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But that didn’t mean she couldn’t treat him how he deserved, and she started digging through the packages to find the one she was looking for. Something to keep her mind, her body, off him. Books had been their common ground and eventually their main connection. He was always looking to escape his home, and she was able to bring him to hers. When they were eleven and her parents died in a car accident, he was the one who gave her an escape. She’d never had a real group of friends — the one she had, parted ways once they hit puberty — but Dragan was her one constant. They had spent hours staying up in blanket forts or on the phone late into the night, hours reading on the store’s front porch or by Deer Creek which split the main town from the more rural part of the area. Or as Dragan would call it, the track that split the Right Side from the Wrong Side.
And he had a pretty firm idea of which side he belonged to.
Her hands found the package — a paperback copy of one of her favorite books, set to go along with two others she’d been holding onto. Books were their escape, and June tried to make a point of regularly giving him little care packages. She couldn’t fix how he saw himself, but she could at least give him a safe space.
Smoothing her skirt, she sat at the office desk and stacked the books, flipping through each one carefully before wrapping them in a blue satin ribbon with an oversized bow and a tag.
To my best friend
There was never any point in signing it. June always signed it to him, but never from her, not knowing how she should sign it. They were more than friends without beingmorethan friends. In their twenty-three years of friendship, they’d only ever saidI love youonce. More accurately, Dragan had said it when they were sixteen and decided to try drinking for the first time. They were deep into the tequila bottle he’d snatched from one of his dad’s hiding places, and he’d said it so softly she wasn’t sure it had actually been said. But the air around them had immediately changed, from a warm current to a thunderstorm. Her body had responded in a way she’d never experienced, but he laughed it off and they never spoke of it again.
So June left those three words where they belonged, in a hazy memory on the banks of a creek when she was sixteen with the only man she ever loved. Even when it hurt to do so. Even when there had been several times she could’ve sworn he was about to say them, or times when they almost slipped out of her own mouth.
But she could never do anything that jeopardized what they had.
And as June had learned, loving people usually ended in losing them.
And she would die if she ever lost Dragan.
3
Dragan glanced at June’s reflection in the mirror he was trying to hang, torn between needing his focus on the fucking heavy antique she wanted over the fireplace and wanting to catch her noticing his arms bulging through his tee shirt.
Bingo.
Their eyes met, briefly, before she blushed and turned back to the customer line.
One end of the mirror slid, thudding against the mantel.
“Shit,” he muttered. He’d been trying to catch the wire on the back to the two screws in the wall for a good fifteen minutes, his arms fully spread while the ornate mammoth bullshit decided to take its sweet-ass time finding the marks.
“Do you need help?”
Dragan looked in the mirror, seeing Rhys Dougherty step out of line with a smirk, sporting a Dougherty Construction hoodie. He helped run the business with his dad and two brothers while his mom and sister, Olive, ran For Goodness Cakes bakery. Olive was Dragan’s age and the bakery had helped their friend Colton find his footing after his knee injury.
But now he was faced with her older brother who was at the bookstore far more than Dragan ever saw or heard of him reading.
“No, I don’t.”
Rhys shrugged, the coil of a tattoo peeking out along his neck. “If you say so. I, uh, work in construction, so I can lend a hand.” He shifted his gaze to June, who was avoiding both of them, before returning to Dragan.
No shit, Sherlock.
Dragan caught himself before the words slipped out. While June saw or had seen virtually every aspect of him, he could still try and temper his attitude in front of her.
“Thanks, but I’m good.”
“Suit yourself.” Rhys moved up in the line, putting a hardcover on the counter and flashing June a smile with obvious flirtation disguised as small talk. Dragan watched them through the mirror, still trying to catch the stupid fucking wire, when June threw her head back and laughed.
Oh, hell no.
That was her full-on belly laugh. The one that rang truest — and loudest — through every room. And as far as Dragan knew, he was the only man to have ever made her laugh like that.
Until Rhys-fucking-Dougherty.
Dragan slammed the mirror against the wall, feeling the tug of the wire as it caught both screw heads and stayed in place. He saw red as he stormed past them into the back office, not caring when he glanced through the door that the mirror was basically hanging on its side.
He’d straighten it out once he calmed the fuck down.
