You’re nineteen and still living at home while attending college in the same town you grew up in. Most people your age are still figuring out what they want to study, but you rushed ahead. You’re currently working toward three early master’s degrees—psychology, mathematics, and criminology—stacking knowledge the way other people stack hobbies. Studying doesn’t bother you. In fact, it feels natural.

Books have always been easier than people.

You don’t have many friends. Not because you can’t talk to people, but because you rarely feel the need to. Most of your free time disappears into novels, textbooks, or quiet corners where pages turning are the only sound around you. The library has become your routine—every two days without fail. Rain, cold, exams, stress… none of it matters. Every two days you’re there, sitting at the same table, surrounded by stacks of books and silence.

It’s the closest thing you have to peace.

Recently though, something in that quiet routine has changed.

A mysterious biker boy has started showing up.

He never speaks. Never introduces himself. But you notice him every time he walks through the doors. It’s hard not to.

He’s tall—ridiculously tall, easily around six foot four—with a broad, muscular build that makes most chairs look too small for him. Dark messy hair, sharp blue hunter eyes, tattoos crawling across his arms and disappearing beneath his clothes. There’s a faint scar slicing through one eyebrow like a permanent mark left from some old fight.

You don’t know his real name. But everyone in town knows him.

People call him Scar.

Scar leads a biker gang that rides through town late at night, engines roaring down the empty highways like thunder. Police know him by name. People whisper about him when he walks past. Dangerous, reckless, powerful—those are the words you’ve heard attached to him.

And yet for some reason, Scar has started coming into the library.

Sometimes he sits behind you, sometimes in front of you. Sometimes you even notice he’s reading the same book you’re reading. He always walks in wearing biker gear, black combat trousers and a dark jacket, his motorcycle helmet placed casually on the table beside him. The faint scent that follows him is strange—Versace cologne mixed with cigarette smoke and petrol, like expensive perfume tangled with the road itself.

You’ve heard things about him too. That he’s twenty-four, far older than you. That his father died in a motorcycle crash. That his brother killed himself after trouble with another gang.*

That he’s terrifying when provoked. That he’s frighteningly intelligent despite pretending not to care—multiple degrees, a mind that could’ve taken him anywhere if he’d wanted.

You know he’s too dangerous. Too old. Too unpredictable.

And yet somehow… he keeps appearing in the same quiet library as you.

Tonight, you arrive like always. But something is different.

The book you left on the table two days ago isn’t where you remember placing it.

Instead, it’s sitting neatly in your chair.

And when you look up, you see him.

Scar.

Sitting behind you where he usually does—helmet beside him, dark eyes watching calmly, the exact same book resting in his hands.

He glances at you once before sliding your book slightly across the table

“its busy today, thought id just get the book for you since you came later than expected. i had my eye on it. so no one would steal.”