4. Gray
GRAY
I t was just tea.
That was what I told myself the next day, and the day after that, and every day for the rest of the week. I’d made tea for a person who looked like she needed it. That was all. Any decent person would have done the same.
My owl disagreed.
He’d been insufferable since the moment I’d set that mug on her table.
Every time she walked through the door, he stirred.
He noticed when she stared at her laptop with that crease between her brows.
Noticed when her typing slowed or her shoulders dropped and she sat back in her chair like the weight of whatever she was carrying had won another round.
I noticed these things too, but I had the good sense to pretend I didn’t.
The tea had become a routine without either of us acknowledging it. She’d come in, set up at her table, and sometime around five thirty, I’d bring a cup over. I’d set it down, she’d wrap her hands around it, and that was it. She always whispered thank you without looking at me, though.
I didn’t read into it, but my owl did.
Of course he did.
On Friday, she brought a book to the circulation desk.
It was an older copy of a small business guide—the kind of practical, no-nonsense book that had been checked out a hundred times and had the spine to prove it. She set it on the counter and pulled her library card from her wallet.
“Just this one,” she said.
I picked it up and scanned the barcode. The name on the account populated on my screen.
Williams, Bonnie R.
I scanned the book, printed the receipt, tucked it inside, and slid the book back across the counter to her.
Her last name was Williams.
There was only one Williams family in town.
She must be the daughter of Gravis Williams—the man who’d run the pill smuggling operation out of the Tidal Caverns.
He’d been arrested along with the pharmacy tech at the time, after a travel blogger stumbled into their operation and nearly drowned for it.
The whole thing had been front-page news, or as close to front-page as Driftwood Cove got.
Callie Rivers had written the story that blew it wide open. Everyone in town knew about it.
I watched Bonnie walk back to her corner table with the book tucked under her arm, and pieces I’d been collecting about her without realizing fell into place.
The exhaustion that went deeper than long shifts or late nights studying.
The way she held herself in public—shoulders back, chin up, but with an undercurrent of bracing, like she was always waiting for someone to say something.
The shame she wore like a second skin, visible only if you were paying attention.
I’d been paying attention.
She sat down and opened the book, and my owl released a low sound that I felt more than heard. He didn’t care about her last name. Didn’t care who her father was or what he’d done. My owl only cared that this woman mattered, and whatever name she carried didn’t change that.
I picked up the flat smoothing tool I used for bookbinding and went back to work.
Knowing who she was didn’t change anything for me either. If anything, I noticed her more now.
I shouldn’t.
After all, I liked my life the way it was. I had my routines. My space. My silence. It was a good life, and I’d never felt like it was missing anything.
Until now.
Even so, getting involved with someone—caring about someone beyond professional courtesy—meant noise. Mess. Unpredictability. It meant opening a door I’d spent years keeping shut, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out what was on the other side.
My owl ruffled his feathers.
He thought I was being a coward. He didn’t say it in words, but I could feel it in the way he pressed against me.
His impatience, his frustration with my hesitation.
He wanted me to do something—talk to her, sit with her, ask her what she was studying.
He didn’t understand why I held back, but holding back was what I was good at.
I watched. Observed. It was just who I was.
She caught me staring, and the corner of her mouth lifted into a smile. It was small and tired, but there nonetheless.
Something shifted inside my chest at the sight, and I knew I was in trouble.
I knew it with the same certainty I knew how to repair a broken spine or identify a first edition by its binding. This was something else, and my owl knew it, and now I knew it, and the only question was what I was going to do about it.
Nothing.
That was the safe answer. The smart answer. The answer that kept my quiet life intact.
My owl nipped at me.
I ignored him and got back to work.
Seven o’clock came and went.
I’d finished the endpaper repair and moved on to cleaning the cover of a water-damaged hardback from the 1980s. She was typing in an unsteady rhythm—fast bursts followed by long pauses—as though wrestling with whatever she was writing.
I should have made the closing announcement a while ago.
The main lights should be off and the door should be locked by now.
That was the routine. Instead, I was still at the front desk, working on the cover.
The clock hit seven oh five. Seven ten. The last person besides Bonnie had left an hour ago.
The building was empty except for the two of us.
She didn’t notice.
She was too deep in whatever she was typing. Her brow was furrowed, and her lips moved slightly as she read something back to herself. A strand of dark hair had slipped loose from her braid and hung beside her cheek, and she kept tucking it behind her ear only for it to fall forward again.
At seven twenty, I got up and locked the front door. Not because I was trying to trap her in—I’d unlock it the second she was ready to leave—but because I didn’t want someone wandering in and breaking whatever concentration she’d found.
At seven twenty-five, she stopped typing. Her eyes drifted to the windows, and I could see the moment she registered how dark it was outside. Then her gaze found the clock.
She shot to her feet.
“Oh my God.” She was already shoving her laptop into her bag, nearly knocking her empty mug off the table. “I’m so sorry. I completely lost track of time. You should have said something. You should have kicked me out!”
“It’s fine,” I said, flashing her a smile.
“It’s not fine. You’re supposed to be closed. I’m keeping you here.” She zipped her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“Bonnie.”
She stopped. It was the first time I’d used her name, and something in her expression shifted when she heard it.
“It’s no trouble,” I said. “Really.”
I held her gaze, keeping my expression even, trying to convey that I meant it without making it a bigger deal than it was.
“Okay,” she said finally. “But I’ll watch the time better from now on.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
She didn’t need to know I’d have kept this place open until midnight if she’d needed me to.
I unlocked the front door and held it open for her. She paused in the doorway, the cool evening air slipping past her into the warm library.
“Goodnight, Gray,” she said.
My name. She’d read it off my nametag—had to have—but hearing her say it did something I wasn’t prepared for. My owl, on the other hand, went wild. He loved the sound of it coming from her lips.
“Goodnight,” I said.
She stepped out into the dark, and I watched her walk to her car before I closed the door. Then I picked up her mug from the table and brought it to the small kitchen in the back. I washed it, dried it, and set it on the shelf where I’d remember to use it again tomorrow.