Chapter 24 #2
At some point I drift off and wake again with the light just starting to find the edges of the curtains. He's still here, on his back with one arm tucked behind his head. When I move he doesn't shift, he just turns his head enough to look at me like he's been awake for a while.
Pancake is sprawled across both our feet, heavy and immovable.
I trace a line across his chest with my fingertips and let my eyes close again, and he leaves his hand at my back without changing the rhythm of it, and the morning keeps taking its time. I fall asleep again with my hand still on him.
Later, in the kitchen with the light fully up and two cups on the counter between us, I lean against the edge and watch him for a second before I say, "Tell me what it feels like now. Is Kellerman still sitting on you the same way, or did last night change something?"
He drags his thumb along the rim of his mug, not looking away.
"Not gone," he says. "But it feels like it won't be making decisions for me anymore. I can see where it starts and where it ends. Before, it bled into everything I chose."
He takes a sip and sets it down.
"Now that I know what happened," he says, looking at me, steady. "It's not something I have to chase anymore. It can stay where it belongs."
"Yeah," he says, quiet and steady. "It isn't a switch. But I know what it is now. It doesn't get to run me."
I reach over and lace my fingers through his. He closes his hand around mine without looking away. We stand there with the coffee between us, not saying anything.
Jonah stays through the week and leaves on Saturday morning with a duffel bag and the specific satisfaction of a man who dropped in on a crisis and got to see it resolve.
"I might be back sooner than later," he says, tossing his bag in the back of his truck.
"Your new employee looked at me for maybe twelve seconds and immediately filed me under 'terrible idea.
' Which, historically, is usually a strong sign of interest. I may have to investigate this alleged book club situation further. "
His grin softens for a fraction of a second.
"I don't know. There's something about her."
"Jonah, women don't flirt with you," I say. "They conduct risk assessments and update their emergency contacts."
"And yet," he says easily, "they keep calling me back."
"If she's paying attention to how you actually show up and not just how you narrate yourself, you might have a shot," I tell him.
He snorts. "Please. I've been carrying this family on charm and strategic exits for thirty-one years," he says, then tips his chin at me. "And you fell for a guy who built you shelves and alphabetized them when he got stressed, so maybe don't act like you're not shopping in the same aisle."
He nods, satisfied, and opens the driver's side door. "Tell Callum I'll be back in about a month. Give him a heads up so he doesn't pretend he's surprised when I show up and eat all his food."
"I'll warn him," I say. "He can stock up and emotionally prepare."
Jonah gives me a long bear hug, then jumps in his truck and I watch him go.
The next week passes quietly.
We fall into routines without discussing them. Coffee in the morning. Pancake claiming whichever room we're in. Calls that used to be updates becoming conversations instead.
Somewhere along the way, life stops feeling like something we're trying to survive.
A week later, the store is the specific kind of loud that means things are working.
The registers, the milk steamer, Beatriz talking a man who came in for one thriller into leaving with three Devon Hook novels and a sudden interest in morally questionable detectives, Cordelia refilling the whole-bean display while loudly telling a customer that her coworker at her other job is dating a real-life private investigator which, again, Cordelia, was information meant to stay inside my apartment.
The light comes through the front windows and falls across the reading nook where the "Fall in Love, You Coward" display table has been restocked by someone who is not me.
Callum is in the chair by the window with Pancake across his feet and a file folder he opened forty minutes ago and has not looked at since. He's not hovering or fixing anything. He does track the door when it chimes, which he'll probably always do. But I've made my peace with that.
Around 10:30, he sets a cup of coffee on the counter in front of me and I take it.
That's the whole thing. He brought it and I didn't run a single calculation about what that costs me or what it means about the balance of things.
I just took the coffee like a normal person instead of mentally drafting a financial treaty over a latte, because that's what people do when they care about each other.
The morning keeps going.
There is no clock running and no inspection scheduled.
Or rather, there was one, ten days ago. An independent assessor looked at every panel, sprinkler head, and corridor exit then signed off and filed the forms with the county under my name and no one else's.
The red tag is officially gone, the building is clean, and there's no offer to purchase my building I have no intention to sell.
A woman with a tote bag comes up to the register and asks for a book recommendation for a child with a birthday coming.
"Middle grade," she says. "He's ten, likes adventure. Hates anything that feels like homework."
I know exactly the book.
I lead her to the shelf and pull it out. She reads the back and the description lands right. No one's waiting for the next thing to go wrong.
I feel like a woman in her bookstore on an ordinary morning.
The door chimes behind me and I glance up out of habit, my chest tightening for half a second before it settles when I see it's just another customer stepping in with a question and looking toward the counter.
After the past several weeks I've had, it's unfamiliar. But I let it be.