“I do,” I agreed easily. “I am.”
“Just a man, babe. Don’t forget it,” he reminded me, uncharacteristically somber.
I frowned and reached up to smooth the little furrow between his own brows. “Never just a man, King. Not when you’re my man.”
“Sap,” he accused laughingly, nipping at my fingers.
“So says the man who writes me love poems nearly every day.”
“So says the woman who thinks Satan is literature’s greatest man.”
“He is.” I linked my arms around his neck and smiled. “Should we name our firstborn son after him, do you think?”
King burst out laughing, and even though it was like looking into a supernova, I kept on watching right through it.
Cressida
* * *
Before I found King and he changed my life, I lived for the written word. I meant that in an almost literal way. My life during those years was so dull, so incredibly uninspired that a far better alternative could always be found between the cloth-bound pages of a favourite book. By extension, bookstores became my second home, perhaps my real home, because I could be exactly who I was meant to be as a reader. I could be the wild, fierce heroine in Tamara Pierce novels or the witty, well-meaning star of Jane Austen’s love stories. I could travel the world the way I’d always wanted through the narratives of Bill Bryson and luxuriate in the lives of sensational men like the ones found in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s fictional universes.
Bookstores were a home for my troubled mind at a time when I had no safe harbour to develop who I truly wished myself to be.
So it was no wonder it had always been a dream of mine to open my own.
But it was a dream in the way I’d always imagined all my dreams to be; unattainable, a pretty thing to look at but up in the clouds so high that it could never possibly rain down to earth.
Of course, that was all before I’d met my biker poet.
The first time I mentioned opening a bookstore to King, he’d cocked his head, and said, “Cool. Let’s do it.”
And he didn’t mean that in a condescending way, as if it was inconceivable that I hadn’t pursued that goal before, or in a domineering way the way my parents or my ex, William, might have acted. King said it nonchalantly, because for him, it was just that simple.
If he wanted something, he took it.
Which meant, in his beautiful brain, that if I wanted something, he would make it happen for me.
So even though I made the decision to go back to university with him to earn my Master’s in English Literature, he still urged me every day to consider opening my store.
And then when we graduated, and I wasn’t sure if I should continue as a professor at the University of British Columbia, he took the step I’d been too afraid to take.
He bought me a storefront.
It was on Main Street just a few blocks down from Entrance Bay Academy where we’d met, and right beside Honey Bear Café, my absolute favourite coffee shop in the province. Before we owned it, it had been an antique shop run by an elderly woman who passed away. It was dirty, run down, and need a whack ton of TLC.
I loved it.
Together, with help from the brothers, my old colleagues Rainbow and Tay from EBA, and our friends, Benny and Carson, we transformed the tired space into an absolutely beautiful literary oasis.
Paradise Found Books was dark and moody in the way I imagined 18th century literary cafes to be, with deep leather chairs, brass sconces, and exposed brick. The only natural light came from the two enormous floor-to-ceiling windows in the front left corner of the shop, and the black trim beautifully highlighted all that warm red brick. It was broody and moody and absolutely, if I did say so myself, fabulous.
And we were due to open next week.
“Stop fussing. You’re giving me a headache,” Rainbow called out to me as I wiped a smudge off the huge windows in the corner of the store. “Seriously, woman, I’m tired just looking at you.”
“You don’t want to go home too tired to have sex with King,” Tayline chimed in, popping her head around the corner of a bookcase to waggle her black brows at me. “Now, that would be a crying shame.”
She and Rainbow snickered and then devolved into full blown belly laughter when Benny sighed dreamily and added, “Totally.”
Carson rolled his eyes at his boyfriend and tugged him hard into his front. “You sayin’ I don’t keep you satisfied, Benny Benito?”
The blush that coursed over his pale olive skin was vermillion, but he still leaned heavily into the taller man and batted his lashes at him. “Satisfied has nothing to do with it. King Kyle Garro is beauty incarnate, and you know it, even if you won’t admit it in front of Cress.” He dipped his head back to make eye contact with me. “Seriously, he’s told me before he’s a gay man with eyes, so of course, he thinks King’s hot as hell.”