Page 7 of One Last Thing Before You Go

I check my phone for the time. “Any second now.”

The shop had remained closed in observance of Walter’s death for the past three days, but his lawyer had made contact at the funeral, asked us to meet him here today. When Walter passed away, I was so nervous about what would happen to the store—not just to me as an employee. But knowing that he put his affairs in order settled some of the panic. Of course Walter had prepared for any scenario. It’s the type of man he was.

As if right on cue, the bells over the shop door chime and a short man in a taupe suit and cowboy boots walks in. In his hand, a leather suitcase; on his head, a cream Stetson.

Where the hell does this guy think he is? Because it definitely is not in a microscopic beach town in Maine in the middle of spring.

His eyes bounce around the shop until they land on mine. “Miss Veracruz?” I nod and he sticks his hand out, which I shake. “Leroy Jones. Lawyer to the estate of the late Doctor Walter Adams.”

“Doctor Walter Adams?”

The short man smiles. “Ph.D. He used to be a professor.”

“Walter was a professor?” I ask, a bit awestruck. “I’ve—I had—worked for him for several years and never knew.”

“Really? He was pretty well-known in the academic field when he was younger. Wrote lots of books.”

“Walter wrote books?” Jenn bursts out.

“Textbooks, mostly. Comparative Literature, I think,” the lawyer clarifies, as if it should make it any less impressive. “You must be Miss Roberts?” Leroy shakes her hand with a toothy grin. He places his suitcase on the counter, laughing softly. “I guess you didn’t know Doctor Adams as well as you thought you did.”

“He wasn’t an easy man to get to know,” Jenn mumbles.

In all honesty, there wasn’t much I really knew about Walter. Sure, I knew how he liked his coffee and how much he hated music. I knew he was as stubborn as he was brilliant. And I knew he had an immense passion for classic literature and was constantly frustrated by people who did not share the same interest. He was a man of few words with a watered-down Scottish accent. An outsider who showed up in town almost ten years ago and kept mostly to himself. No friends, no family—nothing but this bookstore.

He was also the only person in town who never commented on my life or the choices I made. Given the size of Ceres Cove and its main collective hobby being gossip, I’m sure he’d heard how my life imploded in slow motion, but he was kind enough to never bring it up.

Probably because he didn’t really care, to be honest.

It was what I liked the most about him. He didn’t care about all the noise. None of it ever mattered to him. Walter was all about his books and his quiet life and he owned it.

But still, a professor? Who wrote books? Textbooks? I had no idea.

“No,” I whisper. “I guess I didn’t know him as well as I thought I did.”

So we both had past lives, old friend.

A pit forms in my stomach—there’s that guilt again. This man took me in, gave me hope when I crawled back to town in tatters, and I realize now that I barely knew him.

I am a horrible person.

“Anyway, we’ll get started once Mr Riddick arrives,” Leroy says, breaking through my thoughts.

“Mr Riddick?” Jenn asks.

“Yes.” He checks his watch. “He texted saying he would be a few minutes late, but⁠—”

“I don’t understand. Who’s Mr Riddick, exactly?” I ask, my head still spinning with the new information.

The bells above the front door jingle again, but I keep my eyes on Mr. Jones.

“So sorry, sir. But the shop’s closed until further notice,” I hear Jenn say to the incoming customer.

“Oh. I’m actually here to meet someone?”

My entire body freezes, a shot of adrenaline coursing through it as my mind tries to process the sound of the man’s voice. The last time I heard it was when he groaned my name in a dark room, his lips to my ear, and…

I know that voice. I know who it belongs to. I know what it sounds like when he laughs at his own jokes, when he breathes my name on a sigh. I know what it sounds like when he groans in pleasure, when he begs for more, his body under mine. I know it perfectly because I’ve been replaying it in my head for the past three days.