Chapter 11

Palmetto Pride Bookswas about as much Sam’s home as her parents’ place in Westchester. Situated at the end of a strip mall next to a Chinese restaurant, the bookstore was open to all but had gotten gayer and gayer over the years.

A little bell that had been above the door since the Great Depression dinged after Sam put her shoulder into opening the glass door. It scraped against the laminate floor before finally spitting her into the shop.

Inside the small space, guests who had arrived too early for the reading milled around the tightly packed space. The front of the shop was split into two halves. LGBTQ+ romances of all varieties on one side and literary greats like Audre Lorde and Leslie Feinberg on the other. Covering the entire ceiling was the massive rainbow flag Sam’s mother had sewn for Blanca as a business-warming gift nearly fifteen years ago.

Her favorite part of the shop was the witchy corner, tucked away in a shadowy nook in the back next to where Blanca had set up a lounge for teens who needed a quirky place to keep them safe. The shelves were packed with spell-books — some modern paperbacks, others ancient leather-bounds. Crystals of every color glimmered in display cases. Incense sticks in exotic scents like dragon’s blood and white sage sat next to bundles of dried herbs.

Sam intended to slip in and make it to the back of the store before anyone spotted her, but a tall brunette with flawless skin and captivating eyes started toward her — the Lilith book tucked under her arm.

“Prof. Reyes,” the woman said, voice low and sultry and utterly enchanting. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.” Her accent was mild and impossible to identify. Spanish? Portuguese? Catalan? Sam couldn’t pinpoint it.

Sam wanted to tell the woman standing before her in leather pants and a wicked gleam in her eye that she wasn’t her typical reader. There wasn’t a speck of academia’s pretentious dust on her. But she resisted making an assumption. Didn’t arrive at a conclusion without evidentiary support.

“Thank you so much for coming to the reading,” she replied cooly even as her pulse jumped in her throat while the woman neared. It wasn’t an attraction response. It was like coming to the end of a hiking trail and realizing that a momma bear had just spotted you standing too close to her young. It was exhilarating in an unnerving way.

“Unfortunately, I can’t stay,” she said, bright brown eyes verging on auburn and glinting dark red where the fluorescent lighting hit them. “I don’t love crowds.” She pulled out the book. The cover was worn, and the pages were adorned with sticky tabs. “I was hoping you could sign it for me.”

“Sure, of course.” Sam reached for the pen tucked in her blazer’s inside pocket.

The woman opened the book to the first page. Her fingernails were long, sharpened to terrifying points, and painted a red so dark it reminded Sam of pooling blood. Oxidized and sticky.

“Who should I make it out to?” Sam clicked her pen and took the book.

“Librada,” she replied with a feline purr.

“What an unusual name. It’s lovely.” Sam scrawled a dedication before signing at the bottom of the page.

Librada smiled, sending a chill straight down Sam’s spine and curling around her stomach. “Thank you. It’s old.” She moistened her lips like an archer nocking an arrow. “Very, very old.”

“Did you?—”

“Sam!” Blanca, long, dark curls bouncing, waved at her from behind the counter, cutting off Sam’s question and shattering the haze that had draped around her.

Librada reached for the book, leaning disquietingly close to Sam’s ear. “You got quite a lot right, Professor.”

“What do you mean?” Sam furrowed her brow. “What did I get wrong?” she half-joked, trying to find her balance in the odd exchange.

Librada smiled, turned around, and disappeared out the front door without having to struggle to get the thing to budge.

“I thought you were going to be here a little earlier. Greta made that weird dip you like.” Blanca, a woman a solid foot shorter than Sam, said before pulling her into a hug.

Lifelong friends who dated briefly in college, she and Blanca quickly realized they were platonic soulmates rather than romantic ones. Since then, they’d seen each other through loss, divorce, success, and joy.

“You’re the only person who thinks spinach dip is weird,” Sam replied like she always did.

“It’s a vegetable. Vegetables aren’t dips. There’s no lettuce dip, is there?” Blanca’s bright green eyes shone against her freckled, round face. “There’s a reason for that.”

“Maybe they should try drowning lettuce in cheese and serving it on Hawaiian rolls,” Greta, Blanca’s wife — a tall, bottle blonde with short hair and an uncanny resemblance to Sam — said when she appeared behind Blanca.

“Hey, sweets.” Sam greeted Greta with a kiss on the cheek.

“Come get something to eat before the reading,” Greta said, a perennial warm smile on her lips. If there were two people who complemented each other more than steady Greta and energetic Blanca, Sam had never met them.

The sound of the bell on the door forced Sam’s attention away before she accepted. The sight of Natalia walking into the bookstore welded her to the spot. In high-waisted trousers, silk top, and hair ironed dead straight, Natalia looked like she’d just left a board meeting where she fired the lot for incompetence and made a room full of finance bros cry.

Sam’s pulse raced, the memory of Natalia’s mouth on her, setting her on fire from the inside. Her body remembered her touch and ached for more.

“Who’s that?” Blanca whispered, but Sam couldn’t look away from Natalia. Not when she’d cut through the small crowd and locked her in her sights.

“Jesus, she’s hot. Is she famous? A Real Housewife?” Greta guessed.

“I’ll be right back.” Sam gave Blanca’s arm a squeeze and floated toward Natalia.

Each step she took toward her made Sam’s body sing. Made her heart pound in her ears and her skin flush with heat. Natalia stopped next to a round table covered in YA romances. Her dark gaze was as piercing and intense as the woman herself.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Sam said, hoping her voice sounded steadier than she felt. Natalia was the last person she expected to see in Blanca’s store — or ever again, really. “This isn’t exactly gala territory.”

Natalia tilted her head. She watched her for the longest second ever recorded, eyes set and studying. “If this is all it takes to surprise you, Professor, I worry about the depths of your imagination.”

Sam smiled, a chuckle rumbling in her throat while she slipped her hand into the pocket of her trousers. As much as she wondered what Natalia was like when she dropped the icy act, she loved that every conversation between them moved like a competitive dance.

“How else was I going to get your autograph?” Natalia’s eyebrow gave the tiniest flick.

Moistening her lips, Sam let her teeth drag over her bottom lip, memories of their last time together buzzing inside of her like a neon sign. “You could’ve just texted me,” she suggested before holding out her hand to accept the book.

“Texting? How forward,” Natalia shot back like they hadn’t seen and touched and tasted every inch of each other.

“What was I thinking?” Sam joked before taking Natalia’s copy of the Lilith myth. Her well-worn and neatly annotated copy, Sam noticed when she flipped through the pages. “Is this a sly way of sneaking a contract in here for me to sign?”

“I think you already know, Professor, when I do something… you feel it.”

Sam chuckled, heat flushing her face and throat. “And thank God for that.”

“Plus…” Natalia smirked. “You look litigious.”

“Damn, the truth comes out!” Sam scribbled a note in the book before handing it back. “You didn’t have to come all the way down here just to harass me about the rights.”

“Do you feel harassed, Professor?” Natalia locked her in her gaze. A gaze that seemed to want to shove her against something hard and kiss her again.

“Only in the very best way,” she promised.

Blanca showed up at her side with a camera and a smile too wide to spell anything but trouble. “Natalia Flores,” she announced, eyes fixed on Natalia.

Behind the counter, Greta looked remorseful. Like she didn’t realize her wife would use the information she dug up. “My kids had the best time at gay prom last year. That’s such a cool thing United in PRIDE does for them.”

Natalia tipped her head forward in acknowledgement.

“Natalia, this is my very best friend, Blanca Corzo.” Sam pointed toward the back of the store. “And that’s her lovely wife, Greta. They do a lot with LGBTQ+ youth including providing safe spaces like the bookstore.”

“That’s very honorable,” Natalia replied, a light inside her dimming. “A lot of kids really have nowhere to go.”

Blanca put her hand to her chest. “Too many.”

“Good thing there are people in the world looking out for them,” Sam said, attention bouncing between Blanca and Natalia.

“Two trailblazing members of the community in my little shop.” Blanca lifted her camera. “I have to get a picture.”

“You have to, huh?” Sam raised her brows to signal that she knew what Blanca was doing and wasn’t amused.

“Imagine all the IG clicks.” Blanca grinned. “You know how hard it is to get organic traffic these days? Especially for a little mom and mom shop like ours.”

“Expert use of guilt as a negotiation tactic,” Natalia said with the hint of a smile hovering at the edges of her lips. “Who could say no to that?” She moved closer to Sam, her arm snaking around her waist, before Sam accepted that the photo was happening.

As the taller one between them, Sam curled her arm around Natalia’s upper back. It was impossible to resist taking a deep breath. To breathe her in greedily, her perfume triggering memories of Natalia’s body on hers. Of the sound of her sultry voice cursing and groaning.

“Say cheese!” Blanca pointed the camera at them.

Sam smiled and wondered whether Natalia had changed her stoic expression. She doubted it.

“Thanks.” Blanca smiled. “Can I offer you anything to eat? We have some bubbly for after the reading, but I can break it out.”

“I’m fine, thank you.” Natalia’s tone was almost warm.

“We should get started, Sam,” Blanca said before slipping away.

“I’ll let you get to it then.” Natalia took her book back. “I don’t want to distract you?—”

“Well, it’s far too late for that, isn’t it?” Sam leaned in closer, wishing she could taste her lips again. She wouldn’t be able to think about anything else tonight.

“I’m sure your powers of concentration can do better than that.” Natalia’s voice was too low, her mouth so tempting.

“Am I to believe that you came all the way here just for me to doodle in your book?”

“Far be it from me to tell you what to believe, Dr. Reyes.”

Sam’s adrenaline spiked. Natalia made everything so difficult and exciting. “Why don’t you stay for the reading? Let me take you somewhere after.”

“I just had parking lot hotdogs for dinner a few weeks ago,” she replied cooly.

Sam laughed, giddy and electrified in Natalia’s presence. “I’ll have to come up with something else then.”

“How will I get through this reading with that cliffhanger?” Natalia walked toward where a few dozen chairs were mostly filled.

Sam tried not to ogle her swinging hips like a creep, but her gaze got away from her before she could correct it. When she looked up, Greta and Blanca were staring at her from the other side of the store. Two sets of eyes silently begging for gossip. Sam gave them a noncommittal shrug before starting for the podium. The reading had just become a thousand times more difficult.