In his dreams, a voice he'd never heard spoke words he somehow recognized, and for the first time in two years, the storm nightmares stayed away.
Chapter 2
Between the Lines
Finn
Nine o'clock on the dot, same as always. Finn unlocked the door to “Between the Lines” and breathed in that smell he'd never get tired of—old books and lemon oil and the kind of quiet that only came with a thousand stories just waiting for someone to crack them open.
God, he loved this place. Three years of opening this door every morning, and it still felt like coming home.
He wandered through the narrow aisles, nudging a maritime history back into line, fixing a poetry collection that some browser had left crooked. Everything had its spot, and after three years, Finn knew exactly where that was without even thinking about it. The morning light was hitting the Melville first-editions in the window just right, making the leather bindings glow like old friends waving hello.
He was reaching for a book that had shifted out of place when he spotted the guy across the street.
Tall, broad-shouldered, just standing there on the sidewalk like he was trying to work up the nerve to do something. Darkhair catching the light, hands stuffed deep in his jacket pockets. Something about the way he held himself screamed careful—like someone who worked with dangerous stuff and had learned the hard way not to make sudden moves.
Finn found himself staring through the window, watching this stranger who was obviously wrestling with some kind of internal debate. The guy wasn't just killing time or window shopping. He was looking at the bookshop like it had answers to questions he couldn't figure out how to ask.
Then their eyes met.
Holy shit.
Everything just... stopped. Finn got hit with this wave of recognition so intense it felt like getting punched in the chest. He knew this guy. Knew those green eyes, knew exactly how they'd look when they smiled, knew how those hands would feel—strong but gentle.
Except that was completely impossible. Finn had never seen this man before in his life.
The stranger looked just as shocked, going through the same confusion, the same weird sense of finding something he hadn't even known he was looking for. They stared at each other through thirty feet of street and glass, both looking like they'd been struck by lightning.
Then the guy just turned and walked away. Fast. Like he was running from something.
“Wait,” Finn said to the empty shop, pressing his hand against the window glass. He watched the man disappear around the corner and felt this panic that made absolutely no sense. His heart was going crazy, his hands were shaking, and there was this awful hollow feeling in his chest like something important had just been ripped away.
This wasn't normal attraction. This felt like loss. Like grief. Like watching someone you loved walk away forever.
What the hell was that about?
Finn tried to shake it off and get back to normal stuff. Books to shelve, orders to deal with, Mrs. Chen coming by later to pick up that atlas he'd finished restoring. Regular work that usually kept his brain occupied.
Every few minutes he'd catch himself looking toward the window, hoping to see the guy come back. Hoping for another shot at whatever that moment had been.
By lunch, he'd managed to convince himself it was just one of those weird things that happen sometimes—seeing someone who reminds you of a dream or some half-forgotten face from when you were a kid. Nothing more mysterious than random brain weirdness.
He headed upstairs to his workshop with the maritime journal Mrs. Chen had dropped off yesterday. Beat-up old thing from 1847, leather cracked and faded, some pages coming loose. But the text was full of firsthand whaling stories that would be absolute gold to historians once he got it fixed up properly.
The workshop was his favorite part of the whole building—microscopes and tools arranged exactly how he liked them, everything in its place. This was where he did his real work, bringing back books that other people thought were too far gone to save. He was damn good at it too.
Finn sat down at his main workstation and cracked open the journal to see what he was dealing with. Standard stuff, really. The spine needed rebuilding, some pages had torn free, everything would need cleaning before he could start the actual repairs. Maybe two weeks of careful work.
But then he looked closer and his stomach dropped.
The binding was showing signs of recent work. Not amateur attempts, but skilled restoration using the exact same techniques he would use. Someone had already started thecleaning process, and they clearly knew what they were doing with salt-damaged paper.
Finn grabbed his work log—the detailed notes he kept on every single project. According to what he'd written down, he'd only gotten this journal yesterday. Hadn't started any work on it yet.
So why the hell did it look like someone had been working on it for days?
He flipped to a section he remembered being completely illegible from water damage. The text was perfectly restored now, the faded ink somehow revitalized through chemical treatment he definitely hadn't done. The work was flawless. Exactly as good as he could have done it himself.
