Chapter Twelve
Zander
I’m sitting in a back corner of the library, minding my own business, watching a pigeon strut along the cobblestones outside the window.
The words in my brain are not making their way onto the page and waiting for Addie isn’t helping.
My fingers twitch with pent up nerves, because fuck, I can’t believe this incredible woman listened to my story and still decided she wanted to hang around me.
I’m terrified she’s going to show up, come to her senses, and visibly cringe away from me.
But as I turn away from the pigeon, as if called to do so, and spot a frantic redheaded blur, I’m convinced this won’t happen. Addie rushes toward me, a goddess in a dinosaur skirt. I can’t help but grin. By the time she reaches the table, I’m smiling so hard my cheeks hurt.
Be cool. Chill.
Addie slides a coffee cup from Dam Good Coffee across the table and leaves another in front of her spot. She pulls a laptop and her bright pink notebook out of her bag before settling into the wheeled office chair. I bring the coffee cup to my lips. Tea. Just the way I like it.
“Hey.” I tip the cup her way. “Thank you.”
She waves me off. “Don’t mention it. I figured if we’re going to get some work done we need some writing fuel.”
“What’re you working on?” I ask.
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she says and opens her laptop with a delicious smirk.
She’s going to kill me. She cannot do this to me in public.
“Two can play at that game,” I say and angle my computer further toward myself. “I won’t give you any clues, either.”
“Isn’t it your job to give clues?”
“That depends. Do you think I’m good at giving clues?”
“I do.” She sips at her iced coffee and I stare at her lips.
Fuck. Me. “I promise I’ll stop joking about being mysterious because I really do have something I want to know.
And I like talking about my writing; it helps me figure things out.
I just like throwing it back and forth with you. You keep up with me.”
I don’t trust myself to speak, so I also play with my coffee cup.
You keep up with me. Hell yeah, Addie, I will for as long as you’ll let me.
I peer at her over the rim. She looks up from her keyboard and meets my eyes with the most intimate eye contact I have ever experienced in my entire life.
I have the sudden urge to slam the cup down on the table and kiss her senseless, which then turns into a much more specific vision of us up against the stacks. Defiling each other.
Stop.
Not here.
I swallow tea that barely registers as anything on my tongue. But at least my mouth isn’t dangerously dry anymore.
I clear my throat for good measure. “What do you want to know?”
“Why did you choose to write thrillers? I mean, you’re so talented with what you do.
I had no idea it was Michael until you revealed it in Midnight, and then I felt like an absolute idiot, because of course it was him.
That’s why he moved to Vancouver in the first place.
Sorry, you’re good. It’s just quite a departure, you know? ”
“You read the memoir?”
I don’t know why that’s what I get from her praise. I’m nearly thirty-two and I still can’t take a compliment.
“Yeah. I read it in a day, or a night, rather. I wanted you in your own words after you sent me all the official stuff.”
“Why wouldn’t you just go with the official stuff?”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s so clinical. I appreciate you being crystal clear and sending me all the facts, but they don’t exist within a vacuum. There’s the facts, and then there’s the man who had nineteen years of hell. No offence.”
“None taken. You’re not wrong.”
“So you wrote your life story, and then…”
“I didn’t intend to write my life story. I don’t think I ever explained that in the book. Actually, I did, my editor just told me to take it out because my therapist suggested it as an exercise wasn’t a way they could sell books.”
She lets out a breathy laugh. “It’s always something with those editors, isn’t it?”
“I understand the suggestion, though. We did sell more books that way.” I smirk and she rolls her eyes.
“When I was in prison, I joined a book club. We read a bunch of different genres. I found myself drawn to the memoirs; the stories of people overcoming pain. I don’t know if this was the intended purpose, but they gave me this flicker of hope I thought I’d lost. So, when my therapist suggested writing, I did.
I started writing what would eventually become the memoir.
It made me remember those fleeting moments where I felt human as a kid.
I had one teacher back at Beaver Creek High that pulled me aside after a writing assignment and praised my work.
As I was writing, I thought about that.”
“Not to interrupt, but was it Mrs. DaRosa? Because she’s part of my origin story as well.”
“Yeah,” I say and reach for Addie’s hand, upturned on the table. “It was her. Does she still teach, do you know? I’d like to thank her. She was one of the few people who believed in me.”
“She’s still at the high school. It’s their last day tomorrow, I think, so you could probably catch her.”
“Huh, maybe I will,” I say. I’d thanked her in the acknowledgments of my second book, but I’d never actually thought about doing it in person.
Beaver Creek’s been wary of me for years and it would break my heart just a little if she were to feel the same.
I take a deep breath and shake it away. “Right. Anyway, I didn’t really have a plan to publish the memoir, it just kind of happened.
Which I feel is an extremely pretentious thing to say when I know how hard it is to make it in publishing… but it’s true.”
“I get that. I actively worked toward where I am now and had that in mind, probably, since high school, queried for years with multiple books and finally got lucky. I know everyone’s path to publishing is different.”
Her kind smile sets my soul on fire. I have the sudden urge to bring her hand up to my lips and kiss it.
“I knew as soon as I got the deal, I wanted to continue in the industry. But I only have one memoir in me right now, and I wasn’t about to wait another twenty years before I had something else to say.”
“So you committed to a life of crime in fiction instead of reality?”
The comment catches me off guard, and maybe I would have taken it the wrong way a week ago, or even said slightly different. But Addie’s tone is deadpan and her eyes crinkle behind her glasses. God, I love those glasses. I don’t expect it, but I laugh.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it worked out that way, though not intentionally.”
She bites back a grin. “I’m sorry, I know that was probably insensitive. It came out without me fully thinking it through. A lot of the time, I think I’m being funny and I’m really not.”
“No, it was funny,” I say. “I wouldn’t have laughed otherwise. I get you as well. You’re always so fast and quippy. I like it. You keep me on my toes.”
She could run circles around me and I’d follow like a puppy.
“Good. Tell me if I cross the line.”
“I really don’t think I have any lines with you.
” Her eyebrows raise and a devious smirk works its way through her features.
My body goes hot. I rub the back of my neck with my free hand.
“I mean—Yeah, I didn’t think I’d be writing thrillers.
When I got out, I was working as a carpenter.
It was through a program in Canadian correctional facilities that essentially sets you up for a better outcome upon release.
So, I was juggling a lot. I was the quiet guy who liked books and tinkering with stuff in prison.
Guys would confide in me because they knew I’d be level-headed about it all.
I think bits and pieces of those secrets slipped into what I was writing. ”
“That’s kind of fascinating. Like, hands-on crime research. You’re more dedicated to the craft than I am.”
“I know research is your life’s blood. If you ever need some behind-bars intel, I’m your man.”
“You’re my man,” she says under her breath.
The words work their way under my skin, sending shivers through my body.
She adds her right hand on top of our clasped ones and squeezes, before pulling away entirely.
I feel her absence so acutely, it almost hurts.
I’ve never felt such a need to be in contact with someone, but all I want to do is touch her.
She rolls her chair closer to mine, so we’re essentially thigh to thigh. Visions of us in the stacks come to mind once more and I feel my jeans tighten. She turns her laptop toward me.
“Here’s what I’m working on.” She shoves a USB into the slot and navigates to a folder with multiple files. “This is all my research. I know you’re apparently a Canadian history buff. Have you heard of Camp X?”
“Would you believe I know of Camp X because of the Eric Walters book?”
“Stunning. You’re a king. That would not surprise me in the slightest.”
“So what’s happening at Camp X?”
“I have all this research, aside from one woman who hasn’t gotten back to me yet, a half-finished outline, and a handful of scenes that wouldn't leave me alone. What I know for certain is my main character’s grandmother dies, so she’s going through her house and finds a box in the rafters with letters about Camp X, which leads her to discover that her grandma was involved there.
I’m thinking grandma potentially had an affair and her real grandfather was one of the agents. ”
“Damn. That’s a good twist.”
“Thank you. I thought it might be a bit predictable, and perhaps a little anti-feminist, reducing her work like that. I want to do a double twist, like she had this affair, yes, and that’s what the granddaughter is shocked about at first, but she was also this badass spy who pulled off a secret mission.
That’s actually the piece of research I’m waiting for. ”
“About a specific mission?”
“Mmm yeah. They recruited French Canadians, trained them, then dropped them in France to, sort of, hide in plain sight. They’d pretend to be French citizens and steal intelligence from the German army. It’s a really cool story. As soon as I stumbled upon it, I knew this was grandma’s story.”
Addie’s voice comes out high and fast. She opens documents with interviews and articles from the past, scrolling through them quickly as she explains her thought process.
Her eyes are glued to her screen as she talks, which allows me to stare at her side profile.
If passion was a visible substance, she’d be glowing golden right now.
Her red eyebrows furrow, doe eyes, made wider from her lenses, squint and expand as she speaks.
Her upturned nose scrunches and her rounded cheeks tint even pinker.
Oh, holy shit. I’m in trouble. She is something else.
“Incredible,” I whisper while she’s still going through her files.
Her fingers pause on the track pad and her eyes shift to mine.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hey,” I say. “Did you know you’re beautiful?”
She licks her lips and looks down. “No, One Direction, I didn’t.”
I can’t help the laugh that escapes me. It’s a loud guffaw, unsuitable for this quiet section of the library, and I cover my mouth immediately. She does the same after she lets out a forceful snort.
I never got to have this experience as a teenager, the giddy giggling with your crush while everyone makes eyes at you to shut up. But right here, in the old section of the Beaver Creek Library, I feel the first love of sixteen.