Chapter 2 #2
He looks away first, toward the contract like he suddenly remembers why I’m here, and I decide not to think too hard about any part of the last ten seconds.
Pancake snores, loud and final, like a notary stamp.
The drive home takes twenty minutes and I spend most of it reminding myself that this is transactional. Transactional.
Callum Thorpe has a problem, which is Stein sniffing around the block.
The problem I have is thirty days in length, three violations, and a red tag on my door.
Callum and I have arrived at a mutually convenient arrangement that solves both. That's it. That's the whole thing.
I crack the window and leave it that way because the salt air is familiar and I want something to remind me of what I'm doing all this for. I'm not replaying the moment I picked up his pen and I'm definitely doing fine on all counts.
My phone rings over the car speakers. It's Shane.
"I wanted to make sure you're getting back okay," he says, and his voice settles into that familiar, steady cadence I've come to rely on for the three years he's worked for me.
"Yeah, heading back now."
I give him the summary of the pop-up terms and he listens without interrupting. When I finish he says it's a genuinely generous deal, and then he says there's no such thing as a landlord who doesn't want something.
A beat passes before he adds anything else. Then he adds, "You'll figure out what it is, though. Eventually." He says this like he's more certain than I am.
"Already starting to figure things out. See you in about ten minutes."
He tells me that Mrs. Monahan came by with a loaf of banana bread for each of us and he'll see me soon. I let that land the way it's meant to, with a steadiness I trust, because Shane has earned that so far.
After I hang up, the word eventually rides with me and I can't quite shake the way he said it.
The rest of the way back I think about the other thing longer than I should, which is that I've been calling my business with Callum transactional for the past hour and I'm not entirely sure I'm convincing anyone, least of all me.
I pass the marina as I head back into town, boats rocking against their slips while a pair of fishermen argue over something with the intensity of men discussing matters of national importance instead of bait. The harbor looks exactly the same as it did this morning.
Port Hueneme has a talent for acting like nothing's wrong.
Meanwhile my bookstore is red-tagged, my future is currently month-to-month, and I'm apparently leasing commercial property from my brother's best friend.
I'm still thinking about it when Cordelia calls and I'm met with the sound of a blender running at full speed directly behind her voice. She doesn't acknowledge it.
"Tell me everything," she says, over what sounds like a small industrial accident.
"Cordelia. The blender."
"It's a smoothie."
"I can barely hear you."
"I can hear you fine." A pause, and then the blender gets louder, which is somehow worse. "Did you sign a lease?"
"Turn the blender off."
"I'm almost done."
"Deely!"
The blender stops. "He owns buildings and was already thinking about your square footage. Sounds like a meet-cute and you're living in a story."
"Have you been talking to Jonah? I had to drive out to Oxnard to make a business decision."
"I was making a smoothie," she says, as though this is a comparable hardship. I can hear her settling into what I know is her reading chair, which means she's in it for the full debrief. "Is he taller than I remember? Was he wearing a fireman's uniform?"
"He didn't get shorter," I say. "And he's not a fireman anymore, I figure you know from Jonah that he took over his father's business. He's got a three-legged bulldog with a Boss Lady bandana."
A pause. "I'm sorry, what was that last part?"
"His dog. Her name is Pancake. She was there the whole meeting. She snored on his boot while I signed a legally binding document and I think that's going to bother me for a while."
"Okay," Cordelia says, and I can tell she's filing the dog away for later. "And Callum? Is he the same?"
I open my mouth. What comes out is, "He's thirty."
There's a silence on the other end of the line. One full second of it, which doesn't sound like much but in twenty years of friendship it's the most suspicious silence I've ever heard her produce.
"Thirty is the age where a man either knows exactly who he is or has absolutely no idea, and either way it's interesting."
"Cordelia."
"I'm just saying."
"You always say things."
"That's because romance is fascinating."
"You read about it six days a week."
"Exactly. Reading about it is much safer."
"Uh-huh."
"I support love as a concept. Participation remains unlikely."
I didn’t answer her question about whether he’d changed, and I'm not acknowledging that. "He had eighteen months of research on Stein laid out before I walked in and he had info on my building before I'd shown up. He didn't tell me why and I don't think he's going to."
"So what did you do?"
"I did what I had to. I leased the pop-up so that I can fix the violations in my store." I parallel park a couple a couple stores down from mine and cut the engine but don't get out. "And I figure out what he's not telling me."
She's quiet for a moment in a way that's thoughtful rather than suspicious, which is a different kind of quiet. "Are you smiling right now?"
"I'm not smiling about him," I say, and regret it immediately. "I'm smiling because I have a plan and a plan is better than nothing."
"The dog," she says. "Was she cute?"
"Yes."
I tell her goodbye and hang up before she can note anything else for the record. My phone buzzes before I've even gotten out of the car. A text. Then another. Then three more in quick succession, all from Cordelia.
Cordelia: pop-up section name ideas, you're welcome "Plot Twists and Emotional Damage"
Cordelia: books to read when a billionaire shows up and ruins your life "He's Probably Fine"
Cordelia: one shelf, all red flags "Square Footage of the Heart"
Cordelia: I just thought of this one the billionaire's dog gets her own display. "Boss Lady Picks"
I stare at my phone a moment then respond back to her.
Me: He hasn't ruined my life.
Her response is immediate.
Cordelia: yet
I sit there for another moment, because "he's thirty" wasn't an answer to "is he the same" and I know exactly what me saying it means but I'd prefer not to deal with it tonight.
I should be worried about Marvin Stein, his purchase offer, and his pattern of acquisition that Callum walked me through. That's the problem in front of me. That's the thing I signed a lease to avoid.
But the person I'm concerned about is the one who showed up with an available pop-up two blocks from my store and a face I spent ten years trying not to think about, who didn't look surprised when I came back to sign the lease.
I get out of my car and go inside, still seeing the line of his jaw when I push through the door and the chime rings overhead, which answers a question I haven't been willing to ask yet.
We close early at two, flipping the sign before anyone can argue with me about it, and I spend the next ten minutes on the phone locking in movers for first thing in the morning while Shane pulls the cash drawer and starts stacking boxes behind the counter.
We start with Plot Twists and Emotional Damage, because Cordelia would never forgive me if that wasn’t the first thing that made it into the pop-up, and then Fall in Love, You Coward, and then Dead Bodies and Good Writing, working shelf by shelf in a rhythm that feels almost normal if I don’t think too hard about why we’re doing it.
Shane keeps things moving without needing direction, breaking down boxes, labeling them, asking the kind of questions that make the process smoother instead of slower, and I answer without looking at him half the time because if I stop I’m going to start thinking about everything I just signed and everything I don’t understand about it.
He leaves at five after making me promise I’ll lock up properly, and I tell him I will, and then I don’t leave when he does.
I map out what moves first, listing the shelves and boxes that will go to the pop-up tomorrow and what stays behind for Shane to pack and bring over in two days.
I mark every box that’s leaving in the morning and start clearing shelves, taking down every book that’s going to the new space until the store begins to look like something I don’t recognize, stacks building across the floor in careful, temporary order, and I keep going until my arms ache and my brain finally quiets.
By the time I lock the door at ten, the place is only halfway packed, but it's organized enough to start the first phase of what I know will be a three-part move.
I drive home on muscle memory, park without thinking, and carry a box I'd packed with personal items inside. I should go straight to bed, which is exactly what I don’t do.
I drop my keys on the counter, kick off my shoes, and open my laptop before I’ve even turned on a light, like habit has more say than common sense.
A Google alert I set up years ago and never turned off notifies me about Lara Vaine, the version of me that gets to want things out loud. She writes about love like it's survivable, which is easier to do when nobody knows it's you.
The alert links to a neighborhood interest piece in the Ventura Star about the red tag on my store. In the article's fourth paragraph, between a quote from a city spokesperson and a brief history of the building's original construction, is my name. Both of them.
Avery Laramie, owner of Why Knee Me Books & Brews, is also the author behind the popular Sutton Sisters romance series, published under the pen name Lara Vaine. Laramie, who has kept her dual identity private since buying her—
I read the paragraph three times. Then the byline, the date, and the source the journalist cited, which is vague enough to be useless and specific enough to mean someone talked. I sit with it as the refrigerator cycles on and off.
The red tag came on a Tuesday morning. The offer came the same hour.
The lease was waiting for me in a twenty-first-floor office fifteen minutes east, put together before I knew I needed it.
And now this, my name, my other name, in a neighborhood piece in the Ventura Star at eleven forty-three at night.
It feels like everything was set in motion before I arrived and I've stepped into something already arranged around an outcome I didn't choose, and if I'm right, I'm already too late to get out of it clean.
My stomach drops hard enough that I have to press my palm flat against the table to steady myself, a tight, electric awareness crawling up the back of my neck like something just shifted behind me, and whatever this is, it doesn't feel like coincidence.
I don't know how the pieces fit yet, but I can feel them closing in.
I shut my laptop and grab my phone, already lining up the first moves.
I start moving the store into the pop-up tomorrow and push remediation as soon as I can get access.
The faster I move, the faster I get back into my space and out from under Callum's control before this turns into something that takes longer to undo.