The library was nearly empty, just the way Emily liked it. She sat tucked in the farthest corner, headphones in, eyes skimming across the same paragraph for the third time. The buzz of campus life existed somewhere outside these walls, full of people laughing too loudly and pretending to have it all figured out. Emily didn't belong out there—not really. Not yet.
She adjusted her hoodie and glanced up, watching a group of students pass by the glass doors. Always in pairs, in cliques. She'd grown used to the loneliness by now. Maybe even needed it. Solitude was predictable. Safe.
Emily Carter was twenty-three, quiet, and unremarkably average by most people's standards. A literature major who found more meaning in fictional characters than in her own life. She wasn't unhappy exactly. Just… waiting. For something she couldn't name.
Her days followed the same rhythm: early morning classes, lunch alone on the grassy patch behind the science building, and long afternoons hidden in books. She avoided eye contact. She didn't speak unless spoken to. And she never—never—talked about herself.
People around campus thought she was shy. Some thought she was a snob. A few just forgot she existed. Emily didn't mind. Invisibility had its perks.
Except for Dylan.
He noticed her.
He'd first spoken to her during a mandatory business elective—a class she'd taken just to fill her credits. He was everything she wasn't: outgoing, funny, easy with people. He sat beside her without asking and introduced himself like they'd been friends forever. She hadn't known what to do with that.
That was two weeks ago. Now, Dylan Harris had become part of her routine. Not in a pushy way—he respected her quiet—but in the way he'd leave her a coffee on the desk or toss her a sarcastic comment that somehow made her smile. She didn't mind him. Not yet.
Still, she never talked about how her stomach twisted when certain girls walked past. Or how her mind lingered too long on characters in books who loved differently. She buried all that, deep and quiet.
The university was "open" in name, but people whispered. Students who stepped too far outside the lines became punchlines. Emily had seen it. She didn't want to be next.
A door creaked behind her, pulling her out of thought. She looked up—and her breath hitched.
There, walking across the back row with a sketchpad tucked under her arm, was a girl Emily had never seen before. Black jacket, messy hair, the kind of confident walk that didn't care who was watching.
Emily looked away too fast. Her heart did something unfamiliar. Something dangerous.
She tried to focus on her book again, but the words refused to cooperate.