Cyrus (The Henchmen MC 9)

After a little subtle encouragement from me to maybe consider writing something full-length, she apparently had.

That, well, it was beyond cool.

See, I'm a reader. I love books. I love the smell, the covers, the fonts, the page decor, the author pictures, the dedications. And, of course, the stories.

But I knew I wasn't a writer.

That being said, I still envied that ability. To create worlds. To suck people into them.

And I had never actually been able to be close with a writer before. I hadn't read a word of her work, and I was already fangirling so hard.

"Yep. The pages. Don't get too excited," she said, keeping her hand on the stack even as she pushed it toward me like she was struggling with letting it go. "I can't promise it's any good."

"You told me that you have like five-thousand followers on your story blog. You don't get that many followers by being a crummy writer, Daya."

"But I've only ever written short, smutty stories, not a full-length love story."

"Hey, worst case, it needs some revamping here and there. But at least you will hear that from me, not some agent or publisher or mean-hearted reviewers. If there are any issues, we can work out the kinks together."

Her breath exhaled on a relieved sound, her shoulders relaxing, her smile going a little less forced.

"One thing."

"Anything," I said as I picked up the folder. Okay, so maybe I hugged it to my chest a little. Shut up. It's totally normal.

"Don't read it here in front of me."

I smiled at that, the first real smile I had felt in a while. "Deal."That night, I went home, excited for a romance for the first time in a long while, finding myself staying up until three AM, devouring every last word of Daya's book.

It needed some kickass formatting, a quick line edit, and a cool cover, but it was good.

It was really good.

I intended to tell her exactly that as soon as I got out of work the next day.--"What's going on?" I asked, walking into the library the next day to find the other two librarians as well as two volunteers standing around the circulation desk, having a whispered, but animated conversation, arms flying, faces contorted.

Quite frankly, I wasn't in the mood to put up with some trumped-up drama. Like the time they threw a fit because someone wrote a naughty haiku in the bathroom stall.

Heck, I praised the effort.

It wasn't bad!

But I worked with much older ladies who had more - ah - delicate sensibilities than I was inflicted with.

Different strokes for different folks, as my grandmother would say.

It was simply that I was in the minority at the library. Which made sense because, well, nobody went into a field as unsteady as library sciences anymore. Unless, you know, you want to get paid pennies to be around old, musty books all day.

Which I did.

But anytime I suggested we do something more progressive to bring people back in again, like a poetry night for teens, or a simultaneous book club for moms of under school-age children where the kids would go do a craft with Marcy, the librarian in the children's section, and the moms would go with me to talk books, well, they shot it down.

No moms read anymore, Reese, I would be told by one.

I don't want to be stuck, alone, with a bunch of misbehaved brats. Kids these days don't have any discipline. That, incredibly, came from the children's librarian.

It was a bit draining to try to keep a dinosaur from dying out when they were just patiently waiting for the meteor to hit.

"Oh, Reese, finally," Barb said, shaking her head at me like I was late. I was five minutes early.

Again, I thanked the fact that three days of the week, I worked the afternoon and evening shift. Alone. With just the volunteers. That was maybe the only thing that kept me sane the other two or three day shifts I worked. Well, that and the idea of 'retirement.' Not for me, for my coworkers.

We all have dreams, right?

"What are you all talking about?"

"We got a donation this morning," she announced, face pinched. To be fair, it might have always been pinched. Whether that was from her pinching it up all the time that, as the childhood adage went, it stuck, or just how she was born, was impossible to tell.

"Oh, great!" I chimed, brightening slightly.

Donations were few and far between these days, making the budget tight. No one thought to give to the local library anymore. Unless cleaning out their bookshelves, and dropping old, damaged, outdated, useless books counted.

It didn't.

And I understood. Especially since the women's shelter opened. Talk about a worthy cause.

We did get a trickling in from older residents of the town who didn't want to see the library disappear in the digital age. But it was usually only, at best, a thousand dollars.