Fable
— · —
By the fourth day after the crash, I’ve healed enough to be dangerous to myself. The stepladder is only three rungs high.
I’ve climbed it a thousand times, to reach the top shelf, to adjust the window display, to change the light bulbs that burn out with suspicious frequency. It’s basically furniture at this point, more familiar than some of my actual chairs.
So when I step onto the second rung and reach for a hardcover that a customer requested this morning, I’m not expecting my brain to suddenly decide that gravity is a suggestion and the floor is actually the ceiling.
The world tilts. My vision goes swimmy. My hand closes on air instead of book spine, and I feel myself tipping backward, falling, about to crack my skull on the poetry section…
And then I’m not.
I’m in his arms, caught, steady, my back pressed against a chest with the density of warm stone.
For one second, one endless second, I feel all of him: the heat bleeding through my sweater, the solid band of his arm under my ribs, his breath stirring the hair at my temple.
My body, which nearly just died, decides this is the perfect moment to notice that being held by him feels less like being caught and more like being kept.
Get down. Get down get down get down.
I don’t move.
He was across the room. He was by the door, at least fifteen feet away. I saw him there when I started climbing.
“You need rest,” Orion says, and his voice is strained in a way I haven’t heard before. Tight. Almost angry. “Real rest. Not ‘sitting on a stool pretending you’re not working’ rest.”
“I’m fine.” The words come out automatically, even though I’m definitely not fine, even though my head is still spinning and my heart is hammering from the almost-fall. “I just got dizzy. It happens.”
“You almost cracked your skull on the poetry section.”
“I would have hit fiction. Much softer.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
He makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be a growl, I genuinely can’t tell, and sets me down on my feet with exaggerated care, like I’m made of glass and he’s afraid of breaking me.
How did he catch me? He was across the room. I saw him.
Another thing that doesn’t quite add up about Orion Halloran. The list is getting long.
“I’m taking you to my house,” he announces.
“Excuse me?”
“My house. In the woods.” He’s already moving, collecting my bag from behind the counter, checking that the register is closed. “The store isn’t letting you rest. You keep trying to work.”
“Because it’s my store. Working is what I do here.”
“Exactly. So we’re going somewhere you can’t work.”
“I can work anywhere. I have a phone. I have anxiety. I can worry about inventory spreadsheets from literally any location.”
He pauses, bag in hand, and looks at me with an expression caught between exasperated and fond. “You’re very stubborn.”
“Thank you.”
“It wasn’t a compliment.”
“I’m taking it as one anyway.”
He sighs, actually sighs, like I’m personally exhausting him, and holds out my jacket. “My house is quiet. You’ll eat dinner. You’ll actually recover. And you won’t be tempted to climb any ladders.”
“And how do I know you’re not taking me there to kill me?”
The question comes out lighter than I intend, more flirty than serious, but his eyes flicker anyway. Surprise, maybe. Or amusement at how long it took me to ask.
“I’ve spent four days bringing you groceries and alphabetizing your shelves,” he points out. “That seems like a lot of effort for a murder plan.”
“Maybe you’re playing with your food.”
Did I just… did I just imply that I’m his food? What is wrong with me? Why does my brain do this?
But instead of looking disturbed, he looks… intrigued. His head tilts slightly, and warmth moves across his face, and my stomach does an unnecessary flip.
“Maybe I am,” he says, voice dropping lower. “I guess you’ll have to trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone.”
“You trusted me to drive you home from the hospital.”
“I was concussed. That doesn’t count.”
“You trusted me to cook you breakfast.”
“You had eggs. I was hungry. Survival instinct.”
“You trusted me with your checklist.”
That stops me. Because he’s right. I did trust him with that. Trusted him enough to let him see my systems, my coping mechanisms, the scaffolding I’ve built around my chaos to keep myself functional. And he didn’t mock me for it. He laminated it.
“Fine,” I say, because I don’t have a counter-argument and we both know it. “Take me to your murder cabin. But if I end up dead in a ditch, I’m haunting you forever.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”
His house is ridiculous.
Not ridiculous in a McMansion way, not flashy or tacky or trying too hard. Ridiculous in an of course this is where he lives way, the universe having apparently designed a house to match Orion Halloran’s entire aesthetic.
It’s an A-frame cabin, all dark wood and floor-to-ceiling windows, perched on a ridge overlooking the valley like it grew there organically.
The view is a view that should be illegal, mountains rolling into the distance, trees catching the last of the autumn light, a sky that’s turning pink and orange in ways that make me want to write poetry and then immediately burn it for being too earnest.
“This is where you live,” I say flatly.
“Yes.”
“Alone.”
“Mostly.”
“In the woods.”
“On the mountain, technically.”
“This is a serial killer house.” I turn to look at him, arms crossed. “You understand that, right? This is exactly the kind of house where people get murdered in true crime podcasts.”
“It has good natural lighting.”
“Serial killer houses often do. Helps with the cleanup.”
His mouth twitches. “Would you like a tour?”
“I’d like to know where the exits are.”
“Front door, back door, and technically the windows open wide enough to climb through if you’re motivated.”
“I’m noting that for later.”
He leads me inside, and the interior is exactly what I expected based on the exterior: clean lines, expensive furniture, everything in its place.
The books on his shelves are alphabetized by author’s last name, then by publication date within author.
I can see it from across the room. It’s both impressive and slightly unhinged.
Of course his books are organized by publication date. Of course they are.
“You live here alone?” I ask again, running my fingers along the back of a leather couch that probably costs more than my annual rent. “Aren’t you supposed to be, like, thirty-four with a wife and a boat?”
“No boat.” He’s in the kitchen now, doing something that involves opening cabinets with unnecessary precision. “The lake talks too much.”
I pause. “The lake talks?”
“Old joke.” He glances at me over his shoulder. “You wouldn’t get it. It’s very old.”
“How old can a joke about a lake be?”
“Old enough.”
That’s not an answer. That’s barely even a deflection.
I tuck it away with the rest. At this rate I’m going to need a filing cabinet.
“This isn’t a house,” I announce, wandering toward the windows. “It’s a museum. A very clean, very organized, slightly intimidating museum.”
“Is it intimidating?”
“Everything about you is intimidating.” I turn to face him. “The height. The jaw. The sweater collection. The fact that you apparently read romance novels and remember details about carriage scenes.”
“The carriage scene was very well-written.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
I open my mouth to answer, then close it, because I don’t actually know what the point is.
I just know that standing in his perfect house, surrounded by his perfect furniture, looking at his perfect face, I feel like I’ve wandered into a book I haven’t read the back cover of.
Like I missed some crucial piece of setup that would make all of this make sense.
“This is a sexy museum,” I say finally, because my brain-to-mouth filter has completely given up. “Your house is a sexy museum and I don’t know what to do with that information.”
A flicker moves through his eyes. A look almost like heat, quickly controlled.
“Did you just call my house sexy?”
“Did I stutter?”
“You did not.”
“Then yes. I called your house sexy. Your house is sexy. You can put that on your listing if you ever sell. ‘Gorgeous A-frame, mountain views, aggressively sexy atmosphere.’”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
He’s looking at me, and his eyes are darker now than they were a moment ago, more focused, and I realize suddenly that we’re standing too close. That at some point during my rambling, I wandered toward the kitchen and he turned to face me and now there’s maybe two feet of space between us.
This is a bad idea. This is such a bad idea. He’s a stranger. A stranger who showed up at your hospital bed and alphabetized your chaos shelf and made you laminated coping mechanisms.
A stranger you’ve been living in the same orbit as for four days, who makes you breakfast and catches you when you fall and looks at you like…
“Dinner,” he says abruptly, turning back to the stove. “You should sit. Rest. I’ll cook.”
I sit.
Coward, says a voice in my head that sounds suspiciously like Millie. You’re both cowards.
Dinner is some kind of pasta situation that has no right being as good as it is.
We eat at his kitchen island, because of course he has a kitchen island, a big slab of marble or granite or whatever expensive stone rich people put in their kitchens, and I try to focus on the food instead of the way his forearms look when he rolls up his sleeves.
I never noticed forearms before this week. Now I’m apparently a collector.
“This is really good,” I admit, because credit where credit is due. “Where did you learn to cook?”
“Practice. I’ve had a lot of time to learn.”
“What, in your thirty-four years?” I raise an eyebrow. “Thirty-four years isn’t that long. My mom spent forty years trying to learn to cook and never quite managed.”
A shadow crosses his face, there and gone, too fast to read. “Some people are faster learners.”
“Some people are modest about their kitchen skills.”
“Modesty is overrated.”
“So is false humility, apparently.”
He smiles at that, full and unguarded, and I feel it in my chest, a physical impact. A warm hand pressed to my sternum and squeezing.
Stop it. Stop feeling things about his smile. This is a temporary situation. He’s going to stop showing up eventually. Everyone stops showing up eventually.
“Tell me about the bookstore,” he says, refilling my water glass without being asked. “How long have you owned it?”
“Three years. It was called something else before, Books and More, which is the most boring name imaginable, and I spent my entire savings on the down payment and rebranding.”
“Fable Tales. Because of your name.”
“Because of my parents.” It’s out of my mouth before I can catch it, and I freeze, fork halfway up.
Don’t go there. Don’t talk about them. He doesn’t need to know about…
“They named you Fable,” he says, and it’s not a question. Just an observation, offered gently.
“Yeah.” I set down my fork. “They were… literary people. My dad was an English professor. My mom worked at a library. They met arguing about Shakespeare in a coffee shop.”
“What were they arguing about?”
“Whether Much Ado About Nothing was a comedy or a tragedy.” I smile despite myself. “My dad said comedy because it ends with weddings. My mom said tragedy because all the funny parts are about how much the characters are hurting.”
“Who won?”
“They got married, so. Draw your own conclusions.”
He’s quiet for a moment, watching me with an expression I can’t quite read. Then: “You talk about them in past tense.”
Damn it. Damn it, why did I…
“I don’t…” I push the pasta around my plate, suddenly not hungry. “I don’t really want to talk about that.”
“Okay.”
That’s it. Just okay. No pushing, no follow-up questions, no attempts to pry open the door I just slammed shut. Just acceptance, simple and clean.
Who does that? Who respects boundaries without being asked twice?
“You’re weird,” I tell him.
“So I’ve been told.”
“I mean it as a compliment.”
“I’ll take it as one anyway.”
We finish dinner in comfortable silence, and I help him clean up, or try to, anyway, until he physically removes the sponge from my hand and points me toward the couch.
“Rest,” he says. “That’s the whole point of bringing you here.”
“I’m rested. I’ve been sitting on a stool for three days.”
“You’ve been worrying on a stool for three days. That’s different.”
He’s not wrong. He’s annoyingly, infuriatingly not wrong.
I sit on the couch. He hands me a blanket, soft, expensive, probably made from the wool of ethically raised alpacas or something, and I wrap it around myself while he finishes in the kitchen.
“Stay for dinner,” he says, and it’s not a question. More like a statement of fact, delivered after we’ve already eaten dinner, which should be logically impossible but somehow isn’t.
“I already stayed for dinner.”
“Stay for tomorrow’s dinner. And the one after that.”
“That sounds like an invitation to move in.”
“That sounds like you’re avoiding the question.”
I am. I absolutely am.
“I have a concussion,” I say. “I’m not supposed to make important decisions.”
“Is having dinner with me an important decision?”
“It feels like one.”
He’s standing at the edge of the living room now, backlit by the kitchen lights, and his expression is doing something complicated that I can’t quite parse. A look like hope, or want, or maybe just patience wearing thin.
“Stay,” he says again, softer this time.
I open my mouth to answer, to say yes or no or something in between, when a sound cuts through the quiet.
A howl.
Long, low, mournful, rolling down the mountain in one slow wave, echoing off the windows of his perfect house. It sounds close. It sounds very close.
I flinch instinctively, pulling the blanket tighter. “What was that?”
“Wolves.” He says it calmly, casually, like someone commenting on the weather. “They live in the woods up here. Harmless, mostly.”
“Harmless mostly?”
“They don’t come near the house.”
“How do you know?”
“We have an understanding.”
I stare at him. He stares back. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t react. Doesn’t show any sign that a wolf howling maybe fifty feet from his windows is anything worth worrying about.
Normal people react to wolves. Normal people at least look concerned.
“You’re weird,” I say again.
“You said that already.”
“It bears repeating.”
The howl comes again, closer this time, and I swear I see something flash in his eyes, a flicker of gold, there and gone, but when I blink, they’re gray again. Normal. Steady.
“Stay for dinner,” he says, one more time.
And somewhere in the dark woods beyond his windows, the wolves answer for him.