“Me too. I mean, you—I’m into you, not me. I’m into meandyou. This, now.”
Fortunately, he shut her up with a kiss.
Chapter 16
Lana
Griffin shifted under the sheet and kissed Lana’s shoulder blade. They’d dozed off for a while. So very cozy. Here she was, lying naked next to a guy she was so incredibly into, who was also apparently into her. And if there was a world where they could feasibly be together, it wasn’t this world.
“Four-five-one,” he said, reading her tattoo, a number inside a flame. “Fahrenheit 451—the temperature at which books burn. Great book.”
“I have thirteen editions.”
“There are different editions?”
“The text doesn’t change, but the retro covers are fantastic.”
He kissed the tattoo, then his lips followed the path of her rose-gold necklace to the heart pendant. He flipped it over and read the inscription. “Always in my heart.”
“Vivien has a matching one. We’ve had them as long as I can remember.”
“Very pretty,” he said, looking at her face. He kissed her and got out of bed, pulling his boxers on. “We should eat. And I’ll grab you some cream for those Taser burns.” He pointed to her upper arm.
“You don’t have any tattoos, then?” The closest he came to ink was the purple and red bruise on his ribs where Hector’s stunt double had landed a hit.
“They’re a pain for makeup artists. For some reason, I end up in films where the plot requires me to be naked, or nearly naked, at some point.”
She rolled onto her side, watching him dress. “Can’t imagine why.”
“Also, I’m not sure anything defines me so much that I’d make it a permanent declaration. My existential issues. An alien hermit might be hard to explain.”
“I got swept up in the moment. Went to a librarian symposium, and a bunch of us got them—different ones.”
“I love that so much. What did the others get?”
“One guy got ‘shh’ tattooed on his pointer finger. My boss got an epic one—an open book with the pages burning. As they float up, they turn into butterflies and fly away. To symbolize that you can burn a book but not an idea.”
“For fierce defenders of truth and enforcers of ‘you should be allowed to read any damn book you please,’ you guys seem obsessed with book burning.”
“You laugh, but we’re basically civil rights campaigners. The unlikely warriors on the front lines of the culture war. Someone once filed a formal complaint against me for wearing rainbow socks.”
“They what?” He started getting plates out.
“It’s not even our patrons. The people who complain live nowhere near. Sometimes they come from different states—stealth squads who go around libraries stealing specific books they claim are ‘polluting young minds.’ One will distract you with a question while the others grab the books. The alarm goes off at the door, but by the time you get there, they’ve gone. They have getaway cars and everything.”
“Maybe I will join a library, for solidarity.”
“Honestly, if you came into the library and borrowed a book, it would be interpreted by some as an extreme political act.”
“Then I’m definitely doing it. Better yet, I’m gonna make a movie about a librarian who is fired for rainbow socks and fights back. The caped defender of intellectual freedom—cardiganeddefender. We’ll call itBadass Librarian.”
“Oh, I will watch that. When I got my tattoo, I considered getting an entire line fromFahrenheit 451, the one at the beginning where the protagonist is burning the old lady’s books, and she chooses to burn alongside them, and he wonders what unimaginable things could be in a book that would make someone die to protect it. But I didn’t want to go through that much pain. Your badass librarian totally would.”
“By any chance, do you ever wear a cardigan? Glasses on a chain?”
“Do you know how often men ask me that question? But full disclosure: I wear cardigans. Our A.C. is all over the place, so I’m constantly shifting between too hot and too cold. No glasses, though.”
“Would you wear them just for me? And peer over the top when I return a library book all dog-eared.”
