Page 14 of Fate, Interrupted

“Is that a problem?”

“It would be, but I’ve decided you’re harmless and slightly amusing, so therefore, I’m making an exception.” He looks back at me, and the banter is still banter but I want him, and I’m beginning to suspect he knows it.

I set my coffee down.

His mouth curves, slow and satisfied.

His expression stirs—the satisfaction of a man who has heard what was said and also what wasn’t.

“I appreciate that,” he says.

“Don’t,” I say, moving toward the door. “It’ll go to your head.”

I flip the sign and unlock the door.

“You can stay,” I say, going back behind the counter, “if you’re buying something. Those are the terms.”

“What if I’m still deciding?” he says.

I look at him across the counter and raise one eyebrow. It’s my ’I know what you’re up to’ look, the one I used to use on my twelve-year-old niece when she tried pulling one over on me.

He’s already decided.

We both know that.

“Take your time,” I say, and I pull the stack of new arrivals toward me. As I start checking them in, the first real customer of the day pushes through the door at nine on the dot.

I know where Silas is the entire time.

And I like that he’s still here.

That’s the part I haven’t figured out what to do with yet.

Chapter five

Silas

The restlessness is there before I open my eyes.

I lie there for exactly as long as it takes to confirm that sleep is finished, and then I get up. Coffee doesn’t help. I stand at the kitchen window with the mug and watch the street below: delivery truck, woman with a dog on a retractable leash he’s choking himself with, a kid on a bike taking the corner too fast. I’ve been restless, and I know why.

I know what it’s attached to. I walked out of a bookshop three days ago with a tome I’ll never read and the nagging sensation of a conversation that hadn’t finished. The feeling has idled under everything since—soft enough to ignore during the parts of the day that require full attention, loud enough to resurface the moment those parts end.

I still can’t believe I stalked her at her coffee shop yesterday. I knew it was the one she frequents the same way I know most things about the blocks surrounding The Last Chapter, because I looked into the trash can behind her counter and saw The Beanery cups. No sixth sense required. I stayed after she opened until the first customer came through the door. Was I obvious? I’m completely out of my league.

I have a lot of work to do this morning. The contract sitting on the kitchen table needs my sign-off. I read the first paragraph twice, absorb nothing, and put it face-down.

I give up, leave my apartment, and go downstairs to the warehouse. Everything is moving when I arrive on the floor, two trucks at the loading dock, the forklift on its first pass of the yard, the delivery vans lined up and waiting for their routes. The smell of the place hits: exhaust, solvent-clean air from the commercial side of the operation, the oily smell of asphalt coming through the open dock doors.

It should calm me. It’s typically how I ease into my day.

Not today.

I do the floor walk, check the pressing equipment on the commercial side, run my eye over the conveyor system, look at the day’s delivery manifests. Everything is where it should be. Marta has compensated for the two-person shortage on the cleaning floor without making a thing of it, which is why she’s been running that floor since before most of the equipment was installed.

The work is there, and I do it.

Halfway through the second manifest, I’m thinking about Norah again. I have to keep dragging my attention back to the dispatch board. The memory surfaces without announcing itself.