Page 38 of The F*ck-It List

“Ah shit, sorry,” Connor says.

“Jesus, Connor,” Augusts gruff voice comes from my left and then warm hands are on my hips, guiding me around the furniture obstacles. My breath catches in my throat before I’m able to say it’s okay and without thought, my hands cover August’s, feeling the roughness of his knuckles and the sheer size of him. It takes me a moment to realise we’ve stopped moving, but August is still there, touching me, and I’m still touching him right back. The hands over my eyes are gone but I’m still in the dark because I’m in front of a black wall of cotton. My eyes travel up until I’m looking at August, his hands grazing my waist before coming away completely as he straightens. “You okay?”

“Yep,” I squeak. “All good.” Which is true aside from the fact my heart seems to be trying to escape my chest, and my stomach has dropped low, leaving a heavy weight on my uterus.

He nods, stepping aside and my gasp is loud and sharp on my throat, accompanied by an involuntary sob as I slap my hands over my mouth. The shelves aren’t on the wall where I had set up the temporary ones, instead they cover the entire back wall, flawlessly framing the door to the customer toilet and the back storage room. They’re dark cherry wood and not a single edge is straight, instead left in their organic shape, like the shelves have been carved straight into the forest.

My books have already been set out, not in alphabetical order but in colour so they create a beautiful rainbow against the natural wood. There’s a click and then the shelves light up, highlighting my books and bringing more details to my vision. I step close and see that along the raw edges are sporadic designs that seem to have been scorched into the wood. A dragon, a heart, an old-fashioned silhouette, a quill, a ghost. They’re all adorable, and so small, you’d have to be looking closely to find them. And I want to find them all because I’m sure there’s more.

“We uh,” August says and clears his throat. “We read the backs of some of your books to get ideas of the kind of things to mark into the wood.” I blink and tears wet my cheeks. “There are one hundred designs, so you can spend some time finding them.”

I turn to face him and when he sees the state of my watery eyes he frowns.

“August—”

“Ah shit, you know if you don’t like them, I can sand them down and make something more—”

“No!” I step forward and put my hands on his chest just to stop whatever blasphemy he’s about to say. The thick muscles beneath mypalms jump and I can’t help but flex my fingers over them. “These are better than anything I could have imagined, thank you. Thank you so—oh my God!”

My eyes are caught by an explosion of colour on the wall opposite the counter, where I had expected the bookshelves to go, and I’m crying once more. Joanie stands next to the incredible mural that spans the entire wall from the front to the back of the café. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. One scene seamlessly blending into another from a Georgian town with ladies in bonnets with parasols, to an enchanted forest with nymphs and a unicorn. The sky shows space with a spaceship and a rather attractive blue alien that may have come directly from the cover of one of my books. The more I look, the more I see. There are references to some of my favourite books, and I laugh loudly when in one corner I find four little hobbits and one giant spider.

“Shelob,” I point at it and look at August. He raises a brow, but his lips are twitching with his amusement. When I look at Joanie, she’s beaming, hands clasped in front of her. “You did this?”

“It’s kind of my thing,” she says with a confident little shoulder shake. “Best interior designer in the village—”

“Only interior designer in the village,” Connor mumbles from where he’s perched himself on the corner of one of the tables.

Joanie gives her son the middle finger which makes me choke out a laugh. “Anyway,” she says pointedly. “August said you wanted to be transported to another world, so I gave you several options.” She gestures at the wall again and I wrap my arms around her neck. She laughs, hugging me back and rocking us from side to side.

“You have free coffee for life,” I say against her wavy hair.

“Unnecessary,” she says, pulling back and giving me a warm smile before her face goes serious. “But I’ll take it, verbal contracts are binding, no take backs.”

“Deal.” I laugh.

“Right,” she says, stepping away from me and addressing Connor. “Come on, you have homework to do.”

Connor groans and stands as if to follow, but I wrap him in a hug before he can take a step toward the door. He hugs me too and when we part, he pats me on the head, highlighting the fact he’s several inches taller than me. I push him away to his amusement, laughing as he and Joanie leave. I turn to August still stood in the middle of the room, watching me with his hands in the pockets of his soft looking jeans.

“You need to tell me what I owe you,” I say trying to sniff back my tears and hold on to my emotions.

He’s shaking his head before I’ve finished speaking. “Consider it an apology for being a dick.”

“I can’t accept that, August,” I say quietly. “You’ve already apologised, you took me to your parents’ house for dinner, that was more than enough. This took a long time and must have cost a lot in materials; I have to pay.”

“You can pay for the materials,” he concedes. “But Joanie and I already agreed we wanted to help to say welcome to the village and we’re sorry Connor caused all the damage.”

Something about that feels so wrong, like I keep forgetting Connor was the one who vandalised my books, because he’s such a good kid. “Connor’s worth his weight in gold,” I tell him. “He’s already making it up to me.”

Both August and I have been slowly walking forward, towards each other, until we’re now only a foot apart. He huffs out a breath, frustration flaring in his eyes. “Jesus, woman, can you just let us do something nice for you?”

“Why do you want to do something nice for me?” I ask, voice barely above a whisper, my head tilted up to keep looking at him.

There’s a long pause as he looks into my eyes and then over my face, snagging momentarily on my lips before coming back to my eyes. “Don’t ask me questions I don’t know how to answer, sunshine,” he rumbles, and the endearment squeezes my beating heart.

It’s impossible not to rise to my tiptoes and wrap my arms around his neck. He bends to bring us to the same height, but he doesn’t envelope me with his beefy arms like I would like. Instead, he pats me on the back and grunts, which only makes me smile into his neck. I turn to kiss his cheek, but his face is closer than I’d anticipated, and I catch the corner of his mouth.

August stands straight, forcing me to let go and he takes a big step back, shaking his head. My stomach roils and I feel heat rush to my cheeks, a new stinging at the back of my eyes.