Chapter 39
Fable
A warm breeze billows through the alley behind my future bookshop. Theo’s surprisingly quiet while I find the number in my phone, then type it into the keypad. The lock clicks, but before I open the door, I look up at him.
“Callum Properties called back yesterday.”
“To ask you what kind of smoothie you like at Smoothie Bro?” There’s a teasing glint in his eye.
I grin. “No, the bros fell through.”
He reaches out to lace our fingers together. “And what does that mean?”
“It means”—I push the door open with my free hand and lead him inside—“the space is available.”
My legs feel wobbly as I step over the threshold and into what appears to be a storage room. Or maybe a trash room? A construction zone? It’s a mess—a crumbling shelf full of cardboard boxes against one wall and several sheets of drywall and plywood along another.
“They’re willing to work with me on fixing up the place and taking it out of my rent,” I explain, stepping over a pile of boards and around some paint buckets.
“That’s great. You have a lot of helpers.”
“I do.” A whole crew of people who would help me with anything. I’m not nearly as alone as I thought I was.
We reach another doorway, which opens into the main part of the store, and my feet pause at the view.
It’s still a mess, but it’s beautiful. The doorways are arched with intricate trim details.
Decorative light fixtures hang throughout the space.
The crown molding around the ceiling gives the room an old, charming feel.
There’s history here, and I can’t wait to learn every detail of it.
This storefront was never meant to be a Smoothie Bro. It was meant to be a bookstore—the kind of place that feels like a home away from home. Where you grab a cozy seat and find new adventures between the pages of a book.
I wish Gramps could see it. He’d be in love.
Tears press at the backs of my eyes as I let go of Theo’s hand and stroll to the front door. The crowd is loud on the other side. I peek through a tiny gap in the paper to see everyone milling about.
“Next year, we’ll have the doors wide open during the festival,” Theo says from close behind me. “People spilling in and out of the shop.”
I smile at the thought. “I’ll plant tulips in pots on the front stoop, and we’ll have ferns hanging by the windows.”
“I can’t wait to see it.”
Spinning in a slow circle, I point to different spots.
“We’ll have a seating area over here. The register here.
Shelves lining all the walls, then shorter ones throughout the store.
” I skip toward the back corner, narrowly avoiding a ladder.
“And a story time and book club over here. What do you think?”
I turn to find Theo standing in the middle of the room. He’s unreasonably attractive in his fire crew pants and a tight black shirt that molds over every curve of his muscular build. His arms are crossed over his chest, that lopsided smile hooking his mouth, and happiness sparkling in his eyes.
In a space full of mess and chaos, he’s calm and unwavering in the center. Full of possibilities and steadfast faith in me. He’s watching me with the kind of intensity that makes me feel like I’m floating.
That look is for me. It’s mine and no one else’s.
He always says a lot with that look. I want to kiss you. You’re adorable. You have no clue how much I want you.
But right now, it’s saying something else. I can see it clearly. I love you.
“Theo.” His name is an unconscious, breathless murmur on my lips as I walk toward him.
He doesn’t take his eyes off me. “Hm?” he asks, a raspy hum.
“I’m so sorry.” I wrap my hands around his suspenders. “You’ve been a safe space for me—comforting and encouraging and patient when I need it. And I didn’t do the same for you. I threw that moment at the parade like a weapon, when that’s not how I feel at all.”
A deep breath gusts out of him. His hands curve to my waist. “I know you don’t, sweetheart.”
I pause, working through it in my head. “I shouldn’t have threatened to run away. Leaving just felt like the easy solution—like it always has.”
His expression is somewhere between cautious and hopeful. “And how are you feeling about leaving now?”
“I don’t want to. At all.” His eyes brighten.
“I’m trying really hard to believe in myself.
To trust that I can figure it out. But I’m also learning there are a lot of people around who are willing to help me see my dreams come true.
I thought I had to do it on my own to be successful at it, but—” I fade out, my throat tight.
“But it’s not a bad thing to ask for help. We all want to be part of something you love,” he finishes.
“We?” I ask, needing to make sure. “You haven’t changed your mind?”
I love you, his eyes say again. I’m realizing it might be less of an again and more of an always.
“Sweetheart.” The endearment shoots straight to the warm, glowy spot in my chest. “I’m not changing my mind. My heart is yours.”
My breath of relief is audible. There’s an electric hum beneath my skin. “I was hoping you’d say that.” Holding his gaze, I pull a piece of paper out of my back pocket.
“There was a doubt in your mind?”
“It was small. Tiny. Microscopic,” I admit, carefully unfolding the paper and presenting it to him.
My heart flares as bright as the sun while I watch him read the words. Do you love me? Check yes or no. [ ] yes [ ] no
Dimples bracket his wide smile. “Fable, I need—”
“Oh!” He needs a pen. I whip out the one tucked in my pocket and offer it to him.
But he can’t grab it because he’s busy opening his wallet.
“I need to show you—I have one too.” He slips out a piece of notebook paper.
It doesn’t make a sound as he unfolds it—too old and worn and touched to crinkle in his fingers.
“It’s eighteen years old, written by a lonely boy who really wanted to be friends with the girl who sat beside him in math class.
He didn’t know it at the time, but that note would change his entire life. ”
“Theo,” I rasp, tears welling in my eyes as I take the soft paper from him. The letters are barely there, faded over the years, but I know them by heart. Do want to be my best friend? Check yes or no. [ ] yes [ ] no
He reaches up to caress my cheek. “Little did I know, that girl would be my soulmate, my best friend, the love of my life.”
A breathy cry bursts out of me. “Love of your life, huh?”
He doesn’t answer yet, just slips the pen from my fingers and walks over to the wall, using the surface to write something on the paper.
As he returns, he says, “Do you want to be my best friend? and Do you love me?” A slow smile stretches across his face as he turns the paper to show me his answer. “They feel like the same question when it comes to you.”
The note is blurry through my tears, but I can see a green heart sitting over the yes box and beside that he’s written thoroughly and enthusiastically, a callback to how he told me he wanted to kiss me.
The joy of his reply cracks me wide open, all the contents of my heart spilling out in the best way.
I grab the paper, and Theo tucks the pen in his pocket to cup my face. “That little boy got so lucky. Once-in-a-lifetime lucky.”
“Maybe not that lucky. She’s kinda mean sometimes.” I try to laugh, but it comes out watery.
“And he loves every second of it. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.” His lips pinch and his voice dips into something sad. “I wish I could offer you this perfect version of myself, trauma-free and healed. You deserve that.”
I tip my head back, needing to see his eyes when I tell him, “You don’t have to be healed to be loved.
You don’t have to carry all that alone. I love you just the way you are.
You deserve that.” Something seems to shift inside him.
A broken breath stutters out and he melts against me.
“Healing doesn’t have to happen before we love each other.
It gets to happen because we do. We can walk that path together. ”
He searches my face. “You love me?”
“A truly maddening amount,” I whisper.
Leaning in, he brushes his lips over my forehead. “That’s the perfect amount, actually.”
I curl myself into his arms, our notes tucked together in my hands. The echoes from the crowd outside fade away as his heartbeat hammers in my ear.
“I heard it’s the dimples and the bitable forearms,” he murmurs.
“Those definitely.” I look up at him. “But also your friendship. Your big heart and the way you make me laugh even when I think I don’t want to.”
He presses a kiss to the top of my head, my temple, my cheek. “Am I allowed to kiss you?”
I nod eagerly. “I really wish you would. I’m dying here.”
“Seems like apt punishment for what you do to me.”
When he brings his lips to mine, something unfurls inside me.
It’s a slow, gentle pressure, warm and comfortable and everything I’ve been missing.
A hum of pleasure pours out of me as his palm slides over the side of my neck, and I lean into it, tilting to deepen the kiss.
He takes advantage, tightening his grip and devouring me, a hot, desperate moan pooling in the back of his throat.
I’m seconds away from jumping up into his arms and begging him to press me against the wall when his phone goes off. He keeps kissing me, like nothing else in the world matters, but a loud ruckus outside the shop brings me back to my senses.
I pull away, and his mouth falls to my throat. “Theo, we have to go.”
“Mm-hmm.” He lazily trails his lips over my collarbone. “My freckle demands attention,” he says, kissing the spot.
“I promise we’re going to pay a whole lot of attention to each other later. In fact, I insist,” I tell him as he wraps his arms around my waist. “But right now, there are a bunch of animals that need adopting.”
That seems to break him out of his spell. He lifts his head, kiss-bitten and dreamy-eyed and blissed-out. “Come with me. I don’t know if I can let you out of my sight today.”
Once our notes are safely tucked away, he slips my hand in his and we walk toward the exit. Looking back, I cast another glance over the space that will house Gramps’s bookshop one day. Our bookshop.
He may not be here to see it, but he’ll be in every decision and every corner of the space, and I can’t wait to bring it to life for both of us.
We stop at the back door. Theo tips my chin up, his eyes tracing my features. He studies me, touches me, like I’m something precious to him. Like I always have been.
“You know what this means?” I ask.
“That I get to leave a lot more stuff around the A-frame?”
I roll my eyes playfully. “Yeah, but something else.”
“That you get all the red Starburst forever?”
“I’d better, but not that either.” He gives me a quizzical look. “It means you have to listen to true crime podcasts for the rest of your life. Especially the creepy, gory, unhing—”
He cuts me off with a kiss. “A win is a win,” he says with a wink and that lopsided grin that has had my attention since day one.