There’s no sign of the bookstore owner, only a fat orange tabby cat lounging in a rocking chair. He lets me pet him, kneading his big paws into the plaid blanket he’s using as a bed.
I dive deeper down the rows of towering shelves. To my surprise, Kaiser follows. He even seems to browse, picking up books and reading the jackets before reshelving them. I study him through the stacks.
He’s acting like my dream man. He realized I was upset and did what he could to cheer me up. It’s so obvious he’s doing this so that I will like him. I refuse to like him.
He’s my captor.
I can’t think about my conversation with my father yet. His criticism was so hurtful, I can’t examine it too closely yet. But I do wonder if he made himself the bad guy so I would run into Kaiser’s arms.
And it worked. I can feel the shift. I’d rather be here with him than with my father.
Kaiser’s in the religion section, looking up at a huge Bible. I get close and nudge him.
“Have you read it?” I ask.
“Sections.” He moves on, and it’s my turn to follow. “Father Francis assigned passages for us to copy out. To practice our handwriting.”
I blink. That sounds intense. “He said he taught you.”
Kaiser nods.
“He told me you lived on the streets but would go to the church for meals.”
“Yes.” He pulls a book off the shelf. He’s brought me to the romance section.
He’s distracting me, and it’s working. I find an old copy of Wolf and the Dove and hand it to Kaiser. “You should read this.”
I unearth a copy of Silver Devil so old it doesn’t even have a cover. I hide it before Kaiser sees it. The hero in that book is depraved. I don’t want him to get any ideas.
I fill my arms with Beverly Jenkins’ Destiny series. Then I get to the sci-fi/fantasy section and find a hidden treasure trove of Mercedes Lackey and Anne McCaffrey. Kaiser has to help me hold the stacks.
“My mom loved these books,” I tell him. “She kept tons of copies of them in our lake house. Anna, our housekeeper, told me my mother called them her manuals for life.”
Kaiser raises a brow.
I frown, trying to make sense of what my mother might have meant. “I think she meant relationships. Some people aren’t good with emotions.” Like my father, I think but don’t say. “Their partners need emotional catharsis and support. A couple coming together to live happily ever after is the dream. The fantasy.” I look longingly at a beautiful hardback edition of Robin McKinley’s Sunshine. Without asking me, Kaiser adds it to his stack.
“Studies show that reading fiction makes you more empathetic,” he says. “Mental rehearsal.”
“What do you know about mental rehearsal?”
“From fighting. Training for the ring.” Once again, he’s surprised me.
“We need more men to read romance novels,” I say. “Too bad the patriarchy calls them trash and looks down on people who read them.”
“The patriarchy likes it when people fight.”
“What?” I think about it. “When people talk things out and don’t fight, there’s no need for a strong man.”
“The strongest men make peace.”
He dips his head and leads me to the checkout counter. “Not if the leaders keep them fighting. The ones in charge want to stay in charge. They do this by creating fear. That’s how you control a strong man: make him afraid. Of everything.”
“Then more women should be in charge. And non-binary people.” I wrinkle my nose at him, daring him to disagree.
The bookstore clerk finds us like that. He’s a young man, handsome if you like pale, skinny dudes who look like they’re on a grad school stipend diet. His eyes are beautiful, though. Soulful. I bet he writes his own poetry.
And I have an idea. An awful idea. A wonderfully awful idea.
