I’m huddled in my oversized cardigan with half of my blond hair pulled up in a messy knot and a romance novel in my hands. It goes without saying that I’m in no way prepared, mentally or physically, to face the most notorious member of Clement University’s beloved basketball team.
Vincent Knight is fearsome. He looks far more like the ex-Mafia romantic lead in my novel than a college athlete—except, maybe, for the sling supporting his left arm and the bulky brace wrapped around his wrist.
“Hi,” I blurt. “Can I help you?”
A muscle in Vincent’s jaw ticks. His right hand—the one not cradled in a sling—is clenched so tightly around his student ID it must be carving into his palm.
“I need some nineteenth-century British poetry.”
The timbre of his voice, lowered to a library-appropriate volume, cuts through the quiet and hits me square in the chest. I suppress a shiver.
“Sure. That’ll be on the second floor. If you take a right when you get out of the elevator and follow the signs, it’s all the way back by the—”
Vincent cuts me off. “Can you give me any specific books?”
It’s a totally standard request. The tinge of annoyance dripping from the words is nothing new either. It pales in comparison to what I see during finals, when a combination of sleep deprivation and desperation brings out the worst in humanity. There’s really no reason that one brooding basketball player should make me feel like I’m melting with embarrassment in my seat because he needs a reading recommendation.
Abruptly, I remember the romance novel in my hands.
My face burns as I roll my chair forward and shut the book, pressing it cover-down into my lap and praying that Vincent Knight can’t read upside down.
“Our overnight librarian is actually out right now,” I tell him in my most polite customer service voice. “Do you want to wait for her to get back, or—”
“Are you not qualified?”
My mouth shuts abruptly at his curt tone. Vincent Knight must be used to getting what he wants when he whips out the condescending remarks and the steely glare I’ve only ever seen him use on the court. I’ll admit that I’m intimidated—by the size of him, by the weight of who he is and how everyone at Clement knows his name, by the cool intelligence glinting in his dark eyes—but I’m not about to let him push me around.
“I’m in the honors English program. If anything, I’m overqualified.”
“Great,” Vincent says, unmoved. “Lead the way.”
“Unfortunately, leaving this desk to help cranky kids with their homework isn’t in my job description.”
Vincent’s eyebrows shoot up with surprise. He cuts a glance at the tables in the atrium, where two or three of the late-night studiers have looked up from their laptops and are staring at the star of our school’s basketball team like this is the last place in the world they expected to see him on a Friday night. Which leads me to wonder why, exactly, he’s here with one arm in a sling and a pressing need for British poetry. Especially since the rest of his team is supposedly throwing a forbidden party at the basketball house.
Vincent turns to face me again and presses his lips together, chastened.
“Do you think you could make an exception for someone who’s only got one good arm and is having a really shitty night?”
It’s a small surrender of his pride, but he’s clearly not used to having to ask for help or apologize for his surliness. But Vincent looks, for a moment, like he knows he’s being an asshole and wishes he could stop. Something about that softens the edge on my anger.
We stare each other down. I’m the one who cracks.
“Fine,” I say begrudgingly. “I guess I’ll just . . . come with you, then.”
It’ll only be five minutes of my life, and it’s not like I have much else to do besides reading about Lorenzo taking Natalie up against an elevator wall. I set The Mafia’s Princess face down on the circulation desk and flip up the little sign that tells people I’ll be back in fifteen minutes.
It’s not until I stand up from my chair that I realize how enormous Vincent is. It makes sense that he’s tall—he’s a Division I basketball player, after all—but I’m nearly five foot eleven, so it’s not often that I’m towered over. It throws me off. I snatch my lanyard, keys clanking against my water bottle in my haste, and loop the strap tight around my fist as I march around the desk and brush past Vincent. I catch the scent of laundry detergent and something warm and spiced—and then I absolutely do not think about how good he smells, or how small he makes me feel, or how much I like it.
The stairs are on the far side of the atrium, but considering I was just a few paragraphs from reading about passionate sex in elevators, I’d rather not trap myself in one with Vincent. He trails behind me as we climb to the second floor and plunge into the maze of books, weaving through the stacks like animals on the hunt. I’ve always been a fast walker. Harper and Nina bitch and moan about it when they fall behind, but Vincent—with his long strides—keeps up without complaint.
He might have his head stuck in his ass, but at least he’s not slow.
The British literature is tucked deep in a corner. One of the fluorescents overhead has burned out, leaving this nook of the library dim and oddly intimate. If anyone were to go looking for a private place on campus to make out, this would be the best spot. Not that Vincent and I are going to make out.
Jesus Christ, I scold. Pull yourself together.
This is what I get for reading smut on the job.
“Here we go,” I huff. “British poetry. It’s all sort of thrown together, but I can help you pick out some from the century you need, if you don’t know how to work Google.”
Vincent rolls his eyes. “Just hand me whatever.”
I tilt my head to the side and scan the spines on the shelf, reading off the titles and authors under my breath. Nineteenth-century British poetry is fairly broad, as far as requests go. I’ll need some more specific parameters if we’re going to hurry this up so I can get back to my book.
“What class is this for?”
“I’m taking a GE on classic British literature,” Vincent says. “We’re supposed to analyze a poem by Monday. The professor didn’t specify what kind.”
So, no pressing midnight deadline, but he’s still here instead of at the party with the rest of his team. Why couldn’t he wait until tomorrow morning and just come in with a hangover, like every other undergrad at Clement?
I regard Vincent carefully, my eyes dancing over his disheveled hair and the slight shadows beneath his dark eyes. He looks like he could use eight hours of sleep and a good laugh. Maybe he’s more anxious about this paper than he wants to let on. Or maybe the sling around his arm and the impending start of basketball season is to blame for his sour attitude. If I had my phone on me, I could send a covert text to Harper and Nina to see if they’ve got their hands on any intel.
But my phone is downstairs, and Vincent is standing next to me, tall and brooding and visibly agitated as he glares at the books surrounding us.
I stifle a sigh. One problem at a time.
“What are you in the mood for?” I pluck a few off the shelf—Byron, Wordsworth, Blake—and stack them in the crook of my arm for his approval. “Some poetry by an old white man, or some poetry by an old white man?”
Vincent doesn’t laugh at my joke. Instead, he takes the Byron off the top and flips it over to scrutinize the back cover.
My eyes catch on Vincent’s hand. It’s nearly twice as large as mine and moves with a confidence and agility that is, unfortunately, deeply attractive. If this were a romance novel, Vincent Knight would be the hero. There’s no argument. He’s tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, and handsome in the most wicked of ways. He could be the Mafia hit man, the alpha of the pack, the cutthroat billionaire with daddy issues—he could scoop me up with his good arm, pin my back to a bookshelf deep in the stacks, and fill me. He’d whisper dirty things to me too. Not lines out of a bad porno, but poetry. Words of passion.
But this isn’t a romance novel. And if the way Vincent is frowning down at Lord Byron’s compiled works is any indication, I don’t think I should expect any poetry from him.
Stop thinking about sex, you miserable little shit.
“That was a joke, by the way,” I say, eager to fill the silence. “Everyone knows the best poets of the nineteenth century are women.”
Vincent hands the Byron back to me.
“Do you have anything”—he hesitates—“simpler than this?”
“I’m afraid Dr. Seuss is twentieth-century American.”
Vincent cuts me an annoyed look. I tip my chin up, refusing to apologize.
“Look,” he grumbles, “I’m sorry. My wrist is killing me, I haven’t slept right all week, and I’m way out of my comfort zone with this—this poetry shit.” Twin spots of pink bloom on his cheeks, but surely it’s only a trick of the light. “English was never my best subject.”
I slot the three books back on the shelf.
“A lot of people struggle with it,” I admit. “Especially poetry. Which honestly isn’t surprising, given the way it’s taught.”
Vincent snorts bitterly. “I hated high school English. I was shit at it. I almost had to sit out basketball my freshman year because my teacher was going to fail me for not memorizing a Shakespeare poem.” He cuts another sideways glance at me. “I got my grades up, obviously. I was smart enough to graduate high school.”
“Just because poetry never clicked for you doesn’t mean you’re not smart. Poetry is—it’s almost like another language. It doesn’t matter if you can recite every word from memory. Learning a bunch of vocabulary won’t do you any good if you don’t learn the grammar and cultural context too.”
If Vincent finds my monologue embarrassingly pretentious, he doesn’t say anything. His eyes are patient. Locked in. His attentiveness gives me the confidence to keep going. I run my eyes over the rows of books in front of us, then I pluck a familiar and very thick tome—Engman’s Anthology, Twelfth Edition with Extended Prologue—off the shelf and flick through it until I find the section on Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
“Okay, this one’s good,” I say, tapping the page with my fingertip.
Vincent shifts closer to read over my shoulder. I hold myself very still, determined to neither flinch away nor lean into the heat of his large body.
“If thou must love me,” he reads, warm breath ghosting over my collarbone and the back of my outstretched hand.
“It’s a sonnet,” I say, pulling my hand into a fist. “Fourteen lines, iambic pentameter. Very easy to spot. The trick with sonnets is usually to watch for a turn toward the end. Sometimes it’s in the last couplet—the last two lines—if the rest of the poem is split into three quatrains—”
“That’s four lines, right?”
I glance up at Vincent. It’s a mistake. He’s so close I can see freckles on the bridge of his nose and a little white scar just under his right eyebrow. His eyes aren’t on the poem. They’re on me.
“Um, yes.” I clear my throat and consult the book again. “Four lines. But see, this is a Petrarchan sonnet. One octave and a sestet. So, the turn is in the sestet—those last six lines.”
“If thou must love me, let it be for nought.” Vincent reads the first line.
“Except for love’s sake only,” I continue.
The air around us slows, and the world narrows to this one corner of the library. I read the rest of the sonnet out loud, tripping over a few words as I go, but Vincent doesn’t snicker or correct me. He’s silent. Reverent. It feels sacred, somehow, to read the work of a woman long dead in a chapel built to honor words and their makers.
“. . . But love me for love’s sake, that evermore thou mayst love on, through love’s eternity.”
There is a moment of silence—a shared breath—after I read the last line.
Then Vincent asks, “What does it mean, Professor?”
I laugh in a quiet exhalation, thankful he’s the one who’s broken the tension.
“Elizabeth wrote this for her husband. She doesn’t like the idea that he might love her for her intelligence or her beauty. I love her for her smile—her look—her way of speaking gently. She doesn’t want that. Those things can change. She’ll get old. She might get sick. She could just . . . change. And she doesn’t want his love to be conditional.”
Vincent steps back, the heat of his body lingering for a moment before I’m cold again. I shut the anthology and turn to face him.
“Shit,” he says, a genuinely stunned smile tugging at his lips. “You’re good.”
His words send a flood of heat through my body. I think I’m damp between my legs. It’s humiliating—that one silly little compliment can have such a strong effect on me. That one kind word said in a quiet corner of the library can make me feel like I’m on fire.
“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” I joke, my voice weak as I shove the book at Vincent. “Well, actually, I make minimum wage. Although we get an extra buck an hour for the night shift, which is pretty sweet.”
Vincent weighs Engman’s Anthology in his good hand like he’s considering something. “How late do you work?”
For the life of me, I can’t tell why he’s asking.
“Um, I should get out of here by five. I mean, assuming whoever has the morning shift isn’t a total dick and actually gets here on time.”
Vincent lets out a low whistle. “Jesus. That’s rough. How often do you have to work nights?”
“I usually volunteer to take Fridays,” I say with a shrug.
“Why would you do that?” He sounds almost affronted. “Everyone knows all the best parties are on Friday.”
“I’m not a big fan of parties. I mean, I definitely like drinking with friends, but I’m more low-key about it. Crowds make me—I don’t know.” I shiver at the thought of deafening music and dark rooms packed tight with strangers. “But I have a social life. I party, in my own way. My roommates and I do wine and movie nights every Thursday and boozy brunches on Sundays.”
The corner of Vincent’s mouth tugs up in a knowing smile.
“So,” he says, “Thursdays and Sundays, you party.”
“Yep.”
“And on Fridays, you sit behind that front desk reading porn.”
