Chapter 32
BOOKER
“Seth, I’m not in the mood,” I said as the door to the bar swung open without looking up from the glasses I was rearranging for the third time.
“Not Seth.”
The voice hit me like a brick to the back of the head.
Miles.
I glanced at the clock before I looked at him. Two o’clock.
So he’d had his meeting, then.
As subtly as I could, I took a deep breath. My fingers curled around the edge of the bar until my knuckles turned white.
I had to congratulate him, obviously. I had to. That was what friends were for.
I could go in the back and cry about it later.
“Miles,” I said, forcing myself to smile. I wanted to offer him a drink, or say I take it congratulations are in order, but I couldn’t trust my voice and I didn’t want it to break.
Miles picked his way over to the bar. I’d been so busy worrying about my own feelings that I hadn’t noticed when he came in that he wasn’t grinning at me.
Had they turned him down?
I hated the way my heart flipped at the thought. I didn’t want to keep him by default. I didn’t want staying in Otter Bay to feel like a disappointment.
“How, umm…” I forced myself to speak as he approached, pausing to clear my throat as he stopped in front of the bar, one hand on the back of a stool. “How’d it go?”
Miles’s tongue darted out to wet his lips. “They, umm. Angela offered me the job.”
Of course she had. There was no way she’d made the trip out here—even if it was only a detour on a visit to her family, like Miles had told me—if they weren’t serious about him. She definitely wouldn’t have planned to come back.
“Oh,” I said, in my best surprised voice. “Well, I knew they would. When do you start?”
Miles looked at me. My heart was pounding so hard in my ears that I couldn’t decide what the look meant.
I was losing him. I was about to lose him.
Now that the moment was here, I felt as though the floor was collapsing under me. I’d psyched myself up to be so gracious, so happy for him, whatever my feelings might have been. I was going to be the perfect supportive friend, because dammit, Miles needed the perfect supportive friend.
With him standing in front of me, though, I was learning first-hand about the road to hell and what the flagstones there were made of.
You should give him all the information. You’ll regret it if you don’t.
Seth’s words came back to me as though he was sitting on my shoulder like the better angel of my conscience. As was usually true with him, he was right.
Even if it’s as a parting gift.
He was right, and this might’ve been my last chance. If I didn’t tell Miles how I felt, I’d regret it.
Miles opened his mouth to speak. Probably, I should have let him. But if I didn’t speak up now, I might never find the courage again. Once he confirmed he was going, I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to tell him.
“The thing is, I’m in love with you.”
“—turned it down,” Miles finished.
I took a breath to apologize for talking over him, then registered what he’d said.
“Wait,” we said at the same time, staring at each other.
“I turned it down,” Miles repeated, voice tiny. As though he was waiting for me to scold him.
I almost did. Why balanced on the tip of my tongue for a heartbeat before I bit it off.
“Turned it down,” I repeated, still processing. I hadn’t considered the possibility. The way he’d talked about it, his excitement, all the research. It’d seemed like a done deal.
Miles nodded, biting his lower lip.
I stared at him. I wanted to say something, anything, but the buzz of static in my brain was so loud I would have expected it to come out of my mouth if I opened it right now.
Miles looked down at the bar, running his thumb over a tiny scratch in the finish. “Did you, umm. Did you say you loved me?”
He glanced up at me from under his eyelashes.
Miles was always beautiful—I’d thought of him as being like a wild deer before, and that was still true. There was something fragile about him. Right now, he gave the impression of an otherwise skittish animal rolling over to show someone their belly.
Me. To show me.
“Yes,” I said—croaked, more like. If Miles was a wild deer, I was a big, old toad.
“Did you mean it?” he asked, turning his face up to look me in the eyes.
Hope. There was hope there. Uncertain hope, the edges of it shimmering with disbelief.
“Yes,” I confirmed. Miles’s hope, somehow, had gotten into my voice. It wavered with nerves, but it was there. “I meant it.”
Miles broke into the biggest smile I’d ever seen on him. At least, I thought he did—I only caught sight of it for a split second before he grabbed my collar, hauled me forward over the bar, and kissed me.
Our noses collided, our teeth clicked, and it was the best kiss I’d ever had.
“You turned it down?” I asked against Miles’s lips when he let me have enough space to do so.
“I turned it down,” he agreed.
“It was your dream job,” I said.
Miles shrugged. “It was my dream job, yeah,” he said.
“But… that was when I couldn’t dream of a job where I felt like I was part of something bigger than myself.
Before I knew what it felt like to be part of a community.
To be… loved,” he said, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
“Besides, I’ve gotten attached to the books here. ”
“Would’ve been more in Chicago,” I pointed out, even as my heart started to unfurl from the tight ball it’d been curled up in for longer than I cared to think about. The space under my ribs felt too small for it as I took in what Miles was saying.
This was his dream job now. Here in Otter Bay.
“But not the one Book I want,” he said, looking me in the eyes again.
The one Book I want.
Me? He was talking about me.
“I love you, Book. You’re… you’re part of the dream.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came to mind. I’d never been part of anyone’s dream before.
People loved me. I knew that, I felt it, I was lucky to have them. But none of them would ever have stayed for me. Not like Miles was. Not like this.
“So it’s just as well you said you loved me, because this would all have been very embarrassing if you’d just like, been kind of into me.”
I laughed. What else could I have done?
Dreams I’d been too afraid to have were coming true for me right now.
“Come around the bar,” I said. “So I can kiss you properly.”