Henry Winter stands at the far end of the Hampden library, pretending to read.

Not because he isn’t interested in the passage from De Natura Deorum, but because you're near.

Somewhere to his left. Two rows down, third table. He knows this not because he saw you enter—though he had, thirty-one minutes ago, at precisely 4:03 PM—but because he feels you. Like gravity. Like heat behind marble. Like the pull of a string no one else knows he's tied to his ribcage.

You had smiled at the librarian in that slightly condescending way you do when someone misplaces an adverb.

Henry had smiled, too. But inwardly.

He turns the page of his book. He doesn’t absorb the words.

Because he is thinking about your hair today—tied into a coil, loose strands falling to your spine like dark, deliberate brushstrokes. And your posture: precise, muscular, that narrow torso folded neatly over a psychology textbook as if the spine of a book could whisper back all the answers. He notices the faint scratch on your knuckle. Another accident. Or a fight. Or both. Probably both.

He’ll ask. Not now.

Soon.

When his heart isn’t this loud.

You’re too much for this place. For these books. For the air itself. And yet, there you sit—purple shirt over your shoulders like royalty slumming it, eyebrows furrowed in the way that makes his pulse misstep.

A goddess with a diagnosis. A myth with scraped knees.

Henry bites the inside of his cheek. He cannot look directly at you. Looking would imply a right. And nothing about you is owed. You are a sacrament.

Your presence disrupts him more than beauty should. It is violently present. You bring in with you the scent of lavender and organic coffee and some faint trace of gym chalk that always lingers on your sleeves. You are everything Henry cannot preserve in a glass box. You are warm. Fast. Alive. You flirt with mortality in ways that terrify him.

He looks again.

You’re chewing on the end of your pen. Your left ankle bounces. You're irritated—he wonders if someone near you smells bad.

Henry breathes once. Shallowly.

Then he rises.

Not to speak. Not to make himself known. But to leave something behind.

He crosses to a different table. Places a pressed clover inside a book on psychological trauma—one you’ve been reaching for often. Then turns, quietly, as if the motion itself were sacred. He doesn’t say goodbye. He never says goodbye.

But your voice catches him.

“Henry.”

He turns slowly. He has to compose himself before his eyes meet yours.

There you are.

Pointed chin raised. Curved brows narrowed. You look like you’ve caught him cheating on an exam.

“You’re avoiding me,” you say.

His lips twitch. “I’m not.”

“You are.”

He wants to say I’m protecting you. From the chaos of his circle. From the ugliness of what lives in his mind. From the way he nearly passed out the last time he saw you trip on the cobbled path outside the dining hall and nearly collapse—heart clutching inside his chest like it was yours, not his.

But he doesn’t say any of that.

Instead, Henry says, “You dropped your water bottle. Tuesday. In front of Francis. You picked it up too quickly. You should’ve waited.”

You blink. “What?”

“You turned red. I think your heart was racing. You didn’t sit for ten minutes after. I counted.”

Your mouth parts. And for once, Henry doesn’t flee.

He steps forward, slowly, gloved fingers curling at his sides. He isn’t built for sports. For the now. But he is built for this: a moment on the edge of revelation.

“I can’t run after you,” he says, softly. “I don’t know how.”

You blink again. “What the hell does that mean?”

He wants to laugh. Not because it’s funny, but because you said it. You, with your bluntness and your chaos and your grammar-policed madness. You, who once cleaned his coat sleeve after Bunny’s drunken spill with a tissue and a snarl like you were slaying a demon.

Henry steps closer. Inches away now. He smells you again—lavender, sweat, peppermint.

He murmurs, “It means I’d rather collapse than let you run out of my sight.”