap my arms around him and breathe him in. “Yes. Please. That would be amazing.”
“I’ll get supplies and get started later this week. If you have a plan, let me know. Otherwise, I can whip some blueprints together to go over with you. Just make a list of your favorite flowers and what not, any concepts you want included, and we can go from there.”
“That would be great.”
“Okay. I better get going.”
“Thanks again, Jax—for listening to the stories about my parents and my daughter.”
“I’ll listen to every story you ever tell about them whenever you want to share.”
He disappeared back into the woods, and the butterflies he left with me? They kept on fluttering.
17
Jax
“Time out, rewind. Deep breaths. You’re telling me, we are diving into the world of landscaping?” Connor asked as he sat at my table eating the pizza I ordered for us. He didn’t know the pizza was a bribe yet. Normally, I would’ve made him kale chips and a protein shake.
He shoved the pizza into his mouth, unaware of where this conversation was about to go. “Holy shit—”
“Language,” I order.
“Holy balls!”
“Not much better.”
“No, don’t you see, Jax? This is great! Everyone knows my lucky number is three, which is exactly what this next business venture will be for me! I’ll have three businesses before I’m even eighteen. How many businesses did Bill Gates have at seventeen? I bet you it wasn’t three, that’s for sure.”
“Seeing how you only have one business up and running, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“Yeah, okay, partner. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge,” he said, bumping me in the shoulder. “Do you want me to come up with a name for the business? Maybe have me make up some business cards and taglines? How about this? We trim your bushes and fertilize your soil? Oh! Oh! Or Two Men and a Hoe?”
“Connor. Hold your hustle. We’re not starting a landscaping company. We are just helping out a woman who fired Lars.”
“Lars,” he grumbled. “Our competition.”
I wasn’t even going to dive deeper into why Lars wasn’t our competition, seeing how we didn’t have a landscaping company. It wasn’t even worth talking about. “One job, and then we are done, you got it? I called you over to look at the blueprints I drew up. I picked up some layouts of the property, and we have pretty much free rein on what we can do with it.”
Kennedy’s only request? Daisies, and blue flowers.
I couldn’t help but smirk at the blue flowers request—it was for sure a request to drive the nosy, judgmental neighbors insane. That seemed very much like the