Chapter 5 Riley
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Riley
Thursday arrived, and I had spent the entire week not thinking about the weird hot Australian.
I was very successful at this. Extremely successful. I only thought about him maybe forty or fifty times per hour, but who was counting? I didn’t know what was wrong with me. It was just one guy, and I would never see him again. Why the hell was I so obsessed?
The book club was my sanctuary, the one thing in my life that felt entirely mine.
Every Thursday at seven, a rotating cast of wine-drunk romance enthusiasts gathered at Vino Veritas, a wine bar downtown that I rented out for the evening.
The owner, a middle-aged woman named Doris who had strong opinions about tannins and fictional men, gave me a discount in exchange for book recommendations. It was the perfect arrangement.
Tonight’s book was “His Darkest Obsession” by an indie author who clearly had some things to work through. It was about a morally gray billionaire who may or may not have murdered his business rival for looking at the heroine too long. Very on-brand for our group.
I arrived early to set up, arranging wine glasses on the reserved tables, setting out the snacks Jade had dropped off earlier, and making sure there were enough copies of the book for anyone who “forgot” to buy one.
The wine selection tonight was a nice Malbec that Doris had recommended, along with a crisp white for the people who complained that red wine gave them headaches.
Sloane showed up next, sliding into her usual seat with the grace of a cat claiming its territory.
“You look tense,” she observed.
“I’m not.”
“You’ve rearranged those wine glasses three times.”
I looked down at the glasses. I had, in fact, rearranged them three times. They had been organized by height, then by color, then by some third criteria I couldn’t identify. Stem thickness, maybe. I was losing my mind.
“Okay, maybe I’m a little tense.”
“Is this about the Australian?”
“What? No. Why would it be about him?” I asked, completely lost.
Sloane just stared at me. She had this way of staring that made you feel like she could see directly into your soul and was deeply unimpressed by what she found there.
“It’s not about him,” I insisted. “I haven’t thought about him at all. I don’t even remember what he looks like. Tall? Maybe? Who can say.”
“You texted me a detailed description of his jawline last night.”
“That wasn’t me. I was being possessed by the ghost of an old lady and sent those messages for documentation purposes.”
“Please, bitch. You used the word ‘chiseled’ four times.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it.
I did do that. At two in the morning, unable to sleep, I’d sent Sloane an increasingly unhinged series of texts about the stranger’s face, his voice, the way he’d looked at me.
I was afraid I would forget with time, so I’d used phrases like “storm cloud eyes” and “built like a Greek god who does CrossFit” and, yes, “chiseled” four times because apparently my vocabulary abandoned me along with my dignity.
“I was tired,” I muttered. “People say weird things when they’re tired. I don’t know what’s up with me, okay? Just please pretend that never happened.”
“I screenshot everything. It’s saved forever.”
Oh, gods. “I hate you.”
“No you don’t.”
“I really, really do.”
“And yet here we are.” She gestured at the wine bar. “You hosting book club, me providing moral support, both of us pretending you’re not having a crisis over a stranger.”
“I’m not having a crisis.”
“You alphabetized your spice rack on Tuesday and sent pictures like a proud mother hen. You don’t even cook.”
She had a point.
“I might start cooking.”
“Riley, you burned water last month. You somehow burned water.”
“The pot was defective.”
“The pot was fine. You forgot it was on the stove for three hours because you were writing a sex scene.”
“In my defense, it was a really good sex scene.”
“I’m sure it was. The pot is still dead.”
I didn’t have a response to that, so I just poured myself a glass of wine and pretended Sloane didn’t exist.
Jade arrived next, carrying enough chocolate to put everyone into a sugar coma. She had little bags of truffles and a box of fancy chocolates from that place downtown that charged eight dollars for four pieces.
“I went overboard,” she announced cheerfully. “But it’s been a week, and I decided we all deserved it.”
“Bless you,” I said, grabbing a truffle immediately.
Margo followed with vodka and the weary expression of someone who spent all day dealing with people’s worst decisions.
“Long day?” Sloane asked.
“A man tried to argue that his affair wasn’t cheating because it happened in a different time zone.
I swear to god, I have no idea how people come up with this shit.
” Margo set the bottles down with more force than necessary.
“His exact words were ‘it was three AM there, so technically it was still yesterday.’ I need alcohol and fictional men who are terrible in entertaining ways, not pathetic ones.”
“That’s - That’s not how time zones work,” Jade said.
“That’s not how anything works. But try explaining that to a man who thinks geography is a loophole for infidelity.”
“Ready to discuss fictional murder as a love language?” I asked.
“Born ready,” she said.
The other members trickled in over the next twenty minutes. There were about twelve regulars, though attendance varied week to week. Tonight we had eight, which was perfect. Enough for lively debate, not so many that things got chaotic.
Patricia and Ellen arrived together, the retired librarians who had the filthiest opinions about book boyfriends and zero shame about sharing them.
Marcus came in solo, the only man brave enough to attend regularly, clutching his copy of the book with several Post-it flags already marking pages.
Then came the twins, Destiny and Diana, who always disagreed about everything and turned every discussion into a spirited argument.
We settled in with wine and snacks, the familiar ritual of it settling my nerves. Doris came out with a fresh cheese board, winked at me, and retreated for the day, leaving the keys with me. This was my space. My people. Whatever weird thing happened at the bookstore, it didn’t touch this.
I was just opening my copy of the book, prepared to lead the discussion, when the door to the wine bar opened.
I looked up, expecting a latecomer or maybe Doris with more wine. My brain short-circuited at what I saw.
Caelan the Australian was standing in the doorway, and I forgot how to breathe.
He was wearing dark jeans and a sweater, and he looked like he walked off the cover of one of my books. His blonde hair was slightly disheveled, his gray eyes scanned the room, landed on me, and stayed there.
Heat flooded my cheeks. I was suddenly hyperaware of everything. The way I was sitting, how my hair looked, whether I had wine on my teeth. My heart was doing an embarrassing thing in my chest, beating too fast and too loud.
Get it together, I told myself. He’s just a guy. A weird, intense, unreasonably attractive guy. No big deal.
Behind Caelan, Thessa waved enthusiastically. “Hi! We found the book club!”
“How?” I managed. My voice came out slightly strangled.
“Social media. You posted the location.”
Right. I did. Because I was an idiot who assumed strangers would never actually show up to a romance book club in the middle of Lysmont without at least texting me first.
“We brought wine,” Caelan said. His voice was deep, and warmth spread through my body. I shifted in my seat. What was wrong with me? “And I have questions about your book.”
“You have...” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat. “Questions?”
He held up a copy of “The Alpha’s Reluctant Heart.
” My book. Except this copy looked like it had been through a war.
The pages bristled with colored sticky notes, every color of the rainbow, and I could see handwritten annotations on nearly every visible page.
The spine was cracked from use. There were tabs sticking out of the top.
“I have many observations,” he clarified.
Behind me, the book club had gone dead silent. I could feel Sloane’s stare boring into the back of my head.
Jade leaned toward Margo and whispered, loudly, “Oh my god, it’s the Australian. He’s here.”
“I can see that,” Margo whispered back, not quietly at all.
“There are so many sticky notes,” Jade continued. “That’s either romantic or deeply concerning.”
“Could be both,” Margo said.
Caelan’s attention hadn’t left me. He was looking at me with that same intensity from the bookstore, as if I was the only thing in the room worth seeing. Under his gaze, I felt exposed. Seen in a way that made my breath catch.
“You annotated my entire book,” I said slowly.
“Extensively.”
“Why?”
His brow furrowed slightly, as if the answer should be obvious. “Because I wanted to understand it. The emotional arc of the protagonist is compelling. Though I have questions about certain... mechanics.”
I didn’t want to know what mechanics he meant. I absolutely did not want to know.
“The theme tonight is ‘morally gray love interests,’” Sloane cut in, her voice protective. “We’re reading a different book. Not Riley’s.”
Disappointment flickered across Caelan’s face, quickly masked. “I see. I had hoped to discuss Riley’s work specifically.”
“You can come back another time,” Sloane said. “When we’re reading her book.”
“Or,” Thessa interjected brightly, “we could stay for this book and just participate? We love morally gray love interests. Ky especially. He’s very into the murder-for-love trope.”
“Are you now,” Margo said, eyebrow raised.
“It’s compelling,” Caelan said, completely serious. “The willingness to transgress moral boundaries for love is a fascinating narrative device.”
Everyone stared at him.
“He reads a lot,” Thessa explained. “It’s basically his only personality trait. That and brooding.”
“I don’t brood.”