Chapter 25: The library
The smell of old paper and lemon polish was supposed to be calming.It wasn’t. Every squeak of a chair, every rustle of pages from the study carrels down on the second floor, felt like a judge’s gavel falling.I kept checking the stairwell.
Chloe was already curled in the window nook, a halo of dusty afternoon sun lighting up her flyaway brown hair.She had a sociology textbook open on her lap, but she wasn’t reading. She was watching me climb the last steps, her expression a mix of nerves and something else.Expectation.
“Hey,” I said, my voice too loud for the hushed floor.I winced.
“Hey.” She closed the book softly. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“I said I would.” I dragged the other leather armchair closer to her. The feet scraped against the hardwood, a sound that seemed to echo forever.We were alone up here. The third-floor nook was a forgotten spot, just a few shelves of local history no one ever read. I’d suggested it.
“About last night…” she started, tucking her hair behind her ear.“Don’t.” The word came out sharper than I meant. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees.“Just… don’t, okay?It was weird. I’m sorry I was there.”
She studied me.“You looked… I don’t know. Shell-shocked.”
A laugh barked out of me, hollow and ugly.“Yeah. That’s one word for it.” I’d replayed it a thousand times. Nora’s throaty commands.Chloe’s head thrown back. The possessive, deliberate way Nora’s hands had moved.It wasn’t jealousy that twisted in my gut now. It was a deep, corrosive shame.I’d been an audience.A prop. I’d loved it and hated myself for loving it.“Your stepmom is… intense,” Chloe whispered, her cheeks coloring.
“You have no idea.” The words were bitter.I looked at Chloe then—really looked. She was pretty in a normal way.Soft eyes, a mouth that smiled easily. She liked indie bands and wrote poems in the margins of her notebooks. She was a universe away from the calculated, golden heat of Nora.She was safe.Maybe that’s what I needed.Something real. Something that belonged to me.
“Can we just… not talk about her?” I asked, my voice softening.“Can we just be here?You and me?”
Relief washed over her face. She wanted normalcy too.“Yeah. Sure.”
I slid out of my chair and onto the worn Persian rug next to her nook.I leaned my back against the shelf below the window. Our knees were almost touching.I picked at a loose thread in the rug. “What were you reading?”
“Nothing.Boring textbook stuff.” She nudged my shoe with hers. “I’m glad you texted.”
“Me too.”
The silence that followed wasn’t the heavy, charged silence of Nora’s house.It was just quiet. Sun-warmed and full of dust motes dancing in the light.I could breathe here. For a minute, the crushing weight of Nora’s rules, the phantom glare of that photo on her phone, receded.
I reached over and put my hand on her ankle, just above her sock.Her skin was warm. She didn’t pull away.“Ethan…” Her voice was a question.
“Is this okay?”
She nodded, a small, quick motion.My hand moved up, slowly, over the calf of her jeans. It was clumsy. My heart was hammering, but it was a different rhythm than the terror-driven pounding Nora inspired.This was the old, familiar anxiety of a teenage boy making a move. It was almost comforting in its simplicity.I looked up at her. She was biting her lower lip, watching my hand travel up her leg.Her breath hitched when my fingers reached the bend of her knee.
This was what I was supposed to want.A girl my own age. A sweet, slow exploration in a sunlit library.A secret that was just ours.But my mind betrayed me. The feel of denim under my palm became the memory of soft cotton sweats. Chloe’s quiet whimper echoed the sounds I’d heard from her last night, but they were paler, less certain. I was trying to rewrite the script, to be the one in charge, but my own body was a traitor.My movements felt learned, practiced from a different, darker tutorial.
I shifted, rising up on my knees to get closer to her. My hand slid higher, to the middle of her thigh.Her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated. She brought a hand to my shoulder, not pushing, just resting it there.
“We shouldn’t… not here,” she whispered, but there was no conviction in it.“No one comes up here,” I murmured back. I was leaning in now, my face inches from hers. I could smell her perfume, something fruity and light.I closed my eyes, trying to block out everything else. Trying to just be here, with Chloe.My phone buzzed in my back pocket.
A hard, violent jolt against my hipbone.I froze.My eyes flew open. Chloe’s face was right there, confused by my sudden stiffness.It buzzed again.And again.Not a call. A rapid-fire sequence of texts.My blood turned to slush in my veins.I knew. With a certainty that felt like a physical blow, I knew.
“You should get that,” Chloe said softly, leaning back a fraction, giving me space.I pulled the phone out, my fingers numb. The screen was blinding in the dim nook.Three messages. All from N.
The first was the photo.The one from her bedroom.My lips on her neck, my hand between her legs. My own private horror, gleaming up at me.The second was a screenshot of a map. A little pulsing blue dot.Here.The library.The third floor.
The third was just text: Her jeans are tight.Are you comparing her to me?The world tilted. The sun-dappled quiet of the nook became a grotesque diorama.She was watching. She knew where I was.She knew what I was doing. The photo wasn’t just leverage; it was a leash.And she had just given it a vicious, mocking jerk.“Ethan? What is it?” Chloe’s voice sounded far away. “You’re white as a sheet.”
I stood up so fast I got lightheaded. I shoved the phone deep into my pocket, as if I could bury the evidence.“I have to go.”
“What?Why? Did something happen?”
“I just… I can’t.” I was already backing toward the stairs. The shame was back, a tsunami now, drowning the brief respite I’d felt. I wasn’t escaping Nora.I was performing for her, and she was grading me from the shadows. “I’m sorry, Chloe.”
“Ethan, wait—”
But I was already turning, taking the metal stairs two at a time, the clanging footsteps chasing me down into the musty darkness, away from the sun, back toward the only game I was allowed to play.