Chapter 2
EMILY
Men.
Men were the one thing I had promised myself to avoid when my plane took off from Seattle and left my old life behind.
And for the most part, I had done pretty well.
Until the library.
Until Pietro.
I still didn’t know his last name, and maybe that was for the best. There had been something about him I couldn’t quite explain.
Not just that he was attractive, though he absolutely was.
It was the way he carried himself. Controlled.
Watchful. A little dangerous. The cane should have made him seem less intimidating. It didn’t.
That was the problem.
The spark I’d felt across that table had been instant and inconvenient. It lit up something in me I spent a long time assuming was dead, or at least damaged enough to be left alone.
Apparently not. Which was why I had spent the better part of the last week acting like an idiot.
Not in any dramatic way. I wasn’t writing his name in notebooks or staring moodily out of windows.
I was just…adjusting my schedule. Slightly.
Turning up at the library at roughly the same time we had met.
Telling myself it was practical, that I worked better in the late afternoon anyway, that the extra study hours were good for me.
All technically true; also complete bullshit.
By day three, I had started spending a little longer on my hair before leaving my apartment. By day four, I had added mascara. By day five, I was so disgusted with myself I nearly scrubbed it off out of principle.
And the worst part? The part I hated most?
The stupid little drop of disappointment every time I packed up my books, slung my bag over my shoulder, and realized he hadn’t shown up.
Maybe I imagined it. Maybe there hadn’t been anything there at all. Maybe I had built an entire ridiculous fantasy out of one look, one deep voice, and an academic book exchange.
I snorted and pushed my pink headband back into place as I looked at myself in the mirror by the door.
“You have terrible taste in men, Emily.”
My phone buzzed on the entry table before I could talk myself into staying home out of embarrassment, and I grabbed it on the way to my bag.
It was a video call from Sophie.
Of course it was.
I answered with a sigh. “You know, most people text first.”
My sister’s face appeared at a deeply unflattering angle, all huge brown eyes and zero shame. “Most people are cowards.”
I laughed despite myself and stepped back into the apartment to lock the door again. “You’re fourteen. Stop talking like a retired mob boss.”
“Can’t. It’s who I am.”
Sophie adjusted the camera, and the screen wobbled for a second before settling. She was half sprawled across her bed, one leg stretched out awkwardly beneath the blanket, her crutches visible against the wall behind her.
My thumb found the seashell bracelet on my wrist before I realized I was touching it. Sophie had made it during rehab, back when her hands still shook with frustration and stubborn determination, and the clasp had been repaired twice because I refused to stop wearing it.
It was crooked, fragile, and not remotely my usual style.
I loved it more than anything expensive had ever deserved.
There was a pencil tucked into her messy bun and the expression on her face said she had called for a reason and intended to drag it out for dramatic effect.
“When are you coming to visit?” she asked.
There it was.
“Soon.”
“That’s not a real answer.”
“It’s the only one I have right now.”
She narrowed her eyes at me in a way that would have been intimidating if she were not wearing a sweatshirt covered in cartoon frogs.
“Mom says you’re avoiding the question.”
“Mom needs hobbies.”
“Mom has hobbies. She has anxiety and casserole.”
I bit back a smile and hoisted my tote bag higher onto my shoulder. “Tell Mom I love her casserole.”
“I’ll tell her you’re deflecting.”
“That too.”
Sophie propped her chin on her hand. “Are you ever going to tell us the exact address?”
The pause that followed was brief. Not long enough for most people to catch.
Long enough for Sophie.
Her expression changed at once, the mischief draining into something softer, older. She had always noticed more than people gave her credit for.
“You still think he’ll try something?” she asked quietly.
I looked out the narrow window beside the door at the flat gray of the Boston morning.
“I think men like him don’t enjoy not knowing where people are.”
That was the most I had ever said out loud, and even then it felt like too much.
Sophie went quiet, but then, because she was Sophie and refused to let anything stay heavy for too long, she said, “Well, if he comes near you, I’ll hit him with a crutch.”
I smiled. “Very intimidating.”
“It is aluminum. That’s basically a weapon.”
“That is the most reassuring thing I’ve heard all week.”
She grinned, pleased with herself.
Growing up with Sophie had taught me a hundred things I wished more people understood.
That help offered badly could be as exhausting as no help at all.
That independence sometimes looked messy.
That being slower at one thing did not mean being helpless at all things. That pity was its own kind of rudeness.
Mostly, it had taught me to ask before assuming.
Which was probably why the man in the library had stayed in my head all week.
Not because he had a cane. Not because of the slight drag in his gait.
Because nothing about him had invited pity, and for one stupid, electric moment I liked that he seemed to know I would never offer it.
Sophie’s voice sharpened. “Wait.”
I blinked. “What?”
“That face.”
“What face?”
“The one that means there’s gossip and you’re being weirdly private about it.”
“There is no gossip.”
“Emily.”
“There is no gossip,” I repeated. “I am hanging up now because unlike some people, I have actual work to do.”
“Is there a man?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“Go to school.”
“I am going to school.”
“Then learn something.”
She cackled as I ended the call.
For a moment I stood there with the silent phone still in my hand, smiling in spite of myself. Then the smile faded. Silence had a way of letting thoughts back in.
And there he was again.
Pietro.
I still did not know his last name. I did not know what he studied, whether he always sat in that exact spot, or whether I had imagined half of what had passed between us. All I knew was that something about him had caught under my skin and stayed there, irritating and impossible to ignore.
Which would have been easier to dismiss if I had not spent the rest of the week quietly rearranging my study schedule in the pathetic hope of seeing him again.
Not pathetic, I corrected. Mildly humiliating.
By the time I reached the history building, the wind had picked up hard enough to make my eyes water. I pushed through the doors, grateful for warmth, and headed upstairs to the seminar room where twelve undergraduates waited to be led through political propaganda in Renaissance Italy.
The teaching assistant job paid just enough to make my bank account slightly less tragic and ate far more of my time than the department brochure had implied, but I liked it. Most days.
Today, the universe had decided to test that.
“Morning, Emily.”
I looked up from my notes to find Tyler Dawson already in his usual seat, smiling at me with the polished confidence of a boy told all his life that dimples counted as a personality.
“Morning,” I said.
His smile widened.
I had met enough charming men to know when charm was really just entitlement with good lighting.
“Did you have a good weekend?” he asked, leaning back in his chair like we were halfway through a date instead of eight minutes from a discussion section.
I set my papers down carefully. “Did you do the reading?”
He gave a lazy shrug. “Depends. Does flirting with my TA count as extracurricular effort?”
A couple of students snorted.
I smiled, because murder was frowned upon in academic spaces.
“No,” I said pleasantly. “But embarrassing yourself in front of your classmates does show initiative.”
That got a laugh, including from one of the girls in the back who looked seconds away from applauding.
Tyler pressed a hand to his chest. “Cold.”
“Open Machiavelli.”
By the end of the hour, I had corrected three catastrophic interpretations of The Prince, written half a page of notes for my supervisor, and managed to not throw a dry erase marker at anyone. A success by most standards.
When the room finally emptied, I packed up slowly, mentally sorting the rest of my day.
Office hours.
Archive notes.
Library.
I paused, fingers stilling over the zipper of my bag.
I was going to the library because I had work to do. Because a chapter of my thesis was due in twelve days. Because my apartment was too quiet, campus coffee was too expensive, and the library had better heating than my building.
I was not going because a tall, sharp-eyed man with a cane had looked at me like I was a puzzle instead of a project.
That would have been ridiculous.
Still, when I checked my reflection in the dark screen of my phone before leaving the room, I caught myself smoothing a hand over my sweater where it clung over my hips and stomach.
I stared at myself.
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
By the time I got to the library, I was already annoyed with myself.
I crossed the main floor, weaving between tables scattered with laptops, half-drunk coffees, and students who looked like they had not slept since the Clinton administration.
My usual spot by the east windows was free, which should have felt like a win.
Instead, my gaze flicked automatically toward the table where I had met Pietro.
Empty.
Of course it was.
I told myself not to be ridiculous, dropped my bag onto the chair, and sat down hard enough to make a girl at the next table glance up.
I muttered an apology, pulled out my notes, and tried to focus on fourteenth-century Italian succession laws instead of the fact that my body seemed capable of recognizing disappointment before my brain did.
This was absurd.
I met the man once.
Once.
He helped me get a book off a shelf, looked at me like I was more interesting than I probably was, and managed to become the most persistent thought in my week.
I opened my notebook with more force than strictly necessary.
I pulled my thesis notes from the bottom of the pile and spread them across the table with more purpose than I felt.
The key, I had written in my last chapter draft, was that it never felt like control from the inside. It felt like belonging.
I stared at the sentence until it stopped making sense, then looked up at the empty table across the room.
Pietro.
I only knew his first name, and the fact that he studied something in the business school.
I knew he had a man who followed him at a careful two-table distance and pretended to be on his phone.
I knew he had looked at me in the library like I was a problem, and that I had come back to the same table three days in a row on the slim and humiliating chance that he might do it again.
I knew almost nothing concrete about him.
I had come back anyway.
I pulled my glasses off and pressed two fingers to the bridge of my nose.
I put my glasses back on and made myself read the next paragraph.
“Emily?”
I looked up.
Daniel Mercer stood at the end of the table, one hand wrapped around a paper cup, the other hooked through the strap of his satchel.
He was in the medieval studies doctoral cohort too, a year ahead of me and generally the sort of man people described as nice before running out of more interesting things to say.
Tallish, neat beard, corduroy jacket, kind eyes.
Safe, in the way academia often produced safe men.
Slightly rumpled, slightly earnest, permanently in need of better sleep.
“Hey,” I said. “You look like you’re about to either collapse or ask me to proofread something terrible.”
He smiled. “Can’t it be both?”
“It can,” I said, “but I’d charge extra.”
He laughed softly and nodded toward the empty chair across from me. “Do you mind?”
“Go ahead.”
He sat, setting his coffee down beside a stack of books so carefully it was almost apologetic.
For a minute we talked about ordinary things.
Professor Lewis’s impossible standards. The archives’ heating issues.
The rumor that the department budget was about to be hacked to pieces again by people who had never once set foot in a humanities classroom but still felt qualified to decide its value.
It was easy. Comfortable.
And perhaps that was why, when the conversation dipped, my mind betrayed me again.
Easy should not have felt so flat in comparison to one sharp look from a man I barely knew. I hated that thought on sight.
Daniel rubbed the back of his neck. “So, this is going to sound either normal or painfully awkward depending on how kind you’re feeling.”
“That’s a strong opening.”
“I’ve been practicing.”
“That explains why it still sounds awkward.”
He laughed softly, glanced down at his coffee, then back at me.
“I was wondering if you’d want to get coffee sometime. Not department coffee. Real coffee. Somewhere without fluorescent lighting and people pretending to enjoy committee work.”
I just looked at him.
On paper, this was exactly the kind of thing I should have wanted. Daniel was kind. Smart. Safe in the least complicated sense of the word. He didn’t make me tense. He didn’t make me feel watched. He didn’t make my pulse do anything stupid.
A sensible choice.
Maybe that was why saying yes felt less exciting and more like discipline.
I smiled anyway.
“Okay.”
His whole face brightened. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Tomorrow?”
That caught me off guard. “Tomorrow?”
He shrugged sheepishly. “Before I lose my nerve.”
I smiled properly at that.
“Tomorrow’s fine.”
“Great.” He sat back a little, looking relieved. “There’s a place on Harper that does decent coffee and stale croissants.”
“An irresistible sales pitch.”
“I like to keep expectations low.”
“That much is clear.”
He grinned, and for a moment it was easy. Easy enough that I could almost pretend I hadn’t spent the last week rearranging my study schedule because of a man whose last name I still didn’t know.
Almost.
Daniel stood, gathering his things. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
“Probably wise.”
He lingered a second. “I’m glad I asked.”
Something akin to guilt made my chest heavier.
I didn’t regret saying yes. Not exactly.
“Me too,” I said, and hated the lie the moment it left my mouth.
He left with the satisfied look of a man who had done something brave and been rewarded for it.
I watched him disappear between the shelves, then looked down at the open page in front of me without reading a single word.
Tomorrow.
A nice man. Coffee. A normal decision.
Exactly the sort of thing I should have wanted.
So why did it feel like I just agreed to the wrong thing?