Chapter 9 #2
“Right? As it turns out, it wasn’t that guy here to kill me, it was just you killing the lyrics to another song.” I stop to smile at my own joke. “All that to say, I’m fine. This is fine. Everything—” I use my hands to make big circles in the air — “is fine.”
He eyes me.
“That’s a lot of fine,” he says, turning toward the stove. “I made breakfast.” That must have been all the thuds I heard, which makes more sense than coffee. “And you don’t have to be fine yet, Bay. I wouldn’t expect you to be.”
“Oh, I’m fine,” I assure him with a wild look in my eye, but his back is already turned as he makes his way through the kitchen to grab plates out of a cupboard.
I catch sight of the tattoos peeking out of his shirt cuffs, curling around each bicep, and my stomach practically smirks up at me for thinking I could control it.
Even worse, when his shirt lifts, the slacks he’s wearing from last night are hanging loosely around his hips without a belt.
I force my eyes away just before he turns around.
“In my experience,” he says, “the more times someone says fine, the less fine they are.”
I squirm beneath the towel, feeling seen.
“I think I only said fine once or twice,” I mutter.
“The number of times you just said fine is equivalent to the number of times someone might say it when running from a burning building with their hair on fire.” He smiles. “I could be wrong, though. You tell me.”
He sets two mugs down near the coffee maker.
“Fair assessment,” I agree, swallowing. “But can you blame me after last night?”
“That’s why I’m asking.” He grins, and my toes curl right along with the corners of his mouth. “What do you put in your coffee these days? Cream? Sugar? I don’t think teenage Bailey drank coffee.”
This is new. The last time we hung out, he was more likely to toss me in a lake or meow at my sweater than pour me a cup of anything comforting.
“Uh, just a splash of cream,” I tell him. “Not too much.”
I move to grab the carton out of the fridge, but he points me to one of the barstools.
“I got this. You sit.”
He pulls the cream from the fridge and fixes my coffee, then sets the mug on the counter in front of me and spins the handle around toward my hand so I can pick it up more easily.
“Thank you,” I tell him, loving that he thought to do that.
He turns to pour himself one next, adding significantly more cream than I ever add to mine. I always imagined Rhett drinking his coffee jet black and bitter. Like it somehow fits him better, as if people with big biceps and a history of running military operations should only drink it black.
I take the first sip.
It’s hot and familiar, like it’s just another day, and Rhett Monroe is standing in my kitchen first thing in the morning while I sit here in a towel drinking coffee that he’s just made for me. After spinning the handle toward my hand.
No big deal.
Nothing to see here, younger self. Just your every wish and dream coming true.
I take a second sip and begin to digest everything that unraveled during the party, now that my subconscious has had a whole night to get a handle on it. But it still feels like an impossible mess.
He points down the hall.
“Take your coffee with you while you get dressed. And when you’re ready, we can talk about how fine you really are.”
Despite feeling like absolute garbage this morning, I crack a smile.
“Why, thank you,” I say, raising a brow, grinning. “I’m going to pretend like fine is not our new code word for shit.”
He mirrors my grin and points down the hall. “You know what I meant. Now, go get out of that towel.”
Despite my best efforts to hide it, he must notice what’s written all over my face.
“I meant go change, Bailey,” he says, straight-faced, but I swear I see a bit of red shade his cheeks, too.
I grin. “I’ll be back,” I tell him.
Rubbing my neck with one hand, I grab my coffee mug with the other, then rise off the barstool, just as his phone buzzes on the counter.
“Hollis,” he says, eyeing the screen, then he swipes it open.
I don’t go down the hall just yet. While Rhett’s busy reading whatever Hollis just sent him, I have a few more sips of coffee and watch his eyes for any indication of what it says.
His jaw clenches, then he blinks longer than usual, before sucking in a breath and letting it out through his teeth. It’s the same look he had in his eyes last night. The one where he appears both calm and deadly all at once.
My chest thumps as if my heart’s just been replaced by a drum, and I tap my own phone screen, but it doesn’t show anything new from Hollis or anyone else.
“What is it?” I ask, wanting to move closer to him so I can see whatever she just sent, too.
He holds out the phone with an email already pulled up. No, not an email, but a screenshot of one addressed to my author account. There are multiple photos attached to this one, too.
“Another one?” I ask.
“This one just barely came in.”
He hands me the phone so I can scroll through everything.
There are three grainy photographs attached to the email. Sent from the same untraceable account as the one used last night, and the three before that.
The first one is a photo of me arriving at the big bookstore on Kent Street.
The photo was taken from outside, right in front of the building.
It shows me pulling the door open, holding a huge, clear dome umbrella up over my head — the one I’d bought that same day when it started pouring rain on my walk over.
Last Thursday.
I close a hand over my mouth.
I’d been going in to talk about the upcoming signing event there after being invited by what I had thought was the event manager.
She’d emailed to say she wanted to speak in person, but when I got there, she had no idea I was coming.
It seemed odd at the time, but it hadn’t even occurred to me that someone else might have lured me there.
The next photo is of me talking with the manager inside, taken through the window.
And the final photo is of me leaving the store, waving over my shoulder while smiling at the team inside.
It’s all from last week.
The email reads: I almost didn’t go, but then the sky opened up, and I knew that I was meant to meet you there.
A line from my last book.
I’m shaking by the time I hand the phone back to Rhett, and am shaking even harder when I see the look in his eye.