Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Iwoke up tangled in my sheets, the memory of my dream still clinging to me like heat.
Rion’s horns had been under my hands again. Smooth. Warm. Strong. I had traced their curves while his eyes drifted closed, and that deep rumble in his chest had followed me all the way back into consciousness.
“Get it together, Clara,” I muttered, dragging a pillow over my face.
These dreams had become a problem. Not a serious problem, obviously. No one had ever died from being wildly attracted to a minotaur architect with excellent hands and a secret talent for baking.
Probably.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Heavy book delivery today. Need help?
I smiled before I could stop myself. Rion texted the way he spoke when he was trying to pretend he wasn’t being thoughtful: as if verbs and pronouns were optional and feelings were definitely not invited.
Yes, please. Arrives at 9. Coffee’s on me.
I added a coffee emoji, deleted it, then added it back before hitting send. Whatever this was between us had settled into something deceptively easy. We texted every day. He showed up when I needed him. He looked at me like I was something he was trying very hard not to want too much.
Which was inconvenient, because I was failing much more openly.
“When you said ‘helper,’ I was picturing Dylan from the community college,” Brenda whispered later that morning as we watched Rion carry a stack of encyclopedias that should have required a cart. “Not a seven-foot mythological fantasy.”
“Shh.” I elbowed her and glanced towards the front desk. “His name is Rion.”
“Oh, I know his name. You’ve said it enough times.”
“I have not.”
Brenda gave me a look. “Honey, if you say ‘he’s just being nice’ I’m going to start shelving all your romance novels under horror.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again, because that had in fact been the next sentence lined up in my brain.
Brenda’s grin softened. “I’m teasing. Mostly. But the man hauled himself in here at nine in the morning to help you move books, and he looks at you like you’re the most important thing in the room.”
That was not a sentence I was emotionally equipped to deal with before coffee.
“I have work to do,” I said.
“Yes, you do,” she said cheerfully. “Preferably near the large handsome minotaur in reference.”
I found him in the aisle between Ancient History and Classical Studies, unpacking a box of books on Greek architecture. The aisle was narrow under normal circumstances. With Rion in it, it had become intimate by force.
“You’re a lifesaver,” I said, slipping in beside him. “We would’ve been unpacking these until lunch.”
“It’s not difficult.” He slid another book onto the shelf with absurd care. “The weight distribution is manageable.”
“Of course it is. Why think in pounds when you can think in structural load?”
He glanced down at me. “Exactly.”
I smiled and reached for the next book at the same moment he turned. My arm brushed his.
The contact sent that familiar jolt through me, sharp and immediate. Warm fur with hard muscle underneath. Instead of stepping back, I stayed where I was. So did he.
“Sorry,” he said quietly.
“It’s a tight aisle,” I replied, and hoped he could not hear how unconvincing I sounded.
We kept working, passing books back and forth. Our fingers brushed once, then again. His elbow nudged mine. My shoulder grazed his arm. None of it was exactly accidental, which was the problem.
Or maybe the best part.
From this close, I could see the base of his horns clearly. He was not wearing the hat in the library, and the fluorescent lights picked out every detail: the subtle ridges near the base, the smooth dark curve rising from his forehead, the strength of them.
I looked too long.
“You’re staring,” he said without turning.
I jerked my attention back to the box. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be weird.”
He turned then, and his expression was unreadable in that frustrating way of his.
“It is all right,” he said. “Most people do.”
“That isn’t why I’m staring.”
His gaze sharpened.
I should have stopped. I knew I should have stopped. Instead I said, “They’re beautiful.”
For one terrible second, I thought I had broken my own neck with embarrassment.
Then he said, very quietly, “Beautiful.”
“Yes.” I swallowed. “The shape, the symmetry, the texture. They’re…” I made a helpless little gesture. “Remarkable.”
A strange, quiet look crossed his face. Something almost like surprise, but something warmer than that too.
“They are just horns,” he said.
“Nothing about you is just anything,” I whispered, and the air between us changed.
He held my gaze, and suddenly I was very aware of how little space there was in the aisle, how close we were standing, how easy it would be to lift one hand and touch him…
A small voice interrupted from the end of the row.
“Are you a monster?”
We both turned.
A little boy stood there clutching a dinosaur book to his chest, his eyes huge behind crooked glasses. He looked maybe six, but he didn’t look frightened. He looked thrilled.
I opened my mouth, but Rion crouched first, folding himself down with surprising grace.
“I’m a minotaur,” he said, his voice gentler than I had ever heard it. “Half man, half bull.”
“Like in the stories?”
“In some stories.”
The boy considered this. “Do you eat people?”
I bit the inside of my cheek.
Rion shook his head solemnly. “No. I prefer cookies.”
The boy nodded as if that seemed reasonable. “I like cookies too.”
I laughed, and Rion’s mouth twitched.
“Can I touch your horns?” the boy asked.
My breath caught, but Rion hesitated for only a second before lowering his head. “Gently.”
The boy reached up and touched one horn with one careful finger. His whole face lit up. “It’s warm.”
“Jeremy!”
His mother appeared at the end of the aisle, clearly prepared to scold and immediately derailed by the sight of Rion crouched in front of her son.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “He wandered off and I—”
“He was asking very important structural questions,” I said smoothly.
Jeremy beamed. “Mom, he’s a min-o-toor and his horns are warm.”
“Minotaur,” Rion corrected gently as he stood.
The mother blinked, then managed a slightly stunned but polite smile. “Thank you for… helping him.”
Jeremy was still staring up at Rion with pure awe. “Do you live in a maze?”
“A labyrinth,” he said. “And yes.”
Jeremy gasped like Christmas had come early.
After they left, I looked at Rion. “You are very good with children.”
He shrugged and reached for another book. “They ask honest questions.”
Unlike adults, who stare and whisper.
He did not say it, but I heard it anyway.
I bumped his arm lightly with mine. “You probably just became the most exciting thing that has ever happened to Jeremy in this library.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “That’s a low threshold.”
“Don’t be modest. You are definitely making show-and-tell.”
That got another faint smile out of him, and the warmth of it settled low in my chest.
We finished shelving the last of the books in a silence that felt full rather than awkward. When the final volume was in place, he checked his watch.
“It’s noon,” he said. “You should eat.”
As if summoned, my stomach growled.
I sighed. “Nothing about me is mysterious.”
“Would you like company?” he asked.
The question was simple. The look in his eyes was not.
“I brought sandwiches,” I said. “You can join me in the break room if you don’t mind a space roughly the size of a broom closet.”
“I don’t mind.”
The break room looked even smaller once Rion was in it. His horns came dangerously close to the ceiling. His shoulders made the room feel like it had shrunk in self-defense. When he sat, the chair creaked like it regretted every decision that had led it here.
“Sorry,” I said, handing him a sandwich. “The library board keeps promising improvements, but staff comfort remains a tragically unpopular line item.”
“It’s sufficient.” He accepted the sandwich with a delicacy that would have been funny if it weren’t so distracting. “My home began as a much smaller structure.”
“Before you turned it into an architectural masterpiece?”
He took a bite. “Each addition served a purpose.”
“Like a library,” I said. “Everything grows where it’s needed.”
His gaze met mine. “Exactly.”
I sank into the chair opposite him and took a bite of my own sandwich, suddenly aware of the narrow space under the little round table. Our knees brushed almost immediately.
Neither of us moved.
The contact was slight, but steady and impossible to ignore.
“How is it?” I asked, nodding towards the sandwich.
“Good.” He considered it. “Balanced.”
I laughed. “You make turkey on wheat sound like a design principle.”
“Everything follows design principles if you look closely enough.”
“Is that how you see the world?”
He thought for a moment. “I see potential. What something is. What it could become.”
The room felt even smaller when he said that.
“And what do you see when you look at me?” I asked.
I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
His gaze locked on mine, but he didn’t answer right away, which somehow made it worse.
“Someone who sees me,” he said at last. “Not what I am. Who.”
The words hit hard enough to steal my breath. Under the table, I let my knee press a little more firmly against his. He answered the pressure without hesitation.
“I like who you are,” I said. “I like the architecture and the cookies and the way you talked to Jeremy. I even like the terrifyingly efficient texts.”
“I’m not terrifying.”
“You’re a little terrifying.”
His eyes narrowed.
“In a good way,” I added, and that almost made him smile again.
The silence stretched between us, but it wasn’t awkward, just weighted with things not yet said.
Brenda stuck her head into the room, took one look at us, and grinned. “Just grabbing my yogurt. Ignore me and continue your emotionally significant lunch.”
“Brenda,” I said.
She disappeared, still grinning, and Rion looked at me. “She suspects.”
“Brenda suspects everything.”