Opening Morning

A Bookshop Daddy & Delivery Lads Bonus Chapter • by Jace Wilder

An exclusive bonus scene. Six months after the epilogue. The morning of the second-shop opening. Jude’s thirty-fifth birthday — which he didn’t tell anyone — and a charcoal henley Leo bought in secret on a Tuesday in March.

~4,900 words • Jude POV • 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ Inferno heat • explicit on-page sex

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Opening Morning

Jude POV. Six months after the epilogue. The new shop, — the second location, — opens at ten a.m.

Eleanor was right about the ribbon.

The Irish linen ribbon she had ordered for the front of the new shop was unlike any ribbon I had ever touched in my life. It came in a small flat box wrapped in tissue, and when I opened it on the new shop’s counter at six-eighteen on Saturday morning, in the dark, with one work light on and a coffee going cold beside me, the ribbon felt — I do not have a better word for it — intentional. It felt like a thing that had been made by a person on a loom on a different continent, slowly, on purpose, for the specific purpose of being cut at ten o’clock that morning by Leonard Hawthorne in front of a crowd I had spent six weeks helping plan.

I uncoiled it on the counter.

Twelve feet. Cream. Heavy.

I stood there in the empty shop with my hand flat on the ribbon and I — I had a small private moment that I am not going to be embarrassed about later. I stood with my hand on a piece of fabric that Eleanor Pell had ordered for the front of a shop I half-owned a building for, in a town I had been a stranger in seven months ago, and I let the moment be what it was for about thirty seconds.

Then I rolled the ribbon back up. I put it in its box. I put the box on the high shelf behind the register so Boswell, who was, for reasons I had not gotten to the bottom of yet, in the new shop with me at six in the morning, could not get at it.

Boswell was on the counter.

Boswell was at this point an old man cat — fifteen, going on sixteen — and he had decided, sometime in March, that the new shop across the street was an extension of his territory, and he had been letting himself in through the side door whenever Finn or I left it propped, which was often. He was sitting on the corner of the counter now in the half-dark, looking at the front window, his tail twitching once in a while at nothing, and he was — he was supervising me.

“You are not supposed to be in here, Bos.”

“Mrrow.”

“Eleanor is going to be here in an hour and a half and she is going to put you out and you know it.”

“Mrrow.”

“Fine. Stay.”

I scratched the spot under his chin he had taught me to scratch in November. He purred. He shut his eyes. He was, for the moment, content.

I went back to my list.

The list was on a yellow legal pad on the counter — the same yellow legal pad Finn had been writing on the previous October, before I had bought him a typewriter — and it had, on it, in my block letters:

OPENING MORNING.

1. Power on register at 7. Run test transaction.

2. Stage front display per Finn’s drawing. Featured: Erpenbeck stack center, Cather right, Bulgakov left.

3. Coffee from Mary Beth at 8:15.

4. Shortbread from Mary Beth at 8:15.

5. Eleanor at 8 with the ribbon.

6. Mayor at 9:45.

7. Karen Stroud / Gazette at 9:50.

8. Don Pike at 9:55 (he asked).

9. Ribbon at 10:00.

10. Leo speaks. Three minutes max.

11. Open the door.

12. Sell books.

I had been working through the list since five-thirty, on items 1 and 2. The register was on. The test transaction had cleared. The front display was forty percent staged — Erpenbeck center stack done, Cather pile in progress, Bulgakov untouched. I had four hours.

The side door clicked.

Boswell opened one eye.

“Jude.”

It was Leo’s voice.

I turned around.

He was in the doorway of the side door from the alley with two travel mugs in his hands, in the cardigan he had been wearing the previous Saturday and which I had personally washed on Tuesday because Leo, while improving, was still a man who would wear a cardigan for nine days if I did not intervene, and his hair was wet at the temples from the shower, and his glasses were on, and he looked at me across the half-dark shop and his mouth did the private corner-thing.

“You are not supposed to be here for another hour, Leo.”

“I know.”

“What are you doing here.”

“I brought coffee.”

“Leo.”

“I am also here,” he said, “to lock the side door.”

I looked at him.

“Why.”

“Because at some point in the next forty minutes, Jude, you and I are going to do a thing in this office that is not on your list, and I do not want Mary Beth to walk in on it.”

I — God.

I felt my mouth do a thing.

I had not, until that exact moment, in the dark of an empty shop at six twenty-three a.m. with a list in one hand and a cat purring beside me, registered that Leo had, at some point in the last twenty-four hours, decided to do this. I had been so deep in the spreadsheet of the morning that I had not put two fingers on the calendar and noticed that my partner had been quiet, in a specific way, since Thursday afternoon, and that the specific quiet was the quiet of a man who was planning something.

“Leo.”

“Yes.”

“Are you — ”

“Yes, Jude.”

“At six twenty-three in the morning.”

“At six twenty-three in the morning. Yes.”

“Leo. I have a list.”

“I am aware.”

“I have Mary Beth coming with shortbread in — ” I looked at the clock “ — in an hour and fifty-two minutes.”

“I am aware. It is going to take twenty minutes. I have been thinking about it since Thursday.”

He set the travel mugs on the counter. He came across the floor. He walked past me toward the office at the back, and he reached into his cardigan pocket on the way and he pulled out — and this was the thing that undid the rest of my morning — he pulled out a small bottle of lube, the same kind we had been using since November, the one Finn bought in Burlington, and he set it on the corner of the desk in the office without breaking stride.

He stopped in the office doorway. He turned around. He looked at me across the dark shop floor.

“Jude.”

“Yes.”

“Come here.”

I came.

I am not going to pretend I did not. I came across the shop floor in fourteen seconds. Boswell, on the counter, opened the other eye and watched me go, and I am sure he had opinions, but I did not care.

I came into the office. I closed the door behind me. I locked it.

Leo was already at the desk.

He had — he had taken his cardigan off. He had folded it over the back of the chair, neatly. He was in a charcoal henley I had not seen him in before, which was, I realized with a small private pleasure, a new one, which meant Leo had been to Burlington in the last two weeks and bought himself a shirt for this morning, which was — Leo did not buy himself shirts. Leo had not bought himself a shirt since November when he bought one specifically for Eleanor’s seventy-ninth birthday. I had now, this morning, witnessed the second shirt purchase of his fifty-first year, and it had been a charcoal henley, and he was in it, and I was going to be in trouble.

“Leo.”

“Yes.”

“That is a new henley.”

“I bought it on Tuesday.”

“You went to Burlington on Tuesday.”

“I did.”

“You did not tell me you went to Burlington on Tuesday.”

“I did not, Jude.”

“Leo.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you go to Burlington.”

He looked at me.

He said, simply: “I bought you the shirt I am wearing, Jude. I bought it because I knew today was going to be hard for you. I knew you were going to be at this shop at five-thirty in the morning. I knew you were not going to sleep last night. I bought the shirt on Tuesday because I wanted, today, when I came in here at six-twenty, to be — to be the version of myself you would not be able to ignore. I wanted to come in here in something you had never seen on me, because I wanted you to look up from the list and remember, for thirty seconds, that I was not just the man you opened a shop with. I am also the man who — ” he breathed “ — I am also the man who is about to bend you over this desk.”

I stared at him.

I stared at him for about three seconds.

Then I said, hoarse, “Leo.”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Jude.”

“That is — ”

“I know.”

“That is the most thoroughly considered seduction I have ever — ”

“Jude. Bend over.”

I bent over.

I bent over the desk the way I had bent over the desk six months ago, the morning of the first opening, when Leo had put lube in my drawer on Easter Monday for a Thursday morning two days later. I bent over my own desk in my own shop and I put my forehead down on the blotter and I breathed, and Leo came up behind me, and he put his hand flat on my back, slow, between my shoulder blades, and he pressed me down, and he said, quiet:

“Good.”

I felt my whole body drop a gear.

He did this to me now. He did this every time. Six months of doing it had not made it stop working — six months of doing it had made it work more, because every time he did it now he was using it on top of all the previous times, and my body had been trained, Pavlov-clean, to drop the second that hand landed.

I dropped.

“Jude.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what your morning has been so far.”

“Leo — ”

“Tell me, Jude. I want to hear it.”

“Up at four-fifty. Coffee. Reviewed the inventory list. Walked over at five-thirty. Ran the register test. Started the front display. Erpenbeck center, Cather right, Bulgakov pending. The ribbon — Eleanor’s ribbon — came in. It was — it was in tissue. I unwrapped it. I — I had a moment about it. About the ribbon. Which is stupid. I — ”

“Jude.”

“Yes.”

“It’s not stupid.”

“Leo — ”

“Tell me about the ribbon.”

“It was — it was twelve feet of cream linen. It was — Leo, it was made by somebody. It was made on a loom. I touched it and I — I had a small moment with my hand on it about — about being a person who owns part of a building who Eleanor Pell ordered a twelve-foot piece of Irish linen for, and I — ”

“Yes, Jude.”

“I am thirty-five years old today.”

His hand went still on my back.

“Wait.”

“Yes.”

“Jude.”

“Yes.”

“Today is your birthday.”

“It is.”

“You did not tell me.”

“Leo.”

“Jude.”

“Yes.”

“Why did you not tell me.”

“Because. Because the opening is today. Because the opening is the opening. Because if I had told you it was my birthday, you would have done — what you are doing right now. And I did not want to take the day from the shop.”

“Jude.”

“Yes.”

“Sit up.”

I sat up.

I sat up on the desk and turned around and Leo was looking at me with an expression I had not seen on his face since November, which was the very specific Leo-face that meant a man is about to get spoken to with great firmness about something he had been wrong about, and I — I braced for it, and it came.

“Jude Kane.”

“Yes.”

“You are going to listen to me for the next thirty seconds, and you are not going to interrupt.”

“Yes.”

“Thirty-five years old today is not a thing you take from the shop. Thirty-five years old today is a thing the shop owes you. The shop is opening this morning because you spent ten weeks of your life on it. The shop is opening this morning because at six twenty-three in the morning on your birthday you are at the shop’s counter staging an Erpenbeck pile. The shop does not get to also have your birthday. The shop is going to be fine if your birthday goes first. Are we clear.”

“Leo — ”

“Are we clear, Jude.”

“Yes, Leo.”

“Good. Lie down on the desk.”

“Leo — ”

“Jude.”

“Leo, the shop opens in three hours and fifty-six minutes.”

“And Mary Beth comes in an hour and forty-eight, and we are going to take twenty of those, and you are going to be back in the front in ten more, and I am going to spend the rest of the morning watching you do the work you have been doing, and I am going to know — and you are going to know — that you turned thirty-five with my mouth on you, in your office, in your shop, in the dark, on purpose. Lie down, Jude.”

I lay down.

I lay down on the desk. He had — at some point, while I had been distracted by the henley, he had cleared the blotter. The blotter was clean. The keyboard was off to the side. The framed receipt on the wall above the desk caught the work light from the front. I lay flat on my back on the desk in my own office in my own shop, and Leo undid my belt, slow, and pulled my jeans and my boxers down to my knees, and he stood between my legs with his hands on my thighs and he looked down at me, and he said, quiet:

“Happy birthday, Jude.”

“Leo — ”

“Hush.”

He put his mouth on me.

He took me in slow and deep and he kept his hand flat on my belly, fingers spread, the way he did when he wanted me to feel held against the desk while he worked. Leo had spent six months getting to know my body in a way that had become — there was no good word for it — fluent. He knew the rhythm I needed when I was wound. He knew the rhythm I needed when I was tired. He knew the rhythm I needed when I had been running things, which I had been running things for ten weeks, and he had — he had been quietly cataloging, and he was, this morning, applying everything he had cataloged.

I made a sound.

I was not going to be quiet. I had told myself, in the doorway, that I was going to be quiet. I had reasoned it: that the side door was locked, but that the front of the shop was glass, and that Mary Beth was going to come up the sidewalk in less than two hours, and that we were grown men, and that I was going to keep my mouth shut.

I did not keep my mouth shut.

“Leo.”

He hummed.

“Leo, I — ”

He came off slow. He looked up at me over my stomach. His mouth was wet. His glasses had fogged at the bottom. He said, quiet, “Talk to me, Jude.”

“Don’t — don’t make me come yet.”

“No?”

“Not — not in your mouth. I want — I want you in me.”

“Yes.”

“Now.”

“Yes, Jude.”

He stood up.

He pulled me forward by the hips until my ass was at the edge of the desk and my legs were over his arms. He reached for the lube. He slicked his fingers. He worked one in.

I — I was easy this morning. I had been thinking about him in the shower at five. I had been thinking about him for ten weeks. I had been, since November, the kind of partner whose body had decided that Leo was the answer to the question, and I had stopped being closed in any meaningful way to him almost ever, and one finger went in clean and a second went in clean, and Leo, watching my face, made a small pleased sound and slid in a third.

“Jude.”

“Yes.”

“You were ready.”

“I have been ready since I woke up at four-fifty, Leo.”

“Jude — ”

“I have been thinking about you. I always think about you in the morning. You know I always — ”

“Yes, Jude.”

“Get inside me.”

He undid his own belt.

He slicked himself. He did not bother with a condom — we had not for four months, since the testing in February — and he lined up, and he pressed in.

Slow.

He pressed in slow because he was always slow, because Leo’s whole body was slow, because Leo was a fifty-year-old man who knew that fast was a trick young men played on themselves to convince themselves they were not paying attention, and Leo paid attention. He pressed all the way to the root and held, and we both breathed, and I looked up at him from the desk and I said:

“Hi.”

“Hi, Jude.”

“Hi.”

“How are you.”

“I am — ” I laughed. “I am full. And I am thirty-five. And I am very good.”

“Good.”

He moved.

He moved slow. He held my left thigh with his right hand and he braced his left palm flat on the desk next to my head, and he rolled, slow and deep, and he kept his eyes on mine. The work light from the front of the shop was the only light. His face was half in shadow. His hair, where the shower had wet it, was almost black. His glasses were still fogged at the bottom and he had not bothered to clean them. The framed 1948 receipt on the wall behind him caught the light, and behind that the brick, and behind that the building, and behind that Marrowbrook, and behind that — I do not know what I was thinking about, behind that.

I was thinking about my partner.

“Leo.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me — tell me a thing.”

“What thing, Jude.”

“Anything. Tell me a thing about this morning. Tell me a thing about the shop. Tell me a thing — tell me a thing about you. Anything. Tell me a thing while you are inside me on my desk on my birthday and I am — I am going to put it in the bank with all the other things.”

He laughed.

He laughed against my throat. He kissed my jaw. He rolled deeper.

“Jude.”

“Yes.”

“I bought a second cardigan in Burlington on Tuesday.”

“What.”

“In addition to the henley.”

“Leo — ”

“It is hidden in the closet of the rare-books room because if Finn finds it he is going to start wearing it before I have ever put it on. I bought it because I wanted a cardigan that was not — not the cardigan Finn has been wearing for seven months. I wanted my own one. I am — I am, at fifty, learning how to buy clothes again. I am telling you because — I am telling you because you are the one who has been doing my laundry for seven months and you are going to find it in the closet next week and I want you to know I bought it on purpose.”

“Leo.”

“Yes.”

“You bought yourself a second cardigan in secret.”

“Yes.”

“On Tuesday.”

“Yes.”

“Leo, I am — Leo, you are inside me.”

“I know, Jude.”

“That is the — that is the most domestic — ”

“Jude. Come.”

“Leo — ”

“Come, Jude. We have an hour and forty-five minutes and I want to hold you for thirty of them.”

I came.

I came on the desk between us — I had been close since the new-cardigan reveal, because Leo telling me he had bought a second cardigan in secret on a Tuesday in March was a sentence I was going to think about every day for the rest of my life — and I came hard, my back arching off the wood, his hand flat on my chest holding me down, and he kept moving slow through it, slow and deep, and he came with his forehead against my temple and his mouth on my jaw, quiet, two strokes after.

He held.

He held inside me with his hand flat on my chest and his face against my throat, and we breathed.

Then he kissed me.

He kissed me slow. He pulled out slow. He reached for the box of tissues on the corner of the desk — which was new this week, which I had not put there, which Leo had put there on Wednesday for exactly this reason, I now understood — and he wiped me clean. He wiped himself. He pulled my boxers and my jeans up. He buttoned me. He buckled my belt.

He pulled me up to sitting on the edge of the desk.

He cupped my face with both hands.

“Jude Kane.”

“Yes.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Leo.”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

“Leo.”

“Yes.”

“Do not — do not buy me a third cardigan.”

“Why not.”

“I do not know if I can survive a third.”

He laughed.

He laughed and kissed me and pulled me against his chest and held me there for — I do not know how long. Longer than three minutes. Less than ten. The shop was quiet. The work light hummed. Boswell, on the other side of the office door, made a single small mrrow of inquiry, which we ignored.

After a while Leo said, quietly, “Jude.”

“Yes.”

“Finn knows about the birthday.”

“Of course he does.”

“Riley too.”

“Of course.”

“They are coming in at seven-thirty.”

“What.”

“Both of them. Together. With muffins. They have a card.”

“Leo — ”

“They have a card and a small wrapped thing, Jude. I am telling you now because I do not want it to land on you cold at seven-thirty when you are still — ” he gestured at me “ — at this. Finn was going to come at seven-thirty regardless. Finn told me last week. I have been keeping it from you so they would have the moment. I am telling you now so the moment doesn’t land on top of — ”

“On top of you.”

“Yes.”

“Leo.”

“Yes.”

“You are very kind to me.”

“Jude.”

“You are. You are very kind. You are the kindest man — ”

“Jude.”

“Yes.”

“Drink your coffee.”

I drank my coffee.

I drank my coffee at six forty-four on a Saturday in the office of my own shop in my own thirty-fifth-birthday clothes, and Leo sat on the desk next to me and drank his, and we watched the work light through the glass of the office door, and Boswell, beyond it, watched back.

Finn and Riley came in at seven thirty-one.

They came in through the side door — Leo had gone and unlocked it at seven, with a kiss to my temple and the murmur, I am going to set up the front, and he had gone — and I heard the door, and I heard Finn say, quiet, to someone, “Where is he,” and I heard Riley say, quieter, “Office, probably.”

I came out of the office.

They were both in the half-dark of the front. Finn had a paper bag in one hand and a coffee tray in the other. Riley had a small wrapped box about the size of a paperback. Leo was at the front display, finishing the Bulgakov stack, and he looked up at me when I came out, and his mouth did the corner-thing, and he did not say anything.

Finn saw me. Finn put the bag down. Finn crossed the shop in four steps and threw himself at me and wrapped his arms around my neck and stood on his toes and said, into my throat:

“Jude.”

“Finn.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Thank you, Finn.”

“You did not tell me.”

“I did not tell anyone.”

“I knew anyway.”

“I am aware, Finn.”

“Riley knew too.”

“Riley always knows.”

“Jude.”

“Yes.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, Finn.”

He kissed me, on the mouth, sweet and quick, and pulled back, and tugged me by the wrist toward the bag he had set down, and Riley came over with the box.

Riley was — Riley, at twenty-five, was the same Riley. He was in flannel pajama pants and a hoodie because Riley had clearly come straight out of bed because Riley did not, at seven-thirty, dress for the world unless there was a reason, and he was holding the small box in both hands and he was looking at me, and his amber eyes were soft.

“Jude.”

“Rye.”

“Happy birthday.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

“This is from — ” he glanced over his shoulder at Leo, who was very deliberately not looking at any of us “ — from the three of us. I am — Finn picked it. I wrapped it. Leo paid.”

“Riley — ”

“Open it, Jude.”

I opened it.

Inside the box was a fountain pen.

It was — it was not a flashy one. It was not a pen that screamed. It was a small dark green Pelikan, the kind a man buys when he has finally decided he is the kind of man who uses a fountain pen, and it was — God, it was perfect. It had been engraved on the cap, in small capitals: J.K. — HAWTHORNE & SONS, EST. 2025.

I looked at it.

I looked at Riley.

I looked at Finn.

I looked at Leo, who had finished pretending not to watch.

“Jude,” Leo said, quiet.

“Yes.”

“You have signed every check we have written for the last seven months with a forty-cent disposable Bic from the back of the register drawer.”

“I have.”

“This is an upgrade.”

“Leo — ”

“Finn picked it.”

“Finn — ”

“I knew the model,” Finn said. “I have been waiting since December.”

I looked at the pen.

I — I did not, for a second, know what to do with my face. I felt the wet-bright thing happen, which had become — over six months — a thing I just let happen now, because the four of us did not, anymore, hide things from each other. I let my eyes get bright. I held the pen flat in my palm. I closed my hand around it.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Jude,” Finn said.

“Yes.”

“You are welcome.”

“Riley.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.”

“You are welcome, Jude.”

I put the pen back in the box. I put the box on the counter. I pulled all three of them — Leo, Finn, Riley — into a small hug, the four-of-us hug, the one we had worked out in November, where Riley fit under my chin and Finn fit against Leo’s chest and Leo wrapped his arms around all three of us like a man holding his life together, and I held them.

After a long second Finn, into my collarbone, said, “Jude.”

“Yes.”

“There is a muffin.”

“Finn.”

“I am just saying. There is a blueberry muffin in that bag and it is from Mary Beth and it is your favorite, and I am holding myself together but it is a muffin.”

“Finn. Eat the muffin.”

“I am going to eat the muffin.”

He pulled back. He went to the bag. He pulled out four muffins — one for each of us. He handed them around. He sat on the floor in front of the counter. Riley sat on the floor next to him. Leo sat in the leather chair Don Pike had moved over from the main shop in March. I sat on the counter, the pen box next to me, and I ate a muffin in the half-dark of the new shop at seven thirty-eight on the morning of the second-shop opening, on my thirty-fifth birthday, with my partner and my two — partners, lovers, family, brothers, the words had blurred over six months — sitting around me eating muffins in the dim work light, and I was so happy I could barely chew.

After a while Finn, on the floor, said, “Leo.”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to say something at ten.”

“Three minutes max, Finn.”

“Are you nervous.”

“Finn.”

“Yes.”

“I have been keeping a secret from Jude for four days about a cardigan and I have, on top of that, been keeping a secret from him for three weeks about a fountain pen, and I have, additionally, been keeping a secret from him this morning for a full ninety minutes about the muffins. I am not nervous about three minutes in front of Mary Beth and the mayor.”

Finn laughed.

Finn laughed into his muffin, and Riley laughed against Finn’s shoulder, and I laughed on the counter, and Leo, in the chair, smiled the small private smile and ate his muffin and watched us.

The work light hummed.

Boswell, who had at some point gotten under the counter, made a small content sound.

The front window of the new shop, I noticed, was starting to go gray with the first light.

Outside on Main Street a single car went past, and then, somewhere blocks away, the bells of the Presbyterian rang the half hour.

It was seven-thirty.

The shop opened in two hours and a half.

We had time.

Thank you for reading.

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