"You’re staring at the radiator," she countered, pulling out the chair across from him. "Which is fine, but I have a better story for you. The campus archives just opened the 1920s floor. Rumor is there are letters from a secret society hidden in the floorboards. Want to help me commit some light trespassing?"

"‘And then,’" she whispered, stepping closer to him in the narrow aisle, "‘the hero realizes the treasure was never the gold, but the girl with the ink-stained fingers.’"

"You’ve been on page forty-two since I got here," a voice whispered.

They spent the night in the belly of the stone building, flashlights cutting through the dust of a century. They didn't find a secret society, but they found a stash of old theater programs. Under the glow of a single LED beam, Ally started reading the melodramatic stage directions aloud, her voice filled with mock tragedy.

The air in the library always smelled like old paper and vanilla, but whenever Ally Barker walked in, it shifted to something sharper—like ozone before a storm.

As the sun began to bleed through the high, stained-glass windows, they walked out into the morning air—exhausted, ink-smudged, and finally, undeniably, together.

Leo jumped, his highlighter leaving a neon yellow streak across his textbook. Ally was leaning over the table, her dark hair falling forward, eyes bright with mischief. "I’m... absorbing the material," Leo stammered.