I’ve always loved libraries after dark.
This one—the only twenty-four-hour library at Clement University—may not have the marble floors and cathedral ceilings that adorn Pinterest boards and travel Instagrams, but it’s still one of my favorite places on campus. And despite the outdated furniture, questionable carpet stains, fake ferns, and lingering stench of old coffee, there’s something magical about the way moonlight floods the central atrium through the glass ceiling overhead, casting the mostly empty tables far below in a soft blue glow.
There’s nowhere else I’d rather be at ten o’clock on a Friday night.
It helps, of course, that I’m getting paid to do nothing.
At the beginning of my shift, I did a lap around the second and third floors to collect stray books, which took me all of fifteen minutes. Now I’m wrapped up in my biggest knit cardigan and seated behind the circulation desk. It’s the end of October—just past the usual midterm rush—so there are only a few people still scattered around the tables in the atrium: five or six students who seem deeply engrossed in their laptops, a group of girls who are currently packing up to leave, and a boy who’s walking back and forth between one of the desktop computers and the old copy machine that never seems to print what you want it to on the first try.
Soon the library will be a ghost town, but outside, campus is buzzing with students. Some of them are trudging back to the dorms from their night classes, but most are leaving pregames in search of house parties. Their drunken laughter and shouts echo in the quad and drift in through the glass front doors of the library. I watch them stumble past from my seat at the circulation desk with a sense of detached curiosity, like I’m on one side of the glass at a zoo exhibit.
I can’t figure out if I’m the visitor or the captive animal.
Maybe I should feel lonely during these long and quiet night shifts, but I don’t. Not when I’m surrounded by books. And definitely not when the rest of my life feels so loud and bright and inescapably hectic.
Besides, I’m not totally on my own. I have Margie, my supervisor and the resident overnight librarian at Clement—who, right on cue, appears at my side and drops a stack of heavy tomes on the desk. Margie might be a foot shorter than me and three times my age, but she’s got the arm strength and no-nonsense attitude of a drill sergeant.
“These were on the floor outside the drop box,” she says. “Apparently, putting them into the box is too much work.”
“People are the worst. Here—I’ll log them.”
The circulation desk is long enough to hold five stations for processing checkouts and returns. During the day, there are enough student workers to staff the entire desk, but tonight, it’s only me and Margie. I boot up a computer to log in to the library’s record-keeping system, sighing and propping my chin in my palm when it gives me the dreaded loading screen.
Clement University might have a billion-dollar endowment, but our wireless network is notoriously unreliable.
The atrium girls finally walk past my desk on their way to the doors, some of them stopping next to me to toss their empty coffee cups in the trash. I catch bits and pieces of their conversation.
“—professor wants us to read the whole book by Monday.”
“You can always drop the class—”
“Oh, fuck, my phone died.”
“Guys, Georgia just texted me. She says there’s a party at the basketball team’s house. Do we want to pregame at her place? She has tequila.”
“Aren’t they not supposed to be throwing parties this close to the start of the season?”
“Yeah, it’s top secret. Invite only. I might still have some chaser in my—”
“Seriously, though, can I borrow someone’s charger?”
The door swings shut behind the girls, their now-muffled voices fading until all is quiet again. My eyes slide from the loading screen in front of me to my phone. If the basketball team is having a secret party, that’s where Harper and Nina—my roommates—will end up. Which means I’m sure to get some drunk texts over the next few hours.
The three of us have been inseparable since we got shoved into a triple in the freshman dorms. Now that we’re juniors, we’ve gotten good at respecting one another’s differences. Harper can’t stand theatrical productions or discussions of three-act structure. Nina can’t stand anything that involves workout clothes and braving the crowd of sweaty bodies at Clement’s gym. And I can’t stand college parties—too many people, lukewarm beer, shitty music played at eardrum-rupturing volumes. So, on Fridays, while Harper and Nina go out and get shit-faced, I work the night shift at the library and get a few hours of peace and quiet.
It’s the perfect arrangement.
Once I get past the loading screen and into the library’s record-keeping system, it takes all of five minutes to process the stack of returns Margie gave me. With nothing else immediately on my agenda, I push back my chair and reach for my backpack. It contains all the things I usually bring for the night shift: a full Hydro Flask, my lanyard with the keys to my apartment and a copy of the key to the library’s front door, a plastic baggie of assorted snacks (in case the vending machine by the elevators is out of order again), and—most importantly—my book of the week.
With one last look to make sure no one’s watching, I discreetly retrieve The Mafia’s Princess from the depths of my backpack.
The cover is humiliating. I don’t know who made the executive decision to put naked male torsos on romance novels, but I have a sneaking suspicion that some big-shot marketing executive wanted to shame me into buying an e-reader so I wouldn’t have to be seen holding this in public. My face heats as I flip it open, press my thumb down the crease, and dive back into the third chapter of yet another story about a bookish young woman and the brooding, smart-ass alpha male who adores her.
My roommates call me a hopeless romantic. I let them. It’s nicer than being called a lonely hermit.
“Kendall.”
I jolt and shove my book into my lap, hiding it under the desk. Margie is standing between me and the front doors, too busy sorting through her master ring of keys to notice how awkward my arms look and how red my face is. Behind her is the poor kid who’s been pacing back and forth between the computer and the copier. From the way his hair is standing on end and the look of utter defeat on his face, I’d guess it isn’t going well.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“The printer’s acting up again,” Margie explains. “I’m going to take this young man over to the engineering library to let him use one of their machines. I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.”
Margie leads the suffering undergrad out through the front doors. As soon as they’re gone, I whip out my book and slide down in my chair, giddy with anticipation.
I can’t believe I’m getting fifteen minutes of uninterrupted reading time this early in the night—usually I have to wait until after midnight before I can kick my feet up and relax.
The Mafia’s Princess isn’t groundbreaking literature, but it’s exactly what I want out of a romance novel. The heroine, a quick-witted attorney, isn’t whiny or too stupid to live, and the hero, a former street fighter and Mafia renegade, isn’t so possessive that he’s a walking red flag. They’re both clever. They’re both driven. Also, it’s only the third chapter, and there’ve been two very well-written fight scenes. This is a good sign. Authors who write brilliant fight scenes tend to be good at other physical scenes—and if the banter and heated glances between the leads are any indication, I’m fast approaching what might be one of the hottest sex scenes I’ve ever read.
I’m so absorbed, I barely hear it when one of the student ID–operated turnstiles at the front door beeps and swings open. Maybe it’s one of the girls who just left, come to reclaim a forgotten water bottle or phone charger. Or maybe it’s Margie and the boy who needed to print. I should look up. But the attorney and her renegade are alone in an elevator, the sexual tension between them crackling like electricity, their breathing heavy and—
A shadow falls over my desk.
I lift my eyes reluctantly.
The guy standing on the other side of the circulation desk is tall. Really, really tall. I tip my head back to look at him properly—and oh. Oh. He’s equal parts menacing and beautiful. He has dark hair cropped close to his head and eyes the color of ground coffee. Eyes that are watching me with a look I can only describe as hostile.
My heart hiccups with recognition before sinking to my stomach.
Because I know him. We’ve never spoken, but I’ve seen him from a distance on campus and, occasionally, on screens. He’s the star of Clement’s basketball team. The player all the sports broadcasters and basketball fanatics predict is going to be a first-round draft pick. The one who got ejected from last year’s big game for breaking our rival point guard’s nose with a hard right-handed uppercut.
Vincent Knight.
