Chapter 14 #2
The truest thing about Shane has always seemed to be the part of him that loves this place the same way I do. He knows where every genre belongs. He remembers customers' favorite authors. He argues passionately about endings and gets personally offended when people dog-ear pages.
I don't know if I can trust him with my life or my business or whatever else is happening underneath all of this.
But I trust him with the books.
Callum and I spend the afternoon getting the sections to find their walls again, and the sofas and reading chairs angled back like they never left. The Fall in Love, You Coward display goes back into the front window where the late afternoon light hits the spines just right.
Around 2:00, Shane texts to let me know the truck is loaded and the pop-up is empty.
Me: Thank you! Please lock up and I'll see you here in the morning to unload.
Shane: Sure thing.
By 6:00, the furniture is back where it was, the signage is up, and a third of the books are shelved in their right places. It looks like a bookstore again. My bookstore.
Callum steps up beside me, close enough that I feel it before I look. "Hey," he says, quiet. "Reopening day on Monday. Your regulars are going to line up around the block."
I glance at him. "That optimism feels suspicious."
He huffs a quiet laugh. "You caught me," he says. "Terrible mistake on my part. I was hoping to maintain an air of mystery for at least another week."
Then his expression shifts, quieter around the edges.
"I already know people will come back," he says. "You built something they don’t leave."
A beat passes.
"Which is inconvenient for my whole mysterious billionaire image, honestly."
I let out a breath and shove another stack of books into place. "I still have author events to book and an order that got delayed during remediation."
Callum slides a hardcover onto the shelf beside me, taps the spine into alignment, then points at the row like he's presenting evidence in court. "You'll get it done."
I glance over. "That confidence feels irresponsible."
"I've seen you reorganize an entire store while fighting with city inspectors and publicly feuding with a newspaper." He steps back to study the shelf. "Honestly, I don't think there's much of anything that's outside your skill set."
I snort and move down the row while Callum keeps shelving books beside me.
“Before you lock up tonight, check the last row in this section,” he says casually, sliding another paperback into place.
I look at him immediately. “You definitely hid something.”
“Suspicious of you to assume that.”
“You literally just told me to always be suspicious.”
“That sounds like responsible guidance from a concerned citizen.”
I glance over. “Why?”
“I want independent verification that my shelving skills meet your standards.”
“You own multiple commercial properties. I refuse to believe alphabetizing is where your confidence falls apart.”
“Humor me anyway.”
Then he comes up behind me and rests his hand lightly on my hip. “I’ve got to finish some work before the day’s over, but I’ll come by later if you want. Call me when you lock up and head home.”
I straighten another spine. "I might go home and write tonight. I'm so behind."
"Okay. Just let me know."
He steps closer.
The anticipation hits first. By the time his fingers slide under my chin and turn my face toward his, my body is already there ahead of my brain.
Then he kisses me once, quick and warm enough that I feel it all the way down to my ribs.
"But call me when you lock up anyway."
"Bossy."
He looks back at me, one hand already on the door. "You say that like it's a complaint."
"It was meant to be a warning."
"Too late," he says easily. "I'm already attached to the job."
Then he laughs under his breath and heads for the door. "Bye, Avery."
His car pulls away from the curb and I watch through the window until the taillights go, then I lock the front door and keep shelving books.
That's when I find a note between two spines in the last shelf Callum had worked on in the Fall in Love, You Coward section.
It's Callum's handwriting, different in every way that matters, even and deliberate. I read it while standing at the front display.
You're mine to protect whether you like it or not. — C
The worst part is that I can tell he meant it as both a threat assessment and a love language.
I stand there for a moment thinking about my question about being in danger, wondering how I should take his note. Then I put it in my pocket.
I text him when I get home.
Me: Found your note. Thank you. I'm home but going to write tonight so I'll see you at the store tomorrow, I'm getting there around eight.
He responds in under a minute
Callum: Good. Lock your door.
Me: Always do.
I lock it, then call Cordelia.
"You moved back in," she says.
"The store looks good. The cameras are—"
"Is that what you want to talk about? The store?"
I balance the phone between my shoulder and my ear and pull a frozen burrito out of the freezer. "The Ventura County Star ran a thing," I say.
"I saw it." A beat. "Are you okay, or do I need to commit a misdemeanor?"
The question catches me off guard.
"I've survived worse journalism."
"Good. Because the photo, Maureen Pike's quote, what the headline's suggesting is the most transparent thing I've ever read in a publication that calls itself a newspaper." A pause. "His hand on your back looked very… present."
I nearly drop the burrito on the floor.
"Cordelia."
"Placed."
"I'm hanging up."
"Don't hang up, this is not a drill and I need you emotionally available," she says at maximum amplitude. "I met someone."
I peel back the burrito wrapper. "OK, thank you for not making me the one making all the bad decisions."
"I met him on Mingle, which statistically places him above men who list 'entrepreneur' and below men who have a tattoo of their mom, so it's the least bad decision I could possibly make."
"Mingle has been the origin of most of your recent bad decisions."
She ignores my comment and continues. "We moved off the app to texting, and then today we did Phase Two: Public Verification of Humanity at a coffee shop and determine whether the person is, in fact, a person." A pause for effect. "Which he, in fact, is."
"High bar."
"In this economy, Avery. He has a job and furniture."
"You went to his house?"
"No, I saw it in the background of one of his profile pictures, and he said it was of him and his cat at home."
"He has a cat? I thought you said that was an ultimate red flag—"
"Only if it's his whole personality," she cuts in. "Instead, it's a supportive cat situation."
Again, ignoring. "He listened, then asked questions. He’s also very hot. Do you know how rare that is? He might be the One."
"Cordelia, you met him once for coffee."
"Well, at least for the meantime," she says. "Which is still the One, just with a shorter warranty and a more flexible return policy."
I put the burrito in the microwave and watch it rotate. "That's not right. Deely, the One isn't supposed to be for the meantime. The One is supposed to be the One."
"I've collapsed the categories," she says, completely untroubled by this. "He's both. He’s the One."
"That's not how—"
"Do you want his name or not?"
I take my burrito out of the microwave. "I want his name, address, number, and kindergarten teacher's name."
"That feels invasive," she says, delighted. "His name is—"
We talk for another twenty minutes, which includes her full scene-by-scene account where "he ordered an oat-milk latte with the confidence of a man who has never once been wrong about himself" with a brief sidebar about Maureen Pike and what she'd do to her given thirty seconds and an unmonitored venue.
She promises that she'll stop by the store tomorrow while I'm putting my dishes in the sink, then we say goodbye and hang up.
Then I sit down on the couch with my laptop and open the manuscript.
The chapter I've been stuck on for more than a week opens in front of me. I read the last paragraph I wrote and then I put my fingers on the keys and write.
I don't know what's different tonight, but the words come the way they can when I've stopped managing them, without negotiation or the particular self-conscious friction of a writer watching herself write. An hour passes, then two. The chapters that have been sitting, blocked and waiting, move.
Callum's note is in my pocket the whole time. Warm and specific. I reach for it once, around nine o'clock, take it out and read it again.
You're mine to protect whether you like it or not.
I feel it split cleanly down the middle.
One half is warm in a way I don't have an exact word for.
I can still feel the ghost of Callum's fingers under my chin from earlier, the quick press of his mouth against mine, the way my body answered before my brain had the chance to object.
Disarmed, maybe, or that particular feeling of being seen by someone who isn't asking permission first. He never offers things like questions. He says them like facts.
The other half is cooler and sits lower.
I know this story. I've read it. In a different and considerably more catastrophic version, I've lived it.
It's about the man who decides what you need before you finish the sentence, calls it protection, and is so certain of his own good intentions that the word regardless never registers as a problem until it very much is.
I wrote a whole novel about a woman who couldn't tell the difference until chapter twenty-two. My editor called it "emotionally devastating and structurally sound." It was a compliment because the book was one of my popular ones.
I don't know, sitting here on my couch with my laptop and the best writing night I've had all year, whether this story I'm living is different.
I want it to be different. I can feel how much I want it to be different. But, wanting something to be true has never once made it true, and I know how these stories go.
At 8:03 the next morning, I unlock the front door and stand in the middle of my own bookstore, in the space I've been fighting with for thirty days, and I let myself have exactly five seconds of something that might be satisfaction.
Shane arrives shortly after.
He comes in with his easy golden-retriever smile, jacket in hand, moving through the door like he belongs here, which I would have agreed with a month ago.
"Morning, boss." He hangs his jacket over the back of the chair behind the register before heading for the coffee machine like muscle memory takes him there. Like nothing in the world is wrong.
The thought has been there since the morning I found the piece of paper next to a restock box.
It's his handwriting.
He makes coffee for us and when he hands me a cup made exactly the way he knows I take it, he sees my face (or whatever version I'm showing, which I've been managing since approximately chapter one of whatever this is) and he smiles.
"What time are the movers coming?"
"Any time now," I say. "Why don't you work on Future Main Characters until they get here?"
The heat from the coffee mug presses into my palms, familiar and steady, the kind of detail my body recognizes before my brain catches up.
I hold it there like it’s an answer to something I haven’t said out loud, with Pham's case building somewhere I can't see, Callum's cameras hidden in the corners, and his note now stashed in my bag.
I take a sip.
"Thanks for the coffee," I say automatically, then pause with the mug halfway to my mouth.
Perfect as usual.
The thought lands differently now. Intimate in a way I didn't used to question.
"Exactly how I like it."
"My pleasure," he says, and goes to start on restocking the kids' section.
I watch him cross the store, easy, unhurried, like this is just another morning, like none of it matters, like none of it ever did. My gaze lifts past him to the camera in the corner and I keep my expression exactly where I left it, waiting for the movers and to see what Shane does next.