His gaze settles on mine, soft and steady. His thumb traces a path down my throat. “I could never regret you.”
The words feel like the sun peeking through the clouds after a bad storm, the air still heavy with electricity, but finally glowing with warmth.
I want to believe him. And I realize, finally, that the only thing stopping me isme. One day, I’m going to have to trust someone. And more than anything, I want that person to be Grey.
So I nod. “Okay.”
His smile tips further. “That’s all you have to say?”
I roll my eyes, but can’t help matching his smile, my insides bubbling like champagne. “I love you.”
Now his smile is brighter than the setting sun behind him, blinding and all-consuming. “I know.”
A laugh bubbles out of me, and I shove him back.
He drops his hands from my neck and waist. “You can’t think you were hiding it well,” he says, grinning. “You flew all the way to Maine, Finley.”
“I heard the lobster rolls were better here.”
His eyes twinkle as he closes the distance between us, smiling down at me, fingers twining with mine. He looks at me like he knows I’m full of it, and he doesn’t care. He looks at me like I’ve made all his dreams come true.
“Well, since you came all this way…”
My throat constricts asI stare at the sign in front of me. Unlikely Places Florals and Books. The stores technically aren’t combined, but they’re next door to each other, and the design and decor were intended to be cohesive. My landlord even allowed french doors to be installed between the two shops, and I plan to keep them open all the time so customers can wander back and forth as they please.
I think books and flowers are meant to go together.
And it seems like the community agrees. I was right when I assumed they would rally behind me. For months after I decided to rent the building, I didn’t do anything with it. It sat empty, and I would slip into it when I wanted to daydream. But I was too scared to do anything about it. Grey never stopped buying books for me. I think he curated half the store before I’d even gotten to work on it.
Once wedding season slowed down and the cold set in and I couldn’t waste time tinkering in Mom’s garden, I finally decided to get down to business.
Grey and I, with the help of Holden, spent the winter building shelves and installing them. I painted them a soft shade of sage green with the book club girls one evening. And repainted them with Grey a few days later because it seemed we had missed quite a lot in our tipsy states. I got permits and loans and hired staff to help out at the flower shop so I could spend more time at the bookstore.
In the spring, Grey and I scoured thrift stores and garage sales for books. In the summer, we started taking donations. And now, at the start of autumn, as the first of the leaves slip into copper and gold and bronze, I’m finally ready.
Everyone will be here this evening for the opening night party, but I wanted a moment alone now, in the early morning, before the streets are filled with tourists here for apple season at the orchard. Before the rest of the people in town begin opening their shops for the day.
Right now, it’s just me and Unlikely Places, exactly how I wanted it. I let myself into the bookstore first, breathing in the smell of old books and worn, dusty pages. The flower shop side always smells earthy, floral, organic, and I can never decide which one I like better.
I take it all in—think back on the months of work that have gone into making this place what I always dreamed it could be. Books line all the shelves, some used and worn, others new and gleaming from their spots on the new releases table. There are stacks of books on every available surface in the room. I hadn’t expected this much inventory on opening day, but I should have expected the town to come through like they did, donating books that they will undoubtedly come back to purchase this week.
The door to the shop opens, and I turn from where I was adjusting some of the new releases on the table in the middle of the store and see Grey. His hair has grown a little out of controlin the last few months, wavy and constantly tousled. He keeps saying he needs to get it cut, but I keep talking him out of it.
I like it when he looks a little wild.
Right now, he’s thoroughly windblown. It’s the first week of October, and the chill has already begun to set in, requiring layers in the mornings and evenings that have to be stripped off midday when the sun is high overhead. The crisp morning air has made his hair stick up in messy waves and has stained his cheeks and nose pink. He’s wearing an unbuttoned flannel over a white T-shirt with jeans that are worn in all the right places. A dusty paperback with folded, yellowed pages peeks out of his back pocket.
This has become somewhat of a tradition for us. Over the last year, I’ve rarely seen him without a used paperback for me. Half the shop was stocked by him. I’m not sure where he’s getting them or where he’s keeping them before they make their way into my inventory. I’ve searched his house and truck, but I’ve never been able to locate them. So each one is a surprise.
“Good morning,” he says, lips tipped in a crooked smile. He closes the distance between us, pressing a quick kiss to my mouth. “Today is the big day.”
I nod, nerves settling low in my belly. But there’s also anticipation pumping through my blood. It’s heady, the mixture of the two.
Grey—bless him—can read every emotion on my face. His lips settle against my temple, and he says “it’s going to be great” into my hair.
Reaching into his back pocket, he produces the book for me. It looks like a thriller from the eighties or nineties, and by the way it’s worn and tattered, it’s either been read many times and beloved or ignored and kept in boxes and passed between thrift stores for decades. It even appears that someone took a Sharpieto the cover because the wordWillin the title has been circled with a fat-tipped marker. Recently, by the looks of it.
I drag my fingers over it. “You think someone will still buy it if it’s been written on?”
