Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King (Possessive Small Town Alpha Kings #77)

1. Fable

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Fable

This is fine. This is normal. This is just a Friday.

Lock the deadbolt. The mechanism clicks, solid and reassuring, and I wait for the feeling of done to settle in my chest.

It doesn’t come.

Unlock it. Lock it again.

Did it catch the first time? It definitely caught. I heard it catch. But what if the sound was from something else? What if I imagined it? What if…

Lock it again. Three times feels like enough. Three times feels like insurance. Three times feels like the bare minimum number of locks required to keep the universe from punishing me for whatever I’m about to do.

Fable Tales smells the way it always does at closing: old paper and dust motes catching the last of the October light through the front window, the particular mustiness of secondhand books that have been loved by other people first. There’s a comfort in it usually, a sense of home that blankets me.

Tonight it just feels like I’m saying goodbye.

Stop being dramatic. You’re not saying goodbye. You’re going somewhere and then you’re coming back. That’s how going places works.

“Okay.” I press both palms flat on the counter, right next to the register, and make myself breathe. “You’re fine. You’ve done this before. You can do it again.”

The romance section doesn’t answer, which is probably for the best. If the books started talking back, I’d have bigger problems than the one I’m currently avoiding.

Although honestly? If anyone was going to develop sentience and start giving me life advice, I’d want it to be the romance section.

They’ve seen some things. They know how this works: the fear, the avoidance, the moment where you finally show up anyway.

You haven’t done it in a long time. You know exactly how long. Don’t count.

I count anyway.

Six years. Six years since I’ve driven further than the grocery store, the bank, the doctor’s office two towns over that I only go to because they have a cancellation policy that accommodates my anxiety.

Six years of finding excuses, rescheduling, telling myself next year like next year is a place I can actually get to instead of just another version of now that I’ll fail to show up for.

The October light is fading fast, turning the shop windows into mirrors.

I catch my own reflection in the glass: brown eyes too wide, chestnut hair escaping from its claw clip like it always does by the end of the day, a smear of something that might be chocolate or might be coffee on my left cheek.

I look scared.

I am scared.

That’s fine. Scared people do things all the time. Scared people are brave constantly. You can be scared and still get in the car. Those two things can exist simultaneously.

“You’re going somewhere brave,” I tell my reflection, and my voice only wobbles a little.

“You’re going somewhere that matters. You’ve been meaning to go every single year and somehow never managing, because the car is always too small and the road is always too long and your chest is always too tight to hold everything you’d have to feel when you got there. ”

But today is different.

“Today is different,” I repeat out loud, because saying things out loud makes them real.

My therapist taught me that. She also taught me that talking to yourself isn’t weird, it’s just thinking externally, and anyone who judges you for it is welcome to live inside your brain for five minutes and see how they like the chaos.

The cinnamon candle.

Shit. The cinnamon candle.

I spin toward the reading corner, where sure enough, the three-wick monstrosity I lit this morning during the breakfast rush is still flickering merrily away.

The one I completely forgot about because Mrs. Patterson came in asking for “that book with the duke and the scandal, you know the one, dear,” and I absolutely did not know the one but I spent forty-five minutes helping her figure it out anyway.

Turned out to be The Duke’s Inconvenient Bride. Excellent emotional pacing. I recommended it to her last month, which she also forgot about, because Mrs. Patterson and I are apparently sharing a brain cell and it’s not a particularly reliable one.

I blow out the candle now, watching the smoke curl toward the water-stained ceiling. Then I grab a sticky note from the pad I keep behind the register, yellow, because yellow is for tomorrow, and write BLOW OUT CANDLE in aggressive capital letters.

It’s already on tomorrow’s list.

I look at the list. I look at my new note. I stick it on top of the old one anyway.

Redundancy is not the same as dysfunction. Redundancy is a system. Systems are good. Systems are what keep you from burning down your bookstore.

The closing checklist is taped to the back of the front door, written in purple ink on an index card I laminated myself at the library three years ago.

The lamination is starting to peel at the corners, which I’ve been meaning to fix, but every time I sit down to do it I get distracted by something else and then three hours have passed and I’ve organized my entire pen collection by color instead of accomplishing anything useful.

ADHD is fun like that.

Register closed and reconciled.

I look at the register. Did I reconcile it? I remember closing it. I remember the sound of the drawer sliding shut. But did I count the drawer first? Did I check the credit card receipts against the…

I walk back to the register and open the drawer. Count the bills. Check the receipts. Close the drawer.

Yes. Done. Move on.

Deposit prepared and locked in safe.

The safe is under the counter, and I kneel down to check it even though I already know the deposit is in there because I put it in there twenty minutes ago. The little stack of cash and checks is exactly where I left it, nestled in the fireproof interior, a very boring treasure.

Back door locked.

I walk to the back of the shop, past the chaos shelf that desperately needs reorganizing and the stack of returns I’ve been avoiding and the little bathroom with the sticky lock that I keep meaning to fix.

The back door is solid and green and leads to the alley where I park my car, and when I check the deadbolt it’s firmly in the locked position.

I check it again.

Still locked.

Third time.

Still locked.

“Okay.” I take a breath. Then another. “Okay. You’re done. You did all the things. Now you just have to do the other thing.”

The other thing.

The thing I’ve been avoiding for six years.

You can do this. You’re a person who drives. You drive places. Not often, and not far, and not without extensive preparation and at least one minor panic attack, but you do it. This is a thing you do.

I grab my bag from behind the counter, oversized canvas tote, covered in book-themed patches that Millie got me for my birthday, stuffed with receipts and sticky notes and a paperback I’ve been trying to finish for three weeks.

My jacket is hanging on the hook by the door, and my keys are in my jacket pocket, and my keys have the car key on them, and the car key opens the car, and the car is what I’m about to get into.

See? Logic. You’re very logical when you’re panicking.

I take one last look at my bookstore, my beautiful, cluttered, desperately-in-need-of-organization bookstore, and I give myself one more pep talk.

“You’re a person who drives. You drive places.

You’ve done it before and you’ll do it now.

The fact that you haven’t done it in a while doesn’t mean you can’t do it now.

The fact that your hands are shaking doesn’t mean you’re not capable.

The fact that your heart feels like it’s trying to escape through your throat is just…

enthusiasm. Cardiovascular enthusiasm. For driving. ”

My voice cracks on the last word.

I leave before I can talk myself out of it.

The alley behind Fable Tales smells like damp concrete and fallen leaves, that particular autumn scent that means the world is dying beautifully and will be born again in spring.

My car is parked in its usual spot, which is technically not a legal parking spot but also nobody in Hartsgrove has given me a ticket in three years, so I’ve decided it’s fine.

The Subaru is old enough to vote, a 2006 Outback in a color the dealership optimistically called “champagne gold” but which I would more accurately describe as “sad beige.” It has 187,000 miles on it, a concerning noise every time I turn left, a tape deck that I’ve never used because who owns tapes anymore, and a passenger seat that’s been empty so long there’s a permanent indent in the shape of my bag.

I love it. I hate it. I’m terrified of it.

It’s just a car. It’s just a machine. It can’t hurt you unless you let it.

Except that’s not true, is it? That’s the kind of thing people say when they’ve never had a reason to be afraid.

Cars hurt people all the time. Cars are two-ton metal boxes hurtling through space at speeds the human body was never designed to survive, and every single time you get in one, you’re making a bet that today isn’t the day the odds catch up with you.

Stop it. You’re spiraling. That’s the anxiety talking, not the facts.

I take a breath. Let it out. Take another.

The facts are: you have driven this car more times than you could ever count without incident.

The facts are: millions of people drive every day and arrive at their destinations safely.

The facts are: the thing you’re afraid of is statistically unlikely, and being afraid of it doesn’t change the statistics.

The facts don’t make me feel better, but they do make me feel like I’ve done my due diligence. Like I’ve acknowledged the fear and filed it under “noted but proceeding anyway.”

I get in the car.

The seat is cold through my jeans, and the steering wheel is cold under my palms, and for a moment I just sit there, letting myself adjust to the feeling of being in a vehicle instead of safely on solid ground.