Page 48 of Power Play

“What?”

I looked toward the window. “Nothing.”

“You were staring.”

“I was thinking.”

“Loud again?”

“Apparently.”

His dimple appeared as he backed out.

The drive to his apartment took less than ten minutes. Ryan kept one hand low on the steering wheel while we argued about whether Wuthering Heights qualified as a romance, and by the time he pulled into the cracked parking lot of an older brick building near the edge of town, I had almost forgotten the dangerous part of being alone with him.

Almost.

The stairwell smelled faintly like laundry detergent and somebody’s aggressively seasoned dinner. Ryan unlocked his door while warning me to ignore the building’s personality.

“What does that mean?”

“The pipes knock.”

“That isn’t personality. That’s a maintenance issue.”

“My landlord calls it charm.”

“Your landlord is avoiding an invoice.”

Ryan pushed the door open and held it while I walked inside.

His apartment wasn’t decorated in any deliberate way. It was simply lived in. A black hoodie hung over the back of the couch. Hockey gear occupied a neat corner near the door. Two mismatched mugs sat beside the sink, and a pair of running shoes had been lined against the wall with enough precision to suggest Ryan was tidier than he wanted anyone to know.

The books were everywhere.

Two tall shelves covered most of the living-room wall, both filled beyond capacity. Novels stood upright until the space ran out, then lay horizontally across the tops. More crowded the table near the window and the floor beside the couch. A narrow shelf near the hallway held notebooks, binders, and battered paperbacks with cracked spines.

I moved closer without taking off my bag.

“You weren’t exaggerating.”

“I usually don’t.”

“You own more books than the Book Nook.”

“They sell candles and tote bags. Half their space is decorative.”

I ran one finger lightly along the spines. History, mythology, political theory, poetry, rhetoric. Some were clean and newer. Others looked like they had survived years with him, their corners softened and covers faded beneath repeated hands.

There was something unexpectedly intimate about it.

Ryan had always seemed like a man who carried very little he didn’t need. Hockey bag. Truck. Clothing mostly consisting of black, gray, and whatever jersey somebody paid him to wear. Even his apartment looked practical around the edges.

Then there were the books—hundreds of them, kept, marked, and loved enough to survive every version of him that had owned them.

“You’ve read all of these?”

“Most.”