A place where I could breathe again.
And somehow, that scared me more than everything else.
I wandered past the armchair, fingers brushing spines like they could ground me. The quiet of the shop was sacred, broken only by the soft creak of wooden floors beneath my boots.
Then I heard her.
“Well, well, well.”
I turned just in time to see a woman round the corner from behind the front counter, her long cardigan trailing behind her like a cape. Her smile was wide, bright, and just a little unhinged—the best kind.
She looked like she’d stepped straight out of a storybook—if the storybook had a coffee stain on the cover and a secret map tucked in the back. She was around my age, with big, curious eyes that sparkled like she was always mid-thought and never quite finished dreaming.
Her brown curls were piled into a messy bun held together by a pencil and pure willpower, and her cardigan swayed around her like a cape as she moved between the shelves like she belonged to them.
There was ink smudged on her wrist, probably from a forgotten to-do list. She was the kind of girl who’d quote Austen in one breath and threaten to hex your ex in the next—and somehow, you’d believe she could do both.
She took one look at Hades and grinned like she’d caught him stealing cookies from her personal stash of forbidden tomes.
“So you’re the girl who finally got him to read a romance.”
I blinked. “Wait… what?”
Hades made a noise—something between a sigh and a threat—and muttered, “Don’t.”
I turned to him, slowly.
“You read romance?”
He looked away like the nonfiction section had just become extremely interesting.
Belle cackled. Actually cackled. “Not just read. He’s been coming in for months. Always lurking around the romance section, looking like he’s contemplating murder and love at the same time.”
“Belle,” Hades said, his tone low with warning.
She ignored it completely.
“Usually walks out with something broody and emotionally devastating.” She leaned closer, stage-whispering, “And always pretends it’s for his sister.”
I stared at him.
“You told her it was for your sister?”
“She owns a romance imprint,” he muttered like that excused anything.
Belle beamed at me like we were old friends who had just buried a body together. “Honestly, I was starting to think he was heartless until you showed up. You must be something special.”
My stomach twisted—not with nerves, but with awareness. Of him. Of how tightly wound he was behind me. Of how Belle had seen straight through the armor I hadn’t realized he wore even here.
I swallowed hard, then looked at him again. “So… what’s your favorite trope?”
Hades just turned and walked away.
Belle giggled, and I swear I felt it in my soul. "Take a look around," she said. "And keep an eye out. There may be something for you in that general direction." She pointed over her shoulder.
I wandered deeper into the shop, fingertips grazing the edge of a display table near the romance section when something caught my eye—a small package wrapped in soft brown paper and tied with a thin ribbon, tucked beneath a handwritten sign: Staff Picks for the Soul.
There was a note on top. Not a card. Just a single word, written in that annoyingly neat handwriting I recognized instantly.
