I just wanted to be alone. Had to be alone.
It was what I knew how to do best. Even if over the last few weeks, I’d been slowly falling under Brody’s spell, thinking that I could survive in his social circles. It felt like I’d made a huge mistake. Like I’d leapt out of a plane at fifteen thousand feet in the air, and only now I’d realized I didn’t have a functional parachute.
I cut to a corner of the campus that I almost never went to. It was mostly for grad students, and I was pretty sure most of the buildings were just for administrative workers. Trees lined the tiny quad between four old, brick buildings, one of which was the J. C. Nallerson Crime & Law Library.
It was one of the smallest libraries on the whole campus, and it was exactly where I wanted to be.
I pushed open the double doors and finally felt warm from the cold. The library was blissfully almost empty. Two grad student workers were parked behind the front desk, looking half-asleep as they read the books in front of them.
I felt like I could breathe evenly for the first time all morning. It was a simple library, with some nice floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto a cluster of snow-capped trees.
Crime and law certainly weren’t my usual subjects of choice. But I prided myself on being able to find any subject interesting. I walked through the low stacks of books, passing on the long rows full of international law and legal treatises.
I found, near the end of the stacks by the window, the books about legal history.
Bingo.
This was what I needed. The only thing that could distract me right now. Sure, it wasn’t going to be as interesting as the history of monarchs or civilizations, but it was the best I could do in a law library.
As I pulled an old, leather-bound book off of the shelf, someone ambled around the corner. I glanced up, shocked to see that Brody’s brother, the big, beefy security guard, was here.
“Roman,” I said, clearing my throat.
Talk about people I didn’t expect to see in the library. I guessed there was nowhere on campus I could truly hide from the world.
“Hey, there,” Roman said, giving me a polite nod. “Logan. Fancy seeing you here.”
I cleared my throat. “Good morning,” I said.
“I just finished my overnight shift,” Roman said. “So this is more like the evening, to me. What brings you here? Are you thinking about applying to law school? I know a lawyer, if you need advice, or anything.”
“Oh, no, definitely not,” I said. “I just… wanted somewhere quiet to read.”
Roman watched me closely for a moment, curiosity in his big, brown eyes. I was pretty sure he could tell I was out of sorts, but he didn’t want to pry.
In that moment, I was so grateful for it. Brody’s brother clearly had a good intuition about people, just like Brody did. And it only made my heart ache more.
“I just started coming here in the last few months,” Roman said. “Never was much of a library person myself, but I’m trying to learn about criminal justice and advanced security. And I just like it. Quiet, like you said. Especially after nights where I do security for the campus concerts.”
I studied Roman’s face as he glanced over some of the books on the shelf. It was clear he had no clue about the gossip websites, and that made sense. I was pretty sure they were mainly frequented by frat guys, sorority girls, and college athletes.
Roman had been out of college for a while now. And strangely, right now, that felt comforting to me.
“You want to grab a desk together and do some reading?” Roman asked.
I swallowed. “I, uh…”
“Oh,” he said. “You wanted to be alone, didn’t you?”
I looked at the hardwood floor. “Yeah.”
He cocked his head to one side. “You all right? You seem… a little distracted.”
“More than distracted,” I said. “I feel like shit.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to say it,” Roman told me. “But yeah, you look like you’re not having the best morning, to be honest.”
There really was something about the Bryant boys.
Maybe it was those eyes. Maybe it was their ability to look at you like you were the only person in the world whenever they talked to you—like they had nowhere else better to be, and they’d love to listen to what you had to say.
I wasn’t attracted to Roman like I was to Brody, although they were both ridiculously handsome men.
But I felt comfortable with Roman. Even though objectively, I barely knew him.
That was the core of the Bryants’ superpower. They could make just about anybody comfortable.
“People are saying shit about me on the internet,” I blurted out. I remembered all at once that we were in a library, even though it was mostly empty, and I lowered my voice back down to a hushed level. “Everybody. Well, it feels like everybody, at least. Pictures got posted to this stupid, juvenile, gossipy forum, and now the whole world knows who I am, and I hate it.”