Chapter 3
The First Night
Days passed in that strange rhythm the garden seemed to impose on everything. Maya found herself returning again and again, drawn by something she couldn’t name.
Ash was always there, waiting.
They talked for hours—about the garden’s history, about the women in Maya’s family who had found this place before her, about desires they’d never spoken aloud to anyone.
“The garden shows you what you want,” Ash explained one evening, as flowers bloomed around them in the fading light. “What you truly want. Not what you think you should want.”
“And what do I want?” Maya asked, though she already knew.
He was close now. Close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his skin.
“You want to stop being afraid,” he said softly. “You want to feel everything you’ve been denying yourself.”
When he kissed her, the garden erupted in blossoms.
And Maya finally understood why her grandmother had never sold this place, why her mother had run from it, and why she herself would never be able to leave.
Some secrets were meant to be kept.
Others were meant to be lived.
The End