Chapter Five
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Does this count as a meet cute, do you think?
Leora
This can’t be happening. This really, truly, so seriously cannot be happening. Except, of course, for the fact that it is happening.
Wolfe Blackwood is here. In Hunter’s Moon. Amongst my crystals and my handmade jewelry and my dried herbs, his bulk working in tandem with Sterne Donavon’s to erase an entire quarter of space within these walls. Behind them, Almond’s pink hair flashes at me as she shakes her hand in a jaunty wave.
My arm moves automatically, waving back at my friend and hairdresser as I swallow against the acid in my throat.
Wolfe is here.
In my shop.
Wolfe is here, in my shop, after I told him no.
At least he has the decency to look horrified about the situation as Sterne drags him through the wooden shelves and display cases, shocking me in their grace. They may be bulls in a crystal shop, but they are not making a mess of the place. My heart, on the other hand…
The naive, hopeful little thing leaps.
“Stop that,” I murmur. Per usual, she does a disastrous job of listening to me. She beats ever faster, a cacophony of falling stars crashing into her one after another, making the pattern of her song stumble, skip, and strain.
I cross my arms across my chest and draw my brows low over my eyes.
Wolfe lurches nearer, a… gift from Sterne.
“Is Amia okay?” I ask as the errant organ in my chest threatens to go into a seismic event.
“Did something happen?” Something happening being the only logical, forgivable reason I can think of for Wolfe to be here, in my shop, after I told him no.
He may be a human man, but that doesn’t mean I can’t exercise the benefit of the doubt at least once.
His eyes widen, oceanic depths sparkling surprise. Not a moment later, they soften to such a degree that I step back, unable to bear the pang such an expression on such a face elicits in my chest. My stars, he’s dangerous when he goes soft.
“Goodness,” I whisper. “Stars.” My heart positively lurches when his mouth dares to curl into a miniscule, gracious-it’s-so-gentle smile.
“Amia is okay,” he answers, unraveling my attempts to drag my heart—and my nervous system—back under my control.
“Goodness,” I repeat, weak. His voice. It’s not at all like the feminine lilt of my own thought-voice I read his letters with. It’s masculine and strong and…
Sorry, what did he say?
“Amia is okay?” The gauzy, loose sleeves of my shirt fall as I clutch my hands to my chest, revealing a smattering of thin, gold bracelets, which catch Wolfe’s eye.
Or maybe it’s my chest that’s lured his attention.
After all, a man who ignores an explicit no is likely not the sort to become mesmerized by a few shiny bits of metal.
“You’re wearing the bracelet we got you.”
Oh. My. Freaking. Stars.
“I’m confused,” I say, because I am. So confused.
Because a man who ignores a no is not a man who notices what jewelry a woman is wearing, and a man who ignores a no is not a man whose eyes soften like molten sapphires, and a man who ignores a no is not a man who sets my heart trampling through my chest like the clash of a hundred falling stars hitting land.
And yet.
Here he stands.
Wolfe’s sharp canines dig into his lower lip as he hesitates, seeming unsure in what to tell me—in how to spin this scenario to make a lick of justifiable sense. Behind him, Sterne experiences no such qualms.
“Wolfe’s here to kidnap you,” he says. “And Almond and I are here to make sure he follows through with it.”
A breath wheezes out of my mouth, followed by a curse.
Almond skirts around her brother and his friend, who exchange looks which could be interpreted as conversation, if only I knew the language of their eyelashes and irises. Alas, I do not.
“Isn’t this incredible?” Almond whisper-squeals. “A kidnapping! So romantic!”
Understanding doesn’t just hit me, it wallops me.
“Almond,” I breathe, horrified. “Almond, this isn’t a book. You can’t orchestrate a matchmaker type of kidnapping in real life. Book club stays at book club. Emphasis on the book, in case you weren’t getting that. B-O-O-K. Book. Fiction. Not reality. Fake. Faux.”
Wolfe adds hands to their visual conversation in a universally interpretable Yeah, what she’s saying! sort of way, and Sterne crosses his arms, eyebrow raised in an equally interpretable What’s that got to do with anything?
“Well, obviously the book kidnappings are… bad… probably,” Almond says.
“Sort of, anyway, but this kidnapping is totally kosher and chill. This is a friends-to-lovers situation, so none of that angsty vitriol and emotional torment that the typical enemies-to-lovers kidnapping entails. Just pure, unadulterated romance.” She sighs dreamily, swaying on her feet.
“Friends to what?” I hiss. I poke her toward a golden velvet chaise lounge on the other side of the floor before she can swoon where we stand.
The chaise gets bonus points for being farther away from Wolfe, who’s moved from nonverbal communication to harried whispers with Sterne.
Fervently, I ignore them both in a bid to protect what little bits of sanity this current situation might allow me to keep.
I am wholly unprepared to deal with Wolfe Real Man, as we all well know, and so, I simply will not until I have absolutely no other choice but to acknowledge and interact.
“Lovers,” Almond repeats. “Is that not obvious?”
“Almond.”
“Leora?”
“Almond.”
“Leora??”
Screw Almond’s potential swooning, I throw my own self onto the chaise distressed-princess style. “I am not friends-to-lovering your brother!” I hiss. “I didn’t even want to meet him!”
She plops down next to me, mother-knows-best style.
“That’s how the kidnapping trope usually starts, yes.
If you wanted to be with him, then the kidnapping would just be…
a date? I guess? I don’t know. Nobody is writing consensual kidnapping.
It would be stupid and boring.” She tips her head toward Wolfe.
“Us, though? We’re cornering the market here.
Double non-consent. Wolfe is being coerced and bullied into this.
Not as hot, I know, but maybe you’re in a regular degular romcom instead of the dark romances we prefer?
” She shrugs. “The only thing I know is that the two of you belong together, and I had an opportunity to be a part of making that happen in the funnest of ways. I did think you’d be a little more excited about a kidnapping, but whatever.
” She sniffs. “If you’ve gone soft and boring, that’s fine. I guess.”
I gape. “You are not trying to guilt me into being excited about my impending abduction.”
She shrugs. “I’m not trying to do anything. All those book club meetings with you raving about the romance of cages and chains and the like just had me thinking that maybe you’d appreciate the efforts Sterne and I have gone to a little bit more.” She blinks wide, shining blue eyes.
I sigh. “Al, I know he’s your brother, and you love him, but he’s a man.
And there’s a whole lot of difference between me sending him letters and me being within six feet of him.
” I shake my head. “Also, I told him I didn’t want to meet.
This–” I wave a hand toward the rising voices across the shop.
“Is not okay. In a book is one thing. In a book, we know it’s not real.
We know that the characters are meant to be together, or soulmates, or fated, or whatever else.
Real life doesn’t work like that. Real life people don’t live up to the stories woven on pages, no matter how badly we want them to.
Real life people act in ways that belay whatever goodness they might be on paper.
Real life people disappoint. Real life men especially.
This isn’t a love story, my friend. This is the culmination of all my fears come to life.
This is a situation we can’t come back from.
We only have forward. And forward? That’s where my heart breaks. ”
As it is, the poor organ is already hoping for things she’s never going to get.
We know. We’ve been here before—not here here, with a pen pal come to kidnap, but here at a crossroads where we have to choose to believe in the goodness of a man we think we know or protect ourselves.
Last time, we believed for far too long that a man would change for us—because he should have, because he was supposed to, because a father is meant to father his daughter, not force her into responsibilities she never should have had.
I will not be making that mistake again, no matter what my hopeless romantic heart would have me do. This time, I’m in charge of my fate.
This time, we stay safe from the disappointment of disappointing men.
“But what if it’s better with him?” Almond asks, not unkindly.
“But what if it’s not?” I reply, smiling sadly.
Her eyes soften in a forlorn echo of her brother’s, pity taking the place of the kinder emotions that swirled in his blue. Then, more alarming than the pity, resolve takes over. I brace myself and am glad for it when the next words out of her mouth do not bode well for me.
“That’s okay, Leora. You don’t have to be sure at all.” An unhinged, probably-she’s-on-drugs grin spreads across her face. “That’s what kidnapping is for!”