We grew toward each other like vines toward light — slowly, inevitably, reaching across every distance until our paths became one. It began in a botanical garden on a rain-soaked Tuesday, when Elara was sketching rare orchids and Rowan crouched beside her to identify a fern she'd misnamed.

He was insufferably correct. She never let him forget it. That argument became their first dinner, their first walk, their first understanding that some things in nature simply belong together — the moss and the stone, the rain and the greenhouse glass, the two of them.