Nevermore Bookstore: Chapter 6

“I’m going to kiss Ethan tonight.”

Cady punctuated her declaration to the universe with a lusty bite of burrito. The taco truck she and Gemma favored in the aftermath of a devastating emotional blow sat adjacent to one of Townsend Harbor’s many ocean-view-friendly public gathering spots. Following her last call with Fox, Cady told herself she was well within her rights to skip her usual Chicago Special—spinach, tomato, egg, and cheese—and go straight for the California Calamity: French fries, steak, pico, guacamole, and shame.

“Who are you and what have you done with my platonic life partner?” Gemma narrowed her eyes as she peeled back the foil wrapper from her own, much more modestly sized breakfast. Her assault was far more delicate, owing in no small part to the lipstick she was attempting to keep on her face instead of the tortilla.

“I mean it,” Cady said. “If that man hasn’t made voluntary manual contact with my physical person by midnight tonight, he can find someone else to not-seduce.”

Gemma blotted her mouth with the napkin she’d secured beneath her handbag against the gusty morning currents of air. “Is our good sheriff aware of this romantic ultimatum?”

“Not yet,” Cady said, setting down her burrito so she could pick up her napkin. Three more days with this wretched sling. “But he will be.”

A briny wind off the water carried the high shrill of seagulls as they sailed on the gusts overhead, likely eyeing the breakfast Cady was mangling with her nondominant hand. She and Gemma huddled closer around the standing table they’d chosen for its proximity to the outdoor heater. Like the cold, the torso-forward stance required to avoid anointing her coat with burrito shrapnel woke the ache in her lower back. Once woken, Astrid would helpfully make sure the rest of her body kept her company.

“I’m curious as to why this novel solution wasn’t on the docket last time we talked.” Gemma saw her struggling with the tub of green sauce and popped off the lid before opening her own.

“A lot can change in a few days.” Had Cady not just reached the bacon that the truck’s proprietress had added to her order with eyebrows raised, this declaration might have sounded bitter.

“Such as?” Gemma asked.

After an exhale that very likely brought up lung tissue, Cady made herself say the words. “Fox is officially out of the running.”

Gemma’s burrito paused mid-journey to her mouth. “I’m going to need some context here.”

“I…may have suggested an in-person meeting on our call the other night.”

“Bookmarking that statement for further discussion, but continue,” Gemma said.

“Things got all weird after that, but basically he said an in-person meeting wasn’t an option and then got off the phone as fast as fucking possible.”

“What exactly did he say?”

Cady was back in her bed again with Fox’s voice in her ear, her heart soaring like a paper kite one minute, a sad pile of broken sticks and tangled string the next.

“He said, ‘I can’t. I have one job to do. I can’t fail.’”

“What the hell does that even mean?” Her best friend began wrapping up the remains of her burrito, neatly tucking the corners in the expert fold that had made her so popular at The SandWitch, Townsend Harbor’s now-defunct humanely sourced Wiccan deli.

“Right? It’s clearly an excuse. It’s not that he can’t. It’s that he won’t.”

“Any theories as to why?”

In the lonely hours after he had abruptly ended their most flirtatious conversation yet, Cady had generated about a thousand of them, but narrowed them down to one. “He thinks I’m ugly.”

Gemma pinched the freckled bridge of her upturned nose. “You are a fully ridiculous human. You understand that, right?”

Better than she knew. “What else am I supposed to think when he spouts all these poetic words about my eyes being wild and wise nebulae, and my skin the color of silk roads or moonlight or whatever? It’s obviously bullshit.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Gemma said, holding up a hand. “He said what?”

Flaying would have been preferable than to recall such beautiful words in a moment when Cady realized they may have been no more than carefully calibrated verbal catnip for lonely girls.

“It’s not important. The point is, I made the mistake of asking him what he thought I looked like. He clearly peeped me on social media, couldn’t think of anything nice to say in real time, and hit up a Cyrano de Bergerac compliment generator. I suggested we meet up, his dick retracted like a turtle, and therefore, I’m kissing Ethan Townsend tonight.”

Stubbornly refusing the offer of help, Cady used the fingers poking out of her sling to hold her burrito in place while she twisted the ends of the metallic wrapper like a Christmas cracker with her opposite hand.

Zero points for neatness, but it would serve.

They gathered their breakfast litter and dumped it in the trash before turning face-first into the bracing wind.

Gemma’s cold grip closed around Cady’s wrist, forcing her to slow her pace.

“Look over there,” she whispered.

Cady followed her eyeline just in time to see a figure roughly the size and build of a professional wrestler disappear into the mouth of the alley next to Roy Dobson’s wildly unenthusiastic secondhand store.

“Wasn’t he hanging around here the day after the break-in?” Round red spots of color painted Gemma’s milky cheeks.

Cady blinked at her. “If by ‘hanging around,’ you mean ‘carried the broken bookshelf from the curb to the Junk Hunk’s truck by himself,’ then yes, he was hanging around.”

Having been conscripted by bribes of glazed pastry, their task force had been an amalgamation of locals looking to score shareable details, the pack of ever-changing van-dwelling bohemian poet/artist/musician kids, and several members of Townsend Harbor’s resident un-homed.

The man in question could have belonged to one of the last two categories, but would have stood out in either, due to his sheer size.

“’Kay.” Gemma gave her a wary look. “But why is he skulking around Misanthrope Alley?”

“First, he’s too big to skulk,” Cady said. “Second, he needs to get out of there. You remember what Roy did to the last guy that got caught sleeping there?”

“I think the entire town remembers that.” Gemma shuddered. “I still can’t look at a muffler the same way.”

“I’m just gonna go give him a heads-up.” Cady started down the sidewalk but was quickly tugged back by the tether of Gemma’s hand on her wrist.

“Just because he helped you move some broken furniture doesn’t mean you owe him.”

“I’m not warning him because I think I owe him. I’m warning him because it’s just basic human decency to prevent a man from being assaulted with auto parts.”

“Something tells me he’s not in any danger from old Roy. Did you see the size of his hands? He could squeeze the eyes from your head like a classroom hamster.” Gemma widened her eyes demonstratively.

“I wasn’t looking at his hands. I was looking at his face.”

“Because it looked hungry?”

“Good point,” Cady said. “Do you think he would want my burrito leftovers?”

Gemma brushed dark strands out of the corner of her mouth. “I think he might want some of your soul by way of your ass.”

“You’re welcome to call the authorities if he tries.”

“Hell with that.” Gemma reached into her macrame shoulder bag and pulled out a retractable knitting needle. “If Hot Hagrid so much as lays one sausage finger on you, this puppy is going straight into his temporal lobe.” She twirled the pointy metal object in her fingers like a baton and closed it in her fist.

They walked across the street together, but Cady stopped her friend short of entering the alley. “You wait here, Dirty Harriet. I’m trying to give the guy some food, not a lobotomy.”

The air between buildings was a few degrees cooler, heavy with the scent of old wood and damp earth. Cady stood at the mouth, scanning for a size eleventy-seven boot sticking out of the potential shelter spots.

Nothing protruding from the pile of old pallets leaned against the mossy brick wall outside the back entrance to Roy’s store. Nor from behind the black trash bins nearly twice the size Townsend Harbor typically allowed. The cans, like the pallets, were a special dispensation given him by the city council, who were sick of his endless complaints about the sanitation department, the foot traffic through his alley to access the stairs up the hillside, and the existence of other humans in general.

“Hello?” she called.

A faint dripping sound was her only answer.

“I really appreciate your help the other day. Also have some leftover burrito if you’re hungry,” Cady called in case he was still in earshot. “Just FYI, it has extra cheese and bacon on it, so if you’re lactose intolerant and/or vegan, maybe give it to someone else. But if not, it will restore your faith in humanity. If you had any to begin with.”

“I didn’t.”

Cady whirled around to find the man behind her. Which should technically be impossible, unless he was capable of camouflaging himself as a brick wall.

He certainly looked as solid.

Even without Fox here to provide tactical advice, Cady knew the idea of letting a giant man get between her and the closest exit was most likely a bad one.

And yet the chest-tightening panic she would usually feel in this kind of situation failed to materialize. Somehow, she had the feeling that he was the one in danger of bolting.

“Would you like this?” She held the burrito out with the wrapper side toward him.

Gemma had been right. His hands were huge. The palm he held out to her was the size of a salad plate. His knuckles were reddened, the large square fingernails ringed with dirt.

The tip of his index finger felt like sandpaper when it brushed hers.

From this close position, she could see the chiseled wedges of his cheekbones above the woolly tangle of his beard. His skin was a sun-weathered tan. His eyes downcast, framed with long lashes bleached golden at the tips. His lips red and chapped from the cold.

“You know,” she said, “I have other things around the store you could help me with if you ever wanted to make a little extra money. Unless money is a system you’re choosing not to participate in, which, in that case, respect. I personally think that capitalism should die, but while I still have to pay off my credit cards, it’s books or stripping.”

His thick, dark eyebrows notched upward.

“That was a joke,” she explained. “Not that I’m saying there’s anything wrong with sex work,” she quickly added. “Just that I’m not cut out for it. With my stiff hips and back, they might as well strap a Fleshlight to a hobby horse. Aaand now I am standing in an alleyway, complaining to a complete stranger about why I wouldn’t make a good prostitute.”

At the end of the alley, Gemma frantically signaled to her with wild hands and even wilder eyes.

“I better get going before my friend has a stroke,” Cady said. “Just know you can come by anytime. I usually keep tea and snacks on hand, and there are lots of places to sit and get warm.”

“Thanks,” he rasped.

“I’m Cady, by the way.” She held out her hand again, but the man only stared at it, his non-burrito-bearing hand flexing at his side.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t even think. Maybe you don’t like being touched. It could hurt for all kinds of reasons, and not all of them are easy to see.”

She let her hand drop to her side and smiled at him. “See you around, then.”

Glancing back to give him one last grin, she stepped in a puddle and felt an outsized surge of irritation, adding to her mental list of complaints that the cuff of her trouser jeans would be flapping damply around her ankle until it dried.

Gemma launched into her lecture the second Cady rounded the corner. “Do you have any idea how unsafe that was?”

“Sharing my half-eaten burrito with a stranger?” Cady asked. “I guess I can see where that would be kind of insulting. I did put my mouth on it.”

“Oh, yeah.” Her friend’s lips twisted in a wry smirk. “Men just hate it when we put our mouth on things.”

“But not, like, things that are going in their mouth,” Cady said.

A dreamy smile spread across Gemma’s face as they fell into step. “That reminds me. If things don’t work out with you and Ethan, I think I might have someone else you should consider.”

“But we know all the same people,” Cady said.

“Exactly,” Gemma said, shooting Cady a mischievous smile. “Speaking of mouths, how are you planning on getting yours on Ethan Townsend?” Hearing the leaves crackle behind them, Gemma glanced over her shoulder. “He’s following us.”

“I know,” Cady said. “I told him he could.”

Gemma’s shoe caught a raised edge of concrete, and she stumbled before quickly righting herself. “You did what?”

“I told him that if he wanted to make a little extra money, I had some things he could help me with around the shop.”

“Are you absolutely positive that bookshelf didn’t hit your head? Because—”

“Do you or don’t you want to know about my plans for the evening?” Cady said, heading off another round of interrogation.

“I do,” Gemma said, finally taking a hint.

“We’re doing dinner and a movie.”

“Again?”

“Yes, but he said it was my turn to pick the movie,” she explained.

“And?”

“Your brilliant best friend chose that new buddy cop flick.”

“And you’re hoping your selection of a film within the genre of his chosen vocation will bring about the desired surge of ardor?” Gemma guessed.

“No,” Cady said. “Since he’s going to have to lean over at some point to tell me what they’re doing wrong procedure-wise, all I have to do is turn my face and pow.” She smirked at Gemma. “Game on.”

They slowed at the crosswalk just as the rent-a-cop Ethan had hired to patrol the block rolled by. He gave them a stiff nod, his eyes obscured by tinted Aviators.

“If he doesn’t kiss me back,” Cady continued, “then I’ll know that he’s not really interested. If he does—”

“You’ll know whether you are,” Gemma said.

“Exactly,” Cady said. “Foolproof plan.”

“And what about Fox?”

“What about Fox?” Cady repeated sourly. “I’m moving on to adult males of the species who I can hold hands with, and watch terrible TV with, buy those stupid ‘As Seen on TV’ gadgets for—”

“You’re not going to stop buying them for me, though, right? Because that hands-free can opener?” Gemma chef-kissed her fingers.

“Right?”

“Genius,” Gemma said. “Go on.”

“That’s it, really. Until the other night, I hadn’t realized just how much I want that. The good stuff. The silly stuff. The everyday stuff.” An ache that had nothing to do with various medical diagnoses or improbable injuries lodged itself behind her sternum.

“May I raise one small ethical question?”

“If you must,” Cady said, slowing in front of Nevermore to unlock the shiny new deadbolt Ethan had installed by hand.

“Returning to the controversial topic of putting your mouth on things, are you sure it’s fair to kiss Ethan when you still have feelings for another man?”

“Who says I have feelings for Fox?”

“Your face, mostly.”

They waved to Myrtle, who was walking one of her and her partner’s gigantic wolfhounds and cheerfully flipping off Roy Dobson through the window of You Want It, Take It.

“Feelings can change,” Cady said. “Or they can be locked away in a vault never to be looked at, thought about, or generally acknowledged again.”

“Because that sounds healthy.” Gemma held the door open, then followed her in.

Cady inhaled deeply, holding the comforting smell of old paper, ink, and leather in her lungs.

This had always been one of her very favorite things. How the sensory delight of this place could find her anew after she’d been gone for long enough.

“Jesus.” Rather than taking her coat off, Gemma hugged it tighter around her. “When did you stop heating this place at night, Ebenezer?”

Setting her bag down on the adjustable stool behind the front desk, Cady cranked the dial on the circa 1970s thermostat. The old brass radiator located somewhere that the building’s original architect had considered “central” began to hiss then knock. “Does that make you Bob Cratchit?”

“Fingerless gloves and all,” Gemma said. “Which reminds me.” She rooted around in her bag and came back with an eggplant-purple ball that she tossed at Cady.

“Gem,” Cady said, unfolding the downy-soft bundle and slipping them onto her hands. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Tell that to Hilda.” Cousin to Astrid, Hilda was the nickname they’d chosen for the hyperfocus aspect of Gemma’s ADHD. “Which is why I also have pairs for your mom, Lyra, Kevin Costner…”

“Good luck getting those on him and retaining the use of your hands,” Cady said, beginning her round of turning on the shop’s many lamps. “How is Lyra, by the way?”

“Disgustingly happy,” Gemma reported. “She just won a major case against Merck, and her trust-funded dick-wrinkle of a boyfriend is now her trust-funded dick-wrinkle of a fiancé.”

“Still doesn’t believe you about the dick-wrinkle part?”

“Of course not.” She pouted. “It’s a total crock that I’m the one who has to go around with a name like Gemini when I’m still not convinced we’re actually twins.”

“Except for the whole identical faces thing,” Cady pointed out.

“Probably not even that anymore. I can barely manage a skincare routine, and she’s out there exploring the brave frontier of subdermal neurotoxins.” Gemma frowned at herself in the mirror as she pulled at the lightly puffed lower lid of her eyes. When she spotted something in the reflection of the front window, the frown deepened. “Rip Van Stinkle’s here,” she said.

Cady glanced out the window to see her furniture-hauling friend from the alley seated on the oversized cement planter on the sidewalk. His broad back was to them, collar of his jacket brushing the disheveled tufts of hair at his nape.

“One, his beard isn’t nearly long enough to earn that moniker, and two, he smells like pine needles and rain.”

Having cared for her aunt during the final phases of a terminal illness, Cady could no longer be shocked by anything the human body was capable of producing. She had walked into that alley prepared for anything.

Except that.

“I don’t like this,” Gemma said.

“Then maybe you’ll like this.” Cady took her best friend’s hand and ran it carefully beneath the lip of the counter until they reached a small, round protrusion.

“What is that?”

“A panic button. I press this, and Sheriff Townsend receives a text giving him the green light to ride to my rescue.”

“Uh-huh,” Gemma said slowly. “And how is it that you’re still not sure whether the man is interested in you?”

“Or maybe he’s interested in keeping the number of calls to emergency services low so as not to mar Townsend Harbor’s near-perfect record,” Cady proposed.

“That’s a distinctly unromantic assessment of his gesture.”

“It’s a distinctly odd gesture to make if romance is the goal,” Cady countered.

Gemma let loose an exasperated sigh. “If you’re going to have Silent Bob in here, you at least need to take the cashbox and put it somewhere that you can lock.”

“If that would make you feel better.” Cady floated out from behind the register, surprised at the subtle stab of disappointment she felt when she noticed Burrito Man wasn’t there.

“What the—” Gemma stood at the register with a quizzical expression on her face and a pair of lacy red panties dangling from her outstretched finger. “Times hard enough that you’re giving these away as bookmarks?”

Blood boiled into Cady’s cheeks.

“I’ve heard some people keep paperwork beneath their cash register, but—”

“Hilarious,” she said. “Give those to me.” She made a grab for them with her good hand, but her friend snatched them away.

“Not until you tell me what a box of crotch floss is doing at the register in the first place,” Gemma said with an impish grin.

Cady’s face broke out in a furious flush. “Because wearing them made my body feel like more than just a problem,” she said, grabbing the underwear and shoving it back in the box. “But the only time I didn’t feel ridiculous with them on was when I was talking to Fox. Some days it was too much for me to get up and down the stairs to the apartment before he called, so I changed in the customer restroom.”

Gemma blinked at her as if she’d just revealed that she swallowed live scorpions recreationally. “How come the most upset I’ve seen you in the last three weeks is when I find underwear stashed beneath your cash register?”

“I’m not upset.” Cady fired up her iPad, swiping a finger to scroll through email notifications for new orders that had come in overnight. “Just busy.”

Gemma folded her arms across her chest. “Busy being passive-aggressive?”

“Busy being humiliated,” Cady choked out.

“Humiliated?” Her best friend’s tone had softened along with her expression. “Cady, no. I’m just trying to—”

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Cady snapped. “You’re trying to get me to realize that instead of grieving for my aunt, I poured myself into a phone flirtation with a man I’ve never met and probably never will. You want me to be worried about the break-in, and the property taxes, and the fact that the whole town now thinks I’m a deadbeat who doesn’t deserve a man like Ethan Townsend.”

Gemma’s eyes widened. “That’s not it at all. I just wanted to—”

“What good does it do?”

Cady knew better than to have a conversation like this on what was shaping up to be a bad body day of epic proportions, but now she’d started, there was no way out but through.

“What good does it do to think about how I only got six years with an aunt I didn’t even know I had until I was fifteen? Or how ever since the break-in, Nevermore feels a little less mine, and it’s never felt much like mine to begin with? Or how I still haven’t been able to find any paperwork proving that Aunt Fern left the building to me, but I still have to come up with the money to pay property taxes she was too sick to deal with? Or how instead of dealing with any of that, I choose to create a whole-ass fantasy about a man who doesn’t feel about me the way I feel about him? How worried do I have to be before you stop worrying for me?”

Cady’s shoulder began to throb within its sweaty, itchy canvas prison, and her lower back offered up a dull, radiating duet.

Gemma didn’t answer. Her gaze was trained on the oversized desktop calendar, forever fixed on July. The 22^nd had been haloed by Aunt Fern’s signature purple pen, Dr. Appt. scratched there in script far more casual than its outcome would prove.

With robotic movements, Gemma gathered her bag and coat. “I need to get the store opened,” she said. “I’ll call you later.”

Guilt set in while the shop bell’s brassy note announcing her exit still hung in the air.

She and Gemma had experienced a few minor verbal tussles over the years, but had never ended a conversation or a call without having made up. Without having made their way back to each other.

Cady’s face crumpled as the tears spilled over her eyelids and streaked down her cheeks. A strangled sound tore loose from her constricted throat, and she sank down behind the register where her unraveling couldn’t be witnessed from the shop’s front window. The body-racking silent sobs united the patchwork of pain into one.

Her shoulder. Her back. Her hip. Her heart.

Gemma was only trying to help.

Everyone was always only trying to help.

With her grief. With her condition. With her life.

Most days, she could smile, and nod and accept whatever lukewarm consolation or unsolicited advice was being offered. About her posture, her diet, her energy, her plans.

You know, my friend’s cousin had AS, and she gave up gluten…

My cousin is a reiki healer, and she said that energy work could really…

You poor thing. I just don’t know how you do it.

Behind every breezy “I just take it a day at a time” lived a thousand bitter retorts.

Wait, is not doing it an option? Why wasn’t I told? Or I don’t die. That’s how I do it.

But the real answer, no one but Fox had ever understood:

I escape.

She’d learned to love long shadows. Hints she’d soon be able to crawl beneath the covers and disappear into the space between black letters on a white page. Become something else. Someone else.

Someone not in pain.

The self-pitying thought was obliterated by the familiar squeal of hinges as the front door opened, followed by the bright ping of the hanging bell.

Someone would pick this time to need something from her.

“Just a minute,” she called in a hopelessly congested voice she hoped to pass off as seasonal allergies. “I’ll be right with you.”

No answer.

The hairs lifted on the back of her neck.

Had it been Gemma returning to make up, she would have made some smart-ass quip to the tune of yeah, you will. Even the most entitled of the tourists would usually offer at least a grunt of acknowledgement.

Not Gemma.

Not a customer.

The first tendrils of icy fear reached between her ribs, plunging her back into the night of the break-in. Then, Fox’s eminently sane voice in her ear had been her anchor.

WWFD.

What would Fox do?

No sooner had she asked the question than he answered it inside her own head.

You already gave away your position. Protect yourself. Find a weapon.

Grateful for the sizzling adrenaline that temporarily turned down the volume on her body’s various complaints, she shifted on the soles of her sneakers to face the cabinets beneath the register.

Cady wasn’t sure whether she successfully opened the latch without an audible click, or if she just couldn’t hear it over the primal rushing in her ears. Either way, she felt a fierce pulse of satisfaction when her fingers closed over something smooth, cool, and heavy.

Her quick mental scan revealed no possible matches until she pulled it out into the lamplight.

A leather sap.

How the hell had a weapon wound up on the shelf where she kept biscuits for dog visitors and the disastrous paper book totes with the “CAWm Again” logo that no one had gotten but her?

Ethan.

That was how.

He must have tucked it in here when he’d come by to change the locks.

She spelt a spark of warmth for his protective gesture and willed it to catch fire when they met later that evening.

If they met later that evening.

Even with a cudgel, she was nothing like certain that her left arm’s aim would be accurate enough to connect weapon to skull, even if her maybe-assailant was kind enough to put his within reach.

Slowly and with great effort, she pushed herself up until her eyes cleared the counter—and felt a deluge of relief.

“Oh, hi. It’s you.”

The same hulking stranger who had accepted her half-eaten gratitude burrito now stood in the entryway to her shop, dwarfing the eclectic displays and vintage furniture.

“Did you get enough to eat?” she asked, covertly dipping down to quickly toss the sap in the panty box. “I know those burritos are big, but you look like you probably take down a solid dozen of them and still have room for horchata. Speaking of which, I have bottled water, coffee, root beer—if you promise not to tell my GP. He’s always telling me how reducing my sugar intake will reduce my inflammation, but he fails to understand that reducing my sugar intake also reduces my will to live.”

The crinkles on either side of his eyes deepened. And was that the flicker of movement at one corner of his beard-bracketed lips?

“Water.”

“Coming right up.” Cady marched up the steps leading to the tiny kitchen and opened the three-quarter-sized fridge she’d had to source at a consignment store. The half-empty bottle of prosecco in the rack on the door kicked her hard in the feels—left over from her and Gemma’s celebration of their last Idle Tuesday. A holiday they’d concocted one very high night when they both decided that they felt sorry for basic bitch September having to precede October, November, and December. She grabbed the water and closed the fridge door on the thought.

When she returned, she was somewhat perplexed to see her guest standing just outside the front door, his eyes closed and his face aimed skyward. Taking a few steps backward, she ducked behind a curtain and waited until she heard the door squeak open before breezing out like she’d only just arrived.

“Here you are,” she said, holding the water out so he could approach at his comfort level. “One doctor-approved, completely boring, but life-sustaining beverage.”

“Thanks.” He twisted open the bottle and drank the entire thing in just a few powerful gulps. A film of condensation still clung to the outside when he glanced around in search of a trash can.

“I’ll just…recycle this,” she said, setting it next to the phone on the register. “Well, you’re welcome to look around. There’s a really comfortable leather armchair that’s just your size over by the home improvement and gardening section. Also, almost no one ever looks in that section, so it’s pretty quiet if you want to rest.”

Just looking at him made Cady want to rest. The perpetual grimace pulling his chin downward. The concerned crease chiseled into his brow. Those dark, watchful eyes that looked like they’d witnessed every atrocity the world could unleash.

Twice.

He cleared his throat, shifting on battered boots. “Came to help.”

“Oh! Well, in that case. Right this way.” She made it to the steps again before she realized he wasn’t following her. His hooded lids obscured the exact point of his focus, but she could see his breath had quickened. His deep chest moved in and out like a bellows. Sweat had bloomed on his forehead below the dusty shoreline of his dark hair.

“There’s a door right next to where we’re headed,” Cady said gently. “You can step outside any time you need.”

Seeing the naked gratitude written on that weather-beaten face threatened to snatch the soul straight out of her tiresome, irritating meat suit of a body.

She started again, somehow comforted by the wall of person hanging a respectful distance behind her. He followed her through to the storage room, where the sight of an empty box with Fox’s name on it in bold black marker stirred up her sadness like pond silt.

“So, all those stacks of books in the front of the store need to come back here. And the ones back here,” Cady said, gesturing to a disintegrating cardboard box with the toe of a sneaker, “need to be transferred to those.” She pointed to the not-yet-assembled stack of cardboard file box bottoms and lids against the wall. “It’s not really difficult work, unless you’re down an arm or your back is being a weapons-grade dick.”

The trench-deep furrow appeared between his eyebrows. Cady guessed the term weapons-grade dick might have caught him but wasn’t sure the official medical diagnosis would land any better.

“I’m fine, really. I mean, I’m not, but I am. You know?”

For the very first time since they’d “met,” her stranger looked her directly in the eyes. The suffering she read in them made Cady feel like someone had just dropped a brick on her heart.

“I know.”

She wanted to throw her arms around him and reassure him that it would get better. That whatever it was that led to his current difficulties, she could help him. Listen to him. Do whatever it took to see that bleak emptiness filled with even one positive thought.

And damned if that wasn’t exactly the same kind of thing she had snapped at her best friend in all the world for earlier that morning.

Cady cleared her throat. “Well, I better go sell books and stuff. Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge and let me know if you need anything.”

Back in the shop, Cady set about willfully banishing the ghost of her fight with Gemma, the break-in, the general pong of sadness that had hung over every nook and cranny since Aunt Fern got sick. She dusted. Organized the register cabinets. Windexed the front window. Hell, she even lit one of the palo santo sticks one of the clean-up volunteers had left.

By the time Burrito Guy reappeared an hour later, the air felt a little easier to breathe. The gray day, a shade lighter.

“Done already?” Cady followed him back to the storage area, where not only had he moved and re-boxed all the books, he’d also separated them out by genre. It was everything she could do not to stare at him in open-mouthed wonder and offer him the second bedroom in her apartment. “I’m sorry, but if I’m going to heap effusive praise on you, I’m gonna need a name.”

She instantly regretted what was meant to be a lighthearted second attempt at an introduction when he flinched.

“Pick one.”

“Bob?” she suggested, remembering the most complimentary of Gemma’s earlier nicknames.

“Fine.”

“Pleased to meet you, Bob.” For reasons she couldn’t quite understand, Cady held out her hand to him despite his earlier resistance.

His dark eyes moved from the tips of her fingers down to her wrist. Up her arm. Back down.

Engulfed—the only word Cady could source to describe the sensation of having her small, soft hand disappear into his large, warm, leathery one.

His fingers—not at all sausage-like, thank you very much, Gemma—flexed against her knuckles, gently holding the most delicate bones of her body within a sandpapery grip that felt like it could crush rocks into sprinkles.

But it was Cady’s heart he somehow squeezed with his half-hesitant, half-triumphant flicker of a smile.

“Now that we’ve officially met, you think you’d be up to some more sorting?”

He was.

The next six hours were this exact cycle on repeat.

Cady giving Bob a task. Bob completing in record time what would have taken her a week of working around the hours of her body’s impossible-to-predict cooperation.

They finished out their day by addressing the impossible item that had been on Cady’s task list for the last several months: taking down and dusting all of her taxidermied critters. Towering oak of a man he was, Bob didn’t even need the ladder to reach all of them.

“Initially, it was just Edgar,” she explained, accepting the raven by the small wooden stump his delicate black feet were mounted on. “But he just seemed lonely, so I started buying him friends.”

Picking up the barely damp cloth, she carefully stroked it over the bird’s small, sleek head. “Since Edgar is so, um, special, I tried to pick ones that also had…character,” she said, landing on a word that felt accurate without being insulting.

Bob’s nod communicated none of the patronizing pity she’d come to resent when explaining her collection.

Which was the distinct advantage of those strong, silent types.

“There,” she said, placing Edgar on the card table she’d set up as a work surface. “I need to run upstairs and feed Kevin Costner, then we can get to work on the squirrel family?”

Bob grunted his acknowledgement.

When Cady returned, she saw that Edgar had migrated to the register. Propped open before him against the phone’s base was a tiny but surprisingly well-made booklet complete with a cardboard cover bearing a title in looping, fancy script. Edgar’s single eye leered at the tiny book through a silver monocle that, upon closer inspection, was a paperclip Bob had bent into a tiny circular frame. When Cady saw what Edgar was peering at so intently, she whooped out a laugh that gripped her abdominals and didn’t let go.

Cady was still howling like a banshee, tears streaming down her dust-streaked face, when Ethan showed up smelling of aftershave and looking like he’d tried. She had no idea how long he’d been there when she noticed him standing there, staring at her like he was trying to figure out if he needed to call someone.

“It says…” she began, gasping for breath. “It says…Carrion Cooking.” She howled anew, slapping a hand on the silky wood.

Bob appeared to be as baffled at her sudden hysterics as Ethan as he shifted on his battered boots and glanced toward the front door.

The sight of his discomfort, combined with the mantel clock chiming the six o’clock hour, finally finished her fit.

“Oh balls,” she said, picking a cobweb out of her hair. “I’m so sorry. Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll be so fast.” Remembering that she had no idea where Gemma had stashed the cashbox, she grabbed several twenties out of her purse and stuffed them in Bob’s giant paw. “Thanks again,” she said to him. “I’ll be right back,” she said to Ethan. “Have a good night,” she said to Bob.

Upstairs, she set new land-speed records in sticky-bits washing, bare-essentials makeup application, and would-be-seductress outfit selection. Examining herself in the full-length mirror next to the door, she wasn’t entirely displeased with the effect.

Upon her return, she found Bob gone and Ethan standing opposite her ragtag congregation, his jaw set and his small, shapely mouth in a tight line.

“Don’t they look so much better?” Cady asked. “We finally dusted them all.” She ran a demonstrative finger over Edgar’s glossy black head. It could have been her imagination, but the small black oubliette at the center of his one googly eye seemed to glow with a jaunty little spark of pride.

“I don’t like to meddle in a person’s business”—a quality that pretty much made Ethan a unicorn in this rumor-mill-fueled town—“but the guy who was helping you…”

Cady felt a nibble of irritation at Ethan’s use of the word “guy” as opposed to “man.” From what she knew of Sheriff Ethan Townsend, the list of requirements to earn the latter designation would be extensive and inflexible.

“Bob?”

“Bob,” Ethan said. “His coming here going to be a regular thing, or…?”

“I’m not sure,” Cady said, studying his profile. “Why?”

Ethan was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them. He knew his rugged work boots were sliding onto dangerous territory. “He have a last name, or…”

“I’m sure he does.” Cady smiled warmly. “You going to tell me why you’re asking, or…” She trailed off, mimicking his not-so-subtle game of interrogative Mad Libs.

Ethan scrubbed the back of his reddening neck with the palm of his hand. “I was just thinking, until we get some answers about the break-in, might be good for you not to be alone in the shop.”

“I agree.” Cady brightened, grabbing her sweater off the back of the chair behind the register. “Which is why I invited him to come back tomorrow.”

The satisfaction melted from Ethan’s all-American features. “That’s not quite what I—”

“I know what you were getting at, Ethan,” she said. Bending down, she opened the cupboard and carefully extracted the sap from her box of panties before placing it on the counter.

Ethan looked from the sap, to her, back to the sap. “Were you waiting for me to say something, or…”

“Something like ‘why did you leave a deadly weapon in my place of business without asking me?’”

“But—”

“Or maybe, ‘do I really look like the type of woman who’s capable of rendering another human unconscious if shit goes sideways?’”

“Cady—”

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate how protective you are,” she said, trying to soften her tone. “It’s just that I don’t think we’re quite at the point in our relationship where gifts of potential violence are a thing.”

Ethan’s sandy brows gathered at the center of his forehead. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I didn’t leave a sap in your cupboard.”

Cady’s face flooded with heat as she grabbed the braining stick and tossed it back under the counter. “So, dinner?” she asked, willing a sinkhole to open up and swallow her whole. “I’m starved.”

Ethan, God bless him, let it go at that.

Her brain proved not to be quite so benevolent.

One endless meal and a twice-as-lengthy movie later, Cady’s plan for seduction had gone right off the rails. The precise moment of opportunity she had described to Gemma occurred not even five minutes in, when the embittered senior officer with an axe to grind was assigned the feisty rookie who broke all the rules.

Just as predicted, Ethan leaned in to inform her how a law enforcement administration with any degree of oversight would never pair two officers with problematic conduct records.

Ethan’s clean-shaven, soap-scented face was mere inches from hers. Hell, his eyes had even flicked to her lips for a split second, but Cady choked.

Afterward, they drove back in awkward silence that thickened the air in his county-issued SUV to concrete. She felt a gust of relief when he finally eased the vehicle to a stop in front of her shop, killed the engine, and walked around to open her door.

Now she would get out, and he would escort her across one and a half cement blocks to stand a full three feet away from Nevermore’s front door. There, he would say something to the effect of “I had a really great time,” and, keeping his pelvis a good four King James Bibles’ worth away from hers, hug her shoulders and pat her exactly twice before hightailing it back to his vehicle and driving away.

Whether it was a function of the moon or her impatience to be upstairs in something with an elastic waistband, Cady couldn’t face it.

Not now.

Not ever again.

They’d gotten as far as the door when, instead of waiting for his gentle lean in, Cady captured his square jaw between her hands and stretched up on tiptoes to place her actual mouth parts on his face.

Their alignment wasn’t quite plumb at first, but he quickly corrected it.

And that was when shit got real.

Cady had prepared herself for the stiff, tight-lipped, tongueless smooch she would have to carefully coax Ethan out of.

What she hadn’t prepared for was his walking her backward against a brick wall with a masculine growl that temporarily short-circuited her fine motor functions. Just as she hadn’t prepared for his burying a hand in her hair. Or finding the curve of her hip and squeezing it through the fabric of her knit dress as, right there on the sidewalk, he did things with his tongue that she wasn’t entirely certain would be permitted by Townsend Harbor’s public decency laws.

Her eyes fell closed, and the hands were no longer his. The heated voice in her ear was deeper, smokier.

Fox’s.

“Can I come up?” Ethan asked.

Cady wrenched free, panting and dazed, her palms planted against his chest.

“I’m so sorry, Ethan,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“My bad.” He stalked back toward his car, got in, then got out again before walking around to the hatchback and popping it open. He reappeared with something shaggy and green that she recognized as a potted plant when she no longer had to squint to see beneath the streetlights.

“Almost forgot,” he said, thrusting it at her. “This is for you. From Mom.”

Cady stared at the glossy green leaves climbing the center spike of substrate. “Oh,” she said. “Thanks. Could you just— I just need to…” After digging in her coat pocket for her keys with her good hand, she unlocked the front door.

Like the gentleman he was even then, Ethan carried the plant in and set it down on the counter before marching back to his car. He waited until she had re-locked the front door before driving away at the prescribed speed limit.

His taillights became a red blur through Cady’s tear-filled eyes. She stared at the plant and snatched up its beribboned card.

So sorry to hear about what happened. Thought this might brighten your mood. -CT.

In other words, Sorry about your break-in. Here’s something you need to take care of or feel guilty about neglecting if it dies.

Under normal circumstances, she and Gemma would have been deep into psychoanalysis of Caryn Townsend’s motives by this point.

Under normal circumstances, Aunt Fern would still be alive. Cady wouldn’t have a sometimes-debilitating chronic pain condition. She wouldn’t be involved in a one-sided flirtation with a customer who was probably only toying with her because he could.

Because she was just that hungry.

For something good.

Something real.

Something she was terrified she’d never feel again.

Cady’s body began to quake until she could no longer stand still. She grabbed the plant and stalked through the shop and upstairs, overcome by the overwhelming need to break something.