Page 6 of Between Love & Ruin

“Just call me Dominic. We are working together now, and I like to treat my co-workers as equals.”

He nods with a smile.

I look at Myra, who’s staring at Henry, and I lightly clear my throat to get her attention back to us. This generation is doomed.

* * *

“Are you sure you don’t want to accompany me to the club?” Myra asks me for the tenth time, and for the tenth time she is about to hear a no.

“No,” I say with an exhausted sigh. I don’t hate clubs, but we have an early morning flight, and I would rather stay in bed than go out and get high for no reason. Flying with a hangover isn’t really fun. “I will accompany you downstairs. I heard there’s a bookstore nearby.”

She rolls her eyes. She always says my obsession with reading is boring. I always tell her to shut up after that.

“You read too many books,” she says as we stand inside the elevator taking us downstairs.

“You should try to read one too,” I say. “Fill your empty head with some knowledge.”

“I don’t need more knowledge.”

I shrug because I know better than to argue with her. I have told her many times that knowledge has no bounds, but she doesn’t care, and I am not her parent to lecture her around.

“Don’t take drinks from strangers,” I tell her as she sits in her cab. “Don’t leave your drink unattended. Share your location with me, and please don’t hook up with anyone. Come back before 2.”

“I have a boyfriend,” she tells me as if I don’t know already. “And you’re not my dad, Dominic.”

“A boyfriend didn’t stop you from ogling Reyansh Carter’s PA, and I am your boss. I don’t want my employee to be harmed.”

She gives me a dead smile before waving me off, and I just hope and pray she comes back safely.

The walk to the bookstore is short, as it is just a few buildings away from our hotel, and when I walk into it, there’s silence that calms down my brain.

I have always loved the quietness of bookstores, as it numbs my brain, and when I walk past the newly released section of the first bookshelf, my eye lands on an eerily familiar and eye-catching book.

I pick up the book titled “A Tide of Love by Sienna Hayes” and flip it over to read the blurb, but there’s not much to be revealed there.

Strange.

“This is one of our most sold-out books,” the bookstore manager tells me as she passes me by. “We only have this one copy left with us.”

I smile and nod at her.

“It has no description,” I tell her, finding it extremely strange. “Just one line – ‘This is for the yearners.’”

“Are you a yearner?”

“Perhaps.”

“Then, sir, maybe this book is for you. After all, you found the last copy.”

Maybe.

“Pack this up for me, please.”

I look at the name on the cover once again, a strange tug in my chest. Sienna Hayes.

Who knew this was going to be the start of my yearning era?

Sienna Hayes