I wove through the displays and stood behind him. No way I’d interrupt this show.
“You’re going to keep staring, aren’t you?” Dammit. He must have seen me coming.
“That was the plan.”
He shot upright. “Here I thought you were a gentleman.” If only he knew. I couldn’t dwell on the thought as he smiled. The peck on the cheek kept me here, in the bookstore, with him. “I’m glad you’re not.”
“I’m sorry about last night. Something urgent came up.”
“It was worth the wait.” His lip curled as he slathered on the flattery.
As my face turned red, I stole a glance at the book in his hand. Spaceships and explosions? “I thought you were reading classics?”
He glanced at the paperback in his hand. “It can’t beallhomework.”
I reached past him to a tome on the shelf. “I like these.” The fantasy book had golden sprayed edges and a darkmagenta cover. The silver foil on the cover caught the overhead lights.
He held up his book. “I never buy them. You read them. They’re done. Then you donate them to the library.”
“Well, I think they’re pretty.”
Booker ferreted out a person’s darkest secret in the interrogation room. He didn’t realize that in one statement he had revealed volumes. If his relationships were like his reading habits, once we finished at Synergy, he’d move on. I tried not to overthink it, but part of me feared this comfort between us would evaporate. I didn’t want to be sold at the library yard sale when we finished.
“Ready to help me pick out the next classic?” He took my hand, squeezing it as our fingers interlocked. “I can’t deal with anotherAlice in Wonderland.”
I didn’t have a chance to savor the heat from his hand as he pulled me along. It’d have been easier to walk single-file, but he wouldn’t let go. A woman in a comfy chair in the romance section looked over her book, smiling as she spotted us. Her expression matched the sensation in my chest.
We stood at the bookshelf filled with classics. It was as if I were back in school. I would have never read them on my own, but I’m glad I did. I started pointing at potential purchases.
“The Catcher in the Rye?”
“The movie ruined it.”
“Gone with the Wind?”
“That’s a book?” My eyes went wide, and he chuckled. “I’m kidding.”
“Moby Dick?”
He snickered. “Maybe.”
“Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
“I can’t. Fence painting reminds me of my childhood.”
I stepped in front of him. “For a man who doesn’t read classics, you know an awful lot about the plots.”
“Mrs. Klinger’s tests weren’t easy. I didn’t read them, but I still had to pass English.”
“What about this?” My finger danced over the different editions ofFrankensteinuntil I reached the paperback. “If you like dark, gothic horror.” It wasn’t nearly as impressive as the hardback editions. He took it, looking over the writing on the back.
“I was never a fan.”
“You’ve read it?”
Of all the books he avoided in high school, this was the one that caught his attention? It had been decades since I read it, but I remember empathizing with the monster. Created against its will and destroyed because the townspeople misunderstood their creation. If I were being honest with myself, I didn’t just empathize; I saw myself, a stitched-together version of different people.
“I hated the ending,” he said.
