3
Charm
Ryan should’ve taken me back to my car after the Book Nook.
We had already spent more than two hours arguing over dead writers, dismantling my notes, and drinking enough coffee to make my heartbeat feel slightly unreasonable.
He had given me an essay Professor Klein described as reluctantly persuasive, called me his fairy in Spanish, and somehow turned Mary Wollstonecraft into the most productive academic experience of my life.
That should’ve been enough Ryan for one afternoon.
Instead, he balanced three books against one tattooed forearm as we crossed the parking lot and said, “I’ve got more reference material at my apartment.”
I adjusted my bag higher on my shoulder. “How much more?”
“A lot.”
“That sounds vague.”
“It means I don’t know exactly how many books I own.”
“You don’t know?”
“I’m not counting them for tax purposes.”
“That wasn’t where my concern went.”
Ryan glanced down at me beneath the backward brim of his cap. “Where’d it go?”
“I’m trying to decide whether your apartment has bookshelves or whether you’ve built load-bearing walls out of nineteenth-century fiction.”
His mouth pulled into a slow smile. “Come find out.”
The invitation shouldn’t have changed anything. I had been inside Ryan’s apartment before with everyone else, usually while Briggs complained about the furniture and Bliss touched things she had been specifically asked not to touch.
Going there alone felt different.
Everything with Ryan had begun feeling different lately, and pretending otherwise was becoming increasingly difficult.
I had spent four years surviving an embarrassing crush by filing it beneath things that would eventually pass.
Ryan was attractive. Everybody knew Ryan was attractive.
Wanting him had never made me special when half the women at KFU experienced the same temporary loss of judgment whenever he walked into a room.
Friendship should’ve made it easier.
Then I got to know him.
I learned which smile meant he was genuinely amused and which meant he was about to say something designed to piss someone off.
I knew he watched documentaries about historical wars when he couldn’t sleep and complained about bad translations in foreign films. He hated mustard, loved coffee strong enough to qualify as punishment, and remembered things people said months after they forgot saying them.
He knew things about me too.
Too many things, apparently.
Ryan stopped beside his truck and opened the passenger door.
I looked from him to the seat. “You’re assuming I said yes.”
“You didn’t say no.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
“It is when you’re still standing here.”
“You’re deeply manipulative.”
“I’m observant.” He rested one hand on the open door and waited. “You want the books or not?”
“I want the books.”
“Then get in, mi hada.”
The nickname moved over my skin with the same quiet warmth it had inside the bookstore. I gave him a look meant to communicate that I wasn’t affected by it, but Ryan’s smirk said my face had betrayed me before I climbed into the truck.
He shut the door behind me and rounded the hood.
I watched him through the windshield because apparently I had stopped pretending I didn’t do that too.
Ryan moved with the kind of unconscious confidence that came from knowing exactly how much space he occupied and never apologizing for it. He opened the driver’s door, slid behind the wheel, and tossed his cap onto the dash before starting the truck.
My attention caught on his hair.
That was irritating.
“What?”
I looked toward the window. “Nothing.”
“You were staring.”
“I was thinking.”
“Loud again?”
“Apparently.”
His dimple appeared as he backed out.
The drive to his apartment took less than ten minutes.
Ryan kept one hand low on the steering wheel while we argued about whether Wuthering Heights qualified as a romance, and by the time he pulled into the cracked parking lot of an older brick building near the edge of town, I had almost forgotten the dangerous part of being alone with him.
Almost.
The stairwell smelled faintly like laundry detergent and somebody’s aggressively seasoned dinner. Ryan unlocked his door while warning me to ignore the building’s personality.
“What does that mean?”
“The pipes knock.”
“That isn’t personality. That’s a maintenance issue.”
“My landlord calls it charm.”
“Your landlord is avoiding an invoice.”
Ryan pushed the door open and held it while I walked inside.
His apartment wasn’t decorated in any deliberate way.
It was simply lived in. A black hoodie hung over the back of the couch.
Hockey gear occupied a neat corner near the door.
Two mismatched mugs sat beside the sink, and a pair of running shoes had been lined against the wall with enough precision to suggest Ryan was tidier than he wanted anyone to know.
The books were everywhere.
Two tall shelves covered most of the living-room wall, both filled beyond capacity.
Novels stood upright until the space ran out, then lay horizontally across the tops.
More crowded the table near the window and the floor beside the couch.
A narrow shelf near the hallway held notebooks, binders, and battered paperbacks with cracked spines.
I moved closer without taking off my bag.
“You weren’t exaggerating.”
“I usually don’t.”
“You own more books than the Book Nook.”
“They sell candles and tote bags. Half their space is decorative.”
I ran one finger lightly along the spines. History, mythology, political theory, poetry, rhetoric. Some were clean and newer. Others looked like they had survived years with him, their corners softened and covers faded beneath repeated hands.
There was something unexpectedly intimate about it.
Ryan had always seemed like a man who carried very little he didn’t need. Hockey bag. Truck. Clothing mostly consisting of black, gray, and whatever jersey somebody paid him to wear. Even his apartment looked practical around the edges.
Then there were the books—hundreds of them, kept, marked, and loved enough to survive every version of him that had owned them.
“You’ve read all of these?”
“Most.”
“Ryan.”
“What?”
“This is more than most people read in a lifetime.”
He set the books from the coffee shop on the table. “Most people spend hours watching strangers argue online.”
“You also do that.”
“I study human failure.”
“That is a very elegant way to describe reading comments.”
His laugh followed me as I crouched near the lower shelf.
Wuthering Heights sat beside The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, its spine ruined and pages crowded with paper markers. I reached for it, but Ryan’s hand appeared above mine and pulled it free first.
“That one stays here.”
I looked up at him. “You invited me to borrow reference material.”
“Anything else.”
“You don’t share?”
“I share.” His thumb moved slowly over the worn cover. “I don’t lend this one.”
The way he handled it made me forget my next joke.
“Sentimental?”
“Possessive.”
“About a book?”
“About what’s mine.”
His eyes met mine, and my breathing changed before I could stop it.
Ryan held my stare long enough that the sentence stopped sounding like it had anything to do with Emily Bronte. He placed the novel carefully back on the shelf before offering me his hand.
I took it.
He pulled me to my feet with very little effort, and the motion brought me closer than I expected. My free hand caught his forearm instinctively while his fingers remained closed around mine.
Without his cap, there was nothing between me and the full weight of his attention.
Ryan never glanced. He focused, and it had always been one of the more dangerous things about him.
I cleared my throat. “Which books can I safely touch without triggering your territorial instincts?”
His thumb moved once over my knuckles. “You can touch whatever you want.”
My stomach tightened. “That sounded less academic than you intended.”
“It sounded exactly how I intended.”
The heat climbing my neck became impossible to hide, so I slipped my hand from his and turned toward the shelves before he could enjoy himself too much.
“Reference material,” I reminded him.
“Right.”
He moved beside me and pulled several books from the shelf.
A guide to literary theory. A collection of Victorian essays.
A mythology reference with a broken corner.
His arm passed in front of me each time, bringing him close enough that I caught the clean scent of soap and coffee beneath something warmer that had always simply smelled like Ryan.
“This one will help with Klein.” He handed me the theory guide. “It explains the frameworks without making you want to throw yourself into traffic.”
“That is a strong recommendation.”
“This one has a section on gender and material culture.” He added another book to my arms. “Use it if you want to keep building the clothing argument.”
“I do.”
“I know.”
The certainty in his voice made me glance at him.
Ryan leaned one shoulder against the shelf, arms folded across his chest. “You lit up when you started talking about it.”
“I was interested.”
“You forgot to worry.”
“I don’t constantly worry.”
He looked at me.
“I take occasional breaks.”
“Scheduled?”
“Color-coded.”
His mouth curved, and I hugged the books against my chest to hide how much I liked making him smile.
With Bliss and Aura, I had always known how to loosen. They had known me before I became particularly good at polishing every reaction, and they were both willing to drag the messier version of me into the light whenever I tried hiding her.
Ryan did it differently. He didn’t drag anything out of me. He waited, and somehow that was worse.
At the Book Nook, he had asked what I thought until I forgot to wonder whether the answer would make me look stupid. He listened until I started speaking faster, until my hands moved, until my notes stopped looking perfect and started looking useful.