Free Heartsville 05 - Bloom Box (Cate Ashwood) by Heartsville

his arms, pulling him tightly against him.
    He pressed a kiss against Milo’s dampened temple. “I love you too.” This wasn’t the first time tonight they’d said those words, and God knew Will had thought them a thousand times before, but this time felt like a promise, and one Will intended to keep.
     
     

Chapter Ten
     
     
    The days left in September slowly dwindled. Milo began his classes, and they’d spent the early evenings after the shop closed house hunting. It proved to be more difficult than either of them had anticipated, and although Will looked forward to the prospect of officially living with Milo in a space they’d picked out together, none of them seemed to fit.
    Every time they returned to the cramped little studio above the shop, it felt more like home.
    “I wish we could just stay here,” Milo said one evening as they arrived home from yet another fruitless night of searching.
    “I really am going to miss this place come November,” Will said.
    “Maybe we don’t have to go….”
    “We do. Walt found someone to take over the lease. We have to go.”
    “But, just to play Devil’s advocate, what if we didn’t?”
    “Didn’t go?”
    “Didn’t have to go.”
    Will thought about it. The closer the deadline loomed, the more anxious he felt about leaving Bloom Box. It had become as much a part of him as Milo had. He found that he looked forward to going downstairs in the mornings, and their trips to the flower market twice a week had become their ritual. Despite Milo’s assurances that their trips would be quick with everything they needed preordered, it still took them three hours to get through the market, stopping to look at things in almost every corner of the warehouse. And Will loved it. He loved working with plants and the looks on the customer’s faces when the arrangements or bouquets were delivered.
    He didn’t know when it had happened, but he’d fallen in love with the business as much as he had with Milo.
    “Maybe I could call Walt in the morning,” Will said, his words delicate with hope.
    Milo threw his arms around Will’s shoulders, knocking him back onto the bed. “Really?”
    “Yeah. You love this place, right?”
    “I do.”
    “I do too. It kind of feels like ours, huh?”
    “It does. If we could stay, this could be our home and our business and our neighborhood, and it would make me so happy.”
    “I’ll call Walt in the morning,” Will repeated, feeling more sure about the decision. “That still doesn’t solve our living situation problem. We can’t stay in this little apartment forever.”
    “I have a crazy idea.”
    “What’s that?”
    “What if you talked to Walt about becoming part owner in the building? He could use the influx in income that came from selling half the building, and we could buy this place and the place next door and look at tearing down the wall between the apartments. It would give us more than enough living space, and we would have space to expand the shop if we ever wanted it. Or we could look at doing a partnership? We could rent the space to someone who aligns well with Bloom Box, like a party planner. One-stop shopping, sort of, for weddings and other events.”
    Will leaned forward and kissed Milo on the nose. “You’re pretty smart, you know that? It’s an excellent plan, but I don’t think I could afford to buy even part of the place from Walt.”
    “But I could.”
    Will looked at him like he’d gone insane. “What?”
    “I have an inheritance from my grandmother that has been sitting in an account for a few years. I knew I wanted to use it for something important, and there’s nothing more important than this. You mean everything to me. I love you. I love this shop, and if there’s a chance we could make this work, I want to give it everything I’ve got.”
    “Seriously?”
    “Yeah. In the beginning, when you said you were going to find someone else to lease the place, I always kind of thought, in the