19. Juliette
— ? —
Juliette
He comes back the next evening, after close, and nobody apologizes.
That’s what does it. We’re standing in the dark of my bookstore, one foot apart, last night’s fight still hanging in the air like gunpowder waiting for a spark, and neither one of us says sorry.
He doesn’t apologize for the silence, the drawer, the six years of hoarded love.
I don’t apologize for the shouting, the accusations, the bookmark I threw at his head.
We just stand there, breathing, and the space between us gets smaller without either of us consciously closing it.
“We should finish the inventory.” My voice comes out rough. Wrong.
“Should we?” He doesn’t move. His eyes are dark in the low light, fixed on my face.
“The store opens next week.”
“That’s not what you’re thinking about.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking about.”
“You’re thinking about what would happen if we stopped fighting.” He takes a half-step closer. His hand comes up, hovers near my jaw without touching. “You’re thinking about whether you’d regret it.”
“I’d regret it.”
“Would you?” His thumb brushes my cheekbone, barely there. The contact sends sparks down my spine.
“Definitely.” I don’t pull away. “Absolutely. Without question.”
“Then tell me to stop.”
I don’t tell him to stop.
He leans in, and I close my eyes, and-
“The price stickers.” I step back, grabbing a roll from the worktable like a weapon. “We need to finish the price stickers.”
He blinks. Stares at the roll in my hand. A laugh escapes him, rough and disbelieving.
“You’re going to price books right now?”
“Watch me.” I slap the roll of stickers against my palm like a gavel and march to the nearest carton, and my hands are shaking, and we are both going to pretend they aren’t.
“You can help or you can leave.”
He doesn’t leave.
He crosses to the worktable and picks up a pen, and we stand side by side in the dark, pricing books by the glow of a single desk lamp I forgot to turn off.
The silence is unbearable.
“Three ninety-five,” I say, slapping a sticker on a thriller.
“You’re underpricing.” He takes it from my hand, peels off my sticker, replaces it. “This is a first edition.”
“It’s a mass-market paperback.”
“It’s a first printing of a mass-market paperback. That matters to collectors.” His fingers brush mine as he hands it back. Neither of us acknowledges the contact.
“I didn’t know you knew about book collecting.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“Name three things.”
“I can juggle. I’ve read every note you ever wrote me at least four-” he catches himself, rebuilds the sentence “-more times than I’d admit in court.
And I know the difference between a first printing and a book-club edition because seven years ago a woman at a research desk shamed me about holding books wrong, and I went home and learned everything, in case she ever quizzed me. ”
“You learned book collecting for a hypothetical quiz.”
“I learned book collecting for you. Everything after the upside-down book was for you. The quiz was just the cover story I told myself.”
“Apparently.” I grab another book, price it without looking, shove it aside. “Did you collect books before, or is this a new development?”
“I’ve been reading your notes.” He prices a romance novel with precise movements. “You mentioned editions. You mentioned printings. You mentioned the way certain covers become valuable because the artwork was pulled.”
His pricing hand keeps working while he says it - sticker, corner, stack - the way men of his species confess best, with a task between themselves and the sentence.
My hands stop moving.
“You’ve been reading my notes.”
“All of them.” He sets down the pen and turns to face me. “Every single one. Not just the bookmarks in the shipment. The originals. The ones I kept in the drawer for six years.”
“I know. You told me.”
“I didn’t tell you what I found.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper, worn soft at the creases. “This one. From our second anniversary.”
My throat tightens. I remember that note. I remember writing it at the kitchen table at midnight, trying to put into words something that felt too big for language.
“What does it say?”
“You know what it says.”
“I want to hear you read it.”
He unfolds the paper carefully, like it might crumble. His voice, when it comes, is barely audible.
“‘I’m keeping score. Not of fights, not of wins and losses. I’m keeping score of all the small ways you love me without saying it.
The coffee you make before you leave for work.
The way you check the locks twice because you know I worry.
The hand on my back when we’re in crowds, always guiding, always present.
I’m keeping score, and you’re winning by miles, and I don’t think you even know you’re playing.
’” He folds the paper again, slides it back into his pocket. “I didn’t know I was playing.”
“I know.”
“I should have known.” He steps closer. “I should have been paying attention. I should have been keeping my own score instead of hoarding yours like I was afraid I’d run out.”
“Zachary-”
“I thought about this.” His voice drops. “Every day at the end of your lane. Every night in that bed and breakfast. I thought about what it would be like to touch you again.”
“What did you imagine?” The question escapes before I can stop it.
“Everything.” His hand finds my hip, fingers pressing through fabric. “But mostly this. You, looking at me like you’re deciding whether to let me in.”
“I haven’t decided.”
“I know.” He pulls me closer, and I let him. “That’s what makes it good.”
His mouth finds mine.
The first kiss is tentative, questioning. The second is not.
I fist my hands in his shirt and pull, and he makes a sound against my lips that goes straight through me - low, broken, starved.
Six years of rationing breaks at once. I’ve spent so long being careful, being measured, being the version of myself that fits into Dean family boxes - and now there’s no careful left in me.
Heat floods my veins like a dam cracking.
My fingers twist tighter in the fabric as I drag him closer, needing the solid press of his body to prove he’s real.
“Back room,” I manage against his mouth, already walking backward, pulling him with me.
“The inventory-” His hands settle at my waist, thumbs stroking the strip of bare skin above my jeans, and my grip on his shirt goes white-knuckled.
“Fuck the inventory.”
He laughs against my mouth, surprised and delighted, the vibration rumbling through my chest and loosening what’s been clenched in me for years.
Then he’s lifting me, actually lifting me like I weigh nothing, and carrying me through the darkened shop.
My legs wrap around him on instinct. Every step jostles us together; the hard ridge of him presses right where I ache, and I bite back a moan against his neck.
“Worktable,” I say against his throat, tasting salt and the faint soap he uses. My lips drag over his pulse. It hammers wild under my tongue.
“The one covered in price stickers?” His voice has gone rough. His fingers dig into the backs of my thighs.
“Sweep them off.”
He does. The stickers scatter across the floor in a colorful storm as he sets me on the edge of the table.
One flutters onto my knee. His mouth finds my neck immediately - open, hungry - and I fist my hands in his shirt again and pull hard enough that the fabric strains.
Price stickers everywhere - in his hair, on my sleeve, one riding his shoulder like a tiny absurd epaulet reading $4.
99 - and neither of us stops to laugh about it.
Both of us are filing it away to laugh about later, and that, the certainty of later, is somehow the most scandalous thing in the room.
Yearning tightens my throat until it hurts.
The fabric tears.
Buttons scatter, pinging off the concrete floor. He freezes, staring down at his ruined shirt, chest heaving.
“That was expensive.” His eyes flick up to mine, dark, blazing, awed.
“I don’t care.” I push the ruined fabric off his shoulders, palms sliding over warm skin and the flex of muscle underneath. Six years of denied want, and finally my hands are full of him. “I need you bare. Now.”
“Neither do I.” He reaches for my sweater and pulls it over my head in one motion. Cool air hits my skin; his gaze drops and the naked hunger there sends heat spiking hard between my legs. “I hated that shirt anyway.”
“Liar.” I drag my nails lightly down his chest just to watch him shudder.
“Complete liar.” His mouth finds my collarbone, teeth scraping, tongue soothing, and it shoots straight to my core. “It was my favorite.”
“Now it’s my favorite.” My voice cracks on the words. I thread my fingers into his hair and hold him there while he sucks a mark onto the skin there.
“You’re keeping it?” He smiles against me, hands already at the button of my jeans.
“I’m keeping it.”
“As a trophy?” His knuckles brush the soft skin of my belly as he works the zipper down, and my thoughts scatter with the stickers.
“As evidence.” I pull his face back up to mine and kiss him deep, filthy, pouring every unanswered night into it. “That you can be destroyed. That I can destroy you the way you destroyed me when you let me walk away.”
“I was destroyed the day you left.” His hands shove my jeans and underwear down together.
I lift my hips to help; the table is cold under my bare ass but I barely feel it.
His fingers immediately stroke through the slick heat of me and we both groan.
“This is just confirmation. Fuck, Juliette, you’re soaked.
You’ve been aching for this as long as I have. ”
Light sweeps across the front windows.
We both freeze.