Page 13 of Just My Type (The Boston Hearts #3)

CHAPTER EIGHT

NOAH

“ Y ou brought me to a bookstore?” Hannah asks, eyes fixed on the storefront with the massive red sign, flowers hanging from the roof above the entrance, and window display full of brightly-colored paperbacks. Her voice is quiet, a hint of nerves shimmering below the surface.

On the busy Cambridge sidewalk, I turn Hannah to face me and see the nerves I heard in her voice swimming in her green eyes.

“I did. It’s not just a bookstore. It’s a romance bookstore.

An entire bookstore only for romance novels.

I didn’t realize those were a thing, but they so completely are, and we have one right here in Cambridge. How cool is that?”

I’m not fucking around—it really is cool.

After doing some research last night, I could give an entire lecture on why romance bookstores are thriving when other bookstores all over the country are dying and how the publishing industry is full of idiots who have never given romance the respect it deserves, but I’m holding that one in reserve.

Although I’ll consider whipping it out as a distraction method if Hannah keeps glancing over at the store and then back at me with that anxious look on her face.

I think I would do just about anything to take away whatever it is making her feel like that.

I hope my plans for today do exactly what I intend, although there’s also a non-zero chance she’ll hate it all and run for the hills as soon as I tell her what’s going on. I like to live on the edge like that.

I bring a hand to her cheek to keep her eyes on mine.

“Talk to me, Han. Tell me what’s on your mind.

” I know there’s only, like, a fifty percent chance she’ll actually talk to me, so when she opens her mouth and does exactly that, my heart does a slow roll in my chest, and I have to remind my brain to calm the fuck down. To be what Hannah needs right now.

“I can’t go in there.” The words come out in a rush, tumbling over each other like Hannah is trying to get them out as quickly as possible.

Like maybe if she says it fast, it’s almost like she didn’t say it at all.

But lucky for her, I hear everything. I expected this.

I thought it might happen, and I’m prepared for it.

“Tell me why, Gorgeous.”

Hannah closes her eyes, and maybe it’s my imagination, but for a second, it feels like she leans just slightly into the hand I still have on her face. Like she’s taking some kind of comfort from it. From me. I like the thought of that.

She takes a deep breath before she speaks. “There are going to be a lot of people in there. Romance readers.”

Bingo .

I stroke my thumb over her cheekbone. “Why would that be a problem? Lots of people in there means lots of people reading romance. More people reading romance is always a good thing.”

Hannah sighs, glancing towards the store again and then back at me. “Okay, we’re coming back to your closet romance reader habits later. But my thing? It’s going to sound really, really stupid.”

I shake my head. “I can promise you it won’t. Nothing you say could ever sound stupid. If it’s in your head, it’s already important. If you feel comfortable telling me, I’d like to know. I always want to know what you’re thinking.”

“Why?”

I know she’s trying to change the subject, but if she needs a little time to get around to telling me what’s really bothering her, then I’m happy to give it to her.

“Because you’re funny and interesting and so damn smart.

Because you don’t always share what’s on your mind, so when you do, I know it’s special, and I want to be the one you share the special stuff with.

And all the other stuff. And because you have a really pretty voice, and I love listening to you talk. ”

Hannah’s eyes widen slightly, like she wasn’t quite expecting me to put it all out there, like she’s not at all sure what to do with me. I grin internally because the idea of Hannah Evans being just a little off balance over me is doing weird things to my insides, and I don’t hate that at all.

She takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Okay, but you asked for it.”

This time, I do grin, and I slide my hand off her face and down her arm, linking her hand with mine, doing a little internal victory dance when she doesn’t pull away. “You bet I did. Lay it on me, Han.”

Hannah shrugs as if to say, what the hell .

“Being an author who accidentally goes viral is kind of like living in an alternate universe. I wrote a book and expected my sisters to read it. I figured maybe my mom would pick it up at some point, and I had a handful of social media followers who seemed excited about it. That was enough for me. I loved doing the actual writing so much that I never really gave much thought to what happened once the book was actually out in the world. But, after a very lucky combination of the right cover and the right person posting the right thing on the right social media at exactly the right time, my first book shot into the stratosphere, and every release after that got better. It never occurred to me to use a pen name, and I had my face all over my social media because I didn’t realize this could happen so fast. I didn’t think it would happen to me at all.

In the real world, I’m just a regular person.

But the second I take a step into the book world, I’m kind of… famous, I guess?”

She shakes her head, a sheepish expression covering her face.

“Like, people recognize me all the time, and I know independent romance bookstores are a thing, because my books are in almost all of them, and bookstore owners ask me to sign the books they have in stock when I walk into the store. And god, it’s so fucking cool, Noah.

Like, the coolest, best thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.

And I love talking to the people who read my books.

I’m a reader before I’m anything else, and talking to other readers about my own books is the best part of all of this.

I love it so much that sometimes I can’t even believe it’s real. ”

Hannah swallows hard then, tears glossing her eyes, and when she speaks again, her voice is quiet and full of pain.

“Except now, I can’t write. I haven’t been able to for months.

And if someone in there asks me when my next book is coming out, I won’t be able to tell them, and I hate that.

I hate it so much because I’ve never not known before, and…

” She trails off, closing her eyes. A single tear slides down her cheek, and it shatters my heart into a million pieces.

When I wipe it away with my thumb, Hannah opens her eyes.

“It hurts. It just hurts so much, and I don’t know what to do with that. ”

“I know, Han.”

She swipes at her eyes with the hand that isn’t laced through my own, letting out an irritated little growl, like the fact that she’s showing this kind of emotion annoys her. “What do you mean, you know?”

I take her hand away from her face gently and wipe her tears myself. “I know it hurts you. I heard it in your voice, saw it all over your face, when you told me on the roof.”

“And yet, you brought me to a bookstore, to…what exactly? To see my books on the shelf when I have no idea when I’ll be ab le to add the next one in the series? To talk to readers, knowing they’re dying for something I don’t know if I can give them?”

Hannah blows out a breath and hangs her head for a second before bringing her gaze back up to mine. “I’m sorry,” she mumbles. “You didn’t deserve that. You’re trying to do something nice and I’m being an asshole. This is a me thing, not a you thing.”

I try and resist. I swear I do. But I’ve never been blessed with an abundance of self-control, and my body moves of its own volition.

Before I know what’s happening, I’m leaning forward, pressing a kiss to Hannah’s forehead, my lips lingering there for a second, loving the feel of her soft skin and the way her vanilla shampoo invades my senses.

Okay, fine, I didn’t resist that hard.

When I lean back, Hannah’s eyes are full of questions and the slightest touch of heat and god, I just love that for me.

“First of all, you don’t ever have to apologize for telling me what you think.

I want you to. Second of all, being sad and angry that you can’t do the thing you love doesn’t make you an asshole; it makes you human.

And third of all, I promised to help you.

I want to help you. That makes all of this an us thing. There’s no one in that store.”

Hannah blinks at the abrupt change in subject. “What do you mean there’s no one in that store?”

I smile at her, tipping my head towards the entrance. “You didn’t notice that the entire time we’ve been standing here in front of one of the most beloved bookstores in the Boston area, not one single person has tried to go inside?”

“I was too busy having an existential crisis,” Hannah mutters.

I laugh because she’s fucking adorable and I’m obsessed with her. “Well, thinking an existential crisis may be a possibility, I rented out the bookstore for two hours.”

“You can do that? ”

I shrug. “You can if you operated on the owner’s baby to correct the baby’s cleft palate.”

Hannah tilts her head to the side, studying me.

“You can get donuts delivered because you made a house call for a wisdom tooth issue, and you can rent out a bookstore because you operated on the owner’s baby.

Did you become an oral surgeon just to store up favors you can call in when it suits you? Are you like a Mafia Don in disguise?”

This time I let out a bark of laughter and toss an arm around Hannah’s shoulders, turning us to face the bookstore.

She fits perfectly against me, and I love that too.

“Nah, I just really, really love teeth. Always have, but more about me another day. I rented out the bookstore because I wanted you to be able to come here without having to be Hannah, the writer. You told me on the roof that you’ve been a romance reader since you were thirteen.

Today, you can be Hannah the reader. Go back to your roots and remember all the things you loved about romance before you ever decided to write it. ”

“How did you know to do this?” Hannah asks quietly. “How did you know that running into readers would be hard for me?”

I look down and see her studying the bookstore. “Lucky guess. Or maybe I’m psychic like Cece. Probably runs in the family.”

“It might, but that’s not why.” She turns to face me, my arm falling off her shoulders. “Seriously, how did you know?”

I shrug, my brain racing, trying to find the right thing to say that won’t freak her the fuck out but will show her how much I care about her, how serious I am about helping her.

How serious I’m realizing I am about her .

“I listen when you talk to me. I hear the things you say and also the things you don’t.

I know there’s a lot you don’t share—some of it because you like to keep things close, but some of it because I think, for a long time, someone made you feel like the things you had to say weren’t important.

” I stroke a hand down Hannah’s ponytail, the golden-brown strands gleaming in the summer sun as I give her a few seconds to absorb my words.

“But Gorgeous, I’m here to tell you that everything you have to say is important to me, and I promise that when you want to talk, I’ll always listen. ”

Hannah stares at me for a full minute. When I was a kid, I always wanted to have the power to fly like Superman, but right now, I would give a limb for the power to read minds, to know exactly what’s going on inside Hannah’s brain.

“Okay,” is all she says.

“Okay, what?” I ask, studying her face, looking for clues.

“Okay, let’s go in there and be readers.”

I feel the grin spread over my face. “You gonna let me buy you some books, Han?”

Her answering smile makes me feel like I could jump thirty feet. Scale an entire building. Lift a car. Like nothing in the world would ever be wrong again if only she aimed that smile at me every damn day.

“I mean, it’s a bookstore, isn’t it? It would be practically sacrilegious to leave without buying anything.”

I nod, pasting a serious expression on my face. “I’ve always been a religious man.”

Hannah laughs, and I can’t resist smacking a dramatic kiss to her cheek, my chest warming at the way her laughter kicks up a notch.

The way she rests a light hand on my waist. The way I feel her warming up to this little game of ours that feels less like a game at all and more real than anything I’ve ever experienced in my life.

To keep my brain from going too far in a direction it really shouldn’t right now, I turn to walk us towards the store.

“Noah?” Hannah speaks up just as I start pulling open the bookstore door, one hand on the small of her back to guide her into the store in front of me.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“Anything for you, Gorgeous.”

She flashes me that perfect smile one more time, and together we make our way into the store.