“Matthias…”
“Stay away from me, Lina.” He paused at the door, one hand on the handle, but didn’t turn around. “For your own good.”
Then he was gone, the bell chiming with nauseating cheerfulness in his wake.
“Did he seriously just...” Mika stared at the door with open disbelief. “What kind of Victorian novel bullshit was that? ‘Stay away from me for your own good’? What is this, 2008? Is he going to sparkle in the sunlight next?”
Normally I would have laughed, would have made some joke about brooding mysterious men, but I couldn’t seem to make my mouth work properly.
I spent the rest of my shift jumping every time the bell chimed, certain he’d come back. He’d explain what happened, laugh about the weird static electricity, order another Americano and go back to his corner table where he belonged.
He didn’t.
Four-thirty came and went. Then five. Then six. The corner table sat empty, abandoned, wrong. Other customers took the seat throughout the day, but I wanted to tell them to move. That washistable. Except now he was gone, and he’d told me to stay away from him.
“Want to talk about it?” Vivi asked during the evening lull, a plate of sympathy brownies already in hand.
“Nothing to talk about.” I accepted a brownie anyway, biting into chocolate that tasted of sawdust. “Just a weird customer interaction.”
“The kind of weird where you electrocute each other and he runs away after giving Victorian-era warnings?”
“Mika has a big mouth.”
“Mika is concerned.” Mika herself appeared from the storage room. “That was weird even by Pine Valley standards, and we live in a town that puts silver crosses on doors to ward off beasts.”
I wanted to argue, but what would I say? That when we touched, I’d felt his emotions? That for one terrifying, exhilarating moment, I’d been inside his head? They’d think I’d lost my mind. Hell, I was starting to think I’d lost my mind.
The shop felt different without him in it. Smaller somehow, as if his presence had been taking up more space than just one corner table. The carefully curated playlist that usually made me happysounded tinny and wrong. Even the coffee seemed bitter, though I’d made it the exact same way I always did.
By the time we closed, the hollow feeling in my chest had expanded until I felt I might float away from sheer emptiness. I kept replaying his final words, searching for some hidden meaning, some clue that this wasn’t really goodbye.
‘Stay away from me, Lina. For your own good.’
What did that even mean? Was he dangerous? Was I? Was whatever happened between us when we touched something he’d experienced before?
I locked up the shop, taking extra time to double-check everything. The routine movements should have been soothing, but tonight they just emphasized how wrong everything felt. This morning I’d woken up excited about the day, about seeing him, about maybe finally being brave enough to suggest actual conversation beyond book recommendations.
Now there was just nothing. An empty corner table and fifty dollars on the counter that felt more closely resembling a payoff than a tip.
My hand still tingled where we’d touched. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel that rush of foreign emotions. The want that had nearly brought me to my knees. The self-hatred that made me want to reach out and soothe hurts I didn’t understand, the protective rage that felt raw and absolutely focused on me.
He’d wanted me. In that brief moment of connection, I’d felt how much he wanted me. It went beyond physical attraction,beyond the careful dance we’d been doing for weeks. It was need so intense it had felt almost painful.
So why tell me to stay away?
I touched my hand where our skin had met, half expecting to see burn marks. There was nothing. No evidence that anything unusual had happened except the memory seared into my brain and the ache in my chest that wouldn’t go away.
My phone buzzed. For one stupid second, my heart leaped, thinking maybe he’d somehow gotten my number, maybe he was texting to explain-
It was Sarah. “Heard you had some excitement today. Mrs. Callahan is telling everyone you and some stranger had a lover’s quarrel that involved exploding dishes.”
Great. By tomorrow the whole town would have their own version of what happened.
I typed back that everything was fine, just a minor accident, nothing to worry about. The lies came easier through text where she couldn’t see my face or hear the hollow ring in my voice.
Something had happened when we touched. Something that terrified him enough to run, to push me away with words that sounded more protective than cruel.
‘For your own good.’
