All Chapters of Never. Say. Yours.: Chapter 1 - Chapter 8

For the girls who pull cards in coffee shops and don't know they're prophets yet. For the monsters who learned to be gentle. For the ones who refuse to say the words until they mean them. This one is for you. Every word. Every page. Every door you were too stubborn not to open.And for my mother, who taught me the cards and never told me why. -Josie———————-Chapter One: Grindstone The coffee machine screamed. Josie slapped the side of it, twice, and it shut up. She wiped steam off her forehead with the back of her wrist.Six forty-five. Grindstone opened at seven.Ash Harbor in August was wet heat and the smell of asphalt after rain. She'd been here eleven days. The apartment above the laundromat on Beacher Street still smelled like the previous tenant's incense, something patchouli and wrong. The coffee shop was the first thing that felt like hers.She'd taken the job because the listing said "morning person wanted" and she was, aggressively, a morning person. She'd left Tucson bec

Harlan came in at seven twelve. Same order. Same twenty on the counter. Same green eyes that scanned the room before they found her.But today he stayed.He took the coffee to the back corner booth, sat down, and opened his phone. He didn't look at Josie. He didn't need to. She could feel him the way you feel someone watching you from across a dark parking lot. That prickle on the back of your neck. That animal awareness that says something is looking at you and it knows exactly what you are.She wiped the counter. She reorganized the syrup bottles. She refilled the napkin dispensers. She did everything she could think of that would keep her behind the counter and not walking over to that booth.She walked over to that booth."Refill?"He looked up. His phone screen was dark. He hadn't been reading anything. He'd been sitting there with a black coffee and a dark phone screen and he'd been doing what? Thinking? Waiting?"Sure." He pushed the cup toward her. His fingers brushed hers whe

Three more dinners. Two weeks of texts that were short and direct and made her stomach flip every time her phone buzzed. Harlan didn't flirt. He stated things. *I'm thinking about you. I don't do that often.* Or: *You wore your hair down today. I noticed.* Or, at midnight on a Tuesday: *Are you writing?*She was always writing. Or trying to.On the third dinner, he drove her to his place. Not a penthouse. Not what she expected. A brownstone on Holloway Street, three stories, brick, ivy on the front. Old. The kind of old that had character, not decay. The inside was clean and sparse. Hardwood floors, white walls, furniture that looked expensive but felt like it had been chosen by someone who didn't care about furniture. A kitchen that had never been used. A living room with one couch and a stack of books on architecture."Your place is very you," she said."What does that mean?""Big. Clean. Slightly intimidating."He poured wine. Red. He handed her the glass and stood close. Too close

Underground. Below the city. The room of stone and torches.Seven chairs around the black oak table. Six were occupied. The seventh, at the head, was empty. It was always empty. It belonged to something older than any of them, something that hadn't been seen in Ash Harbor for a hundred years.Harlan sat at one end. Dane at the other. Between them, five other men and women who looked human and weren't. Each one controlled a different district of the city. Each one wore a ring with the claw symbol. Each one had a beast underneath their skin.The Hollow. The society that had run Ash Harbor since before it had a name. Before the colonists. Before the tribes. Before the first human set foot on the harbor and thought, this is a good place to build. It was already built. By things that didn't have blueprints."Two weeks," said a woman named Margit. She was thin, pale, with white-blonde hair and eyes that were silver when she forgot to control them. She ran the eastside docks. Her beast was s