Page 70 of Night Shift

Vincent lets his eyes take a pointed lap down my body and back up again. I want to laugh. I do. Instead, I sway on my feet, unsteady from the force of how much I like it when he looks at me like he’s just as affected as I am right now.

“Should we make a run for it?” he asks, low and rumbling.

I shake my head and tighten my grip on his arm.

I have a better idea.

Vincent’s face scrunches up in an adorably confused frown as I steer him down the science fiction aisle toward the far side of the bookstore, where a narrow staircase with a wrought iron banister curves up to the floor above us. We have to climb in single file, so I drop my hold on Vincent’s arm. He makes a tiny sound of displeasure. I reach back and let him hook his pinkie finger around mine as we ascend to the second floor.

It’s a barren maze of nonfiction. Nobody in Clement has the motivation to drag themselves through the pouring rain just to browse this section of the store. Cookbooks, health and wellness, philosophy, religion, travel—every aisle we pass is empty.

Vincent gives my hand a gentle tug, urging me to stop here.

I tug back. Not yet.

He huffs but follows without complaint. We weave through the stacks until we reach another set of stairs—narrower and darker and tucked way back in the corner. At the top of them is the attic. It’s my favorite part of this bookstore. There’s a little window bench tucked in the eaves where no one bothers you; you have to time it just right because, without some decent sunlight, it’s far too dark to read without annihilating your eyesight.

I’ve always thought of it as a calm place.

But today, with Vincent behind me, I’m not calm. My whole body is humming with anticipation. I feel electric, like I’m one good spark away from combustion.

“Sometimes I come up here to read,” I explain, feeling suddenly embarrassed as I stop in front of the window bracketed by shelves crammed with battered old paperbacks. This was a stupid idea. It’s not romantic, and it’s not very practical. We’d probably be way better off in Vincent’s car. “It’s a little dusty and, like, aggressively dark academia, but I feel weird sitting downstairs where the staff can see me. It always feels like they’re mad at me for reading for hours without buying something. Which is stupid, because they’re really nice here. But they never come up here. Nobody does. So, it’s . . . private.”

Vincent doesn’t make fun of me or the weird little attic that I haunt.

Instead, he sets his sunflowers down on the bench under the window and advances toward me until my shoulders hit the shelf behind me. He crowds me in, blocking out the cool draft from the old, rain-streaked window and casting us both in soft shadows.

“Please tell me that you didn’t bring me up here to read poetry,” he says.

I feign a frown. “What else would we do?”

Vincent takes my face in his hands, but he doesn’t kiss me right away. Not as urgently as I need to be kissed. He holds me so we’re nose to nose, his warm breath coming in slow, steady puffs against my face while mine gets stuck somewhere in my chest. And, yeah, all right. I totally brought this upon myself by choosing the wrong moment to give him cheek. But this is just cruel.

“So mean,” I whine.

“I thought you said I was too nice to you,” Vincent counters. Then, after a moment of silence that tells me he’s replaying our conversation, he asks, “Could you touch my hair again?”

I open my mouth to tease him, because I’m sure he’s teasing me, but then I catch the little glint of self-consciousness in his face and remember when I ran my hands through his hair on his birthday. Vincent likes his hair played with. I don’t have to be asked twice to indulge him: I reach up, thrust my fingers into the soft thicket of his hair, and graze my nails back and forth across his scalp, tugging softly and then soothing with gentle presses of my fingertips.

I watch, entranced, as his eyelids flutter and his throat bobs.

“How’s that?”

He hums. And then he melts, exhaling a long and heavy breath like he’s finally shrugged some unbearable weight off his shoulders. Seeing him so vulnerable and so relaxed makes me want to say things that I don’t think I’m entirely ready to say.

So, I roll up onto my toes and kiss what I can reach. His chin. His jaw. The corner of his mouth.

“I missed you,” I admit in a whisper. And then, because I’m nothing if not horrible at dealing with my emotions: “See what happens when you ask nicely?”

Vincent ducks his head and catches my lips with his.

And this time, it’s not nice. Not at all.

Twenty-eight

I didn’t realize Vincent was being gentle with me downstairs.

Not until right now.

---