Chapter 4
The lock sticks for half a second as I lean into the door with a box digging into my hip, my laptop bag sliding off my shoulder, and my purse threatening to stage a protest. It all feels appropriate, considering the building belongs to Callum, my landlord or my problem, possibly both.
The lights hum overhead. Cardboard, paper, and that faint, comforting smell of books settle around me with a comfort that feels convincing for a space that's only temporary. A version of normal I can almost believe.
I set the box on the counter, pull the stack of inspection printouts from my bag, and spread them out across the surface. I can only even start the remediation work because the main store will be empty after today, which is only possible because he moved me in here this fast.
I follow the timing back, following each step until it narrows to a single conclusion. Callum knew about the Stein offer before it arrived. He pulled my inspection records to assess my vulnerability and offered the pop-up lease to keep me close enough to stay within reach.
I slide a second page into position and stare at when the timelines overlap until it feels less like coincidence and more like structure.
I drag my thumb along the sharp edge of the top page, feel the paper bite just enough to register, and keep going, because pain isn't currently at the top of my problem list.
A man with nothing to hide doesn’t answer direct questions the way Callum does, like he’s already decided which version of the truth I get.
This is the kind of man I keep writing about.
The main male lead with good shoes and better timing and a way of standing in a room that makes everyone feel like he’s the answer to a question they haven’t asked yet.
The kind of man who always gives a perfectly reasonable explanation for everything, and in every version of the story it resolves cleanly on the page, even when I already know it wouldn’t feel that simple in real life.
My hands flatten against the counter as I look around at what I've managed so far, the shelves coming together in a way that still feels like Why-Knee-Me Books even inside borrowed walls, the shape of it settling in my chest with a quiet certainty I wasn't expecting.
The move should be chaos.
Instead, Shane has labeled inventory transfers by section, built a temporary receiving system that actually makes sense, and somehow gotten half the special orders matched to the right shelves before I even arrived this morning.
Half the things I normally worry about during a move have already been handled.
At some point over the last three years, he stopped being the person helping me run the bookstore and became one of the reasons it runs at all.
The pop-up exists because Callum handed me the space.
It's running because Shane knows exactly how the store works and refuses to let anything fall through the cracks.
Knowing that should make me feel grateful.
Instead, it leaves a knot somewhere beneath my ribs.
I don't like needing things I can't provide myself, and I especially don't like owing people for them.
I have no idea yet what accepting Callum's help is going to cost me.
Which would be great if I hadn’t slept four hours, driven here in the dark gripping the wheel, and spent two of those hours listing reasons being attracted to my brother’s best friend is a terrible idea I’m clearly ignoring.
I gather the papers into a neat stack, align the corners until they behave, and set them aside, because the spread of them gives me too many directions to look at once, and I need one contained edge I can manage, the kind of care I reserve for things I'm pretending are under control.
Today I'm going to be professional, impenetrable, and completely unmoved.
It is about the time I'd usually be having my first coffee, which feels like information my body is choosing to hold onto for no useful reason, and I get to work before I can change my mind.
A knock comes at the door at five past seven and I see a woman through the window in a red Dashers cap, holding up a paper cup and bag like proof of life.
I open the door, taking the items and saying thank you, already assuming it’s from Shane because he’s thoughtful like that.
I close the door before I look at the receipt, which reads Callum Thorpe, the way bad news always arrives, quietly and without ceremony, while you're still holding something hot.
The bag smells like a chocolate croissant, which is my favorite. A fact I'd never told Callum. The coffee is black, exactly how I take it, with no note and no explanation and zero regard for how thoroughly it's rattling my already-demolished equilibrium.
I set the bag on the counter and take the cup to the back wall of shelving I've been wrestling with since last night and stand there drinking it with my jaw tight, telling myself it's just coffee and he's just a landlord and the fact that I've been thinking about the way he steadies a room the way other people think about song lyrics is purely a sleep-deprivation symptom.
The only thing I have left to weaponize against Callum Thorpe is my own relentless competence, so I get back to work.
A little after eight, Mrs. Okafor appears in the doorway.
She pauses just inside the entrance and slowly turns in a circle, taking in the shelves, the coffee station, and the still-unpacked boxes.
"I wasn't sure I'd find you."
Something in my chest loosens.
"We're a little harder to locate this week."
"A little." She smiles. "My daughter said I should use Google Maps. I told her I've been shopping here longer than Google has existed."
I laugh.
Mrs. Okafor leaves with a mystery novel, a bag of coffee beans, and a promise to tell her book club where the new location is.
The pop-up still feels temporary.
The customers don't.
The motion sensor chimes at nine and Callum walks through the door with no apparent awareness of how thoroughly he's disrupted my equilibrium before he even arrived. Pancake trots in right after him, circles once, and drops into her usual spot on the rug like she owns the place.
The building contractor I called a meeting with walks in behind him. Mr. Reyes carries rolled floor plans under one arm, broad and efficient in the way of someone who expects to be agreed with. He sets the plans on the counter and starts unrolling them while I clear space with one sweep of my hand.
"We’ll keep this to thirty minutes," he says, tapping the first sheet. "Sprinkler system, panel reroute, updated egress pathway the city flagged." He looks up at me. "Should be a couple of weeks if we’re aligned on the approach."
No one agrees on the approach.
The rear exit blockage is a much bigger problem than I initially let myself admit, because clearing it means finding a place for inventory that doesn’t currently have one, which Reyes’s plan technically solves on paper but not in practice.
I take one look at the proposed plan for the rear corridor and inform Reyes, with the specific cadence of a woman who has read every applicable California fire code section and is now holding all of them quietly in her hands like a weapon, that his approach would create a secondary egress choke point under load and I have the dimensional diagrams to prove it.
Reyes disagrees, citing cost efficiency and standard practice.
I cite CFC Section 1028.2 from memory without blinking. I don’t mention I know it because I’ve been trying to fix this exact problem for three years, since I bought the property, and haven’t had the money to tackle it along with everything else piling up at the store.
Callum has been standing with his arms crossed and his expression unreadable for the duration. He nods once at Reyes. "She's right." He glances between us and taps the rolled plans. "We still have the panel reroute and the sprinkler tie-in. Can you hit both without pushing the timeline?"
Reyes hesitates, then gives a careful yes. "I'll redraw the clearance for the rear exit with storage constraints built in and get it to you this afternoon." He packs up his plans with the slightly stunned look of a man who didn't expect to lose to a bookstore owner with ink on her sleeve.
I watch him go and feel the specific satisfaction of a battle won.
Now's not the time to examine that. I climb onto a stack of boxes with the croissant instead and spread out the inventory sheets I've been annotating while the pop-up settles back into its nine-fifteen quiet, the fluorescent humming and cars passing on Harbor View Drive, Callum still there and not leaving, staying busy without needing me to ask, with the ease of a man who seems to have no other place he's required to be.
“Don’t you have buildings to buy or tenants to mysteriously support?” I ask.
He looks up from the inventory sheet in his hand. “This counts.”
I stare at him. “That's somehow more concerning.”
He shrugs and goes back to reading.
“You seem to have it handled.”
The printed manuscript pages are on the counter too, face-up with red edit marks everywhere and the fictional accountant's jaw described twice on the topmost page.
I don't hide them because I'm too tired and the coffee has already demonstrated that my defenses are structurally compromised this morning.
I stare at him for a second.
The inspection paperwork still sits on the counter between us, buried under inventory sheets, manuscript pages, and the remains of a chocolate croissant.
None of the reasons I shouldn't trust him have actually gone anywhere. They've just become harder to focus on when he’s standing two feet away.
Which feels like a design flaw in my personality.
Or his.
Callum picks up one of the pages and reads with the stillness of someone who’s actually reading, not performing it, then sets it down.
I let him.
“You write like you argue,” he says, setting the page down. “Like you already know how it ends.”
I eat a piece of croissant and give him a look that would qualify as professional restraint in most settings.