Chapter 20
I reach for the deadbolt just as headlights sweep across the front windows. A second later I catch movement through the glass and look up to see Jonah crossing the sidewalk toward the store.
For a second, the tension in my chest breaks on instinct alone.
I unlock the door before he reaches it.
"Well, this is rude," he says as soon as I pull it open. "I drive all the way out here and my welcome committee is already locking up."
I let out a breath that almost feels normal and step into him before he can say anything else. "You're early," I say into his jacket.
"You say that like it's a bad thing." He wraps me up in a tight hug. "Hi to you too."
I laugh once against his shoulder, tired enough that it comes out thin, and hold on for an extra second because I have not seen him in weeks and because tonight has felt like somebody steadily pulling threads loose inside me.
When I step back, Jonah walks inside.
"You weren't home, so I figured I'd come by the store," he starts, then stops.
The shift happens right after the door closes.
He looks at me first, then at Callum, then around the bookstore like he can still feel whatever Shane left behind hanging in the air. Whatever joke he was about to make disappears before it reaches his mouth.
"What did I walk into?"
"Nothing," I say, even though it doesn't sound believable the second it leaves my mouth.
Jonah lets that sit for a beat, then drops his bag beside the counter. "Right," he says. "Because this definitely feels like nothing."
Nobody answers him. I keep my hands braced on the counter while Callum stays where he is near the display table, watching the whole thing unfold without stepping into it.
Jonah looks between us slowly, and I watch the moment his read of the room shifts from something he thinks he already understands to something he doesn't. He lands on Callum for a half second too long.
"Okay," he says. "So are we finally doing this conversation or what?"
The question hits wrong.
I stare at him. "Is that why you came out here?"
His brows pull together. "What?"
I've been bracing for this since before it was anything to brace for. Since the first time I admitted to myself this wasn't going to stay whatever I needed to tell myself it was. I've been hearing Jonah's voice running the preview for weeks. Cal's not built for this, Av. You know how he is.
"You finally get a few days off and decide it's time to tell me what you already told me to watch out for? That he's going to do what he always does?"
Something moves across Jonah's face. Not surprise, exactly. More like acknowledgment. The particular expression of someone who has been found out on something he wasn't quite ready to say yet.
"I walked in and the two of you looked like somebody hit pause in the middle of a breakup scene. I'm trying to figure out why."
I push away from the counter and immediately step back into it. “You are not turning my bookstore into an emotionally charged town hall meeting tonight,” I say.
“Doing what?”
“The thing where you stand there pretending you're asking a question when you've already made your assessment.” The words come out sharper than I mean them to. “I’ve been waiting for this conversation and I'm not doing it like this.”
Jonah blinks once. “I wasn't—”
"You told me," I say. "A long time ago, you told me how he was with women. I already know what you think happens when women get involved with him."
Callum goes still near the display table.
“You walked in here already knowing exactly who he is to me,” I say. “So don't stand there acting like you weren't already halfway through the lecture in your head.”
Jonah is quiet for a moment, and the quiet has a shape to it.
Callum finally speaks. "She made her decision before she found out my life had significantly more conspiracy in it than advertised."
Jonah looks at him. Something in his jaw moves. "Yeah," he says. "Okay." He says it to Callum in a register I recognize — the one that isn't agreement, that's just a man holding something in place while he figures out what to do with it.
"It's not about you two," Jonah says. "Is it." Not a question.
"No," I say.
The store goes quiet again.
Jonah drags a hand over the back of his neck and exhales. "Then I'm missing something. What just walked out of here?"
I let out a breath and push my palm flat against the counter, grounding myself in the solid edge of it, because the feeling in my chest is familiar in the worst way and I'm not seventeen anymore.
I drag my hand across the counter and catch the edge of a receipt roll, then set it back in place because my hands need something to do. "Give me a second," I say, more to the room than to either of them.
Callum watches me without interrupting. Jonah stays where he is, but he lowers his shoulders a fraction.
I pull in a breath and let it out slow. "I'm not actually mad at you," I say to Jonah, then glance at Callum. "Or you."
Jonah tips his head. "Then who?"
"No one," I say, and shake my head when that doesn't land right. "It's everything else. The move, the fire, the last hour. It's my employee walking in here and saying just enough to leave a hole I can't close, and then walking out like that fixes anything."
I slide a pen on the counter to the left. "It's the two of us up against whatever's on the other side of that door," I add.
Callum's eyes flick to mine immediately.
I feel the look before I fully meet it, something warm and steady moving underneath everything else in the room.
I nod once toward him, then back to Jonah. "And you walking in right after like there was somewhere else for all of that to go."
Jonah studies me for another second, then drags a hand down his face. "Avery, I wasn't trying to come in here and start something," he says. "I got held up on a brush fire in the mountains and couldn't get away sooner. I've been trying to get out here since the fire happened."
Some of the fight leaks out of me at that.
He shifts his weight and looks around the bookstore again, softer this time. "I'm here because I wanted to see you," he says. "And because I should've been here earlier. I'm sorry I wasn't."
"Yeah, well." I plant my feet, steadying my thoughts. "I'm not letting this turn into something territorial in my store after the night I just had."
"Nobody's being territorial," Jonah says.
He lets his arms fall to his sides and steps closer, close enough that I can see him take in my face. His eyes move over me like he's checking for something.
I hold his gaze for a second, then look away, pressing my fingertips into the counter.
He shifts his weight, and when I look back his expression has changed, quieter and more careful than it was a second ago.
"Then tell me what happened," he says. "Tell me what I'm missing."
So I do. Quickly, without dramatics, the way you explain something to someone who loves you and needs the shape of it more than the details.
Stein. Shane. The fire code documents altered and filed with the county.
Shane's mother. The acquisition map and schedule with notes in his handwriting.
Callum's years of groundwork running underneath all of it, Detective Pham. The fire and the arrests.
Jonah listens without interrupting, which isn't something he does naturally. When I finish, the room is quiet for a moment.
He looks at Callum.
"You kept her in front of it," he says. "Thanks Cal."
"I kept her in front of as much of it as I could," Callum says. "There are things about the case I couldn't share. That I still can't."
Jonah is quiet for another moment, weighing that. Then something in his posture changes. Not softening, exactly, but settling.
He crosses the room and comes straight to me, closing the distance without looking at Callum again. His hand finds my shoulder and then he pulls me in, firm and immediate, like he has done a hundred times before.
I go into him before I can think about it, my hands catching the back of his shirt, my forehead pressing into his collarbone as he wraps both arms around me and holds on.
"Hey," he says quietly, and I feel it more than I hear it. He doesn't ask anything. He just stays there, one hand at the back of my head, the other across my upper back, steady and solid, and the tightness in my chest loosens in a way I wasn't expecting.
I breathe in and out against him and let myself stay there for a second longer than I would if anyone else were watching, because this is my brother and this is what he does when something goes wrong. He holds on until I'm the one who shifts.
When he finally lets me go, he keeps his hands on my shoulders and steps back just enough to look at me, still close, still anchoring me in place. It's the same way he's done it since I was little, checking my face like he can read the whole situation off it if he looks hard enough.
He looks at Callum over my head for a moment. Something passes between them that I'm not meant to see all of, the particular shorthand of two people who have known each other longer than they've known most things.
"She matters a lot to me," he says finally, looking at Callum and then back at me. "You both do. So whatever this is between you, it can't be something casual."
Jonah has spent years telling other people what they deserve from love. Somehow he's never sounded quite as certain when the conversation turns toward his own future.
Callum straightens slightly beside the counter like Jonah's words physically hit him.
"It isn't," Callum says immediately.
He stays quiet, waiting.
Callum pushes off the counter and looks at me before he answers him fully, and the look settles somewhere low in my chest before he even speaks.
"I'm not here for something temporary," he says. "I wouldn't have brought her this far into my life if that's all this was to me." His gaze stays on mine another second. "And I have every intention of this still being here long after the rest of this mess is over."