Chapter 4
FOUR
SCOTT
Iread Between the Lines’s letter six times before I allow myself to believe what I’m seeing.
As for me: you’ve given me courage too. I’m going to write again. Actually write, not just think about writing. I’m going to stop letting my ex-husband’s voice in my head decide what I’m capable of.
My hands are shaking.
Her ex-husband criticized her writing dreams and made her feel like loving stories was a character flaw.
I pull up my mental catalogue of everything I know about Jessica Wells.
Divorced eight years ago. No children. Father passed away five years back.
Runs The Fiction Nook with a passion that borders on religious devotion.
Lives in the apartment above her shop with a cat named Austen who has better judgment than I do.
And she used to write. Or wanted to. Or still dreams about it when she thinks no one’s watching.
I sit in my writing office at two in the morning, staring at Between the Lines’s letter, and try not to connect the dots I’m not ready to connect.
I’ve been asking her how to be brave enough to confess my feelings to the woman I’m falling for, and that woman is her, and she’s been telling me to be honest while I’m lying to her about approximately everything that matters.
The irony would be poetic if it wasn’t actively destroying my will to live.
I have written books about people who figure out how to communicate their feelings like functional adults.
And yet.
I close the letter carefully and add it to the locked drawer where I keep all of her correspondence. The drawer is getting full, which is either romantic or deeply concerning. Possibly both.
Then I pull up the document I’ve been avoiding all week: the lease renewal paperwork for The Fiction Nook.
It’s been sitting on my desk for three days. I need to bring it to Jessica. Need to make this official. Need to stop driving past her bookstore like a stalker who can’t quite commit to full-on restraining order territory.
Grandma Hensley noticed, of course. The woman misses nothing. She’s like a surveillance system wrapped in a cardigan, and I’m about as subtle as a neon sign screaming “Emotionally compromised landlord in love with tenant. Please send help.”
She cornered me at Sander’s Hardware yesterday. Asked if I was “developing an interest in independent bookstores” or if I was “just circling like a confused shark who forgot how to eat.”
I told her I was monitoring my investment properties.
She told me I was a terrible liar.
I print the paperwork, slide it into a folder, and check the time. Seven AM. The Fiction Nook opens at seven-thirty, which means Jessica’s probably already there, doing her morning routine. Talking to her cat. Making the shop ready for a day of matching readers with their perfect stories.
Being herself in the one hour of the day when no one’s watching.
I should wait until later. Give her time to open properly. Show up at a reasonable hour when other customers will be there to act as buffers between my terrible life choices and her justified hostility.
Instead, I grab my keys.
Because I’m a forty-five-year-old man with no impulse control and a death wish apparently.
I’m sitting in my car outside The Fiction Nook at 7:15 AM, watching Jessica through the front window like the lovesick disaster Grandma Hensley definitely thinks I am.
This is fine. This is normal. Successful businessmen sit in their cars staring at women through windows all the time.
No, wait. That’s stalking. That’s literally the definition of stalking.
I should leave, but I don’t.
She’s restocking a display near the front, and even from here, I can see the care she puts into it. The way she angles each book just so. The handwritten cards she’s placing beside certain titles. The small smile when she finds exactly the right book for exactly the right spot.
She’s wearing jeans and an oversized cardigan that’s seen better days—possibly better decades—her hair in that messy twist secured with a pencil. No makeup that I can see. Just Jessica, comfortable in her space, loving what she does.
She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
And I’m about to walk in there with paperwork designed to ruin her day.
This is why I’m single.
I force myself out of the car before I can talk myself out of it, catch my jacket on the door handle, spend fifteen seconds untangling myself while hoping desperately that Jessica isn’t watching, and finally achieve freedom with only moderate damage to my dignity.
The boardwalk is mostly empty at this hour—just a few joggers and early-bird tourists.
The morning air smells like salt water and coffee from Michelle’s shop next door, which reminds me that I haven’t had coffee yet, which explains absolutely none of my decisions but feels relevant to my current state of poor judgment.
I pause at the door, watching Jessica through the glass one more moment.
Then I push it open, and the bell chimes my arrival like a warning siren announcing incoming disaster.
Jessica looks up, and an expression flickers across her face. Not quite a smile. Not quite a grimace. A complicated look that clearly communicates “oh good, my least favorite person has arrived to make my morning worse.”
“Mr. Avery,” she says, her voice carefully neutral in that way that means she’s considering violence. “We don’t open for another fifteen minutes.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I have paperwork that needs your signature.” I hold up the folder like it’s a white flag. Like it might protect me from the look in her eyes.
It does not protect me from the look in her eyes.
“Of course you do.” She sets down the book she’s holding—one of mine, I notice with a painful twist, one of the early ones she still carries—and crosses to the counter. “Let’s get this over with. I have shelves to restock and dreams to have crushed, apparently.”
Austen is sprawled across the register like a furry bouncer. When I approach, the cat opens one yellow eye and gives me a look that clearly communicates: I remember you. I tolerated you last time. Don’t push your luck.
“Your cat is judging me,” I observe.
“My cat has excellent taste. Unlike some people who keep showing up uninvited before business hours.”
“To be fair, I was invited. By the lease agreement. Section twelve, paragraph—”
“If you quote section twelve at me before eight AM, I will throw this paperweight at your head.” She holds up a decorative rock shaped like a book. It looks heavy enough to cause a concussion. “And I have excellent aim.”
“Noted.”
“My cat has better social skills than you do,” she adds.
“Your cat tried to climb my shoulder last time I was here.”
“Like I said. Better social skills. He was attempting physical affection. You threatened a forty percent rent increase.”
She has a point.
Jessica holds out her hand for the folder. “The paperwork?”
I hand it over, and our fingers brush. Just for a second. Just long enough for me to feel the contact like an electric shock all the way to my chest and down to my extremely expensive Italian leather shoes.
She pulls back like she felt it too, then opens the folder with more force than necessary. A page escapes and floats to the floor. We both watch it drift down with the gentle grace of my romantic prospects.
I should leave. Should let her review the documents in peace and come back later for the signature.
Should absolutely not stand here watching her read through lease terms that I know by heart because I’ve been staring at them for days trying to figure out how to protect her without revealing that I’ve been protecting her all along.
Instead, I stay.
Because I’m a glutton for punishment with a lease folder and no self-preservation instincts.
"This all looks...thorough," Jessica says, flipping through pages.
"Forty percent increase, eighteen-month term, standard renewal clauses.
" She looks up at me with an expression of faux admiration.
"Very comprehensive destruction of my livelihood.
Did you have a team of lawyers draft this, or did you stay up late crafting it yourself like a sociopath with a word processor? "
“Jessica—”
“No, really, I’m impressed. Most people just send eviction notices. You’ve created a whole experience. There’s probably a PowerPoint somewhere, isn’t there? Graphs showing exactly how my dreams will die quarter by quarter?”
“There’s no PowerPoint.”
“Missed opportunity. You could have included animations. Little clip art of bookstores exploding.”
I deserve this. I absolutely do.
“It’s fine,” she continues, still reading. “This is business. You made that clear. Community impact doesn’t appear on balance sheets, and balance sheets determine whether buildings get kept or sold.”
She’s quoting me. Using my own words like knives.
It’s incredibly attractive, and I’m definitely going to the bad place.
“I should clarify,” I start, then stop because I have no idea how to finish that sentence.
Should clarify what? That I'm in love with her?
That I fought the board to keep this increase from being even worse?
That I'm V. Langley and she's been reviewing my books and we've been writing each other love letters disguised as craft discussions?
“You should clarify that you’re actually a decent human being underneath the corporate shark exterior?” Jessica sets the folder down and finally looks at me. “Don’t bother.”
“That’s not—”
“Caroline says you read poetry at the library.” She crosses her arms, and I become acutely aware that we’re alone in her bookstore, and she’s angry, and anger looks devastating on her. “Every Tuesday. In the corner. With coffee and old books. Like a man who has feelings.”
My throat goes tight. “Caroline talks too much.”