The campaign shoot ran two hours over schedule, three wardrobe changes and a lighting setup that the photographer scrapped twice before he found the angle he wanted, and by the time Sam finally got a break, her feet ached enough that she nearly skipped checking her dressing room altogether. The roses were waiting on the table before she’d even peeled off her second look, a dozen of them, the pale pink she’d mentioned once in an interview three years ago and never expected anyone to remember. The card sat tucked into the wrapping, same handwriting as always, small and slanted and instantly recognizable even from across the room.
Thinking of you.
Three words. No name attached, not that she needed one.
Her assistant, Naomi, picked up the bouquet to move it out of the shot before the next round of photos, then set it back down twice as carefully once she caught sight of the handwriting herself. "Okay, who is this. You’ve had flowers waiting for you at every single event for two months and you’ve told me nothing."
"There’s nothing to tell."
"There’s obviously something going on here." Naomi set her clipboard down like the shoot could wait for this. "Normal congratulations flowers don’t come with a card that says ’thinking of you’ and make you go silent for a full minute. Is he married? Is he a secret? Please tell me he’s at least attractive."
"He’s not married." Sam picked up the card again, running her thumb along the edge of it before she could stop herself. "And yes."
That earned a groan loud enough that two of the makeup artists looked over, already reaching for their phones like a story might be breaking in real time. One of them, a woman named Roz who’d worked every shoot Sam had booked in the last year, leaned in for a closer look at the card before Sam could pull it out of reach.
"’Thinking of you.’" Roz read it out loud, delighted with herself. "That’s new. Last month’s said ’proud of you, always.’ I remember because I asked you about it and you changed the subject so fast I got whiplash."
"I don’t recall that."
"You recall it perfectly. You just don’t want to talk about it, which, fine, your business." Roz handed the card back with a grin. "But someone who sends flowers to every single job you book, with a note that specific, isn’t just an admirer. That’s a man building a case."
She let them wonder. Three weeks ago the card had read you did a great job after a campaign launch, plain enough that anyone might have sent it. Two weeks after that, it turned into proud of you, always, deniable, if she needed it to be, something she could have shrugged off at a dinner table if anyone had asked. This one wasn’t deniable. She’d already read it four times and hadn’t worked out where to file it.
She’d told colleagues the same version of it all week, whenever someone spotted the flowers and asked. A secret admirer, she’d say, and smile, and let the subject die there. It wasn’t a lie so much as the smallest true thing she was willing to hand over. The whole truth required naming someone she hadn’t said out loud in the better part of a decade, not once, not even to Franz, though she suspected he already knew exactly who was behind it.
She wondered whether he’d pulled her schedule from Daryll to know where to send them. It would explain the timing, always waiting the second she stepped off a set, never early enough to have been guessed at, never late enough to have missed her. Daryll wouldn’t hand her calendar over to just anyone. He’d hand it to Gio without a second thought, the two of them close enough through Franz’s business that the request wouldn’t even register as unusual.
She sat with the roses a while longer than she needed to, turning the card over once more like the back of it might hold something the front hadn’t already told her. It never did. Just the same handwriting, the same three words, and the same effect they’d had on her since the first bouquet arrived, something she’d spent eight years training herself not to want anymore, apparently still very much intact and very much awake.
Nervous. Giddy, an admission she rarely let herself make about this particular subject. The man she’d wanted since she was thirteen years old had apparently decided, after eight years of avoiding a room the second she walked into it, that this was worth the risk.
"You’re smiling again," Naomi said, not looking up from the call sheet. "That’s twice in one hour. Should I be worried?"
"You should be doing your job." Sam set the card down and picked her phone back up. "The flowers stay here. Nobody touches them for the rest of the shoot."
"Wasn’t planning on it." Naomi hesitated at the door, curiosity winning out over professionalism for one more second. "For what it’s worth, whoever he is, he’s persistent."
"He always has been." Sam didn’t look up from her phone, though the smile stayed exactly where it was. "That’s the part I never used to understand about him."
The shoot wrapped an hour later, and Sam carried the roses out to the car herself instead of letting the driver take them, the bouquet balanced against her hip the same careless way she’d carried the last three home. Her building doorman raised an eyebrow at the fourth delivery this month but said nothing, just held the elevator a little longer than he needed to.
Once she’d set them on the kitchen counter next to the others, three bouquets now, none of them wilted enough yet to throw out, she took a photo of the card before she could talk herself out of it and sent it to no one. She just wanted proof it had actually happened, in case eight years of practice at not wanting something made her doubt it again by morning.
There would be time to figure out what to do about it later. For now, the roses could stay exactly where they were, and so could she.