Chapter 8 #2
“What happened?” he suddenly asked, so softly I barely heard it.
“What?” I turned to look at him.
“To your favourite coffee shop.”
“Oh.” The thought alone gave me slight jitters. “A murder.” I shrugged like that news didn’t give me nightmares for days. Because the murder happened a few minutes after Kenzo and I left there.
“Someone was murdered in cold blood.” My gaze trailed off, but I was staring at nothing in particular, just remembering what Fitz’s Lit and Brew used to look like. “The killer was…a ghost.”
He raised a perfectly arched snow-kissed brow. “Ghost?”
“No witnesses, no traces, no fingerprints. Nothing.” A heavy sigh broke out of my lips.
“Oh,” he murmured, a fall in his expression, and a gaze in his eyes I couldn’t quite place. “That must have terrified you.”
“Yeah,” I hummed. “It did. I didn’t leave the house for days.”
He didn’t say anything. He was looking at the book in his hand, but not with the zeal of someone interested. His mind was somewhere else.
“Don’t you want to try something outside your usual genre?” I held out the front of the book in my hand to him.
He lifted his gaze, his lips pressed into a firm line.
His reply was hesitant, too careful, too cautious. “Sure,”
“It’s alright if you don’t think you’ll like it,” I said, beaming at how gentle he was. I hoped he realised at the end of the day, it was his interest that mattered. He was the one that would read the book, not me.
“I actually haven’t read it,” I added. “But I have the soft copy. People say it’s great.”
“Reviews are subjective, though.” He pointed out, reaching for the book in my hand, his finger brushing against my skin as he pried it from my fingers.
My heart skipped, jolt of electricity sparking gently beneath my veins.
I cleared my throat when I caught myself being carried away by just an innocent touch. “True that,” I agreed, still dazed though. “How about we both grab a copy each and buddy-read?”
“Buddy-read?” He tested the word on his tongue like it was foreign. “I have never done that before.”
“Neither have I.” I reached for another copy of the book on the shelf, pulling it out. “If we like it, we can do it again. Might even become our thing.” I paused to gauge his expression. “How about that?”
“Whatever you say, Elizabeth,” he said the name again, and I thought it wasn’t because he needed to, but because he just…enjoyed saying it.
And I did too.
I liked everything he did or said.
I liked him.
???
Callan came with two soldiers. One that handled the wheel, and another that acted as the assigned guard.
When we finished shopping and went outside, the one behind the wheel was still there, waiting for the command to hit the road, while the bodyguard was by the trunk, ready to put the stuff we bought away.
The sun was already waning, casting long shadows across the parking lot. We spent about three hours there. That was the thing about bookstores. Time ran differently once you were inside. A minute in there could be hours outside.
“Well, those are books to last you a lifetime,” I casually said, chuckling softly as the soldier put the bags away.
Callan glanced at the door of the trunk right before the bodyguard slammed it shut.
Then his eyes returned to me. “Actually, it depends on my schedule.” Something warm flickered in his eyes, a barely-there softness that made my stomach twist. “I could be done in a month.”
“Wait what?” I blurted. “That’s crazy. We got over two hundred copies of books.”
Two hundred copies of books, minus the series, was a lot to cover in one month. Was he reading them or just scanning?
“Well,” he sighed, pocketing his hands. “I read really fast.”
How fast? I read about fifty books per year. On a good year, seventy-five. And I wasn’t even a busy heir of billions of dollars of a centuries old empire.
“Thank you,” he suddenly murmured, low and quiet.
“For what?” I asked, patting the pocket of my blazer as my phone vibrated with a message.
Must be my own bodyguard, Kenzo. He was really not in support of this little meeting with Callan.
But that was the thing about Kenzo Takahashi.
He was always suspicious of everyone, anyway.
He said he was going to start blasting up my phone if I stayed more than two hours.
In his words, Callan Raskov was a kidnapper.
“Thank you for helping me get some books.” A warm look rested in the depth of his eyes. He was bad at words. Lucky for him, I was nearly good at reading eyes…or so I loved to tell myself.
My fingers itched to lift and brush away the strands of white hair the wind had combed against his face.
“Anything for a friend.” I blurted. I didn’t mean to say friend. It just fucking came out.
The word felt like needles pressing into my tongue. Surely you wouldn’t think about kissing your friend. And when he subconsciously bit his lower lip earlier today, I had wanted to know what it felt like to be touched by those lips.
You shouldn’t burn for their touch, and when he held books with such care, I had wanted those hands to hold me.
Your heart must definitely not race at the thought of having a relationship with them, and right now, my heart was hammering against my chest just thinking about the possibility.
This had to be the fastest way I had ever developed a crush on any man. Even Rowan was fast but not this fast. Calling Callan Raskov a friend felt…painful, wrong.
“Should we go grab the coffee now?” I asked, shifting on my heels as the awkward air pressed into my skin.
I seemed to be the only one reacting to my choice of word.
He didn’t seem bothered, disappointed that I called him a friend when he literally just confessed to me… in his own cute and awkward way.
To my question though, he glanced at the café across the street. That wasn’t the one I had in mind. It was far from here. It would involve another ride through Braemont with him.
“Where’s the place–” He was saying until a low, guttural sound ripped from his lips, part growl, part agonizing howl. His hands flew to cradle his head as if something inside there was tearing him apart.
He staggered, his body buckling.
My pulse spiked, everything happening in a blur of motion; the soldier by the trunk pushing past me to steady him, the one by the wheel leaping out to hold him.
In his soldiers steady arms, Callan groaned, veins straining against his neck and temple. And his breaths were sharp and ragged.
My heart pounded, my legs shaking.
What was happening?
“No,” he whispered, barely audible, his voice thick with pain. “Not now.”
He sounded broken, desperate.
The soldiers began to usher him to the car, one of them bumping into me, who had barely lifted a foot.
“Stop,” Callan commanded, his voice trembling as he braced his hands against the door like a wild animal resisting a cage.
“I need to speak to her,” he said, his body trembling.
“Marshal–”
“–I said I need to speak to her!”
I froze, the order striking harder than it should have. And his eyes. God, his eyes. The warmth in those golden eyes from earlier had nearly vanished, almost replaced by something else entirely. A distant storm churned in them, unruly, like a tempest on the verge of breaking loose.
He broke past his soldiers and reached for me. His fingers curled around my shoulders–not the gentle touch from earlier at the bookstore, but firm and desperate, his talons digging into my skin.
“I’ll call you, okay?” His voice cracked, fear woven into every word. “As soon as I can, I will.”
Anxiety slid down my spine, ice-cold and unrelenting. I didn’t understand what was happening, and the sheer panic in his voice terrified me. Callan Raskov was afraid, not for himself, but for me.
Why? What was he afraid of? What or who was going to hurt me?
My heart kept pounding, my body trembling as I watched him slide into the car, the door slammed shut.
As the car drove off, not for once did my gaze break away from them.
I watched until the images blurred. And even long after they were out of my sight, his sound of agony still echoed in my ears.
What exactly was happening?
Why was he so…afraid?