Chapter 7 Rhianna
Rhianna
I spin in slow circles on my desk chair, watching the ceiling fan make its hypnotic rotation above me. My usual stack of half-read novels sits abandoned on my nightstand. I've tried three different books in the past hour, but none of them hold my attention.
With a sigh, I plant my foot and stop the spinning.
My gaze drifts to the clock on my bedside table.
Eli and Claire should be well into their museum tour by now.
Not that I'm counting minutes or anything.
Absolutely not. I'm definitely not wondering if they're having a marvelous time exploring Magnolia Cove's tame little museum, with Claire pointing out historical details in that earnest way of hers, Eli nodding thoughtfully, his glasses catching the light just so—
Nope. Not thinking about that.
Though I am looking forward to dinner with him later. Just to hear how it went. For matchmaking evaluation purposes. Purely professional curiosity.
I spring up from the chair and flop onto my bed, arms splayed like a starfish washed ashore.
Mr. Whiskers, who had been napping in a patch of sunlight on my quilt, shoots me an offended glare before leaping away.
"Sorry," I mutter, as if the cat understands or cares about my apology.
As if explaining that I'm losing my mind over a man—a man I've known for a handful of days, no less—would somehow justify disturbing his precious slumber.
The house creaks around me, empty and too quiet.
Dad's at the university, Mom and Gavin joined the Blackwoods on their boat for the day, and all my friends are either working or helping at the farmer's market.
Which I'm specifically avoiding because a certain professor with ridiculously perfect hair might see me there after his date with Claire, and I refuse to seem like I'm hovering.
I roll onto my stomach and kick my feet in the air, feeling like a teenager waiting for her crush to call. Something hot and uncomfortable prickles under my skin. Is this what jealousy feels like? I barely recognize the sensation. I’m not supposed to feel this way.
I don’t get attached. Not anymore. Not after learning how much it hurts to let someone in and have them walk away anyway. So I keep things safe. Contained. Manageable.
Because if Eli really saw all of me—the highs, the lows, the mess—he’d leave. They always do.
This restless energy isn't jealousy. It can't be. It's just... anticipation. About dinner. About helping my client find his perfect match. Even if a traitorous part of me hopes Claire isn't it. And maybe there’s also a smug little voice in my head, the one that already knows their magic aligns, but doesn’t spark. Not like it does when it’s meant-to-be.
Not like our magic does when we’re together.
The thought slips in before I can stop it and I shove it down so fast, it nearly takes my breath with it.
I sit up and drum my fingers against my thigh, too fidgety to settle on any one task. My gaze falls on my desk, where the application for the World Library Tour Fellowship sits half-completed.
"Focus on that," I tell myself. "That's your actual dream. Not some... summer fling with the new professor in town."
But the words feel hollow, even to my own ears. My fingers drumming picks up pace, my whole body twitching with the need to move, to distract myself from this inexplicable discomfort. The living room seems too empty, and yet my bedroom feels suddenly claustrophobic.
Before I fully realize it, my feet are already moving—down the stairs, through the back hallway, toward the door I deliberately avoid at all costs.
My hand hovers over the crystal doorknob—the one Grandma Ida special-ordered because, "doorknobs should sparkle just like the people who turn them, Rhianna-bean. "
The childhood nickname echoes in my head, and something cracks inside my chest.
I haven't been in this room for at least a year.
After she died, I spent weeks curled up in her bed, breathing in her fading scent, sobbing until my throat was raw.
Then came the months of avoidance—hurrying past the door, looking away when it entered my peripheral vision, pretending the room didn't exist. Now I can enter without dissolving into tears, but I still don't. Not often. Not without purpose.
What's my purpose now?
My fingers close around the doorknob, cool crystal pressing into my palm. The latch clicks, and I step inside.
The blinds are drawn shut, casting the space in gloomy shadows.
It feels wrong. Grandma Ida hated closed blinds.
"What's the point of windows if you block out the light?
" she'd say, tugging the cords to flood the room with sunshine that would turn the hardwood floors golden and make her colorful quilts shimmer like jewels.
I cross to the window and pull the blinds up.
Dust motes dance in the sudden beam of light, and I sneeze.
The room smells stale, nothing like Grandma Ida’s potpourri of cinnamon gum, the floral perfume she ordered from a catalogue, and the endless varieties of tea she brewed in eclectic porcelain cups she picked up at antique stores.
"Sorry," I whisper to the empty room. "I should visit more."
My thoughts have been revolving around Eli all morning, and suddenly I'm here, in Grandma Ida's room, running my fingers over her quilts instead of obsessing over whether he's enjoying Claire's detailed explanation of our town's dubious historical artifacts.
I pause, the realization hitting me with uncomfortable clarity.
Did I wander in here because I needed comfort, or because I needed a distraction?
Is this what I'm doing? Using my grandmother's memory to distract myself from thinking about Eli?
How messed up is that? No wonder Jacob ran. I really am too much.
Or maybe I'm here to remember. To remind myself why getting too close to anyone—especially someone like Eli Lancaster with his earnest eyes and his ridiculous music opinions and his way of making me feel both seen and heard in a way that terrifies me—is a terrible idea.
Because Jacob seemed like the best thing since cinnamon sugar toast at one point too.
Our magic glistened together—maybe not like my magic does with Eli, but still.
There was sparkle. There was hope. And Eli already admitted he ended a relationship when it got too routine.
I read a book my mom recommended once that said we repeat patterns until we deal with our stuff.
(The book used much fancier therapy words, but the point stands.)
That’s all this is. Me repeating a pattern. One that already burned me badly enough to leave a scar. And I’m not going to let myself go through that again. I can’t. I’m not strong enough to survive that again.
I sink onto the edge of the bed, running my fingers over the quilt. I still remember sitting here as Grandma Ida brushed my hair before bed, telling me stories about the goddess I was named for. Rhiannon, forever riding her magical white horse, too swift for any suitor to catch.
"You're just like her," Grandma Ida would say, pride warming her voice. "Wild and free and true to your own rhythm."
Grandma Ida always knew how to spin things. Honestly, she should’ve worked in PR. Despite her encouragement, before I found my people in middle school band—the oddballs who liked me exactly as I was—there were years I felt like a walking, talking personification of too much.
I didn’t have words for it then, but I think I’ve always feared being too much. And Jacob proved me right.
A memory surfaces, sharp and vivid. I'm ten years old, sobbing into Grandma Ida’s shoulder after another day of eating lunch alone. "No one wants to be my friend," I hiccup. "I'm too weird. I talk too much. I'm too... too..."
"Too much like Rhiannon," Grandma finished, stroking my hair. The Welsh goddess—always following her own path. "And that," she says, "is exactly what makes you wonderful."
And maybe she was right. After all, the only man Rhiannon ever slowed down for ended up betraying her. My life is patterns within patterns. Maybe I’ve echoed my namesake’s path all along.
I blink back tears and stand, needing to move.
My fingers trail over Grandma Ida’s belongings—the collection of driftwood pieces lined along the windowsill, the framed photographs, the bookshelf stuffed with volumes organized by color rather than any logical system.
Dad used to drive himself crazy trying to find specific books in her "rainbow chaos," as he called it.
I'm about to turn away when something happens—a sensation I've felt many times before but can never quite explain. An energy pulses from the bookshelf, drawing my attention like a magnet. My ability to sense when a book matches someone is what makes me great as a librarian, why Tom trusts me to find the weirdest monster romances I can get my hands on, the ones he’ll absolutely devour, and why Claire comes to me when she’s in a reading slump.
But this is different. This feels like... a match. A perfect match, but not for me.
For Eli.
I step closer, my fingertips skating over spines until they settle on a moss-green leather binding tucked between a scarlet romance novel and a cobalt book of poetry. The energy vibrates stronger, and I slide the book free.
My breath catches. Welsh Gods and Goddesses by Cyrus Whitlock. I've seen this book a hundred times, but today it feels like I'm holding something sacred. I open the cover, and the pages naturally fall to the most-read section: Rhiannon: The Enigmatic Goddess of the Moon.
The pages are soft with age and handling, the margins filled with Grandma Ida's elegant script. Little notes, observations, connections to other myths. She'd drawn a tiny horse beside one paragraph, and a small heart next to a line about Rhiannon's independence.
This book is precious. A piece of my grandmother, a connection to my namesake, a treasure I've taken comfort in since I was old enough to read.
I couldn't possibly give it to Eli Lancaster.
Even if its energy is utterly aligned with his in a way I can't explain.
Even if the connection feels deeper than the usual book-to-reader match I sense.
I barely know him, I remind myself sternly. And besides, he's out on a date with someone else right now. With Claire, who's sensible and grounded and probably doesn't have a wanderlust itch under her skin or the instinct to keep love at arm’s length just in case it disappears.
I hate the twist in my stomach at the thought of them together. Hate that I'm standing in my late grandmother's bedroom, clutching a book to my chest, fretting over a man like some lovesick teenager. This isn't me. I don't do this.
But the book pulses with that undeniable energy, like it's already decided it belongs to Eli. Like it's just waiting for me to admit it.
I press my forehead against the bookshelf, breathing in the faint, lingering scent of Grandma Ida.
My gaze falls on a framed photograph—me at seven, gap-toothed and grinning, her arm around my shoulders as we proudly display mud pies we'd made after a summer rainstorm.
We're both laughing so hard our eyes are nearly closed.
"What would you tell me to do?" I whisper to her image.
The silence that follows isn't really an answer, but I imagine her saying what she always did when I faced a choice: "Follow your joy, Rhianna-bean. The rest will sort itself out."
I straighten up, adjust the frame to its proper position, and tuck the book under my arm as I leave the room. I'm not going to give it to him, I tell myself firmly. But I'll keep it close, just in case.
The book's energy signature is unmistakable.
Every reader leaves a trace of themselves behind—emotions, thoughts, dreams embedded in the pages like invisible fingerprints.
Over the years, this book has collected a unique energetic aura, one that resonates in perfect harmony with the essence I sense in Eli.
It's not that the book has chosen him specifically, but that its accumulated energy aligns with him in a way I've rarely felt before—like two pieces of a puzzle meant to fit together.
That's what books are meant for, aren’t they?
To be read, to be shared, to find the readers who need them most. Grandma Ida never hoarded her books.
She lent them freely, gave them as gifts, passed them to strangers she met who mentioned an interest. "Books have their own journeys," she'd say. "We're just temporary caretakers."
I close Grandma Ida's door behind me, the crystal knob cool against my palm. The book feels warm under my arm, almost expectant, like it knows something I don't.
"Don't get smug," I mutter to it. "I haven't decided anything yet."
But even as I say it, I know I'm lying to myself. The book has already chosen its new owner. The question is whether I can honor that choice—whether I can let go of this piece of my past to follow what my magic is telling me is right.
I check my clock one more time as I head back to my room, the book tucked safely against my side.
Dinner with Eli is still over an hour away.
He'll tell me all about the date with Claire, and I'll be the perfect, professional matchmaker.
And maybe—maybe—I'll know then whether this book is meant to find its way to him after all.
It would be so convenient if magic could just hand me a big, sparkly “yes, this is the right thing to do” sign.
Maybe with glitter. Or at the very least, less emotional confusion.
With a sigh, I settle on my windowsill seat, open my worn copy of Pride and Prejudice, and try to lose myself in Elizabeth Bennet's world instead of obsessing over mine. But the Whitlock book rests beside me, a quiet but intense presence, like it’s insisting that it's already made up its mind.