Dangerous Hearts

Chapter 1

Whatever he says next is going to cost me something I can't afford.

He shows me his badge and I follow him toward the back room before he has to ask.

"I'll show you around," I say, because the alternative is watching him wander through my store alone, and I have enough problems without a city official unsupervised near the "Read This Before You Spiral" section.

From behind the brew bar Shane calls a regular by her dog's name instead of hers, and she laughs.

The inspector starts with the electrical panel in the back corner and I lean against the doorframe, watching him write things down and trying not to feel like I'm already being measured against a standard I can't meet.

"That panel's original to the building," I say. "I have a quote for replacement. I've been saving toward it."

He writes something down. I consider mentioning that fourteen thousand dollars doesn't just appear because you'd like it to, but I get the sense he's heard that one before.

The sprinkler head above the back door is next. He looks at the empty fitting for a long moment, and I decide to get ahead of it. "It's on my list."

The emergency exit corridor is the one that actually makes me wince, because there's no version of stacked inventory blocking a fire exit that reads as anything other than what it is.

He stands in the corridor, clipboard raised, and I stand next to him looking at the boxes with him. We both regard the situation together in the particular silence of two people who understand there's nothing to say, and one of us has already decided how this ends.

"I'll take that as a citation," I say.

Then he walks to the front of the store and tapes a red tag to the inside of the glass door telling me I have thirty days to remediate or face closure.

Three violations. My brain does the math. I already know the electrical panel is fourteen thousand, the sprinkler head and system is maybe another twenty thousand, and the corridor I can clear myself.

Problem is, I have a hundred and seventeen dollars in the petty cash drawer and the kind of debt that doesn't care about extenuating circumstances.

I watch him walk away into the Tuesday morning and don't say a single thing I'll regret.

"Thirty days," I say under my breath.

The store still does what it always does. The harbor salt through the propped front door, dark roast coffee, and sun-warmed paperbacks.

It's the particular smell of Why Knee Me Books & Brews that I bought back with everything I had and some things I didn't.

It was my father's store before it was mine. He used to rest his hip against the counter at closing, counting out the register while he quizzed me on first lines from whatever book I had tucked under my arm.

The store has always smelled like something that couldn't be taken.

Shane materializes at my elbow with a black coffee, no room, the way he's made it since my third day of owning this store, and sets it in my hands without a word before turning to the glass.

"Just your unit?" Shane asks immediately. "Or did they tag the whole block?"

"I don't know yet." I pull out my phone. "I need to make a call."

I text my best friend.

Cordelia: Bookstore may be dead. Send wine and sarcasm.

Then I start toward the back because I know she'll call instead of text and I don't need whatever comes out of my mouth happening in front of customers.

I pass the Future Main Characters shelves just as a mom hands a little boy the latest Detective Tighty Whitey book like it's a serious literary investment.

Just as I push through the stockroom door, Cordelia calls forty seconds after I texted her, which might be a personal record even for her.

"I have ten minutes until my doctor's appointment. Tell me everything," she says, already pitched between outrage and stand-up, which is her natural register when something is both genuinely terrible and worth a story later.

"Actual doctor or another dating emergency?"

"If I had a dating emergency worth discussing, you'd already know."

"Fair."

She snorts. "Now tell me why you're texting me like someone died."

I give her the violations and the timeline, and she listens with the focused attention she usually reserves for true crime podcasts.

"Burn it down and collect the insurance."

"That's not funny. I'm currently standing in my father's store being told I might lose it."

"Too soon?"

"Extremely."

"Right. Okay. Real advice." She takes a breath and shifts into the version of herself that's been my person for twenty-nine years, and she starts asking real questions about the remediation costs, the building association, and whether the electrical panel is partially their problem if it services the whole block.

I'm working through the answers when a knock comes at the stockroom door.

Shane leans in with a thick cream envelope. "Courier just dropped this," he says. "Certified. Wanted a signature." He pauses half a beat, his eyes on the return address, then sets it on the shelf. "Marvin Stein Properties. You know them?"

"Not yet," I say. "Thanks, Shane."

He pulls the door shut.

"Hang on a sec," I tell Cordelia. "Shane just left an envelope."

"What is it?"

I don't answer as I slide a finger under the flap, pull the papers free, and start reading.

The offer inside is generous, which is exactly what makes it feel dangerous. The number is written in clean type at the bottom of the first page, and my stomach drops before I can decide if that's relief or dread.

Nobody ever offers to solve your problems for free. The only question is whether the price shows up before or after you sign.

My dad's business partner wrote generous checks too, right up until the loans came due on the family business and there was nothing left to collect.

"It's an offer from a Marvin Stein to buy my building," I say. "Not even an hour after the red tag."

Cordelia's rare silence lasts about five seconds.

"That was fast."

"Yeah."

"Okay. I'll be at the store before lunch." She takes a breath. "Call Jonah."

"I don't need Jonah to swoop in and—"

"Avery."

"I have a plan, Deely. I can find a pop-up that will lease me space for a month while I make the fixes, so I don't actually need—"

"You absolutely need," Cordelia says. "I love you. Call your brother."

I hang up and head out front, already reaching for my keys like movement alone might keep this from locking into place, mentally mapping a straight shot to Port Hueneme City Hall to ask for more than thirty days.

I feel a quick stab of guilt for hanging up on Cordelia, which I file under Problems For Later, because the only problem that matters right now has a clock attached to it.

I make it three steps past the counter before Mrs. Gutierrez intercepts me with the polite urgency of someone on a mission.

"Hi, I'm so sorry, I know you're busy, but I'm looking for a signed special edition of Atlantia Obscura for my daughter's birthday.”

I stop, pivot, and slide into customer service mode because there's no version of me that ignores that sentence. "I think we do," I say, already moving toward the display case. "Let me check the inventory."

I unlock the case, pull the last copy, and confirm the signature. She lights up in a way that feels wildly out of sync with my current financial outlook. I ring her up, wrap the book, and write down her shipping details for the companion set she wants next month.

Mrs. Gutierrez pauses on her way out and points toward the brew bar, waving toward Shane.

"Tell your mom I said hello."

Shane doesn't even look up from the espresso machine. "She'll ask why you haven't called."

"Because then she'd keep me on the phone for an hour."

"Valid."

By the time she leaves with a thank-you and means it, I know the delay has been exactly long enough for Cordelia to have called my brother.

I call Jonah and he picks up on the second ring, leading with the particular kind of casual that means he's been waiting.

"Hey."

"Don’t act surprised. I know Deely called you."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Jonah."

"Okay, yeah, she called me." He drops it without any transition. "Now, call Callum Thorpe."

The name catches somewhere I don't examine too closely. I haven't seen Callum in twelve years, not since I was seventeen.

"I don't need anyone to come fix this for me," I say. "I need thirty days and a licensed electrician."

"He already pulled a pop-up space for you. Two blocks down from the store, ready when you are."

"You didn't ask me."

"You would've said no." A beat, and then, with the cheerful certainty of someone who has known me my entire life, "You're going to say no right now and then call him anyway. I'm saving us both two hours."

I open my mouth and close it again. There's genuinely nothing to argue with in that sentence and Jonah knows it. "I'm calling to tell you I don't need this," I say. "That's all."

"Sure," he says. "I'm texting you the address now so drive safe. And Avery? He's good people. He always has been."

Good people.

The trouble is that trust never feels risky at the beginning. It only becomes a problem after you've already handed it over.

He hangs up before I can tell him that's not the point.

I cut through the café counter on my way to the door, where Shane is at the espresso machine, shoulders squared like he's in a standoff with the milk pitcher. "I need to run out for a couple hours," I tell him as I pass, tapping the counter twice like that counts as notice.

"Got it," he calls back.

On the sidewalk, a couple stands in front of my store staring at flyers posted in my window like they're puzzles.

"Port Hoo-en-em?" the guy says, testing it like it might bite him.

"It's Why knee me," I tell him as I pass without slowing down. "Like the question your life choices keep asking."

"Why knee me," he repeats, pleased with himself. "Like the name of the store."

"Nailed it," I say over my shoulder, already halfway to my car, because encouragement costs nothing and I'm in a generous mood for exactly three more steps.