Page 22 of Serpentine Valentine
I’d always thought university was meant to be a time for finding yourself, but since I started at Acheron three years ago, I felt as if I’d lost myself even more. All those things I’d been doing all my life––field hockey, dating, going to parties with popular kids––felt wrong and left me empty. I wandered through my own existence like a shade, taking mute notice of changes but doing nothing to alter my course.
Until now, lying to my boyfriend about going to bed so I could sneak up to the secluded levels of the library to take pictures of Lex Gorgon, the most infamous girl on campus, and someone I had absolutely no business mingling with.
Someone who made my skin tingle for the first time in so long I couldn’t remember the last instant I’d been so moved.
“Baby?” Pierce asked, his luminous eyes wide as he tried to look into mine, to read what I’d written in invisible ink on the surface of my soul. “Seriously, I don’t mind ditching these guys.”
“Well, we do!” Beckett protested. “We’ve got to celebrate your captaincy properly, dude. You can cuddle with Luna any fucking night.”
“I can, and if I want to do that tonight instead of going out with you animals, I will,” he declared.
God, I thought weakly,any girl would kill to be with this man. He’s almost too good to be true.
“I’m fine,” I assured him, kissing him softly, his stubble scratching my chin. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Have fun with the lads.”
He squeezed my hip. “You’re sure?”
Heart aching, I dredged a lie up from the churning mass in my stomach. “Yes, I’m just tired. Going to hit the hay.”
“Love ya,” he said before kissing me back, a little harder and deeper, like he needed a taste of me before parting.
I hummed my response.
We’d been dating since last year, but I wasn’t convinced I loved him romantically or even that I could fall in love at all. Opening up to someone enough to fall for them seemed to take more bravery than I possessed.
The other guys called their goodbyes as I stood and collected my canvas shoulder bag, but I was forgotten as soon as I walked away. When I paused at the door to the stairs to look back, the group of them were laughing, Pierce gesturing with his hands like the leader he was, orchestrating their humor. They looked right together, a picture of young, carefree men in workout gear with two pretty girls in ripped jeans and little tops adorning them like bulbs on a Christmas tree.
My stomach cramped harder. I pressed a hand to it, looking down at my tweed skirt and the matching vest I had buttoned up over my chest. There was some cleavage, and my ass, round from years of field hockey practice, filled out my midi-skirt nicely, but I wasn’t dressed to suit that tableau.
I didn’t really want to be.
Relief slid over me like cool water as I ducked out of sight around the corner and started up the wide marble staircase instead of down, making my way to the dusty old stacks on the third floor.
It was dark on that level, old book spines limned in golden light from old-fashioned sconces and a few heavy chandeliers. The smell was strong here, the musk of aged paper, the slight sweetness of wood wax rubbed into the handcrafted railings and sturdy study tables. I dragged a deep breath in through my nose and held it, hugging my book bag to my chest.
Peace suffused me.
Here amid the books and the years of history housed in them and this very room, I finally felt settled in my skin.
It was late, after nine o’clock on a Thursday, which wasthenight to go out on campus, so I wasn’t surprised by the quiet that permeated the space. Instead of marring the silence by calling out for her, I went in search of Lex.
All the large study tables out front were empty, but when I walked deeper through the stacks, I found my favorite small table decorated with a green plaid blazer and a leather backpack. I recognized the backpack, but even if I hadn’t, the gold snake broach on the blazer would have identified the belongings as Lex’s.
I wondered if I’d be bold enough to ask about her clear fascination with snakes, but I doubted it.
I dropped everything but my film camera on the table across from her seat and went off into the shadowed stacks to find her. My heart tripped, heavy and fast. I felt it drum in my throat, in my wrists, and that major artery near my groin. One big throbbing, thrumming beat.
I couldn’t tell if it was from excitement or fear and decided it was both.
Alone in the library at night with a troubled girl hidden somewhere inside. It shouldn’t have felt so poignant, but it did.
My search increased in intensity as I wandered, first slow, measured steps, then a quick patter of my loafers ringing out over the wood floors. From casual pursuer to something like a hunter.
I was hungry for the sight of her. The idea of stumbling upon her like an animal in the wild, watching her in a place that felt intrinsically like her natural habitat aroused something in me that was hot under my skin. There was an urgency, an almost panicked desire to find her and make sure she was actually real. Not some gorgeous creature I’d conjured intobeing with my imagination.
Finding her should have been anticlimactic.
A person can’t get up to many particularly exciting things alone in an old library.
