Chapter Ten #5
Zavier set the ones he’d gathered on the counter and reached for a hardcover that had slid under the register. “Walk me through the timeline. When did the first note show up?”
“About a month ago.” Flynn stood, depositing his stack on the counter. “First one was on my apartment door. I thought it was a prank. Someone’s kid, maybe, or a neighbor with a weird sense of humor.”
“You kept them.” They gathered their stacks and headed to a shelf on the other side of the store.
“I kept them.” Flynn slid a novel into a gap on the shelf, then immediately pulled it back out and moved it two spaces left.
“Because something felt off. Not scary-movie off. More like that feeling when you leave the house and can’t remember if you locked the door, except it never goes away.
There in a shoebox under my bed, which feels very on brand for my life.
” Flynn glanced at him sideways. “Should I have used a filing cabinet? Because I feel like I should’ve used a filing cabinet. ”
“The shoebox works.” Zavier smiled, picturing his mate securing the scraps of paper inside a three-drawer fireproof fortress. “Did the feeling start before the first note, or after?”
“Before,” he said quietly. “Maybe two weeks before. I kept catching myself looking over my shoulder on my walk to work.” He turned, and whatever vulnerability had surfaced disappeared behind a dry smile.
“I thought I was developing a personality disorder. Turns out someone was just following me. So. Silver lining?”
“Hardly a good trade off.” Zavier glanced at the shelves.
The fiction section was a good-natured disaster—authors shelved by first name in some places, last name in others, a few organized by color, which was either a creative system or a cry for help.
He began straightening spines, aligning them with quiet efficiency.
“Anyone you’ve had conflict with recently?” he asked, keeping his voice easy. “Doesn’t have to be a big falling out. Could be something small that felt bigger to someone else.”
Flynn had moved to the other end of the shelf and continued working. “I returned a library book two days late once. Slid it into the return slot then used the bushes as cover to get away. Does that count?”
“Depends on the librarian.” Zavier grinned, loving how his mate’s mind worked. His thoughts shot directly into the atmosphere unsupervised. It was a coping mechanism for insecurities, but Zavier couldn’t stop smiling.
Fate had given Zavier a hot mess and he couldn’t have been more pleased.
Flynn’s mouth twitched. “Bernadette has the energy of someone who’d been personally wronged by the Dewey Decimal System. So, maybe. You want to know about the gym locker one?”
“Tell me about the gym locker one.” Zavier turned a book right-side up and slid it into place, very aware of his mate’s presence. The morning dew scent had wrapped around him entirely, the scent now a permanent fragrance in his lungs.
“Okay, so.” Flynn turned to face him, books hugged against his chest. “I go to this gym three blocks from my apartment. Nothing fancy. The kind of place that smells like ambition, regret, and someone’s protein powder that went bad a decade ago.
Anywho, one day after a really exhausting workout, I head to my locker, all sweaty and gross.
When I opened my locker, bam, there’s a note inside.
Folded in thirds, like someone thought of mailing it but decided my locker was a much creepier option. ”
“Did the locker have a lock on it?”
“It did.” Flynn hugged his books tighter. “A combination lock. Mine.”
Zavier filed it away alongside everything else Colton had briefed him on, building the shape of someone patient and methodical. Not impulsive. Not someone who’d fixated on Flynn by accident.
“You still go to that gym?”
“Absolutely not.” Flynn turned back to the shelf. “I do yoga in my apartment now. It’s not the same, but at least no one’s leaving me deranged messages between my sneakers.”
“Just your bathroom mirror.” Zavier wanted to hunt down the son of a bitch and rip out his fucking spine for terrorizing his already traumatized mate.
The signs of the deflection, vigilance, nervous movements, and constant verbal spiraling were easy to read for someone like Zavier.
Someone or something had wounded Flynn deeply.
His tiger gave a low growl.
Flynn blew out a breath through his nose. “Just the reminder I needed while holding a horror novel in my hand. Irony, right?”
“What about online?” Zavier asked, steering them back on topic and away from his screw up. He was used to being blunt with his clients, refusing to allow them to forget what was at stake. A careless client made Zavier’s job harder to perform.
But Flynn wasn’t just another assignment.
He was Zavier’s entire life now. His mate needed to feel safe, understood, and seen.
Zavier would have to approach this from a different angle than he was used to, because Flynn was too important to fail.
“Before you deleted the Instagram account. Anything before the DMs? Comments, arguments, someone who seemed too interested in your posts?”
“I posted a photo of my coffee once and someone commented that my hands looked elegant. I blocked them because that felt like a serial killer compliment.” Flynn slotted a book upside down. “Could’ve been nothing.”
“Could’ve been something.” Zavier mirrored Flynn’s tone. “I’ll want to see the screenshots when we go to your place later.”
A customer wandered in, a woman with a tote bag printed with a cat reading a book.
Flynn’s entire demeanor changed, suddenly becoming brighter and open like sunlight reaching a flower.
Flynn was in his element and it radiated from the core of who he was.
A caretaker, someone who took joy in helping others, and Zavier would protect that innocence by any means necessary.
Flynn wasn’t polished.
He bloomed awkwardly.
And that made Zavier want to cup both hands around him like something precious the world had been too rough with.
“Looking for anything specific, or just browsing?” his mate called out.
“Browsing, I think. Do you have anything like Where the Crawdads Sing?”
“Literary fiction, atmospheric, some mystery, strong sense of place.” Flynn was already moving, a little sway in his hips. “Follow me.”
Stop thinking about spreading his naked body under you like a buffet.
His tiger purred.
Zavier turned back to the fiction section and worked through it methodically, pulling books that were shelved in clearly wrong places and stacking them on the floor to be redistributed. The work was simple and satisfying. It let his attention wander elsewhere.
Elsewhere meaning his mate.
Across the store, Flynn was pulling books from a shelf and handing them over one at a time, giving a two-sentence pitch for each.
His hands moved when he talked. Not wild gestures, just small, expressive movements that punctuated his words.
The customer laughed at something he said, and his mate grinned.
Colton had told Zavier how baffled Flynn seemed about being targeted. How could his mate not see just how breathtaking he truly was? Silky brown hair that framed his face in a way that accentuated his angles perfectly. High cheekbones, soft lips, and warm, expressive emerald eyes.
Fantastic. Zavier was standing in a dusty bookstore with a hard-on from hell.
After the lady left, Flynn walked past the shelf, then paused and looked at what Zavier had done. “You alphabetized it.”
“By last name.”
“That’s how it’s supposed to be done.” Flynn sounded mildly offended on behalf of the previous system.
“Yep.” Crouching, Zavier slid the book into place without comment.
“Not a fan of chaos?” Flynn asked.
“Chaos doesn’t bother me.” Zavier moved a misplaced thriller three sections over and filed it correctly. “Hides treasures worth discovering.”
Zavier wasn’t intimidated by the damage his mate masked with humor. In his line of work, he’d dealt with plenty of inner scars. To him, they were signs of strength, of surviving a very dark time in the person’s life.
Flynn stared at him for a long moment, pain and anger flashing behind his green eyes. “You’re a bodyguard, not a treasure hunter. Stick to your job and leave my chaos alone.”
The front door opened again, bell overhead giving a flat little ring, and a man in a postal uniform came through carrying a rubber-banded bundle of mail and a small package.
“Morning, Flynn.” The carrier set the bundle on the counter and flipped through it briefly. “Got a good stack today. And hey,” he said, pulling out a glossy folded brochure, “looks like someone’s getting a vacation.”
Flynn stared a second longer, pleading with his eyes for Zavier to listen.
“Go get the mail,” Zavier murmured. “I’ll respect your boundaries, Flynn.”
“You will?” Flynn stared incredulously at him. “Um, thank you?”
“Um, you’re welcome,” Zavier teased then sobered. “Bodyguard doesn’t mean choices are taken away. It means securing your safety and putting my foot up his ass.”
“Kick him in the nuts, too.” Flynn spun and headed toward the counter.
Zavier didn’t move from the shelf, but his attention sharpened.
“Oh, exciting. Where am I going?” Flynn asked.
“Looks like a beach resort thing. One of those all-inclusive mailers.” The carrier held it up. “Not bad.”
Zavier clocked the carrier’s body language, the casual posture, the easy smile, the way he’d handled the mail without hesitation. Nothing felt calculated. But he kept the man in his line of sight the entire time.
“I’ve never been to a beach.” Flynn took the brochure and studied it with genuine interest. “I’ve been to a lake.
Once. I stepped on something sharp in the water and refused to go back in.
It was probably a rock, but I’ve committed to the trauma.
” He set the brochure on the counter. “If someone’s trying to lure me to a resort, they’ll have to pay for my therapy first.”