Chapter 6
Silas
The Lions of Al-Rassan.
The point is the note. The smiley face. The careful handwriting that matches the first one, the one I'm still using as a bookmark even though I have a perfectly good leather bookmark Toby gave me for my birthday.
It'll destroy you. Fair warning. — D
I read the note four times yesterday. Folded it, put it in my book, unfolded it, read it again. The smiley face is the same as the first one, a circle with two dots and a curve, drawn quickly but deliberately, the kind of thing that takes more intention than it looks like.
Knox is in the kitchen when I come downstairs.
The bar kitchen, technically. There's no real boundary between the kitchen and the bar itself, just the counter and the taps and sixty years of oak.
He's making coffee. He always makes the coffee.
It's one of those alpha things he does without thinking, providing for the household, even when the household is a bunch of grown men who can operate a coffee maker.
Nico's already at the bar with his laptop, working through something with the focus of a man who replaced one obsessive job with another.
Ezra's next to him with his tea, their shoulders almost touching, the two of them reading each other's screens without asking permission.
The apartment situation upstairs is getting tight.
Nico's been in the spare room for weeks, but everyone knows he sleeps in Ezra's bed.
The spare room is a fiction they maintain because admitting it would mean acknowledging the hallway has four doors and five people and that's one too many.
"Morning," Knox says. One word. Full conversation.
"Morning."
I pour coffee, take it to my usual corner. The bar is quiet at seven. Vaughn's already in the garage, I can hear the wrench. Jason won't show up from Ash's place until eight. Robin's at the café, prepping for the morning rush that he'll handle himself since it's Devin's day off.
Devin. Who leaves notes in pastry boxes and reads standing up behind the counter and drinks terrible vending machine coffee without complaint and somehow made the word "destroy" sound like a promise.
I need to get to the library.
* * *
He's in his usual spot when I arrive. Reference section, back corner, the comfortable chair with the reading lamp that casts a warm circle of light.
His jacket's draped over the armrest, the same thin jacket, the only jacket, the one that doesn't keep the rain out.
He's already deep in The Name of the Wind, hunched forward over the pages with the intensity of someone who reads like breathing. Like Robin said.
I don't announce myself. Just go to the fiction shelves, pull The Lions of Al-Rassan, and settle into my corner. Close enough to share the quiet. Far enough to let him have his space.
He notices me. I know because I hear the small intake of breath. Not surprise, more like recognition. The sound of something expected arriving and being exactly what you hoped it would be.
He doesn't wave today. Just lifts his book slightly, showing me the cover, and I lift mine. A salute. Two people with books, acknowledging each other across a silent room.
We read.
This is the thing I didn't expect, that the silence would be the best part.
I've been quiet my whole life. The pride jokes about it, calls me the monk, the hermit, the one who communicates exclusively through book recommendations and strategic grunts.
Knox understands because Knox is quiet too, but Knox's quiet is authority.
Mine is just absence. The space where a personality should be, filled with other people's words instead of my own.
But reading next to Devin doesn't feel like absence.
It feels like presence. Two people doing the same thing in the same space, and the silence between them isn't empty.
It's full. Full of pages turning and the hum of the overhead lights and the distant sound of Margaret's keyboard and the quality of air between two people who are comfortable enough to not speak.
I get up for vending machine coffee. Two cups. I set his on the table near his section without a word. He takes it without a word. We drink terrible coffee and read good books and don't talk and it's perfect.
At 8:30, the seniors arrive. The book club, six women who treat the library like a living room, loud and cheerful and absolutely certain that everyone wants to hear about Barbara's hip replacement and the shocking twist in this month's pick, which appears to be a romance novel with a pirate on the cover.
"Marlene says the love scenes are gratuitous," one of them announces. "I say they're the whole point."
"Marlene thinks holding hands is gratuitous," another says.
Devin catches my eye across the room. He's trying not to laugh, his lips pressed together, shoulders shaking slightly. I raise an eyebrow. He raises one back. A whole conversation in two eyebrows and a shared look.
I open my notebook, the one I use for book notes, quotes I want to remember, fragments that stay with me, and write:
The seniors are reviewing a pirate romance. The love scenes are, apparently, the whole point.
I tear out the page, fold it, and walk past his table on my way to the restroom. Drop it on his book as I pass.
When I come back, there's a note on my table.
Marlene is wrong. The love scenes ARE the point. Also, the tall one in the blue cardigan cries every single week at story hour. She's secretly a romantic.
I put the note in my book.
* * *
Tuesday afternoon.
Robin comes out from the cafe, spots him reading where he always is, and lights up.
"Dev! You're here." Robin leans on the booth. "Listen, I know it's Tuesday and I know you're off, but the afternoon rush is going to murder me. Any chance you want to pick up a shift? I'll pay you extra."
Devin's already closing his book. "Yeah, of course. Anytime."
"You're sure? It's your day off. You're allowed to say no."
"Robin, I'm always up for extra shifts."
"You're a saint. A literal saint. I'm paying you time and a half and you're not allowed to argue about it." Robin squeezes his shoulder and heads back to the counter. "Apron's on the hook. You know the drill."
Devin pulls on his apron — crooked, the way it always is when he ties it in a rush — and falls into the rhythm behind the counter. Robin reties it for him without asking, reaching over with the casual intimacy of a boss who's become something closer to family.
I watch this from my booth with The Lions of Al-Rassan and a coffee.
The ease between them. The way Robin asked and Devin said yes before Robin finished the sentence, not because he's a pushover but because extra hours mean extra money and Devin doesn't waste opportunities.
He was right about the prose, restrained, layered, the kind of writing that trusts you to feel the weight of what's unsaid.
I'm forty pages in and already know this book is going to break me.
He brings my coffee refill at 2:15. I didn't ask for one. He just noticed my cup was empty and brought it.
"How is it?" he asks, nodding at the book.
"Forty pages. Already destroyed."
His face lights up, the sudden animation that comes when someone engages with him about something he loves. "Wait until you get to Jehane. She's — I can't even describe her. Just keep reading."
"No spoilers."
"No spoilers. But you're going to need tissues."
"You said it would destroy me in a good way."
"I said by a book, always. I didn't say you wouldn't cry.
" He's almost grinning, and it opens him up, makes him look like the person he probably is underneath the careful politeness and the customer service voice and the thin jacket.
"When you get to chapter twelve, text me.
I need to know your reaction in real time. "
"I don't have your number."
He freezes. The grin flickers. Not disappearing, but shifting. The realization of what he just said, what he just implied. That he wants me to text him. That he wants to be connected to me outside of this café, this library, the physical spaces where we overlap.
"I —" he starts.
"Here." I pull out my phone, open a new contact, hand it to him.
He stares at it. Then he types his number in with careful, steady fingers. Hands it back. The contact says DEVIN with a book emoji next to it.
"For chapter twelve emergencies only," he says. Trying to make it light. Trying to take back the weight of what just happened.
"Chapter twelve emergencies only," I agree.
He goes back to the counter. I save the contact and don't look at my phone again for forty-five minutes, which is a personal record in restraint.
* * *
Tuesday night. The bar.
"You've been at the library every day for a week," Ezra says. Not accusatory, observational. Ezra notices patterns the way some people notice weather. It's just data to him.
"I read at the library."
"You read here. You read in your room. You read on the back porch when it's not raining." He's doing the bar's books on his laptop, Nico beside him cross-referencing something on his own screen. "But sure. The library."
Knox doesn't say anything. He's in the doorway of his office, coffee in hand, listening without appearing to listen. That's his thing, the ambient alpha, the man who absorbs information through walls.
"Is this about Robin's barista?" Jason asks from the kitchen. He's plating something that smells like rosemary and butter. "The one who reads?"
"Who told you about —"
"Robin," everyone says simultaneously.
Of course. Robin, who can't keep a secret unless it actually matters, and who apparently decided that Silas talking to a human being is newsworthy enough to broadcast to the entire pride.
"He's a reader," I say. "We recommend books to each other. That's it."
"That's a lot, for you," Ezra says mildly. "You recommended a book to Nico once and then didn't speak to him for three days."
"Nico doesn't read fiction."