Chapter 14 #2
People are here. Real, actual human beings browsing shelves, pulling books, sitting in armchairs with their legs tucked under them and cups balanced on the armrests.
A man in a corduroy jacket reads with his glasses pushed up onto his forehead.
A woman with a toddler on her hip plucks a picture book from a low shelf and the toddler squeals and grabs for the cover.
My hand finds my locket. The gold presses warm against my collarbone. I wish my sister could see this. I’ve given up trying to call her, but I make a mental note to try again before we tuck ourselves in back at the bunker.
I cross the space to the railing and I can’t stop staring.
"You brought me to a bookstore." I must sound lovestruck.
Rowan comes up to stand behind me and wraps his arms around my middle. He leans his head down and whispers close to my ear, "I did. This is my bookstore."
I turn in his arms and tilt my head up to look at him.
He watches me with complete, undivided attention that makes me forget there are other people in the room.
The amber light catches the angles of his face and softens them, and for a second he doesn't look like a man who commands and empires.
He looks like a man who owns a bookstore and is proud of it.
"Your bookstore?"
"Da."
"This is yours?"
"One of three, yes."
I stare at him for several seconds before I turn my attention to the two-story shelves and the rolling ladders and coffee bar.
The happy laughter of a toddler squealing over a picture book makes me smile.
I stare at the wrought-iron vine railing, the amber lights and the reading nooks tucked into corners like secrets waiting to be found.
"A mobster who lives in an underground compound owns the most beautiful bookstore I've ever been inside."
"I also own a bar in Wicker Park, but the bookstores are the ones I check on weekly. The ones I care about the most.”
My mouth opens and closes and opens again. I must look like a fish. A deeply confused, deeply charmed fish.
"Walk with me." He touches the small of my back. The warmth of his palm radiates through the fabric of my cardigan and my spine straightens into the contact like a sunflower tracking light.
We move through the stacks. I trail my fingers along the spines the way I trail my fingers along flower petals, loving the different textures.
Linen covers, glossy paperbacks, the rough edges of uncut pages.
The air between the shelves is closer, warmer, and smells like ink and age and the quiet promise that someone poured their entire soul into these pages and left it here for a stranger to find.
I pause at a table display near the center of the floor. Art books. Photography. Design. My fingers land on a book of botanical illustration and I flip it open to a spread of foxglove rendered in watercolor so precise my hands itch for my pencils.
"This is incredible," I murmur. "The cross-hatching on the stem, the way they handled the bell shape of the flowers. Do you know how hard foxglove is to render? The tubular structure fights you the entire time."
He doesn't answer. When I look up, he's standing two feet away with his arms crossed and an expression I can't categorize.
Patient. Quiet. Watching me talk about foxglove cross-hatching the way he probably watches intelligence briefings, except his eyes are warmer than they should be and that barely-there smile he uses every once in a while is threatening to become a real one.
I close the book. "What?"
"Keep going."
My lips part. "About foxglove?"
"About anything." His voice drops. The vowels stretch. "Just like I told you yesterday. Keep talking."
Heat blooms from my collarbone to my hairline. I put the book down and clear my throat and turn toward the far wall of the store because looking at him while he looks at me like that is a cardiovascular event I'm not prepared for in public.
"Where's your coloring book section?" The question is professional.
Automatic. My brain defaulting to the thing it knows best when the rest of me is short-circuiting.
"Every independent bookstore worth its square footage should have a dedicated creative section.
Adult coloring books moved sixty-two million units last year.
If you're not stocking them prominently, you're leaving money on the shelf. "
"I’m glad you asked."
It’s obvious he’s up to something. A playful happiness softens his features and I can’t keep a smile from forming.
He takes my hand as he passes, and tucks me behind him. I follow, weaving between shelves, past a history section and a rack of greeting cards and a display of local Chicago authors propped on wooden easels. He turns a corner and stops. Steps aside.
I do the same, or risk flattening my nose between his shoulder blades. I step out from behind him and my jaw nearly hits the hardwood floor.
I gasp, eyes wide in awe. I can’t believe what I am seeing.
The section he’s brought us to takes up an entire endcap and half a wall. Premium shelving at eye level, warm light angled to catch the cover art, a hand-lettered sign above that reads BOTANICAL ART & ILLUSTRATION in gold script on black card stock by CORA VALE.
“My coloring books.”
All twelve of them.
Stacked, fanned, face-out, spine-out, displayed with the deliberate care of a bookseller who knows these titles and wants the customer to find them.
My author photo from my website is blown up into a life-size cardboard cutout standing beside the display, and the cutout version of me is smiling with a pencil tucked behind her ear and a lily of the valley boutonniere pinned to her apron.
Beneath the cutout, a small placard reads: LOCAL ARTIST. HAND-DRAWN BOTANICAL ILLUSTRATIONS. FIND YOUR CALM WITH CORA.
Beside the books, a curated tray of coloring supplies.
Premium pencils in a tin. A travel set of watercolors.
Fine-tip markers organized by color family.
Everything a customer would need to start the moment they get home, selected with the quiet specificity of someone who either knows the craft or hired someone who does.
A woman stands at the display. She gathers three of my books into her arms, selects the pencil tin, and carries everything toward the register without hesitation.
She doesn't notice me standing six feet away.
She doesn't know the woman on the cardboard cutout is watching her buy these books with shaking hands and a pulse so loud it fills her ears.
I turn to look up at Rowan who has moved in behind me. His warmth wraps around me and there’s nothing I can do about the tears forming along the rims of my eyes.
"How long?" My voice cracks on the second word. I swallow and try again. "How long has this been here?"
"Since the day after you told me. Remember the footrub?"
I nod.
“I had no idea you were really listening to me drone on about illustration and all my ideas.”
“I keep telling you to keep talking because I can’t stand a moment of my day where I don’t hear your voice, your ideas.
You are filled with so many it’s amazing to hear you talk.
All I hear about are death wishes, problems and violence.
” He cups my face and presses a soft kiss to my forehead, the tip of my nose and then my lips.
“But not when I’m with you. I finally understand why my brothers are so love-struck. ”
Love-struck. What a beautiful word.
Looking up at my lover, my vision blurs with tears.
“Don’t cry, my love.” Using the pads of his thumbs, he wipes my falling tears away.
“I cry because I drew my first illustrated coloring book during the worst winter of my life, when the pipes in my apartment froze and the shop was three months from opening and I sat at my kitchen table with a space heater aimed at my feet. That winter I was pretty damn desperate to get anything to work. I didn’t want to be a burden on my sister or my mom. ”
Rowan leans forward and presses a kiss to my forehead. “Go on.”