Page 36 of This Feeling

“You’ve got to be kidding, right?” I asked. “We don’t even know who the hell you are.”

“Oh!” he said with a laugh, reaching his hand out to Gavin first. “I’m Tanner Browning.”

“Related to Harper Browning?” I asked.

He smiled big and bright. “Harper’s my cousin. Are you friends with her?”

“She’s dating my brother, Sean.”

Tanner frowned. “They broke up.”

“That’s what we all thought,” Gavin stated.

I shrugged. “Apparently, they’re back together.”

Tanner’s frown deepened.

“What’s with the look?” I asked.

Tanner shrugged. “It’s just, well…it was pretty obvious that Sean didn’t want to be with Harper anymore, and she even said they weren’t good together, so…I’m just wondering what changed.”

“People break up and get back together all the time,” Gavin said. “But back to your problem. Dude, you need to go in and ask the girl out.”

He looked at the bookstore, then back at us. “Will you guys come in with me?”

I let out a bark of laughter, and when the kid didn’t laugh in return, I sobered up.

“You need to do this on your own, Tanner,” Gavin said. “The worst she can say is no, and at least then you’ll know how she feels and you can move on.”

“Agreed,” I said. “We need to get going. And stop staring into the window, it’s creepy as fuck.”

Tanner grinned sheepishly. “Got it.” Then he drew in a deep breath and gave a firm head nod. “I’m going in.”

We watched as he made his way to the door and walked in.

I sighed. “Please tell me we’re going to see more action than just the town gossip and an introverted twenty-something creeping on a woman.”

Gavin chuckled. “I would think you’d be glad for the calmer work environment.”

“Trust me, I love not having bullets flying toward me. I was just hoping for a bit…more.”

“There’s a jaywalker.” Gavin pointed to a guy crossing in the middle of Main Street. “We can chase him down and give him a ticket. If we’re lucky, he might even call us assholes.”

I stared at Gavin. “You’re not being serious right now, are you?”

When the corners of his mouth twitched, I pushed him away from me. “Asshole.”

“It’s Moose Village, Declan. You grew up here. You know what this town is like. We occasionally get a robbery or something like that, but not often. The last real action that happened in town was when Cadie got kidnapped and we had the FBI bossing us around for an entire day. That really wasn’t any fun.”

I laughed. “Then I guess Ishouldbe glad for a more relaxed work environment.”

“You just jinxed us, I hope you know that.”

“So what you’re saying is, we’re going to get called to a cat stuck in a tree any second now.”

He smirked. “That’s not as easy as you would think. Do you know how fucking hard it is to get a scared cat out of a tree? I nearly lost an eye.”

“Wait, that was really a call you got? To get a cat out of the tree?”

---