Page 9 of Owl’s Cherished Mate

Williams, Bonnie R.

I scanned the book, printed the receipt, tucked it inside, and slid the book back across the counter to her.

Her last name was Williams.

There was only one Williams family in town.

She must be the daughter of Gravis Williams—the man who’d run the pill smuggling operation out of the Tidal Caverns. He’d been arrested along with the pharmacy tech at the time, after a travel blogger stumbled into their operation and nearly drowned for it. The whole thing had been front-page news, or as close to front-page as Driftwood Cove got. Callie Rivers had written the story that blew it wide open. Everyone in town knew about it.

I watched Bonnie walk back to her corner table with the book tucked under her arm, and pieces I’d been collecting about her without realizing fell into place. The exhaustion that went deeper than long shifts or late nights studying. The way she held herself in public—shoulders back, chin up, but with an undercurrent of bracing, like she was always waiting for someone to say something. The shame she wore like a second skin, visible only if you were paying attention.

I’d been paying attention.

She sat down and opened the book, and my owl released a low sound that I felt more than heard. He didn’t care about her last name. Didn’t care who her father was or what he’d done. My owl only cared that this woman mattered, and whatever name she carried didn’t change that.

I picked up the flat smoothing tool I used for bookbinding and went back to work.

Knowing who she was didn’t change anything for me either. If anything, I noticed her more now.

I shouldn’t.

After all, I liked my life the way it was. I had my routines. My space. My silence. It was a good life, and I’d never felt like it was missing anything.

Until now.

Even so, getting involved with someone—caring about someone beyond professional courtesy—meant noise. Mess. Unpredictability. It meant opening a door I’d spent years keeping shut, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out what was on the other side.

My owl ruffled his feathers.

He thought I was being a coward. He didn’t say it in words, but I could feel it in the way he pressed against me. His impatience, his frustration with my hesitation. He wanted me to do something—talk to her, sit with her, ask her what she was studying. He didn’t understand why I held back, but holding back was what I was good at.

I watched. Observed. It was just who I was.

She caught me staring, and the corner of her mouth lifted into a smile. It was small and tired, but there nonetheless.

Something shifted inside my chest at the sight, and I knew I was in trouble.

I knew it with the same certainty I knew how to repair a broken spine or identify a first edition by its binding. This was something else, and my owl knew it, and now I knew it, and the only question was what I was going to do about it.

Nothing.

That was the safe answer. The smart answer. The answer that kept my quiet life intact.

My owl nipped at me.

I ignored him and got back to work.

Seven o’clock came and went.

I’d finished the endpaper repair and moved on to cleaning the cover of a water-damaged hardback from the 1980s. She was typing in an unsteady rhythm—fast bursts followed by long pauses—as though wrestling with whatever she was writing.

I should have made the closing announcement a while ago. The main lights should be off and the door should be locked by now. That was the routine. Instead, I was still at the front desk, working on the cover. The clock hit seven oh five. Seven ten. The last person besides Bonnie had left an hour ago. The building was empty except for the two of us.

She didn’t notice.

She was too deep in whatever she was typing. Her brow was furrowed, and her lips moved slightly as she read something back to herself. A strand of dark hair had slipped loose from her braid and hung beside her cheek, and she kept tucking it behind her ear only for it to fall forward again.

At seven twenty, I got up and locked the front door. Not because I was trying to trap her in—I’d unlock it the second she was ready to leave—but because I didn’t want someone wandering in and breaking whatever concentration she’d found.