Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 56970 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 285(@200wpm)___ 228(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 56970 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 285(@200wpm)___ 228(@250wpm)___ 190(@300wpm)
His chair squeals as he shifts and looks blankly at me.
“What? Why do you think I know?”
“You once wanted to be an astronaut.”
“When I was five! I don’t know any of the constellations.” I sit upright and swivel my legs off the chair. “I don’t know anything.”
“It’s okay. We can enjoy without knowing.”
I stand, shaking my head. “This is my problem. I have no conversation. I’m with a guy, and nothing.”
Damon sits up. “Leon—”
“I don’t need platitudes.” I stride towards the hatch. “I need to make my own luck . . . Wait there.”
I zip down the ladder, clutch the banister and, by the light of my phone, drop steadily down the stairs.
“Leon!”
Damon’s feet thump on each step as he chases after me. Inside the main part of the library, I hunt for the non-fiction section and scour the shelves.
Damon comes around the other end of the aisle and blinks into my light. He’s framed by a narrow arched nook that used to hold a statue of a mermaid reading a book, but that’s gone. He shields his eyes while mine catch on books to his right. I slip nearer and nearer to his gentle grimace. I can tell he’s debating with himself on what to say to me—or maybe how to say it. I leave him to his musings and draw out an astronomy book. There’s a map of the southern hemisphere sky at the back; I leaf to it. “There.” I turn the book towards him. “The smaller one is the Southern Cross. The other one is the False Cross. And you were right, that one’s the Teapot.”
Damon closes the book on my phone, submerging us once again in darkness. “I don’t care.”
The glass entrance door rumbles along its rails, and we snap our heads up. Through gaps above books, I see a figure moving. Not . . . not Tai, I hope? Shit. Where’s my balaclava? Both back pockets, empty. It’s gone. Must’ve fallen out on the roof. I shove Damon’s chest, and he lets me steer him into the shadowy nook behind him.
I press myself close and closer, until his length and mine are trying to form a tapestry for the wall. He hums.
“Quiet,” I whisper at his neck. He shivers against me, and I’m a mess of shivers right back.
The new intruder doesn’t turn on the lights either. They sneak around softly. Who is this person? What are they doing? I glimpse them passing the aisles and tense against Damon, who tightens his arms protectively around me.
Five minutes pass, and the figure retreats, sliding the door shut behind them.
I let out a relieved sigh, sagging against Damon. He’s warm and hard; his scent is muskier up close, and our breaths knot. Electricity sluices through me and I draw back. None of that—
Damon grabs me by the waist, one hand sliding up my back as he twists us, pinning me against the wall. His fingers cushion my head. Every inch of him leans against me, and my breath hitches. “Damon,” I warn.
His nose scrapes over mine, and my eyes have adjusted enough to make out the darker outline of his lips, quirked into a grin. “What did you mean, ‘make your own luck’?”
“It’s hard to think straight when you’re . . .”
He raises a brow.
“Fine. I won’t be able to hide it from you anyway. Those pictures I took—there’s a section on each of them describing their ideal man.”
“Did you read mine?”
I roll my eyes and push him off me. “I’ll go through them and decide who interests me.”
“And then?”
I straighten my shirt that got rucked up in our little moment. “Tailor myself to fit. Leon, 2.0.”
Chapter Six
Damon made his views about my plan perfectly plain on our way back from the library last night. I didn’t listen to any of it. I’m afraid to listen to any of it. Listening means giving in to being a forgettable nobody, and . . . I hope I’m more than that. I can be more than that.
He went to bed declaring the next few weeks would be interesting; I went to bed declaring that was the whole point.
When Damon heads out for his morning surf, I take my phone full of profile photos and . . . go for a walk. Through town . . . Up the hill . . . Down Crescent Lane . . .
I scan the street to make sure no one’s watching and cross to a neat picket gate.
Damon’s house has scaffolding around the outside, the weatherboards primed for painting. It could be mistaken for a villa. Double gables, a sheltered porch with elegant posts, fretwork around the edges. A granny flat in the back garden.
A lot of effort has gone into this place. It’s beautiful.
And look at me, totally not fantasising about Damon hauling groceries inside from our car, barbecuing in that gloriously pretty garden, getting all up in my books on a timeless Persian rug . . .