I duck behind the counter, heart thudding. My reflection in the glass case stares back at me like I’ve lost my mind. Maybe I have.
I peek over the register. He’s closer now, head bent as he scrolls through his phone, hoodie tugged up against the wind. The same uneven gait from his old knee injury. The same careless posture that saysI own every room I walk into.
Crew Wright, in the flesh.
I whisper to the espresso machine, “Play dead.”
The bell above the door jingles.
I swear under my breath.
He steps inside, bringing the smell of ocean and October with him, and the room shrinks.
For a second, neither of us says anything. It’s like time folds—ten years collapsing into this one impossible moment. Of course, it’s not like I have been actively avoiding any moment that would put us within the same space for years.
Then he grins. That same crooked, devastating grin that ruined my GPA.
“Hey, Book Girl.”
My pulse jumps, my sarcasm scrambles for armor, and my heart whispers,oh no.
Of the fourteen snappy replies loaded in the chamber of my mouth, somehow the one that tumbles out is, “You can’t just waltz in here and call me that.”
He leans on the endcap like it’s a casual choice and not a strategic decision to be within breathing distance of me. “I didn’t waltz. This is more of a”—he glances down at his boots—“shove-in-from-the-wind and try not to slip on your antique floors.”
“They’re original hardwood,” I say, because when flustered, my brain choosesHome & Garden Magazine.
“Still charming.” His eyes flick over the ladder, the register lamp, the basket of maple pecan muffins, then back to me. He holds my gaze long enough to make my rib cage feel like it’s trying to remember choreography. “You look the same.”
“I do not.”
“Okay,” he concedes, mouth tipping. “You look like the upgraded edition. Hardback with a better cover.”
I hate that my laugh escapes. “Flattery will get you nothing but store credit, Wright.”
“Store credit’s more than I’ve had in years.” He says it lightly, but there’s a hairline crack through the humor, and for a heartbeat, I see him without the grin—tired at the edges and that careful way he’s holding his right shoulder like it’s a secret.
I fold my arms. “What do you want?”
“A book.”
“Try the giant shelves of them.” I make a sweeping gesture with my arm.
He glances around. “You gonna curate for me, or do I wander until I fall in love with a spine the way people meet-cute on those shows my mother watches?”
“You can start in nonfiction,” I say sweetly, “underConsequences of Being a Teenage Coward.”
He winces, but his grin hangs on. “Ah. Going right for the scar tissue.”
“Just keeping us honest.”
He straightens, stepping away from the endcap, and the room somehow gets smaller. “Honest is good.” He tilts his head. “You gonna come help me, or are you going to stand behind the counter like a force field of ISBNs protects you?”
“I don’t need a force field,” I lie, moving around the counter because apparently, I do, in fact, intend to help him.
As I pass, he smells like ocean and laundry soap and the kind of cologne that lingers in the best way possible. The awareness snaps across my skin like static. I pretend to nudge past him, but my shoulder brushes his chest, and six hundred tiny, ridiculous fireworks go off in my nervous system.
“Watch the merchandise,” I mumble, when really I mean watch me not combust.
