"It's the library. You can't exactly text a book recommendation."
"You absolutely can, but okay." Tyler grins. "So what's his deal? What does he do? How old is he?"
"I don't know. Older. He's part of the — he works with Robin's boyfriend's group. The motorcycle guys."
"The shifters? Dude."
"It's not a thing, Tyler."
"A hot shifter biker is leaving you love notes in the library and you're telling me it's not a thing."
"Book recommendations."
"Love notes."
"I'm going to sleep."
"He left you a BOOK, Devin. That is a man with intentions."
I pull the blanket over my head. Tyler is still talking, something about how I need to make a move before someone else does, but his voice fades into background noise. Under the blanket, in the dark, I pull out Silas's note and read it again by the glow of my dying phone.
Since you gave me dragons, I thought I'd give you unreliable narrators and beautiful prose.
Hethought I'd give you. Like it was a gift, what I did. Like a scribbled note on receipt paper with a stupid smiley face was something worth reciprocating with a 6:30 AM library visit and his own careful handwriting and a book he chose specifically for me.
I fold the note and put it insideThe Name of the Wind, marking where I stopped.
Two notes now. His and mine. A collection.
Tomorrow's Tuesday. My day off. He said he'd be at the library.
I close my eyes and let myself, just for a minute, just in the dark where nobody can see, hope.
Chapter 6
Silas
The Lions of Al-Rassan.
I find it in the library catalog on my phone before I'm out of bed Tuesday morning. One copy, checked in, 823.914 on the fiction shelves. I could put it on hold. I could let the system work. But that's not the point, and we both know it.
The point is the note. The smiley face. The careful handwriting that matches the first one, the one I'm still using as a bookmark even though I have a perfectly good leather bookmark Toby gave me for my birthday.
It'll destroy you. Fair warning. — D
I read the note four times yesterday. Folded it, put it in my book, unfolded it, read it again. The smiley face is the same as the first one, a circle with two dots and a curve, drawn quickly but deliberately, the kind of thing that takes more intention than it looks like.
Knox is in the kitchen when I come downstairs. The bar kitchen, technically. There's no real boundary between the kitchen and the bar itself, just the counter and the taps and sixty years of oak. He's making coffee. He always makes the coffee. It's one of those alpha things he does without thinking, providing for the household, even when the household is a bunch of grown men who can operate a coffee maker.
Nico's already at the bar with his laptop, working through something with the focus of a man who replaced one obsessive job with another. Ezra's next to him with his tea, their shoulders almost touching, the two of them reading each other's screens without asking permission. The apartment situation upstairsis getting tight. Nico's been in the spare room for weeks, but everyone knows he sleeps in Ezra's bed. The spare room is a fiction they maintain because admitting it would mean acknowledging the hallway has four doors and five people and that's one too many.
"Morning," Knox says. One word. Full conversation.
"Morning."
I pour coffee, take it to my usual corner. The bar is quiet at seven. Vaughn's already in the garage, I can hear the wrench. Jason won't show up from Ash's place until eight. Robin's at the café, prepping for the morning rush that he'll handle himself since it's Devin's day off.
Devin. Who leaves notes in pastry boxes and reads standing up behind the counter and drinks terrible vending machine coffee without complaint and somehow made the word "destroy" sound like a promise.