My phone buzzes again. Unknown number:Hi Devin! It's Toby. Silas says you've read Goblin Emperor. Have you read the sequel? It came out last year and I SOBBED. Anyway welcome to the family! We're doing book club Wednesdays if you're free. No pressure! But also definitely come. :)
I save his number. Text back:I haven't read the sequel yet. I'd love to come Wednesday.
Tyler reads the text over my shoulder. "You got adopted," he says. "By a whole pride of lion shifters. Through the medium of books."
"It's just a book club."
"Dev." Tyler puts his hand on my shoulder, surprisingly gentle. "It's never just a book club."
He's right. It's not.
I fall asleep readingPiranesi, Silas was right, it's strange and beautiful and unlike anything I've read, and when my phone buzzes one last time, it's a text from Silas:Sweet dreams, Dev.
Today was perfect.
I type a smiley face. Send it. Close my eyes.
The numbers are still there, still ticking, still real. But for the first time, the countdown doesn't feel like a clock running out.
It feels like a clock running toward something.
Chapter 12
Silas
The week passes like a book I don't want to put down.
Monday: library at 6:45, vending machine coffee for two. He's halfway throughPiranesiand keeps looking up at me with this expression, stunned, slightly overwhelmed, like the book is rearranging the furniture in his head. At noon he goes to work and I go to the café and we do the thing we do. Him behind the counter, me in my booth, the charged space between us that's different now because I know what his mouth tastes like and he knows what my hands feel like on his jaw. During his break we sit across from each other and talk about the book and our feet touch under the table and it's not enough and it's everything.
Tuesday: his day off, which means the library all day. We read in parallel from 6:30 to 4, with breaks for coffee and food from the cafe and one moment at 2 PM when I look up and he's asleep again, his head on his arms,Piranesiopen underneath him, breathing slow and deep.
Wednesday: Toby's book club. I leave Devin at the library's community room at 6 PM and go back to the bar, and when I pick him up at 8 he's so animated he talks for twenty minutes straight about narrative structure and the politics ofThe Goblin Emperor's sequel and how Toby has the best taste in romance novels of anyone he's ever met. He talks all the way to Haven House. Doesn't stop at the corner. Walks me right to the door, turns around, and keeps talking while I lean against the porch railing and listen to him describe a book I haven't read.
He kisses me mid-sentence. Stops talking about the protagonist's character arc, grabs the front of my jacket, andkisses me hard. Then pulls back, blinks, says "sorry, I got excited," and disappears inside before I can respond.
My lion hasn't stopped purring since.
Thursday: the café, the booth, the break. Robin watches us with the satisfied expression of a man who takes credit for everything. Devin fixes the espresso machine again, something with the pressure gauge this time, and Robin gives him another raise.
"He's paying me too much," Devin says during his break, frowning at his phone.
"He's paying you what you're worth."
"Nobody's worth this much for making coffee."
"You also fix the equipment. And reorganized his inventory. And created a filing system for his supplier invoices."
"That was just because I was bored."
"You reorganized his entire business because you were bored. That's worth the raise."
He ducks his head, pleased and embarrassed, and I think about how long it's going to take to teach him that he's allowed to be valued. That people can pay him what he's worth without it being charity. That Robin gives him raises because Devin earns them, not because Robin pities him.
A long time, probably. This is the kind of rewiring that takes years, and I find myself thinking in years for the first time. Not weeks, not months. Years. With him. The thought doesn't scare me the way it should.
Friday afternoon. I'm in the garage trying to fix a carburetor and definitely not watching the clock. It's 4:17. One hour and forty-three minutes until I pick up Devin.
"You've checked the time six times in the last ten minutes," Jason observes from where he's working on his bike.