I opened my mouth to say no—the automatic no, the one I reached for whenever someone offered something I actually wanted because it felt safer than admitting I wanted it—and stopped. He was already here. And underneath the practical question of whether I needed help with the boxes was another question entirely, one I didn’t have the answer to yet—what this was, what he wanted it to be, whether last night had meant to him what it had meant to me or whether I was doing the thing I’d always done with Jasper Dean, which was feel everything twice as much as the situation called for and then spend years recovering from it.
The honest truth, the one I wasn’t going to obsess over right now, was that I wanted him to stay. I wanted him in my shop, moving heavy boxes and taking up space and being exactly what he’d apparently decided to be, which was present. Whether that was wise or not was a question for later. Possibly for Lucy, who would absolutely have opinions.
“Okay,” I said. “There are a few boxes. Most of them aren’t bad. But one is—” I made a vague gesture. “You’ll know it when you see it. It’s too heavy for me.”
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “Got it.” He rolled up his sleeves and headed down the hall, and I stood behind my counter for a second after he’d gone, one hand against the worn wood, watching the empty doorway he’d just walked through.
He’d come to check on me. He hadn’t had to do that. He’d done it anyway, first thing, before the morning had properly started, because that was apparently the kind of man he was now—or maybe the kind of man he’d always been.
I picked up the box cutter and set it down again.
I was in trouble. The kind that crept up on you gradually and then suddenly took over your entire life.
He was already back and carrying in the second box before I’d finished slicing through the tape on the first. I could hearhis boots on the hallway floor, and I made myself focus on the task in front of me instead of listening for them. It was a losing effort. It had been a morning. A good morning, mostly, but a full one. Mystery Night was barely twelve hours behind me. Eric had already happened. And now Jasper was here, in my shop, lifting heavy boxes, while I was up front,notwatching the show he was undoubtedly putting on back there.
I sliced through the tape and peeled back the flaps. The smell hit me immediately—that clean, papery newness I never got tired of. New books smelled like possibility. Like something about to start.
“Where do you want this one?” Jasper asked behind me.
I turned. He had the second box braced against his hip, waiting. “Right there’s fine.” I nodded to the empty stretch of counter behind me. “I’ll work through them in order.”
He set it down without making a production of it and stepped back, rolling one shoulder in a slow stretch before his hands dropped to his sides. The movement was unconscious, comfortable, like he’d forgotten I was watching. I turned back to the box and tried to keep my eyeballs in my head.
“Anything else in the back?” he asked.
“One more.” I kept my eyes on the books.
He disappeared down the hallway, and I turned back to the box in front of me.Get it together.I pulled the first stack of books out and started sorting them onto the slim table behind the checkout counter—hardcovers to the left, paperbacks to the right, special orders near the register. I’d done this a hundred times. I could do it in my sleep. I could not, apparently, do it while also tracking the sound of Jasper’s footsteps coming back down the hall when I was dying to get another peek at his biceps as he lugged around my boxes.
He reappeared with the last box and set it down next to the others. Then, instead of stepping back, he picked up a book fromthe stack I’d already sorted and turned it over in his hands, reading the back with a small, curious frown. I watched him do it. He had the expression of someone genuinely interested, not a man pretending to be interested in what I was into.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing.” He set it down and reached for another one. “Just curious.”
We fell into a rhythm faster than I expected. I directed, he followed without fuss, carried things where I pointed, arranged them like I’d arranged the others without me having to explain it, and asked questions only when they were necessary. The kind of help that was actually helpful—that didn’t create more work than it solved. I kept waiting for the moment it would feel awkward, and it didn’t come.
I pulled the next book out of the box and stopped.
Persuasion.Not a new edition—a nice trade paperback reissue with a pretty, flowery cover. The kind a customer would pick up and hold for a moment before deciding. I ran my thumb along the spine without meaning to, and the memory came up, uninvited and very clear. I was sitting across a scratched library table from a boy who didn’t want to be there. A stack of books between us. He was slouched in his chair, arms crossed, staring somewhere over my shoulder. Me pushing a paperback toward him and saying,Just try it. I think you’ll like this one.Him saying, flat,I don’t read for fun.And me, undeterred how only a teenage girl who loved books could be, saying,Then don’t read it for fun. Read it because I’m asking you to.
I hadn’t thought about that afternoon in years.
I looked up. Jasper was across the shop, sliding a stack of cookbooks onto the display table, his back to me. “Jasper.”
He glanced over his shoulder.
I held up the book. “Remember this one?”
He turned around. His eyes went to the cover, and something in his face changed—the smallest softening around the mouth, like a door he hadn’t opened in a long time had come loose by an inch. He crossed the shop slowly and stopped on the other side of the counter, looking down at the book between us.
“Yeah,” he said. “You made me read it.”
“I recommended it,” I said. “There’s a difference.”
“You recommended it three times in one week.” He reached out and turned the book slightly on the counter, just enough to see the cover straight on, and something about the gesture—casual, almost fond—made me glad I had the counter between us. “That was not a recommendation. It was a campaign.”
“It’s called being thorough. I was a good tutor.” I folded my arms. “Did you actually finish it? Back then?”
