I lean forward slightly. "Is that why you’re wasting your time talking to me?”
His gaze flicks up, and I’m so heated that I don’t read his face at all. All I feel is fire. “So…tell me what you know about Cody."
His eyes give me absolutely nothing.
"Cody who?"
The silence that follows is very loud.
We stare at each other across the table, and neither of us moves, and the air between us has completely changed — charged with something that wasn't there a minute ago.
But I blink, wondering if I’ve completely misread this entire situation.
My phone buzzes on the table, breaking the spell.
His eyes drop to the screen for just a fraction of a second — long enough to see Beckett's name — and something shifts in his jaw. And then it’s gone.
He stands and picks up his jacket.
I stand too. "Wait — that's it?"
He doesn't look at me as he walks away.
"Until next time," he says.
And then he's gone.
I pick up my phone. Two texts from Beckett.
I set it back down and look at the empty chair across from me.
Then I open the book to the back.
The annotations are dense, cramped, written in a hand that presses hard into the page like whoever held the pen had something to prove. I read the first one, scrawled beside a passage about the nature of enemies.
The most dangerous ones are the ones who smile.
My pulse jumps.
I close the book.
I should go back to my dorm. Text Beckett back. Eat something. Be a normal person living a normal life.
Instead, I sit there in the emptying library for another ten minutes, thinking about pale blue eyes and a jaw like a crime and the specific way he saidavoidance is how they win— like he knew exactly what I was avoiding and was daring me to stop.
This is a problem.
I know it's a problem.
Chapter 27: Adela
Ihavearesponsepaper due at midnight, 40 slides of lecture notes to get through, and a Comparative Government reading I haven't started yet.
I know this because I've been staring at the list for 20 minutes without touching it.
My phone lights up. Beckett.
I turn it face down and open my laptop.
