Page 10 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

But my emergency contact is Millie. My emergency contact is five-foot-two and hates mornings and has a collection of novelty socks and would definitely, definitely not be standing there looking like someone carved him out of marble and gave him a really nice sweater.

My emergency contact is not a man I’ve never met.

My emergency contact is not a man who showed up at my hospital bed like it was the most natural thing in the world.

My emergency contact is…

“My WHAT?”

He steps forward, and his voice is exactly as steady as I remember from the crash, from what I thought was the crash, what I thought was a dying dream, what I’m now starting to suspect was maybe actually real:

“Hello, Fable.”

3

— • —

Fable

“I don’t know you.”

I’m sitting up now, which was a mistake, because the room is doing a fun carnival-ride thing where everything tilts fifteen degrees to the left and then slowly tilts back. But I need to be vertical for this conversation. I need to feel like I’m on something resembling equal footing, even though “equal footing” is laughable when he’s approximately the size of a small building and I’m approximately the size of a very confused chipmunk.

“I wrote my best friend’s number.” My voice comes out sharper than I intended, which is either the concussion talking or the fear or the lingering mortification of having called a complete stranger pretty while bleeding on him. “Millie Vance. Five-foot-two. Hates mornings with a passion usually reserved for sworn enemies. Would absolutely not be…”

I gesture at all of him. All six-foot-whatever of him, standing at the foot of my hospital bed like he has every right to be there, like this is somehow normal, like people show up at strangers’ hospital rooms all the time.

“…this.”

He doesn’t flinch at the gesture. Doesn’t fidget, doesn’t shift his weight, doesn’t do any of the normal things people do when they’re being openly scrutinized by a suspicious woman in a hospital gown. He just stands there, impossibly still, impossibly calm, watching me with a steadiness I’m trying very hard not to think about.

“You’re very tall,” I add, because apparently I’ve lost control of my mouth entirely. “That seems relevant. Millie is not tall. Millie has to ask me to reach things off high shelves, and I’m only five-five. You are clearly not Millie.”

“I’m clearly not Millie,” he agrees, and his voice warms at the edges, amusement, maybe, or patience, or some combination of the two, that makes my stomach do an annoying little flip.

Stop that. Stomachs don’t flip. That’s not a real thing that happens. You’re just confused and concussed and he’s very symmetrical. That’s all this is.

He reaches into his pocket, slowly, deliberately, like he’s afraid of startling me, and pulls out his phone. It’s a newer model than mine, sleek and black and probably costs more than a month of my rent.

“You wrote my number,” he says, turning the screen toward me. “On the intake form.”

The photo shows my own handwriting, captured by the nurse’s phone and presumably texted to him for… verification purposes? Is that a thing hospitals do? I don’t know. I’ve never accidentally given my emergency contact information to a stranger before. This is new territory.

MILLIE VANCE, I wrote, clear as day.

And underneath it, a phone number.

A phone number that’s almost, but not quite, the one I’ve had memorized since freshman year of college.

Two digits. I transposed two digits. The four and the nine, swapped places like they were playing musical chairs, and suddenly instead of reaching my best friend, I’d summoned…

“You,” I say flatly. “I summoned you.”

“You did.”

“By accident.”

“So it would seem.”