Page 1 of Catching Flynn

Chapter One

“I should’ve never agreed to meet with him,” Flynn muttered as he glanced out the front window of Dusty Spine bookstore. “Who meets their half-brother for the first time at their job?”

Apparently, people who had zero concept of personal boundaries, that’s who. Or maybe just idiots. Flynn was leaning toward idiots, considering he’d said yes in the first place.

Against every survival instinct screaming at him to fake a medical emergency—appendicitis seemed believable. Heart attack was even more plausible since his ticker was already in full-blown rehearsal—he stayed rooted behind the counter.

Around him, dust motes drifted through beams of morning light that cut across the bookstore in golden slashes.

Old paper and leather binding mixed with the faint vanilla scent of aged pages, a smell that usually calmed him but today just made his stomach twist tighter.

Books lined every available surface—floor-to-ceiling shelves along three walls, stacks on the counter, precarious towers near the register that threatened to topple if anyone so much as sneezed wrong.

His boss’s idea of organization was “wherever it fits,” which meant Flynn spent half his shifts hunting down titles' customers swore they’d seen “right over there” last week. Romance novels were nestled between pregnancy books and toddler sleep training, as if the bookstore were providing a step-by-step roadmap for a life sentence.

Taxidermy books were propping up a wobbly shelf leg. The cookbook section had somehow migrated to the back corner near the bathroom, which seemed like a health code violation waiting to happen.

Still, the chaos felt familiar. Safe, even. Unlike whatever fresh disaster was about to walk through that door any minute now.

“Excuse me!” A woman who looked in her early thirties but dressed like she never left her teens waved at him. “Where are your self-help books of the naughty variety?”

Flynn faltered on his way to her, praying like hell this didn’t turn into a “naughty” conversation. He wasn’t a prude, but he also wasn’t talking about sex to a… well, a woman. Not just a woman, but one who, despite her fashion tragedy, looked like a mom. He was weirdly good at spotting one from a hundred paces away.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t carry adult books.” He forced himself to smile instead of hiding out with the cookbooks until she was gone.

“But this is a bookstore.” She waved her hand around like she was scattering the dust motes around. “There has to be at least one.”

End me, preferably via space rock.

“Ma’am, I assure you, we do not carry self-gratification books,” he replied in a high-pitched, panicked squeak just as someone walked into the store on the ass-end of his reply. “Brows around. Holler if you need me.”

Preferably within the next five seconds before the middle-aged tween gave him a legitimate medical condition. Could you actually die of mortification?

You would’ve kicked the bucket when you were ten if that was possible. The image of his mom showing up on parent night in white go-go boots and smelling like her perfume carried notes of Jack Daniels would be forever burned like blisters into his memory.

“Well, what would you call them?” She blinked expectantly at him.

“Chicken Soup for the Soul!” His volume kept squeaking into higher decibels. If he didn’t get rid of her, windows would shatter.

She met his tone. “Well maybe you should try it!”

I work here. I have to stay. I cannot legally evaporate.

Glancing over his shoulder, Flynn felt his soul leave his body. Zack stood there, watching the exchange with an amused smirk.

You had only one shot at first impressions, and Flynn had used his yelling about erotic books to a lady who seemed slightly unhinged.

Whipping his head back round, Flynn voice reached maximum squeak volume. “We have cookbooks!”

I’m just gonna fall on the floor, fake my heart attack, so when I really do die of mortification, I’ll already be in the emergency room.

Should he clutch chest or just drop? Was there a way to make it look convincing but not too convincing? Were you allowed to have an ambulance on standby?

Wait. If Flynn fainted right now, everyone would think it was because of the self-gratification comment.

You will not faint.

You have lost fainting as an option.