Page 22 of Bookish Girl’s Emergency Contact Is a Lycan King

5

— • —

Fable

By the fourth day after the crash, I’ve healed enough to be dangerous to myself. The stepladder is only three rungs high.

I’ve climbed it a thousand times, to reach the top shelf, to adjust the window display, to change the light bulbs that burn out with suspicious frequency. It’s basically furniture at this point, more familiar than some of my actual chairs.

So when I step onto the second rung and reach for a hardcover that a customer requested this morning, I’m not expecting my brain to suddenly decide that gravity is a suggestion and the floor is actually the ceiling.

The world tilts. My vision goes swimmy. My hand closes on air instead of book spine, and I feel myself tipping backward, falling, about to crack my skull on the poetry section…

And then I’m not.

I’m in his arms, caught, steady, my back pressed against a chest with the density of warm stone.

For one second, one endless second, I feel all of him: the heat bleeding through my sweater, the solid band of his arm under my ribs, his breath stirring the hair at my temple. My body, which nearly just died, decides this is the perfect moment to notice that being held by him feels less like being caught and more like being kept.

Get down. Get down get down get down.

I don’t move.

He was across the room. He was by the door, at least fifteen feet away. I saw him there when I started climbing.

“You need rest,” Orion says, and his voice is strained in a way I haven’t heard before. Tight. Almost angry. “Real rest. Not ‘sitting on a stool pretending you’re not working’ rest.”

“I’m fine.” The words come out automatically, even though I’m definitely not fine, even though my head is still spinning and my heart is hammering from the almost-fall. “I just got dizzy. It happens.”

“You almost cracked your skull on the poetry section.”

“I would have hit fiction. Much softer.”

“That’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

He makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be a growl, I genuinely can’t tell, and sets me down on my feet with exaggerated care, like I’m made of glass and he’s afraid of breaking me.

How did he catch me? He was across the room. I saw him.

Another thing that doesn’t quite add up about Orion Halloran. The list is getting long.

“I’m taking you to my house,” he announces.

“Excuse me?”

“My house. In the woods.” He’s already moving, collecting my bag from behind the counter, checking that the register is closed. “The store isn’t letting you rest. You keep trying to work.”

“Because it’s my store. Working is what I do here.”

“Exactly. So we’re going somewhere you can’t work.”

“I can work anywhere. I have a phone. I have anxiety. I can worry about inventory spreadsheets from literally any location.”

He pauses, bag in hand, and looks at me with an expression caught between exasperated and fond. “You’re very stubborn.”

“Thank you.”