Once.
Twice.
Again.
I stiffened.
I didn’t need to check. I knew the rhythm of Blake’s messages too well urgent, demanding, possessive, clawing.
Dane’s brow furrowed slightly, his jaw flexing.
“You don’t have to read it,” he said.
“I won’t,” I whispered.
And I didn’t.
Not with Dane’s hand brushing mine again in the narrow aisle. Not with sunlight pouring in through the dusty windows. Not with the air thick with wonder instead of warning.
We wandered through record shops next, places with vinyl’s stacked in chaotic towers, the scent of old wood and memories heavy in the air. Dane let me pick up albums, ask questions, ramble about tone and rasp and the sound of heartbreak pressed into spinning grooves.
He listened.
Truly listened.
With soft hums and quiet smiles and a gaze that felt like a warm palm pressed to my spine.
My phone buzzed.
Again.
And again.
Ignore it.
Ignore it.
Ignore it.
I did.
And when he lifted a strand of my hair to move it behind my shoulder, his knuckles grazing my cheek, I felt something inside me loosen—a knot that had been choking me for years.
We slipped into an antique shop next, filled with velvet chairs that looked like they’d once belonged to queens, chandeliers wrapped in cobwebs, and tables carved with stories in their grains.
“My publishing house,” I breathed without thinking.
Dane stopped walking.
“What?”
I blinked, suddenly shy. “It’s stupid.”
“Penn.” His voice dropped into something deep, something warm, something that slid into my bones. “Tell me.”
“I always imagined a place like this… but alive. With books stacked everywhere, old typewriters clacking, velvet chairs, record players in corners. A place that smelled like dust and stories and beginnings.”
He swallowed. Hard.
