CHAPTER 1
TALON
The campus library smelled exactly like I remembered—old paper and too much ambition.
Mostly other people’s ambition, though, because mine was on life support. After four hours of training and another hour of pretending to be the team’s golden retriever for the boosters, I wanted one thing: silence.
It had been three years since I’d walked these halls as a student, but the place hadn’t changed. Same flickering light in the stairwell, same outdated “Quiet Please” posters taped to the walls. The only difference was me. Back then, I’d been juggling swim meets and business classes I didn’t care about. Now I juggled swim meets and a writing career I couldn’t tell a soul about.
I needed this room. My room.
The tucked-away study nook on the third floor was perfect—no foot traffic, no chatty undergrads, no one looking over my shoulder to see thatinstead of spreadsheets or sports stats, I was typing about sword fights and morally gray princes.
Except today, the door was already open.
And someone was in my chair.
A woman sat at the far end of the table, brown hair pulled into a messy knot, hazel eyes scanning the laptop screen like it had personally insulted her. She was surrounded by textbooks and coffee cups—one ceramic mug, one paper to-go. Backup caffeine, I assumed.
Her gaze flicked up, landed on me, and stayed there just a beat too long. Not aWho are you?look. More like anOh, I know exactly who you arelook.
“Hey,” I said, keeping my tone neutral.
“This room’s taken.” She gestured with her pen toward her pile of notes like it was a signed lease agreement.
I stepped inside anyway. “Pretty sure it’s first come, first serve.”
“I was here first.”
“And I was here first for about … three months straight, every Tuesday and Thursday.”
Her brow arched. “Three years ago, maybe.”
Okay, she definitely knew me. And not just from the swim posters still plastered around campus. From her tone, I was pretty sure she’d clocked the wholelocal celebrity who doesn’t actually go here anymorething.
The reason I trained at the university, even though my college days were behind me, was because the top swimmers—Olympians, trial qualifiers, the ones who hadn’t aged out yet—all trained here under elitecoaches. The facilities were better than any club could offer, and if you wanted to make it to the highest level, this was the only place to be. For me, it wasn’t about a degree anymore. It was about a shot at a dream.
But here was the problem: this was the only spot where I could write without the whole swim team—or half the student body—walking past me.
I slung my backpack onto the other chair. “Guess we’re sharing.”
She exhaled like I’d just suggested we co-parent a cat.
I pulled out my laptop and set it down like a declaration of war.
Her eyes narrowed. “You’re really not leaving?”
“Not unless you’ve got a better nook to recommend.”
Her lips pressed together in a way that said shedidknow another place … but she wasn’t about to tell me.
Fine.
I settled in, opened my laptop, and angled the screen slightly away from her. Old habit. It’s not that I thought she would lean over and read my work, it’s just that people had a way of making comments when they saw six paragraphs of romantic tension and a sword duel instead of the email I was “supposed” to be answering.
The cursor taunted me as it blinked, my brain refusing to pick up where I left off.
Instead, I kept catching glimpses of her out of the corner of my eye. She had this laser focus when she read, the kind that made her brow furrow just slightly,lips moving like she was sounding out each word in her head. Her pen tapped against the table every thirty seconds, a steady metronome I found both distracting and weirdly calming.