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He clears his throat thickly. “You told me you were a librarian. I knew how much you’d love it here.”
Love might be the understatement of the century.
For all the years I’ve spent in my home library and the state’s, this one feels more like home than those ever have.
God, he even has one of those rolling ladders…
My heart skips a beat, staring at it. “I honestly don’t know what to say. I’m kind of flabbergasted. I never expected—”
“That I could read?”
I finally turn to face him and scowl. “No. That any of this would interest you, I guess.”
He releases a little sigh, surveying the room absently. “I live alone on a mountain, Callista. I have a lot of extra time on my hands.”
That’s fair.
It’s not like he can spend all his time burying Barker enemies. They can’t have that many.
Right?
Casting a quick glance at him, I keep walking, keep scanning titles until another shelf makes me stop. I reach forward, slide out the cookbook on French pastries, and turn it toward him. “You’ve read this?”
He nods.
“Did you—” I bite back the question because it seems so absurd to ask what I’ve suspected to be true even though I can’t come up with another answer. But I have to know. “Have you been making me all those meals since I arrived?”
His gaze darts away, and he rubs the back of his neck. “Like I said, I’ve lived on the mountain alone for a very long time. It’s given me plenty of opportunity to read and develop new skills like languages and cooking.”
New skills?
The brush-off of his talents makes me gape.
“So, let me get this straight: you cook, you clean this massive house, you chop firewood and maintain this vast property, you speak Greek—”
“I actually speak a dozen languages.”
I throw up my hands and laugh. “Of course, you do. And you also manage to find time to do your family’s dirty work.”
His head snaps up, and his gaze meets mine, hard, unyielding, like the steel it shares its color with. “I don’t sleep much.”
WESTON
Even though the words are true, the statement feels like an inadequate description of my nocturnal situation.
By a long shot.
I can’t even remember the last time I slept through the night or slept at all, really. Just fitful moments here and there, filled with ghosts that never stop chasing me and regrets that crush my shoulders harder than any true weight I’ve ever carried.
And standing here in the library, in my safe space—the one room the cameras can’t reach—that I was so determined to keep her out of, I know I’m not going to be getting any sleep as long as she’s under this roof.
Her pure joy and genuine wide smile as her eyes dart around all the books and take in everything make something warm ignite in my heart. It sears across my chest and blasts through my blood hotter than anything I’ve ever experienced before.
Fuck.
It’s been so long since I’ve felt anything but the agony of my curse—the guilt and regret over what I did and what I’ve let happen for so many years. The taint of the blood on my hands never washes off, and as I rub at that spot over my heart and watch Beauty trail her delicate, pristine fingers over spines of books—some that haven’t been touched in a hundred years—I can’t help but see the glaring truth.
Callista Fox is far too pure and good for this life.
