Page 8 of Fate, Interrupted

Human women, in my experience, fall into two categories. There are those who are careful about everything—themselves, you, what it means—so careful that nothing starts even if we both are interested. And then there are the ones who are too interested in what I am. In the wolf, not in me. Super-sexualized risk-takers. We call them groupies.

Neither category has ever held my attention past a first impression.

Norah is getting under my skin in a way I can’t categorize.

She’s not careful. There’s nothing high-strung about the way she moves through her own space, the way she talks without checking if I’m keeping up, the way she put a mug of tea in front of me like it was already decided and moved on. And she’s not wolf-curious. She knew what I am the moment I walked through the door and has not once looked at me with a combination of fascination and horror I’ve learned to identify in about ten seconds.

She looks at me like I’m a person.

And that shouldn’t be doing what it’s doing.

Her looks don’t hurt either. She has hips that a man can put his hands on and hold. Not slim in the way that makes you feel like you’re handling something breakable—but substantial enough, curved, the kind that moves when she walks, with a sway that is entirely unconscious. It’s messing with my concentration worse than if she were trying. I watched it in the aisle, and I’m watching it now as she crosses to the other side of the small room.

I need to get this under control before she turns around and reads it on my face.

She turns around.

I meet her eyes.

“You zoned out,” she says. It’s more a statement of fact than an accusation, delivered with the mild interest of someone noting a detail.

“I was listening,” I say.

“You were somewhere else.” She sits back down and pulls her mug toward her. “Where did you go?”

I consider the honest answer and decide on a version of it. “This morning,” I say. “I was thinking about this morning.”

She tilts her head. Waiting.

“I had an early site visit,” I say. “Walked afterward. Wasn’t going anywhere in particular.” I look at my tea. “Your door was open.”

She’s quiet for a moment, turning it over, fitting it against the conclusion she’d already half-formed.

“The door’s always open in July,” she says. “Heat gets trapped otherwise.”

“I’ve driven down this street for three years.”

One of her eyebrows rises slightly in speculation. “And today you walked.”

“And today I walked.”

She looks at me, and I let her look. Most people I keep at a distance. She isn’t staying there.

“So,” she says. “Now that you’re back. What was I saying?”

“Something about your staff picks wall,” I say. “The criteria.”

She points at me. “The criteria are non-negotiable. Come on.” She’s already standing, moving toward the curtained doorway. “I’ll show you.”

In the shop’s main aisle, she explains the logic of the staff picks wall with the seriousness of someone presenting a policy proposal, and I’m listening, actually listening this time, to the way she thinks—the architecture of how she connects a book to a person, the instinct she’s developed for matching the right story to whoever’s holding it. She’s good at her job. There’s an obvious joy in sharing the written word with people. For no other reason than she thinks reading makes us all better.

She pulls a book from the wall. Holds it out. “This one,” she says. “Take it.”

I look at the cover then flip to the last page. “I didn’t come in for 1424 pages.”

“Nobody comes in for 1424 pages,” she says. “That’s the entire problem with readers today.” She pushes it toward me. “Take it anyway. Consider it a worthy alternative to the engine manual.”

I take it. She rings me up at the register.