The shelf was solid under my hands, and I pressed into it and kept my face as neutral as I could. “Who told you that?”
“It’s a small town. People talk.”
“Who?”
“Does it really matter?”
It mattered. I had not told anyone outside my family, and my family did not talk to Eric. The only way he could have known was if someone had seen us or if he had been watching. A brief hit of panic shot through me, and I filed it away to think about later and kept my expression steady. “My personal life isn’t something I discuss in the shop, Eric.”
His face changed. Not anger—something more controlled than that. He tilted his head slightly. “I heard you went to The Hearthstone.”
“Who I have dinner with and where is my own business,” I said it clearly, no softening around it. “That’s not something I’m going to discuss with you.”
“That was our place.” He said it flat, like an accusation he had prepared in advance, and then paused just long enough to let it sit. “We had dinner there together, Cara.” His voice was quiet, almost reasonable. “Or did you forget?”
His hand landed between us on the counter, and the floor went sideways under my feet, because he was rewriting that evening. He was standing in my shop rewriting what that dinner had been—rewriting it into something mutual, something shared, something that gave him a claim on where I went and who I went with—and he was doing it so smoothly and with such complete conviction that for one disorienting second I almost felt guilty, which was exactly what he intended.
I took one breath and kept my hands where they were.
“Eric.” My voice came out steady. “That was one dinner. It wasn’tourplace. It wasn’t ouranything.” I held his eyes. “Who I spend my time with is not your business. It has never been your business. I’ve been kind about that because I didn’t want to make things uncomfortable, but I’m telling you directly now because being kind isn’t working.” I kept my voice even. “Mypersonal life is not a conversation we’re going to have. Not today, not the next time you come in, not ever.”
The easy pleasantness he wore like a second skin tightened at the edges, and for just a second, I saw what was underneath it—not wounded, not embarrassed. Something harder and predatorial.
His gaze dropped—just for a count of one—to my mouth.
Unease ran down my spine.
His eyes came back up to mine. “You look different today,” he said. Like I hadn’t spoken. Like none of it had registered, or he had simply decided it hadn’t.
I felt my hands curl against the shelf behind me. “Is there a book I can help you find?”
“No.” He straightened up slowly, unhurried, and picked up his hand from the counter. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Have a good day, Eric.”
He looked at me for a moment longer than was comfortable, that almost-smile still sitting on his face. Then he nodded once, easy and unbothered, turned and walked to the door.
He held my gaze for one more beat. Then he gave me a small nod—satisfied, settled, the nod of someone who has gotten what he came for—and turned and walked toward the front of the shop. At the door, he stopped and half-turned, one hand on the frame.
“I’ll see you around, Cara.”
“Please don’t come back here unless you are buying a book,” I said it as calmly and clearly as I could. I had already told him no once. I was going to keep saying it in every way available to me until one of them landed.
Something moved behind his eyes that I could not name and did not want to. “Sure.”
The door opened. He left.
I stood at the counter, frozen. More than a little bit freaked out. I should have told him never to come back. But something, maybe it was fear, held me back.
The shop was quiet. My heart was about to pound straight out of my chest, and my hands were shaking—not badly, just a fine tremor I could see if I looked at them straight on. I watched them without moving them, because I did not want to curl them into fists, and I also was not sure I trusted myself with anything fragile.
Nothing had happened. Eric had stood in my shop for a few minutes, said things that were technically polite, and walked out. He had not touched me. He had not raised his voice. He had not said a single thing I could hand to someone else and say,here, look at this.And yet something in me had understood—with a cold, quiet certainty—that this had been a message. Deliberate, careful, and intended only for me.
He had looked at my mouth.
He had known about the dinner.
He had walked in specifically to let me know he knew everything.
