This shop, with its maze of aisleways and sagging armchairs tucked into corners, is the closest thing to a sanctuary I’ve allowed myself. No one looks twice at a bookshop owner. No one questions a man who spends his days among stories instead of people.
The shop is the perfect cover, the perfect hiding place, the perfect lie.
I sip my scalding tea as I flip the sign on the door toOpen, not out of hope but habit. Weekday mornings rarely bring customers. On good days, perhaps a literature student searching for an out-of-print collection or a retiree browsing with nowhere else to be. On most days, there’s only silence, dust, and the steady tick of the wall clock counting hours until I close again.
Behind the counter, I settle onto my stool, the wood worn smooth from years of previous owners. My own tenure here spans five months. Two months before Halcyon Hall, two months when I convinced myself I needed to run further, change my name again, and become someone new.
Thirty-one days since I slunk back to this city, to this shop, to this life as Tobias Crane.
A treacherous whisper in my head says I stayed because of proximity, because in a city this size, the chance of crossing paths with him again is always a possibility.
I drown out the voice with another sip of tea.
When the bell above the door jingles, it startles me enough to slosh tea over the rim of my mug. My head lifts, the practiced smile of Tobias Crane already forming on my lips with customer service muscle memory, when it freezes in place.
Aaiden Rockford stands in my doorway, sunlight at his back casting him in an imposing silhouette. His body fills the frame, his Alpha presence radiating outward as a physical force that compresses the air in the shop.
He steps inside, allowing the door to close behind him with a jingle of the bell.
He doesn’t look at me or acknowledge my presence at all.
Instead, he moves through the stacks, fingers trailing along book spines with the proprietary touch of someone accustomed to owning whatever he desires. His tailored pin-stripe suit looks out of place in the shabby charm of my shop, a shark swimming among minnows.
I set my mug down with unsteady hands, tea spilling over my fingers. The liquid burns, but I don’t react to the pain. My heart hammers, fight-or-flight instincts warring within me. There’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. My sanctuary has been breached by the very man who paid me to disappear from his family’s life.
Aaiden pulls a leather-bound volume from a shelf, opens it with careful hands, and begins to read as if he has all the time in the world. As if this isn’t an invasion. As if my world isn’t collapsing inward with each quiet turn of the page.
Heartbeats stretch into long minutes as Aaiden continues his unhurried exploration of my shelves, each book he touches another intrusion into my fabricated world.
My fingers curl around the edge of the counter, muscles tightening until my knuckles go white. The silence between us grows thicker, heavier, until I break.
“What are you doing here?” The question comes out sharper than Tobias Crane would ever speak to a customer, but Tobias is slipping away beneath the upheaval of Aaiden’s presence.
He turns, raising a single eyebrow in a gesture so reminiscent of Ezra that my stomach clenches. “Do we know each other?”
The casual dismissal ignites a fire beneath my ribs. “Don’t play games. How did you find me?”
He replaces the book he holds, lining its spine up with its neighbors. “You didn’t go far. Same city, different name.” He takes in the cramped shop. “Not particularly imaginative, hiding in plain sight.”
“I wasn’t hiding.” The lie sours on my tongue. “If I’d wanted to disappear, you wouldn’t have found me.”
“Perhaps.” The word holds no conviction either way.
Which begs the question of why it’s Aaiden here and not Ezra. He searched for me for a year. Were a few more months too much? Did he finally give up?
The thought hurts too much, so I bury it in the grave where Lorenzo now lives, alongside Nico. Little by little, pieces of me are dying, and I only have myself to blame.
Aaiden continues to browse, moving deeper into the stacks as if we’re having a casual conversation about the weather instead of a second confrontation since he paid me to leave his cousin’s life.
“If you’re just here to lurk, you can leave.” I step out from behind the counter, needing to reclaim some territory in this unbalanced standoff. “The shop’s closed.”
“The sign says open.” Aaiden doesn’t look up from the book he’s examining. “Aren’t bookstores made for lurking among forgotten thoughts?”
His philosophical turn catches me off guard, forcing me to reassess. Aaiden Rockford has always been direct, borderline brutal in his efficiency. This measured approach suggests an agenda I can’t yet decipher.
Suspicious of why he’s here, I clutch the corner of a bookcase. “It’s not a violation of the NDA if you invade my workplace.”
Now Aaiden turns to me, green eyes sharp with intelligence. “You remember the terms quite well for someone who never cashed the check.”