Page 12 of Fate, Interrupted

There it is.

I take a sip. He’s asking to come with me. I should probably make that harder for him.

“That depends,” I say. “Are you asking because you’re returning that gorgeous copy of War and Peace, or because you’ve decided you’re not done talking to me?”

“I’m not done talking with you,” he says.

Nothing casual about it. No opinion, or preference, or possibility. He says it the same way he said I don’t skim that first afternoon, with the assuredness of someone who has decided a thing and is simply stating it.

I should push back. Deflect. Turn it into a joke and walk out with my morning intact. I have the tools for this. I have deployed these tools successfully on multiple occasions. Although it’s been longer than I like to think about.

“That’s inconvenient. Because I have a shop to run,” I say instead, and there is remarkably less resistance in it than there should be.

“I can work around that.”

“It takes two to tango,” I say.

I pick up my coffee and my paper sleeve of regret and start toward the door. I’m aware of him behind me, impossible to ignore even when I’m facing the other way.

The morning air outside is fractionally cooler than the coffee-thick warmth of The Beanery, carrying damp pavement and the smell of wet leaves from farther down the street. Larkin starts the day a bit sluggish on Fridays, traffic slowly thickening, the energy of a day that knows it’s almost the weekend and is allowing itself a little looseness around the edges.

I walk the half-block to The Last Chapter with Silas Coulter a half-step behind me and the posture of someone who has this entirely under control.

I give the shop a jaundiced eye as we approach. The drab brown door. The small shingle overhead. It’s unprepossessing and somewhat humble, but I’ve had customers tell me it reminds them of a shop in Hogsmeade, the village in Harry Potter. I always thought it harkened back to some medieval wand shop. I tuck my coffee under my arm, get my keys out, unlock the door, and push it open. The smell of the shop greets me, musty but warm, redolent of glue, paper, and the vanilla candle I burned down to nothing yesterday while closing up.

I step inside.

He follows.

The door swings shut behind him and I flip the lock, because that is my protocol. I never open to the public before the shop is ready, and I have done this every morning for three years without it meaning anything other than what it is.

Except this morning I’m locking myself inside with a man I’ve spent two days trying not to think about.

It means more than routine right now.

I know it the second I turn back around and find him standing two feet away from me, his hands held up in mock surprise.

“Whoa,” he says.

I huff a laugh because the joke is already there and I’m not made of stone. “Don’t get any ideas. It’s a security thing. I never open before the shop is ready.”

“Good to know,” he says, his voice low and dry. “Keeping my virtue intact was top of my priority list this morning.”

I roll my eyes at him exactly how I’ve been wanting for two days and set my coffee on the counter. I move through the opening routine: lights, register, the small choreography of turning a closed space into a ready one.

The joke hangs between us. Keeping my virtue intact.

It’s banter. Clearly banter. I said something; he said something back; that is the definition of banter. I’m a person who is good at banter and completely comfortable with it. The reason I’m thinking about the words and the deep rumble of his voice when he used them has absolutely nothing to do with the locked door or the empty shop or the fact that we are the only two people in this building right now.

I picture kissing him anyway. Just for a second. His hands on my hips, my back against the counter. I turn on the lights before my imagination gets any farther.

I step around the sandwich board I painted myself and am unreasonably proud of. I point at it while looking at him. “Would you mind?”

He eyes it and nods, looking at the slogan written in chalk. “The Last Chapter. We both know you need another.”

I don’t blink.

“It’s very clever.”