Chapter 4
Bright and early the next morning, I arrived at the Dartmouth library, paper cup of coffee from the local campus coffee cart in hand.
I had spent all night shopping for supplies that I needed to restore the pages of the Pride and Prejudice book that Jules had ruined.
No… not ruined.
Temporarily soiled.
The process for eliminating that smell was going to be very involved and complicated. But it wasn’t impossible. It involved lots of meticulous work, gently washing and drying each individual page over and over with a non-staining vinegar powder solution.
According to the website, my supplies should arrive at my apartment this afternoon.
My heels clacked against the two-toned wood floors as I made my way through the floor to ceiling stacks of books toward the back room that Adam had emailed me to meet him at.
From twenty-five feet away, I saw him standing, flipping through a maroon colored hardcover book with gold embossing.
His black sweater was fitted tight against the sinews of lean muscle. Gray jeans hugging thick columns of thigh and tight ass. His dark hair wasn’t as messy as it was yesterday and even from this far away, it still looked damp from his morning shower.
He glanced up and my heart fluttered as I lifted a hand to wave at him, grinning.
Only, his eyes didn’t find mine. He was staring perpendicular to me, focused on a brunette woman with wildly curly hair approaching him. Her ass twitched with each step from within her skin-tight pencil skirt and sky high heels.
I looked down at my chunky heeled brown penny loafers and light blue button down cotton shirt that was tucked into wide-legged trouser pants.
I loved this outfit. It was comfortable and cute and professional.
But suddenly, beside a pencil skirt, I felt frumpy. Like the tired librarian I was.
Whereas she was the librarian you find in pornos. The kind that men fantasize about spanking them with a riding crop instead of charging late fees.
And based on the flirty smile and way she touched Adam’s elbow, I knew who she wanted her leading man to be.
But that doesn’t mean he wants her, I thought.
Sheepishly, Adam’s hand went to the back of his pink neck.
At the sight of that, My heart bottomed out to my stomach.
I knew Adam’s tells. I knew them intimately. Even if I hadn’t seen him in seven years, I knew that flush of pink that reddened the tips of his ears and back of his neck. I knew the nervous way he rubbed the back of his neck and remembered how he would lick his lips just before he would press them to mine.
While he might have refined his workout routine and added bulk and muscles to his teenage form, he was still the same Adam.
And he liked this girl.
Or at least, he had at one point liked her.
Hot, salty tears spiked in my eyes and I immediately dropped my gaze to my coffee cup in my tight knuckled grip. The white plastic lid had a bit of caramel covered coffee staining the edges, as well as the pink of my lipstick smeared against the opening from where I’d taken my first few sips.
Get it together, Harper. He’s not yours. He hasn’t been yours in years.
And if he and pencil skirt were an item? It had absolutely nothing to do with me.
With a deep breath, I swallowed the emotion that had been rising like a soon-to-erupt volcano. Pressed those lava tears down into the abyss of my body, burying them with all the other forgotten emotions I refused to let myself feel.
Steadying myself, rolling my shoulders back, I crossed the remaining steps toward where Adam and pencil skirt were talking—or rather, flirting.
“Good morning!” I chirped, my voice a little too loud and shrill for a library setting.
I winced as the few students sitting around all jumped, looking up from their books at me.
Gritting my teeth, I whispered, “Sorry,” to a particularly scowly girl beside us with a molecular engineering book open in front of her.
Adam’s smile eased, turning to look at me. “Morning, Harper,” he said, not nearly as loud or tense as me. “This is Jasmine. She teaches ethics and history in the law department.”
Dammit. Hot and smart. I was really hoping she’d be a vapid dummy. But of course, this was Dartmouth. There were no dummies within the walls.
“Hi, Jasmine.” I smiled and offered her my hand.
Her grin revealed a set of dazzling, white teeth and she took my hands firmly and warmly in hers. “Harper,” she said. “It’s so nice to meet you! It sounds like you came to us just in time. You’re a lifesaver.”
Dammit, she was sweet, too.
Her eyes went wide and she pointed at my coffee cup. “And you found Jimmy on your first day!” she exclaimed, excited. Laughing, she leaned into Adam, her long, delicate fingers gently finding his elbow. “Remember when we went on that mission to find the strongest coffee possible?”
He gave an uncomfortable chuckle, his eyes drifting between Jasmine and me. “Oh, yeah. Heh.”
“And Jimmy’s was it?” I asked, assuming that was the name of the guy running the coffee cart where I had grabbed this from on my way in.
“Oh, yes. By a long shot. We were in finals hell week—Adam for his graduate degree, me in law school. And after we’d pulled an all-nighter studying… we decided at six a.m. that instead of sleeping for two hours, we would spend those hours finding the strongest coffee possible on campus. Wired and exhausted, we ran from kiosk to cafe to cafeteria trying every coffee possible. Jimmy’s was the last. With bloodshot eyes and completely jittery from being so exhausted and wired, we went to our classes, hands literally shaking as we took our exams.”
“But did you pass?”
Pressing her lips together, she bumped her elbow to his. “With flying colors.”
My heart squeezed. They had history.
More history than Adam and I did.
I wasn’t sure why that bothered me, but it did.
I guess a piece of me always thought that maybe I was the one who got away in Adam’s life. I was the unrequited love of his life… but seeing Jasmine? It was clear that it wasn’t me.
It was her.
I swallowed the lump of sawdust settling in my throat and forced a smile onto my face. It wasn’t her fault that she was gorgeous and smart and funny and charming.
I liked her. In another world, had she studied at Oxford or had I gone to Dartmouth, I bet we would have been friends.
Not just in another world. We could be friends now… even if we shared an ex-boyfriend.
Unless… maybe he’s not her ex. Maybe he’s her current boyfriend.
It would explain why he looked so damn uncomfortable, wouldn’t it?
The thought lit my insides on fire. It was something I hadn’t even considered until this very moment.
“Well,” Adam said with an uncomfortable cough. “We should probably get started.”
Jasmine stepped back. “Yes, I will leave you to it! I have a class to get to, anyway. Adam, you’ll let me know about tonight?”
He nodded, hands shoved deep into his pockets. “I’ll text you.”
Grinning, she spun, starting to walk away with a wave at me over her shoulder. Her steps were graceful and lithe despite her thin, tall heels. “Bye Harper! It was so nice to meet you!”
When she was out of earshot, I forced a smile on my face and turned to Adam. “She seems nice.”
“Yeah,” he said.
Verbose as always.
“You’ve been friends since grad school?”
“Uh, yeah. She was assigned to me at orientation. Since I’d gone here for undergrad, I volunteered to give the school tours on the first day.”
“That’s a pretty good meet cute if I ever heard one,” I said, trying to keep my voice light.
“What?” he snapped, his gaze looking at me, blue eyes so bright they were like the center of a flame.
You heard me, I wanted to say… but didn’t.
He shook his head, clearly frazzled. “We’re not… I mean, we never… it just … it isn’t like that.”
Yep. I hit a nerve. It most certainly was like that… just clearly one-sided.
“Okay,” I said. “Sorry. I could just tell you two are close.”
“We are close,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re close close.”
Wow. It really was like being back in high school. Two grown ass adults who were dancing around the topic of sex and dating like blushing teenagers. So much so that Adam couldn’t even look me in the eyes and say: No, Harper. Jasmine and I have never had sex even though I clearly desperately want to get into her pants… or rather pencil skirt.
“Okay,” I said again. “Understood.”
It was a big lie. I didn’t understand anything. It definitely did not make sense that in all that time of being close they hadn’t hooked up… not when they so clearly had chemistry.
“Hey,” I asked, nudging his elbow. “What do you call five Siths piled on top of a lightsaber?”
Based on the way he sighed in relief, my effort to both lighten and change the conversation didn’t go unappreciated. His eyes narrowed and he pulled his top lip between his teeth in thought like he used to do when trying to solve a complicated calculus equation in high school. “Siths…” he said slowly. “... on a stick?”
I grinned. “Close. A Sith Kebab.”
“I’ll have to remember that one.” He gave a quick chuckle that sounded like a snort, then turned to a closed door with a keypad lock and handle, gesturing to it. “This is the rare books room,” he said, suddenly down to business and clearly not wanting to discuss Star Wars puns or Jasmine any further. “You’ll be given your own code that you choose. Only you will know it. And we will link your thumbprint to the code so that even if someone else does gain access to your code, only you can utilize it.”
This level of security might have come as a surprise to most people, but at Oxford, we had a similar rare books room that was even more high tech and did a retina scan. Only four people had access to that room… the head of our graduate program department being one of them. And if she was bringing a class into the rare books room, our admission was heavily documented with a secretary there taking minute by minute notes of us from the second we entered to the second we left.
So this fingerprint coded door lock that you can buy off Amazon? It was small potatoes compared to what I was used to.
Adam hit some buttons on the lock, then gestured to it again. “Here you go,” he said. “Punch in the code you would like to use while you’re here working.”
I stepped forward and typed in 0720… it was the code I’d been using for years out of habit, but for the first time in seven years, I actually paused, inhaling a sharp breath at the meaning of those numbers. The meaning of that date.
July 20th. The day Adam and I first met at the bookstore.
The day was actually so much more than that. Yes, it was when Adam and I met. But it was also the first day that Addy and I bonded. The day she became like a sister to me.
And, as I came to learn later, the day she and my dad kissed in the back of the bookstore, forever ruining the history aisle for me.
Thank God Adam couldn’t see the numbers I punched in. Hell, even if he had, would he remember the significance of that date? Sure, it meant a lot to me, but for all I knew he didn’t remember anything about that day.
He might not remember the adorable way his glasses hung crooked on his nose. Or that he was easily four weeks past due for a haircut. Or that he wore a black hoodie with a red zipper that matched my black doc martens with the red rubber soles.
“When you’re done,” Adam said, interrupting my thoughts, “push your thumb onto the plate at the door handle.”
I did as he said until a loud click sounded and the door recited in its melodic robot voice: “Thumbprint detected.Please state your name.”
“Harper Meyers,” I said aloud.
“Harper Meyers,” the robot voice repeated. “Code and thumbprint recorded.”
Another series of clicks from the door, then the voice said, “Door Unlocked.”
Wrapping my fingers around the cool metal of the handle, I pushed down and opened the door, walking carefully inside.
It was smaller than Oxford’s, but grand in a different way. In a charming New England sort of fashion.
But something was off. There was a bitter scent in the air and when I looked into the corner, the wood wasn’t glossy and glistening with freshly cleaned wax. It was scorched. Blackened in the small corner.
The fire. Adam had mentioned some sort of fire yesterday when he picked me up from the airport. If only I could make my dumb brain remember the drunken conversation we’d had when I lived in London! My life would be so much easier.
I held the door open for Adam who still stood on the other side of the threshold.
He shook his head. “Close it and I’ll use my code to come in after you.”
Again, not all that surprising. Other than the fact that I would have suspected some sort of camera or something that could record if I bring a guest in with me. Hell, they might have that, too. I searched the corners of the room until I saw a small black orb in the far right corner.
I assume this meant that I wasn’t allowed to bring any guests in with me. Even with my code and thumbprint. While someone at a higher station than me probably was allowed to do that, I was a lowly conservator. A freelancer of sorts. I had no power. No clout. No station higher than hired help.
Moments later, the door buzzed and Adam entered, shutting it behind him.
“Are you allowed to bring your students in here?”
He shook his head. “Only the head of each department can do that. And usually they reserve it for the grad students and PhD candidates.”
Again, it made sense.
“Okay,” I said, pulling on my gloves and snapping them at the wrist. “Tell me the rules here.”
“The rules?”
“Yeah. What are the hours? When can I come in and use my code? Obviously, I assume no food or drink.” I looked longingly at the door where I’d left my coffee cup on one of the tables out there.
Adam cleared his throat. “Right. The library is open twenty-four hours a day. If you’re still a night owl, you can come do your work at three in the morning.”
I clenched at the way he said that. If you’re still a night owl. Like he knew me. Still knew me.
Well, I was still a night owl. I preferred to get my work done in the middle of the night when the rest of the world slept. There were no annoying emails interrupting me. No spam calls breaking my focus and concentration. No one else using their code and coming into the rare books room while I was patching the tiniest sliver of ink in a two-hundred year old calligraphy.
However, in this case, I might need my evenings to fix the copy of Pride and Prejudice before anyone here became the wiser that it wasn’t exactly in the pristine condition I’d said it was at the time of the phone call.
Basically, thanks to Jules, I now had two full time jobs restoring old books.
“And I’m assuming no… candles?” I asked, my eyes flicking to the charred results of the fire. How the hell did a fire even break out in this room? If they didn’t allow freaking coffee then there was no way they allowed anything remotely flammable.
Adam winced at my words. “Yeah. That should be a given.”
“Can I ask what happened?”
Adam’s gaze on me narrowed. “You know what happened. I told you on the phone the other night.”
Dammit. This was going to be a lot harder than I thought.
“I know,” I said. “But reception can be a little spotty and, uh, I want to make sure I have all the information I need before I get my supplies.”
Adam inhaled sharply. “It’s humiliating,” he whispered. “Please don’t make me relive that again.”
The problem was, I truly couldn’t do my job if I didn’t know every single little detail. A grease fire would require different supplies to restore the books than an electrical fire. Was I dealing with only smoke damage or had flames eaten literal pages of the books?
“Why don’t we start with you showing me the damage?” I offered. Baby steps into making him relive the most humiliating night of his professional career.
“Fine,” Adam said, leading the way across the room over to where the small fire had broken out. “The damage was contained just to this corner.”
Several large hardcover books were there. With gloved hands, I lifted one, opening the front cover. It was an old medical textbook from the early 1800s. Mostly smoke damage. Way easier to fix than actual burns.
I set the book down and lifted the next book, inspecting it closely. Then the next, and the next. Eight in total. Most of them were smoke damage. All in all, not too hard. I lifted the next, which looked like an old journal and turned it over in my hands, my brow furrowing.
Inside, it was handwritten, like a journal, in feminine curly cursive. “What’s this one?” I asked.
Adam cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable being in here with me. “It’s the private journals of Louisa May Alcott. One of Dartmouth’s most prized possessions here in the rare books room.
The edges were burned and ink had smeared, as though it had been splashed with water…
Oh God. My gaze darted to Adam. “No,” I said. “You didn’t, Adam. Please tell me you didn’t douse this book with water after you set it on fire.”
His gaze dropped to his feet as he kicked at some nonexistent dirt. “What was I supposed to do?” he muttered. “Let the whole damn room burn down?”
To start with, don’t set it on fire in the first place, I thought. “You can tamp it out with the fire blanket,” I said, pointing to the blanket that was folded on a shelf.
“Well, I didn’t know that,” Adam snapped. “I didn’t go to school for this like you did. I wasn’t even supposed to be in here. The head of my department left his coffee in here and he knew he’d be busted if he didn’t get the empty cup out. “
Finally, a little backstory about what the crap happened. “So he sent you,” I said. “Then what?”
“All hell broke loose,” Adam muttered sullenly.
“Obviously,” I said, looking around at the wreckage.
With a sigh, he looked at me. “Do I really have to go over all this again?”
For the first time since I arrived, the weight of what Adam went through really registered on his face. The sag of his brows. The constant frown at the corners of his pouty, full lips. The worry lines etched across his forehead. The poor guy had been through it. And it was a wonder he hadn’t been fired immediately. Something I suspected had to do with him doing a favor for the head of his department in the first place.
“What if I tell you something humiliating for me, too?” I offered.
I wasn’t sure why I offered that. Maybe it was because I couldn’t stand seeing Adam so defeated. He’d always had a quiet confidence in high school. Even though he wasn’t necessarily the coolest or the sportiest, he knew who he was. And everyone in our high school respected him for it. He was popular for being him.
He didn’t try to hide his love of reading like I did before I’d moved to Maple Grove. People liked Adam for Adam.
So, I wasn’t used to seeing him so defeated.
It was unnerving.
The frown on his face lifted with curiosity into something that wasn’t quite a smile… but also no longer frowning. “You don’t get humiliated. In all our years together, you were never embarrassed about anything.”
I snorted and shook my head. “Are you joking? My entire teenage years were me basically trying to find myself. Trying to embrace who I was and not be ashamed or hide those weirdo nerd-girl pieces of myself.”
He blinked, seemingly surprised. “You were always so confident, though. Always up for adventure.”
I rolled my eyes. “Being up for adventure and the life of the party was just another shield to hide behind. Besides, what about you? Everyone at that school loved you. For God’s sake, you made a summer reading book club become the cool kids table! I mean, who does that!?”
He laughed and pushed his sleeves higher to his elbow. “I guess so. But I just thought you were too cool for everything. Even when we were together, you pushed me to find more adventure. Be more spontaneous.”
I smiled at him. “And you pushed me to focus inward and find the same joy in the quiet moments.” My heart pounded in my chest as his assessing gaze swept over me, leaving gooseflesh in its wake.
“We were a good team back then,” he whispered, eyes traveling to where a bit of hair had slipped free from my ponytail and tickled my cheekbone.
Adam took a step forward, pink tongue darting out to wet his lips and lifted his hand to brush the hair back behind my ear.
It was tender. Sweet. The same thing he’d done dozens of times when we were teenagers.
But we aren’t teenagers anymore.
And maybe that was a good thing judging from the way my nipples puckered against the soft cotton of my blouse.
Which left the question: if I had the opportunity for a second chance with Adam, would I take it? The boy who crushed my heart. The boy who didn’t choose me. The boy who didn’t stand up for me.
Had anything truly changed? Would his dad still see me as the unworthy, uneducated city garbage that wasn’t good enough to date his son?
Probably. People like Elijah don’t usually change… not that drastically.
And even if he did change, Adam and I had barely spoken to each other since I arrived. I wasn’t going to just fall into his arms and beg him to kiss me because he touched my hair.
I wasn’t that desperate.
Or at least, that’s what I told myself. Over and over again as I stared into his bright eyes.
Get it together, Harper! I had a job to do. A really hard job. One that required my focus and not getting distracted by cute boys who I knew could kiss so, so well.
I took a step backward, my foot catching on the leg of the chair beside me, throwing my balance off.
With a shriek and flailing arms, I tumbled backward, going down in slow motion.
Adam’s expression morphed from a quiet attraction into pure panic and he lunged for me, grabbing my waist and trying to catch me before I hit the floor.
But he grabbed me with more force than I think he meant to, which only served to lift my feet off the floor and send us both flying downward.
Out of reflex I reached for whatever my hands could find to catch myself… which happened to be the small bookshelf beside the table.
I gripped the edge, trying to brace myself, catch myself, stop myself from going down. But then Adam’s weight slammed into me. And the bookshelf which I had stupidly assumed would be nailed to the wall (spoiler: it wasn’t), toppled over with us, sending dozens of books tumbling out of the shelf and landing on top of our crumpled bodies with a thud.