Chapter 21
Theo
The heavy wooden door swung open with a creak that sounded like it belonged in a different century, possibly to a dungeon, definitely to a castle of some kind. We stepped into what could only be described as paradise.
The smells hit me first—freshly roasted coffee beans mingling with the rich, unmistakable scent of ancient paper and leather bindings. It was the kind of aroma that made my librarian’s heart sing, the olfactory equivalent of coming home.
Then I saw the books.
Rich, dark mahogany shelving covered every wall from floor to impossibly high ceiling.
They even had those rolling ladders book nerds dream of for their own libraries.
Every inch of shelving was filled with volumes that looked older than Atlanta itself.
Hundreds of them. No, thousands. Leather-bound spines in deep burgundies, forest greens, and midnight blues, their gold lettering catching the warm light from vintage fixtures that predated electricity.
I stood frozen in the doorway, my mouth slightly open, trying to process what I was seeing.
These weren’t just old books—they were antiques, treasured works from a past so far gone most people wouldn’t recognize it.
Some of them looked like they might have been hand-bound, their spines worn smooth by countless fingers over centuries.
“Theo?” Jeremiah’s voice seemed to come from very far away. His hand gently gripping my should jarred me back to the present. “You okay?”
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.
My inner child was exploding with pure, unadulterated joy while my professional librarian brain was cataloging everything I saw, trying to identify titles and estimate dates and wondering what treasures might be hidden near the top of those impossibly tall shelves.
Jeremiah tugged me toward a particular section near the entrance.
“Look,” he said softly, pointing to a shelf at eye level. “Third one from the left.”
I followed his finger and felt my breath catch. My heart definitely skipped a beat or two.
There, nestled between what looked like a first-edition Poe and something that might have been an original Thoreau, was a slim volume bound in deep green leather with gold lettering that had faded but was still readable: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.
“Is that . . . ?” I breathed.
“First edition, 1890,” Jeremiah confirmed. “I noticed you had a modern copy on your shelves at home, the one with the cracked spine that looked like it had been read about fifty times. I thought you might like to see what the original looked like.”
I blinked up at him, then looked back at the book, then at him again.
He’d noticed that?
He’d been in my house exactly twice, and he’d not only noticed my books but remembered which specific titles I owned well enough to recognize a first edition when he saw one?
“You . . .” I started, then stopped, my voice failing me completely.
“Too much?” he asked, suddenly looking uncertain. “I know it’s kind of nerdy, but I thought—”
“No, God no, Jeremiah . . .” I managed, my voice barely above a whisper. “It’s perfect. You’re perfect. I just . . . I can’t believe you noticed . . . or remembered.”
“I notice everything about you, Theo.” His smile was soft and a little shy. “Everything that matters to you matters to me.”
I could’ve died right there, right then, and lived the happiest life any man had ever lived. I was still staring at him, speechless, when he reached down and squeezed my hand.
“Come on,” he said gently, tugging me forward through the maze of reading nooks and tables scattered throughout the space. “We have a dinner reservation, but we can spend the night afterward digging through the stacks.” He hesitated, then added, “I hoped you might like this place.”
Like this place?
I was pretty sure I wanted to move in.
We wound our way through the labyrinth of shelves toward what I assumed was the restaurant portion of this magical establishment that was so much larger than how it looked from the street.
I caught glimpses of readers folded into leather armchairs, some with coffee cups balanced on the arms, others with plates of what smelled like incredible food.
It was the perfect marriage of sustenance for both body and mind.
“How did you find this place?” I managed to ask as we approached a hostess station that looked like it had been carved from a single piece of oak.
“I used to come here in college, the couple of years I attended, at least,” Jeremiah said, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “When I needed to think, or study, or just get away from everything. I figured if anyone would appreciate a bookstore that serves dinner, it would be you.”
I gazed at him, trying to reconcile this information with everything I thought I knew about the man standing next to me.
Jeremiah—gorgeous, athletic, charming Jeremiah who delivered packages and worked out religiously and knew more about Disney movies than any grown man should—had spent college years hiding away in rare bookstores?
“You came here . . . to study?” I asked, unable to keep the surprise out of my voice.
He tilted his head, looking amused by my reaction. “You sound shocked.”
“It’s just . . . you never really struck me as the reading type. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with not being a reader; it’s just—”
“Just that I’m a dumb jock who probably thinks Hemingway is a type of beer?”
“No! That’s not what I meant at all. I just—” I felt my face heat up. God, I was an idiot. I’d just insulted him . . . after he’d done so much to make me happy. “I’m sorry. That came out wrong.”
Jeremiah’s expression softened. “It’s okay. I get that a lot. People see the muscles and blond hair and assume my brain is just for show.”
His eyes drifted into a past I couldn’t see.
“My mom used to read to me when I was little. Classic stuff—Dickens, Twain, even some Shakespeare when I got older. She’d do all the voices, make it come alive.
I fell in love with those stories, those characters.
I can still picture some of them in my mind—Sydney Carton, Huckleberry Finn, Lady Macbeth. ”
The way he said it, with such genuine fondness, made something twist in my chest. It sounded almost as if he was describing old friends rather than fictional characters.
“I always saw books as little movies that played in my head, just for me,” he continued. “Something no one could ever intrude on or take away. When everything else got complicated or messy, I could disappear into a story and just . . . be somewhere else for a while. I could be someone else, too.”
There was something in his voice, a carefully controlled emotion that made me want to dig deeper, to understand what those “complicated or messy” times had been.
What had driven him to seek refuge in books?
What had he needed to escape from? Why would he—this beautiful, remarkable man—ever want to be someone else?
But something in his expression told me this wasn’t the moment for those questions. Not yet. Maybe someday he’d trust me with whatever shadows lived behind that casual explanation, but tonight was about beginnings, not excavating painful histories.
“That’s beautiful,” I said instead, and meant it. “Your mom sounds like an amazing woman.”
“She was,” he said simply, and I caught the past tense, filed it away with all the other pieces of Jeremiah I was slowly collecting.
My chest felt tight with something that might have been overwhelming gratitude or a growing sense of something so much deeper.
The thoughtfulness of everything, the way he’d remembered what mattered to me and found a way to make our date about the things that made me happiest—it was almost too much to process.
“Table for Mikel,” Jeremiah told the hostess, a woman with silver hair pulled back in a neat bun who looked like she might be as old as some of the books surrounding us.
“Right this way, dears,” she said with a smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. “I’ve got you at one of our corner tables. Perfect for . . . a private conversation.”
She led us to a small table nestled between two towering shelves, the surface lit by an antique brass lamp that cast everything in warm, golden light. It was intimate without feeling cramped, cozy without being claustrophobic.
Romantic without . . . no . . . it was beautifully romantic.
I settled into my chair and immediately found myself craning my neck to read the spines within arm’s reach, sheltered behind a shield of glass: a first-edition Dickens, what looked like an original printing of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, a collection of Shakespeare’s works that was probably worth more than my car.
“You’re going to give yourself a crick in your neck if you keep doing that,” Jeremiah observed, but his tone was playful and fond rather than annoyed.
“Sorry,” I said, forcing myself to look at him instead of the literary treasures surrounding us. “It’s just . . . this is incredible. I can’t believe places like this still exist.”
“Just wait. The food’s pretty amazing, too,” he said, handing me a menu that looked like it had been bound in the same style as the books around us. “Though I have a feeling you’ll still be more interested in what’s on the shelves than what’s on the plates.”
He wasn’t wrong.
My fingers were already itching to explore, to pull down volumes and see what secrets they held. When was the last time these particular editions had been read? Who had owned them before they found their way here? What stories did they contain beyond the words printed on their pages?
“Thank you,” I said quietly, meeting his eyes across the table. “This is . . . it’s perfect. I couldn’t have imagined a better place for our first real date.”
Jeremiah’s smile was soft and genuine, and when he reached across the table to take my hand, I felt that same flutter in my chest that had been building all evening.