4. Norah
Chapter four
Norah
Two days.
That’s how long it’s been since Silas Coulter walked into The Last Chapter, drank tea in my back room like it was a prescription, told me he wasn’t entirely sure why he came in, and left with a fifteen-hundred-page novel tucked under his arm like a man making a point rather than a purchase.
I have thought about it a completely reasonable number of times since then.
I’d like to say zero. That I thought about him zero times. But that would be a lie. I’ve thought about Silas Coulter dozens of times over the last two days.
I tried to convince myself that evening while I closed that Silas Coulter was an interesting afternoon and nothing more. Interesting afternoons are not the kind of thing a grown woman with a functioning shop and a handful of good friends spends her mental energy on.
The decision has been mostly successful.
The problem is that the aisle where the automotive books are housed now has a ghost in it.
A stool in the back room, which I haven’t needed to move since Wednesday, still gives the impression of being occupied by someone quite large and deliberate.
I can’t stop thinking about his words: There’s nothing more interesting in my past relationships than there is in this new one.
But I’m not thinking about it.
This morning I woke up and watered my three windowsill plants.
They’ve survived my care through sheer stubbornness on their part.
I put on a yellow skirt. Light cotton. Good for a hot Friday.
I don’t think about Silas Coulter once on the short walk from The Last Chapter to The Beanery, which I make every morning because Mia makes the most wicked cold brew in this city.
I push the door open.
Shit. He’s at the back counter.
I don’t know why I’m surprised. My pulse jumps. I hate how pleased I am to see him. I take a breath and remind myself that a man can be in a coffee shop without it meaning anything. Clement Avenue is a public street, and his being here is almost certainly coincidental.
I don’t entirely believe that.
Mia nods to me as I walk up to the counter like she’s the one person in the world who I’ve been waiting to visit with. “Coffee,” I tell her, setting my cash down. “Black. And something I’ll regret.”
She doesn’t ask for clarification. She’s already reaching for the pastry case. “You always regret it.”
“Not true. Sometimes you slip me banana bread, and then I feel virtuous. Spoilsport.”
She slides something flaky and definitely irresponsible into a paper sleeve and hands it over. I wrap both hands around the coffee and take a slow first sip, trying to look like a woman with a plan.
He’s moved closer.
I didn’t hear him move. He’s there now, close enough that the air has the same charge it had in the automotive aisle. Warm and weighted and very much undisturbed by the proximity.
“You plan your regrets ahead of time,” he says, low enough that it doesn’t carry past me.
“I like to stay organized. It saves time.”
The corner of his mouth quirks. Not quite a smile. I decide it’s an inconvenient recurring feature.
“I’ll have to try that,” he says.
“You don’t look anything like a man with regrets.
” I look at him properly, without pretending I’m not doing it.
The jaw. The green eyes in the morning light.
The shoulders, which the gray Yale sweatshirt is not minimizing one bit.
And since when is a Yale sweatshirt attractive?
It’s not supposed to look like GQ-wear. I let myself look for another second before I drag my eyes back to his face.
“You don’t strike me as someone who does anything without a reason. ”
“Don’t you think me being here counts as a reason?”
My heart skips a beat. Okay, so there it is. I try to be bland. “I don’t know yet. Does it?”
His expression sharpens. He holds my gaze a beat longer than necessary.
Here is what I know about Silas Coulter after the other day: he is not a man who wanders.
He came in having driven past dozens of times without stopping.
Norwood Street is not his street. The Beanery is not his coffee shop.
I have been coming here every morning for three years and I have never once seen him in it.
He was sure on Wednesday. He’s sure right now.
The only person pretending otherwise is me.
“Let me guess. You had something to take care of on this block,” I say, because I’m going to give him the opening rather than wait for him to make his own.
A good offense is better than a good defense.
The universe is plotting some perverse game, dangling this unusually gorgeous man in front of me. Or the alternative.
Jury’s still out.
He glances around the shop, then back at me. “Trendy coffee is on my ’to do list’ now.”
“Why pick up such a bad habit now? You look like you’re all tapped out on bad habits anyway.” I chuckle as I peer at him over the top of my brew.
He gives a knowing laugh, and the air between us changes register.
“You headed next door? To open up?”
There it is.
I take a sip. He’s asking to come with me. I should probably make that harder for him.
“That depends,” I say. “Are you asking because you’re returning that gorgeous copy of War and Peace, or because you’ve decided you’re not done talking to me?”
“I’m not done talking with you,” he says.
Nothing casual about it. No opinion, or preference, or possibility. He says it the same way he said I don’t skim that first afternoon, with the assuredness of someone who has decided a thing and is simply stating it.
I should push back. Deflect. Turn it into a joke and walk out with my morning intact. I have the tools for this. I have deployed these tools successfully on multiple occasions. Although it’s been longer than I like to think about.
“That’s inconvenient. Because I have a shop to run,” I say instead, and there is remarkably less resistance in it than there should be.
“I can work around that.”
“It takes two to tango,” I say.
I pick up my coffee and my paper sleeve of regret and start toward the door. I’m aware of him behind me, impossible to ignore even when I’m facing the other way.
The morning air outside is fractionally cooler than the coffee-thick warmth of The Beanery, carrying damp pavement and the smell of wet leaves from farther down the street.
Larkin starts the day a bit sluggish on Fridays, traffic slowly thickening, the energy of a day that knows it’s almost the weekend and is allowing itself a little looseness around the edges.
I walk the half-block to The Last Chapter with Silas Coulter a half-step behind me and the posture of someone who has this entirely under control.
I give the shop a jaundiced eye as we approach.
The drab brown door. The small shingle overhead.
It’s unprepossessing and somewhat humble, but I’ve had customers tell me it reminds them of a shop in Hogsmeade, the village in Harry Potter.
I always thought it harkened back to some medieval wand shop.
I tuck my coffee under my arm, get my keys out, unlock the door, and push it open.
The smell of the shop greets me, musty but warm, redolent of glue, paper, and the vanilla candle I burned down to nothing yesterday while closing up.
I step inside.
He follows.
The door swings shut behind him and I flip the lock, because that is my protocol. I never open to the public before the shop is ready, and I have done this every morning for three years without it meaning anything other than what it is.
Except this morning I’m locking myself inside with a man I’ve spent two days trying not to think about.
It means more than routine right now.
I know it the second I turn back around and find him standing two feet away from me, his hands held up in mock surprise.
“Whoa,” he says.
I huff a laugh because the joke is already there and I’m not made of stone. “Don’t get any ideas. It’s a security thing. I never open before the shop is ready.”
“Good to know,” he says, his voice low and dry. “Keeping my virtue intact was top of my priority list this morning.”
I roll my eyes at him exactly how I’ve been wanting for two days and set my coffee on the counter. I move through the opening routine: lights, register, the small choreography of turning a closed space into a ready one.
The joke hangs between us. Keeping my virtue intact.
It’s banter. Clearly banter. I said something; he said something back; that is the definition of banter.
I’m a person who is good at banter and completely comfortable with it.
The reason I’m thinking about the words and the deep rumble of his voice when he used them has absolutely nothing to do with the locked door or the empty shop or the fact that we are the only two people in this building right now.
I picture kissing him anyway. Just for a second. His hands on my hips, my back against the counter. I turn on the lights before my imagination gets any farther.
I step around the sandwich board I painted myself and am unreasonably proud of. I point at it while looking at him. “Would you mind?”
He eyes it and nods, looking at the slogan written in chalk. “The Last Chapter. We both know you need another.”
I don’t blink.
“It’s very clever.”
“Damn straight it is.”
He unlocks the door, positions the sandwich board and comes back in, shooting the lock behind him. I watch his hand close around the lock. Those fingers again. I look away.
He moves through the space behind me—not aimlessly, he doesn’t do anything aimlessly—but with the same attentiveness he brought the day he walked into the shop.
I glance back once and find him at the staff picks wall, head tilted, reading the handwritten recommendation cards I write myself and change every two weeks because I have opinions and a platform for them.
“You write these,” he says. “I don’t mean write them by hand. That’s obvious. But you think them up, not your employees.”
“Every one.”
He reads for a moment. I watch him without being obvious about it, but I’m fairly certain I’m being obvious.
“You recommended the same author three times,” he says.
“She deserves it three times. Her books are amazing. I’m showing restraint.”
His expression softens, brief and genuine, before he seems to realize I’ve seen it. I tuck it next to the others I’ve been collecting without meaning to.
I move to the casement windows in the reading nook and crank them open to let the morning air come in before the day heats up properly.
Toss the candle burned down to nothing in the trash.
I’ll need a new one. Note it on the small pad by the register.
All of this is completely normal, and I’m doing it while being acutely aware of where Silas is always standing in relation to me.
He stops near the front window, looking at the shop the way people do when they think no one is watching them look—taking it in rather than browsing it. The shelf arrangements, the handwritten signs, the way the morning light is coming through the glass and hitting the display table.
“You changed these titles,” he says, nodding at the feature table. “Since the last time I was in.”
“I move it every two weeks. Browsers stop seeing things that don’t change.”
He looks at the table for a moment. Then at me. “What are you reading right now?”
“Why?”
“You work in a bookshop. I’m curious what you actually choose for yourself.”
“That’s a very personal question for someone who came in before we’re open.”
An inkling of a smile plays across his lips. I can tell he’s in a teasing mood. My heart rate speeds up. I’ve always been a sucker for a man who makes me laugh.
I’m also a sucker for a man built like that.
I’m trying not to think about every inch of his hard, naked body on top of me.
Of his knees parting my thighs and what the head of his dick feels like right at my entrance.
My pussy clenches hard enough that I shift my weight.
I switch the fan on and hope it works on cooling down my flushed face.
I’m not sure what’s going on with me, but I need to get new batteries for Brutus before I implode.
Because if this guy is going to keep coming around, I’m not sure I can restrain myself.
I redirect before I completely lose my train of thought.
“Do you moonlight as a PI? You’re very inquisitive for someone who came in for an engine manual.”
“I came in for reading material.”
“So you say. You came in because the door was open, and you stopped.” I look at him directly. “Same reason you’re here this morning.”
He holds my gaze across the shop. The door is locked behind him; I’m in front of him, and I become sharply aware of how little space remains between us and how neither of us is moving to increase it.
“Do you always open alone?” he asks.
“Most mornings.”
“And you take the safety of it seriously.”
Maybe it’s because Silas asked instead of telling me what I should do.
“Yes. I do.”
He nods once. The line between his brows eases.
A warmness fills my chest at the idea that he is concerned about my personal safety.
Normally that would bother me, but the same sentiment that used to get under my skin with my last boyfriend, Lance, would send my independent hackles up. What’s going on here?
“I’m about to open,” I tell him, picking up my coffee. “Meaning technically, you’re still early.”
“Is that a problem?”
“It would be, but I’ve decided you’re harmless and slightly amusing, so therefore, I’m making an exception.” He looks back at me, and the banter is still banter but I want him, and I’m beginning to suspect he knows it.
I set my coffee down.
His mouth curves, slow and satisfied.
His expression stirs—the satisfaction of a man who has heard what was said and also what wasn’t.
“I appreciate that,” he says.
“Don’t,” I say, moving toward the door. “It’ll go to your head.”
I flip the sign and unlock the door.
“You can stay,” I say, going back behind the counter, “if you’re buying something. Those are the terms.”
“What if I’m still deciding?” he says.
I look at him across the counter and raise one eyebrow. It’s my ’I know what you’re up to’ look, the one I used to use on my twelve-year-old niece when she tried pulling one over on me.
He’s already decided.
We both know that.
“Take your time,” I say, and I pull the stack of new arrivals toward me. As I start checking them in, the first real customer of the day pushes through the door at nine on the dot.
I know where Silas is the entire time.
And I like that he’s still here.
That’s the part I haven’t figured out what to do with yet.