The Man Stalking Me Said Stop Working Alone, and the Kind Vet Was the One Who Let My Tire Down novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: The Back Room
Margit's closed bookstore at night smelled of paper and cold radiator and a hundred years of other people's reading.
She had given me the key that week, with a flashlight and a look.
"Roofers have the upstairs till Friday," she'd said.
"If you want somewhere quiet, the shop is quiet.
"I never go in after dark.
"I'm very bad at noticing things."
I took Matt there at eleven, between the county man's last drive-by and the start of my shift.
I had asked the polo shirt to cover my desk for two hours, and the polo shirt had been too pleased to be asked.
The shop ran back from the street in a long dark room of shelves.
I lit one brass lamp on the counter and no other light.
Rolling ladders hung on rails along both walls.
The one nearest the poetry stood at a slant, with its top rung level with my shoulder.
Matt stood in the middle of the floor in his dark coat, looking up at the tall shelves.
"I've never been in this room," he said.
"I know," I said.
"You paid the roof."
"I did.
"I never came in," he said.
"I did not want to be a man who walked into a woman's building because he had paid for the slates."
I locked the door and turned the sign in the window to BACK SOON.
I came back down the aisle and stood in front of him.
I had a plan, and it had been forming all week, between plows.
"Take off the coat," I said.
He took it off and laid it on the counter.
"Everything above the belt."
He took off the sweater and the shirt, and the lamp laid its yellow light along the broad, scarred shape of him.
I put my palm on the long scar from his ribs to his hip, because I liked how his stomach jumped.
"Hands behind your back," I said.
He put them there.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Man Stalking Me Said Stop Working Alone, and the Kind Vet Was the One Who Let My Tire Down are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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