Free Deep Surrendering (Episode Two) by Chelsea M. Cameron

with gold embossing to cheap paperbacks that were cracked with use. Turning my head to the side, I read some of the authors, hoping they were shelved in alphabetical order.
    They weren’t. He had a beautiful leather-bound copy of A Tale of Two Cities nestled right next to a paperback of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo , with a George R. R. Martin hardcover on the other side.
    “Looking at my books.” This time I turned right around and smacked him in the chest.
    “Stop sneaking up on me. And yes, I’m looking at your books. Are they shelved in any particular way?” I stepped away from him to read more of the titles. He even had several law books, medical journals, and other textbooks in amongst the novels. His collection of books was starting to make me feel less and less intelligent. But maybe he hadn’t read all of them.
    “Yes, but I couldn’t explain it in any way that would make sense to you.”
    I nodded and scanned some more titles. “Which is your favorite?” I heard him laughing behind me as if I’d said something quite hilarious.
    “What’s so funny?” I looked away from the books, and at Fin, who was still laughing.
    “That question always makes me laugh. As if you can only have one favorite book. I have hundreds of favorite books, and my favorites are always changing. When I was a baby, Goodnight, Moon was my favorite. Now it’s one of my favorites. Can you pick one favorite?”
    Not that I didn’t read, but I was illiterate next to Fin. “I don’t know. I’d have to think about it.”
    “Don’t pick the answer you think I want. I’m not going to change my opinion of you based on your answer.” Even though it was a summer night and he had the air conditioning on, he crouched down, flicked a button and the fire ignited. The fake flames danced on his face and reminded me of the enchanted forest bedroom.
    “Fine. Then my answer is that’s it’s a three-way battle between 1984 , The Hunger Games, and The Book Thief .” He nodded but didn’t look up at me. I waited for his reaction. Fin stood and reached for a volume on the shelf, handing it to me. Then he went for another. And a third.
    They were my three books. He had them too, and by the looks of them, they’d been read a few times. “So you’re a fan of sci-fi and dystopian?” he said.
    “I guess,” I replied. I looked down at the books. I could remember exactly where I’d been in my life when I’d read them, and how I’d felt after I’d finished. Like I couldn’t go back to normal life anymore because the words on those pages had changed me too much.
    I glanced from the books up at Fin to find an expression I hadn’t seen before. Did he have yet another side that I hadn’t met yet?
    “So,” I said, but my voice came out wrong. I cleared my throat. “So, do you read a lot?”
    “I spend a lot of time traveling and flying and I have trouble sleeping most nights, so I guess you could say yes.” He took the books back from me and put them on the coffee table before taking my hand and leading me to the couch.
    “Why don’t you sleep?”
    “Too many thoughts.”
    “Yeah, me too.” I snuggled against him, and he ran his hand through my hair. “You’re the strangest person I’ve ever met. I never know where you’re coming from, or where you’re going, or what you’re thinking. It’s very . . . unsettling,” I said.
    Silence wrapped around us, apart from the constant noises of Boston. Like breathing, you got used to it and weren’t even aware of them. He didn’t say anything for a long time.
    “I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not.”
    “It is a compliment. It’s rare to meet someone who changes how you think about people. How you judge them when you first meet and then those judgments turn out to be way off.”
    “And I could say the same about you.” I felt my eyes closing from the combination of the vigorous sex and the soup, so I let them and just listened to the rise and fall of Fin’s