Chapter 30
30
“ Excellent. ”
When Scott starts muttering to himself, I know how the night’s going to go.
I’m reading The Shattered Court , wracking my memory for instances of Everbane’s memorable motto. I have the heavy volume propped up on the copy of The Risen Court I’ll get to once I’ve figured out the first component of the clue. Val’s friend first enters the narrative after the coronation and before the other dignitaries come to court, I’m certain of it.
Which means I’m close. I flip past page 101, 102, my gaze racing over the paragraphs—
“Another,” Scott says to himself. “Wonderful.”
His enthusiasm distracts me. I can’t help myself. I glance over, heart pounding with competitive frustration, and find him, sure enough, jotting something in his Moleskine with contented zeal—
Which is when I notice him look up at me.
Of course. He could be doodling in his notebook, for all I know. He’s probably only making his victorious utterances to distract me!
And it’s working, damnit. Sending him a glare, I receive only an absolutely devastating wink in return. I fume. Scott may have planned the literal perfect date, but if he wants competition, it’s competition he’ll get. Our previous clue-hunting duels were powered by no-holds-barred rivalry. No matter how he’s made me swoon this evening, I’ve vowed to reengage my fighting spirit.
And when I notice his wink has stirred in me some rather noncompetitive feelings, I fume even harder. I’ll fume all damn night if it means figuring out the Dewey decimal number faster.
He keeps up his efforts. I reread page 103 over again. Nothing. Nothing! I refuse the discouragement rattling the gates of my resolve—
“Fantastic. Right where I expected.”
I do not give Scott the satisfaction of looking his way this time. So what if I have to read page 104 over again. He doesn’t have to know. I continue in my labors, silently seething. Finally , I find an instance of “In darkness, light,” uttered on page 112, and I flip forward, knowing Everbane has one ominous appearance among the final chapters.
When I’m hunched over the pages, getting lost in the exhilaration, suddenly he’s hovering over me.
Not Everbane—Scott. Reading the very page I’m on.
Then he swiftly withdraws and jots something in his Moleskine, like he’s found another quote. Only after a couple seconds of frantic hunting do I realize he didn’t find anything on the page and was only messing with me.
It keeps happening. Wherever I am, he’s there. Worse, his efforts start extending past direct subterfuge of my reading material.
Way past.
The absentminded mussing of his damnable hair while he reads. The confounded smirk he cuts me whenever he knows he’s wrought my distraction. Every glance I spare his way, he’s doing something I know is in his notes, strategically targeting weaknesses I handed over to him in the pages of my favorite books.
For no reason whatsoever, he carries his copy of The Risen Court over to one of the nearby tall shelves.
Where he leans , occupying as much space in my eyeline as he possibly can.
I struggle to stay focused on the climactic court assassination attempt, knowing Everbane is around here somewhere. Oh, I struggle hard. It’s just—if a calendar were made of Attractive Men Reading Jennifer’s Favorite Books, he would be, like, January . Or December. One of the real heavy-hitter months.
While I proceed to lose my place in the scene four times, lost in openly admiring him, Scott smirks. He makes victorious notations in his notebook.
No. No way.
I proposed a race. A game. What Scott’s started is a war . And I won’t let him win uncontested using his unfairly good hair and his leans. If Scott wants to play dirty, I’ll play dirty with him.
On the flimsy pretense of needing to stretch my legs or inspire myself with a change of scenery, I carry my books in one hand over to the shelves. When I pass Scott, with my other hand I casually undo the top buttons of my dress. I walk into the stacks, putting a row of bookshelves between us.
I wait for him to peer through the shelves. Which, of course, he does.
Which, of course, I pretend not to notice.
Instead, while locating my next page number in Shattered , I sit on the floor. With my knees folded to my side, the hem of my dress rides up, exposing the skin of my upper leg. It’s devious by design. I’m enjoying every minute.
Scott is as well. I watch his eyes catch on the exposed skin. I perceive the very moment he loses his place in whatever he’s reading-slash-scavenger-hunting. Shattered Court ? More like shattered concentration. I weigh sending him a wink, a Scott Daniels Special, and decide I’m not a sore winner.
Sure enough, Scott retreats into the stacks, giving each of us some space. It doesn’t last long—in only moments, he returns, nonchalantly joining me in the stacks. He positions himself against the bookshelf across the aisle from me. Chess pieces staring each other down.
With enchanting coincidence, I find my final Everbane page in the first volume. I close the cover with a pleased flourish—immodest in more ways than one—ready to change over to The Risen Court , which I deposited on the floor when I carried it here with its counterpart.
Scott gazes on, charged with frustration and competition and maybe something else. Deprivation? It’s convenient I’ve just spent the hour immersed in a Winters volume. I have every way of describing the ardent emotions waging war on his face ringing in my ears. Knowing he’s eyeing me, I increase my siege. I get up onto my knees to reach for the book I’ve placed nearby, bending over for just a moment, knowing exactly how much of my skin I’ve flashed him.
Finally he speaks up.
“Jennifer, I’m finding it very difficult to concentrate right now, which I suspect you know,” he says.
It’s a victory like none found in the Dewey decimal system or the pages of my favorite prose. I glance at him over my shoulder, coy and content. “Feel like giving up?” I ask.
“Desperately,” Scott replies.
Insinuation hides in his words. I won’t let it make me flush—not yet. “I hope you can last longer than that,” I reply instead, managing to keep my voice ever casual. Flirting with Lord Valance himself in the moonlit dining hall was the perfect practice, and yet, I know it was nothing more.
Just practice for the real thing.
With my words, Scott’s eyes darken . Somehow, he’s managed to do what every romance novel describes and I never knew how to envision. I remind myself he’s spent the week doing practicing of his own. The intensity of his gaze has deepened, from sharp to smoldering. Passionate to penetrating.
Then he removes his sweater, revealing an off-white button-down. With his deft, deliberate hands, he proceeds to roll the sleeves up his forearms right in front of me.
It’s vulgar. Obscene. Good god, we’re in a library , I want to reprimand him, sternness hiding the heat pounding in every part of me.
Except I don’t want him to stop.
I understand, rationally, it’s a completely ridiculous outfit to wear in the middle of summer. Which means he’s not wearing it for comfort. No, he knows what it will do to me. What it is doing to me. Never mind January or December. I could have a whole calendar of Scott in the academic allure he’s putting on. He read every one of his moves in the pages of a book, and he’s weaponized them beautifully.
“Is this interesting to you?” he asks, noticing my ogling.
I straighten. I don’t need Kethryn right now—no, I’m pulling from my favorite prim Victorian heroines. No hot thoughts for me, no way. Just a Victorian lady with absolutely no knowledge of what naked men look like! “Forearms?” I reply. “Please.”
Please .
I hope it comes out as a scoff and not a whimper. Facing front, I’m ninety-nine percent certain I’m not drooling. However, one can never be too careful.
“Focus on your homework, then,” Scott returns.
I scowl. Focus on your homework is a turn-on for me? Really, Jennifer? Sometimes I embarrass myself.
“I know what you’re doing,” I inform him, uttering my reply rigidly. If I let any emotion in, I’ll let every emotion in.
“Winning?”
I shake my head. “You didn’t just skim the books,” I say. “Did you? Tell me what you thought of them. For real this time.”
The library’s silence surrounds us, and I remember we’re the only people down here. The candlelit fiction section is hushed, waiting for Scott’s reply, just like me.
The question is only half-strategic. Yes, I want to disrupt his practiced charisma with the reminder I know exactly where it comes from. Of course. Deeper down, I’m genuinely curious. He’s not acting like the coworker who has insisted he doesn’t understand the hype for my favorite series. No, he sounds like—
“I’ve read every page,” Scott finally replies. “Multiple times.”
In surprise, I close The Risen Court.
I watch Scott while he slides to the floor in front of his shelf.
We’re facing each other now, seated, legs outstretched with feet nearly touching. I set down Risen . I say nothing, wanting him to know he’s free to continue—and needs to, if he cares for me.
He sighs. “The first read, I was…intimidated,” he explains. “Which made me dismissive. It was pathetic, really. My problem, not the series’. It wasn’t until I read them again, recently, that I could…” He finds my eyes. “Appreciate them.”
“ Intimidated? By what? Because everyone calls Val their book boyfriend?” I frown. “You know that’s just for fun.”
Scott shakes his head. “It wasn’t that. It was…the romance. The way Kethryn was captivated by Val. How he challenged her, how they helped each other grow. How every conversation they had was either deep or flirtatious. How they made love look.”
Quietly, I accept his explanation. I’ve never understood the urge in commentary on art about or for women to compete with fictional characters—whether “over”-competent women or “unrealistically” noble, kind, or supportive men. I do understand what Scott’s saying, which is different. How often have I wondered whether a love is waiting for me as grand as the one my favorite characters have found?
He goes on. “I…I didn’t like how it made every relationship I’d ever had look. Like I’d only thought I knew what love was.” He shrugs, hollow regret in his expression. “So I wrote it off. Convinced myself it was silly. Ridiculous. Fantastical.”
And me with it , I nearly say. I remember Scott’s first week, our first fight. Love of Elytheum is part of why Scott judged me , finding his overwrought coworker, Jennifer, frivolous in her romantic fantasies. It’s not just that he thought we were too unlike each other to be friends. It’s that he avoided anyone and anything that made his own feelings and relationships feel shallow.
He reconsidered Elytheum, though. His gaze found mine when he confessed he could appreciate the passion in my favorite pages.
Is he saying we’re not too unlike each other now?
“I never understood it when people were hesitant or afraid to say I love you ,” he elaborates. “Or when they said they didn’t know if they were in love. I couldn’t fathom it. I thought…if you liked someone for long enough, of course you loved them. Didn’t you? It was quantifiable. Measurable. Predictable, even. One day of like plus one day of like eventually equals love . ”
Quantifiable . Measurable . This is the Scott Daniels I know from work. Something you could organize in a spreadsheet , he’s saying. Or list in a notebook .
He presses one fist gently to his knee, like he’s fortifying himself to continue, despite the challenging conversation. “But it’s different, isn’t it?”
I nod.
The defeated confusion in his eyes inspires me to speak up. It is different, I want him to know. It’s just not unreachable.
“I thought I could just make myself into this fantasy guy and then I’d have the kind of relationship I want. But…then you were here,” he continues.
I smile, unable to resist the playful reprisal of our usual petty feuding. “And you realized, Wait, I don’t want to be the kind of guy Jennifer Worth is attracted to ,” I prompt him.
“Imagine my surprise,” he returns, “when I realized quite the opposite.”
My stomach flutters. The memory of our horseback ride, our kiss, sends my heart soaring for the night sky.
The courage of Scott’s statement has quietly captivated me. The feelings you understand most innately in yourself are often the hardest ones to admit out loud. The fundamentality of them makes them fearsome. Yet here Scott is, confessing the fundamentals—he was wrong. He has feelings for me.
“At the risk of sounding vain, I don’t think the problem was ever with who I was. The eyebrow stuff, the lean…they’re fun, but they aren’t a relationship,” he continues. “The truth is, I called you overly romantic and optimistic because I don’t have a lot of faith in relationships. I’m not close with my family. There’s no reason for it, really, except feeling like my interests were uninteresting to them.”
“I felt that way at school a lot,” I reply. “Like the things I got obsessed with just weren’t interesting to the people around me. It was…incredibly lonely. I’m sorry, Scott. I can’t imagine how much worse it would be when it’s your family.” Sharing, I decide, follows its own lovely economics. The law of diminishing difficulty.
Scott meets my eyes. I have a hunch he’s feeling the same. “When I saw your faith in love and relationships, deep down, I knew it wasn’t just delusion. It was hope. And it…”
He presses his lips together. I hear the guilt and shame swallowing his words. What he’s saying is hard for him.
“It made me angry,” he admits. “Which made me judgmental, and pushy, and critical of what you loved to read. When someone has hope you wish you could feel, it makes you want to dismiss it. If I had been willing to talk about these things more, to be vulnerable in a way that is totally the opposite of dressing up and smirking,” he continues with a graceful flash of humor, “I wouldn’t have felt so embarrassed of it or lonely. I might’ve felt like it was…something that could bring me closer to someone, even.”
I shift my leg so I can nudge his foot with mine. “We’re close now,” I remind him.
Scott smiles.
“We are,” he says.
And I know, in the week of horseback riding and lawn wrestling, and obstacle courses and moonlit flirting and muddy showers, fighting and fandom—now is the moment I’ll remember above all others. Him and me, sharing our real selves in hushed voices, far from clues and costumes and characters. What Scott’s done to the library has made it enchanting. What he’s said now has made it much, much more.
“I guess…” he goes on contemplatively, “I was sick of feeling rejected by the people and things I thought were supposed to be my whole life. I hoped that in love, I could have it all—someone to share a life with, yet who wouldn’t have the power to hurt me if I didn’t let them. All I had to do was not give them very much of myself, and then I wouldn’t feel it when they rejected what little I’d given.”
He hangs his head.
“So I played it safe in my relationships. I kept them insubstantial. Meaningless. I rejected people I was drawn to because that feeling scared me,” he says.
I watch him closely. “People?” I repeat.
He understands my meaning. “One in particular,” he admits. When he looks up, his gaze is penetrating, an utterly open book. “One I can never, ever quite manage to get out of my head,” he says.
His confession explains every question and doubt I’ve had in our fraught year. Amid the candles, I’m not just surrounded by the starlight he’s conjured. I’m full of it.
“In fairness to you,” I say, “she really is prone to getting swept up in the idea of a romance instead of taking it day by day.”
“Please consider how romantic it is that I’m not going to say anything about you admitting I’m right,” Scott replies.
I roll my eyes. “I’m swooning so hard right now,” I assure him—and the way he smiles when I say it really does have me swooning. “Okay,” I say, “since I am prone to flights of fancy, let’s get some things straight.”
“Let’s,” Scott agrees. “Good to connect live. Tick through the points.”
Hearing him reprise his emailisms, I fight laughter. We are in a library. “You said we’re not here to become friends. What exactly are we here to become?” I ask pointedly, ushering the inquisition along.
“I like you, Jennifer. I do want to be your friend. But I also…want you,” he replies, his gaze locked with mine.
His answer steals my breath, forcing my next question to come out hoarse. “When did you realize this?”
“I’ve always had eyes.” With his words, he trails said eyes down my body.
Even if part of me wants to, I don’t let his obviously perfect reply distract me. Practiced, perfected flirting is not the discussion I want to have right now. “Come on,” I reply. “Please be serious. Don’t just say what you think Val would say.”
Scott exhales, looking like he needed the admonition. “Okay, fair. But that’s not just a line. I guess…” he continues, “I consciously realized it when you came here. I had just watched you get dumped. I watched you carry a box of reminders of your failed relationship up to work,” he marvels.
New heat lights in me now. Scott has managed to make my embarrassment feel like strength. Like courage. It’s magic even I’ve never conjured. He’s not exaggerating or overdoing his praise—and the measured honesty of it makes the sentiment mean more to me than poetry or prose.
“Then that same day you came here, not to wallow, but to experience something new. You had to have been hurting, but you didn’t let it stop you. I thought you were really brave. And…well, I wished I had been that brave.”
Brave . I want to hear him say it over and over.
Instead, I don’t let myself indulge. Not the point , I remind myself. “But of course, you knew you never had a chance with me so you focused on making yourself into the perfect book boyfriend for someone else,” I presume.
“Jennifer.” The hint of a smile plays over Scott’s lips. “I was pretty sure I had a chance with you.”
Only with Kethryn’s strength and the resolute temperament of the Northern Court’s most devout Afterrealm guardians do I avoid the powerful pull of our old rivalry. It would be very easy to say zero-point-zero-zero-zero-zero-one percent is a chance, yes …“This is no time for cockiness, Daniels,” I reply instead. “We’re on to vulnerability now.”
“Vulnerability means honesty,” Scott argues. “And honestly it was obvious you were checking me out since I got here. Which is why”—he preempts me when I open my mouth to interrupt—“I was so annoyed when I heard you say you wouldn’t even consider me for a rebound.”
Even in the moment, I felt guilty for the way my overheard rejection would’ve hit. Now, though, new understanding settles over the memory.
“I don’t think you want to be my rebound,” I venture.
“I don’t,” Scott says.
The nighttime library is suddenly very quiet. Or, well, it feels quieter. Every shadow the shelves draw, every star summoned by the man sitting with me, seems to wait. I wait with them.
“You want vulnerability?” Scott murmurs. I nod. “When you beat me to that first clue, I realized I wasn’t trying to become the book boyfriend for some future mystery girl. I was doing it for you. It was…all for you.”
He won’t meet my eyes. Hope is dangerous—the truth is, too.
“And then if it didn’t work,” he explains, “if you still didn’t like me, then, well, it wasn’t really me you were rejecting. It was a character. Something that only works on the page but not real life. I could write it off, the way I did whenever you shared your incandescent love for these stories.”
I don’t dare move, not wanting to disturb the pieces fitting into place. His notes, his winks, his Val-isms. His lean.
They were…for me.
It was all for you .
“And then…” He hesitates.
I remember him helping me—and Jelly Bean—in the rain. I remember us, filthy with mud, feuding in the forest, starting to understand each other. I remember him encouraging my newest dream, sharing what higher education meant to him, revealing parts of his own life I’d never known.
“Then you realized you could win me for real,” I say, “by showing me you .”
“Well, I do think the eyebrow thing helped, and I won’t lie, I picked up some very nice kissing tips, but—”
I laugh, shoving his leg with mine. He grins—my favorite of his grins, knowing and wry and warm and very, very Scott.
“But yes,” he says, “it wasn’t about the book boyfriend. Or not in the way I expected. The more I tried to be him, the more I understood it. While the smirking and leaning and growling is very nice, it’s not the whole fantasy, is it?” He picks up his copy of The Shattered Court , flipping pages with the reverent familiarity I’ve felt every time I open them. “He gets to know her. He listens. He shares. He loves her without holding himself back. The more I did those things, the more I felt something real between us. Something I desperately wanted.”
He closes the volume.
“I never should’ve played it safe, Jennifer,” he whispers.
When his eyes leap to mine, the darkness has parted in them. They’re piercing. With love. With loss.
“I would risk everything for a chance with you,” he says.
I feel emotion well up in my chest.
Everything he’s saying is what I would want in a declaration of love written in a favorite author’s hand, and it’s happening to me . It’s perfect. Impossibly perfect, so perfect it couldn’t be real.
Except—what if it is? Hasn’t this week taught me fantasy can be real?
I dare to welcome the deepest gift the Elytheum Experience has given me. Not the heart-pounding looks exchanged with the fae of my fantasies. Not the dance lessons, the delicacies, the details rendered in life from fandom-loved pages. Not the fun, not even the friends I’ve made on the lawns of the decorated college.
It’s faith in fantasy. It’s the courage to embrace dreams when they come to you in the guise of life.
Scott watches me with vulnerable hope. I move to my hands and knees, and with his eyes on me, I crawl across the aisle, closing the distance separating us, up his legs. I’m right in front of him now, my face only inches from his.
When he tilts his head back just slightly, inviting, I write the start of our first chapter in the soft kiss I press to his lips.
His hands find my waist, rising seemingly on their own, like he couldn’t restrain them even if he intended. “Well,” I murmur, sitting in his lap, facing him, “I seem unable to resist you, Scott Daniels,” I inform him. Yes, it’s fantasy. It’s also the realest confession I’ve ever made.
His smile goes wonderfully wicked. The hot rush in me knows exactly what it’s promising. He doesn’t need to say it, and he doesn’t.
“Why don’t we finish this riddle,” he offers, “and then we’ll see about that?”
The riddle . Oh, the stakes have never felt higher. “You better solve it fast,” I reply. “I don’t intend to wait.”
Scott fixes me with a devastating stare. He raises an eyebrow.
“In that case,” he finally says, “I’ll admit I solved it before you unbuttoned your top.”
Affronted, I lean back. Honestly, his knowledge of the series continues to impress. Did he really know where every scene with Everbane’s motto was? And will I never learn to assume Scott’s hiding something in our scavenger-hunt showdowns? “Where was it?”
“Nearby,” Scott confesses with no small amount of sly pleasure. “The organizers probably planned it that way. It was close to general fiction, where you’d find Elytheum, though a completely different section. Dewey number 822, 490. Few shelves down the aisle. ‘English Drama’—plays from the 1600s and stuff.”
He gestures in the direction I remember him retreating when I first turned up the heat on my own sabotage.
“I noticed the one right on the end of the shelf, by the playwright James Shirley. From 1653,” he recounts. “It’s called The Court Secret .”
Very clever, Amelia , I have to concede. Finding pages that would point to a section close to fiction, near Elytheum itself, and then in that section, finding something that would capture the notice of the intrepid fan. The Court Secret . You’d know it was what you were looking for if you were hunting our clue.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” I ask.
“And miss out on what was going to happen after the top unbuttoning?” he returns.
I smirk. Fair enough, Lord Daniels. “I was going to let you win anyway,” I inform him, settling onto his lap, enjoying the comfortable clasp of his hands on my hips.
Now his other eyebrow rises to accompany its counterpart. “Why’s that?” he asks.
With the candlelit library surrounding us, with Scott speaking the plainspoken poetry I needed to hear, I don’t know why I even need to answer. Isn’t it obvious? I want to say.
“I’m pretty sure,” I reply instead, “I just had my dream date.”
I move close, heat humming in the library stacks. Scott’s eyes devour me. And when I lean forward to kiss him, I don’t stop.