Page 48 of Everything You Hate
“Piper.” He nods at her without looking away from me. “Sorry about the...” He gestures at the air between us, which is still charged enough to power the store lights.
“No you’re not,” Piper says.
He almost smiles. Doesn’t. Turns and walks out, boots heavy on the hardwood, and the bell chimes again behind him.
The store goes quiet. The woman in the romance section has given up all pretense and is openly staring. The man by the window has folded his newspaper into a tight rectangle and is examining the ceiling with great interest.
Piper waits exactly four seconds.
“Well,” she says. “I should probably adjust the thermostat. It’s getting warm in here.”
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. My heart is hammering. My skin feels two sizes too small. “Shut up, Piper.”
“I’m just saying. For a contained conversation, that was remarkably... uncontained.”
“Please stop talking.”
“I’m stopping. I’ve stopped.” She holds up both hands. “Totally stopped. Not another word about whatever that was. Except?—”
“Piper.”
“—he’s been like this since you got here. Shea noticed it first. Then Colter. Then literally everyone.” She picks up the journal, runs a finger along its spine. “Dean doesn’t do... that. Whatever that was. He doesn’t follow women around. He doesn’t argue in bookstores. He doesn’t almost kiss people and then remember he has a fuel filter to buy.”
“He didn’t almost kiss me.”
“Sure.” She sets the journal down. “And I don’t sell books for a living.”
My phone buzzes in my bag. I ignore it. It buzzes again. And again.
Piper raises an eyebrow. “Someone wants you.”
I dig it out. Malcolm.
Three fire emojis. A screenshot of an analytics dashboard—engagement graph spiking vertically, numbers I can’t read at this size but don’t need to. The caption: Exactly what we needed. The conversation is happening. Well done.
Below it, another message: North shore permissions came through this morning. We can start filming next week.
I stare at the screen. The graph is all faces. People I’ve never met, planning trips, booking ferries, asking where to dig. A drone over a pasture where a five-year-old girl plays. Metal detectors on a beach that belongs to a family that’s already holding itself together by its fingernails.
This isn’t momentum. This is a flood. And I opened the gate.
“Everything okay?” Piper asks.
I set the phone down. “I need to go.”
“You just got here.”
“I know.” I’m already gathering the journal, shoving it into my bag, reaching for my jacket. “I’m sorry. I’ll come back. I promise.”
“Scarlett.” Piper’s voice softens. “Whatever it is, it can wait five minutes.”
It can’t. That’s the problem. Whatever this is—this thing I’ve started, this story I’ve put into the world—it’s moving faster than I am. I can feel it pulling away from me, and the dread in my stomach has nothing to do with Dean and everything to do with the fact that I have no idea how to call it back.
Chapter Twelve
Dean
The charter cancels at eleven seventeen on a Thursday morning, and I watch four thousand dollars walk off my dock in a three-minute phone call.
