The silence of the Westbridge library was a physical presence, thick and heavy, broken only by the soft rustle of pages and the distant hum of the climate control system. It was Amelia's sanctuary, a kingdom of ordered knowledge where she felt entirely in control. Or, she usually did.
Tonight, that control felt tenuous.
She was tucked into her favorite carrel on the third floor, the one tucked behind the towering shelves of literary criticism, surrounded by a fortress of books. She was deep into an analysis of the narrative framing in Wuthering Heights, her brow furrowed in concentration. The first essay for Professor Evans's class was proving to be as brutal as Adrian had predicted.
A soft scuff of a shoe on the polished floor made her look up. Her breath caught.
Adrian Vale was standing at the entrance to her carrel, his hands shoved into the pockets of his dark jeans. He looked out of place here, among the worn spines and the faint smell of old paper. He was too bright, too modern, too… large for this quiet space.
"Library Girl," he said, his voice a low murmur that somehow carried in the hush. "Fancy finding you here."
Amelia closed her book with a soft thud. "Do you ever get tired of that joke?"
"Not really," he said, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. He nodded towards the empty chair opposite her. "Is this seat taken?"
"By a mountain of work, yes."
"I can share the mountain." He didn't wait for an invitation, sliding into the chair and pulling out his own copy of the Brontë text. It was pristine, the spine unbroken. Of course.
They sat in a charged silence for a few minutes. Amelia tried to focus on her notes, but she was hyper-aware of his presence, of the way he casually turned the pages, of the faint, clean scent of his soap cutting through the dusty air.
"So," he began, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table. "Lockwood. Idiot or just profoundly unlucky?"
It was the exact question she'd been wrestling with. The first, easy answer was 'idiot.' But the essay demanded more. She looked at him, suspicious. "Is this a real question, or are you just trying to distract me?"
"Can't it be both?" he countered, his blue eyes glinting in the warm library light. "But yes, it's real. I think he's a narrative convenience. A pair of eyes too stupid to understand what he's seeing, which allows the reader to discover the horror alongside him."
It was a solid, academic point. And it annoyed her that he'd made it.
"That's reductive," Amelia found herself saying, her competitive instincts flaring. "He's more than a device. He represents the outside world, the 'civilized' society that is completely unequipped to handle the raw, primal passion of Wuthering Heights. His inability to comprehend it is the whole point. He's not just unlucky; he's emblematic of a failing."
Adrian leaned back, a slow, appreciative smile spreading across his face. It wasn't the smug smirk from the coffee spill or the cafeteria. This was different. This was the look of someone who had just found a worthy opponent.
"Emblematic of a failing," he repeated, rolling the words around as if tasting them. "Okay. I'll give you that. But what about the second narrator, Nelly Dean? Reliable, or the biggest gossip in all of Yorkshire?"
And just like that, they were off. The quiet carrel became an arena. They debated Nelly's biases, the structure of the dual narrative, the symbolism of the moors. Adrian's arguments were sharp, intuitive, and surprisingly well-informed. He wasn't relying on wealth or charm here; he was relying on his mind. And it was a formidable one.
Amelia found herself arguing back with a passion she usually reserved for her private journal. She wasn't just defending her thesis; she was matching him, point for point, sometimes parrying, sometimes attacking. It was exhilarating. For stretches of time, she forgot he was Adrian Vale. He was just a smart, challenging guy who loved books.
"You know," he said after a particularly heated exchange about Heathcliff's morality, his voice dropping again, "for someone who claims to want a quiet life in the library, you fight pretty dirty."
"I don't fight dirty," she retorted, a flush of pleasure warming her cheeks. "I fight to win."
"I'm starting to see that." He held her gaze for a moment too long, and the air between them shifted. The intellectual charge sparked into something else, something warmer and more dangerous.
He looked away, breaking the spell. "So, the study group. You never gave me a real answer."
Amelia looked down at her annotated copy of the book, her heart thumping a steady, nervous rhythm. This was the chasm again. The Cafeteria Divide. Saying yes felt like stepping onto his turf, into his world. But here, in her sanctuary, with the ghost of their debate still hanging in the air, it felt different.
"I have a closing shift tomorrow at the Grounds Keep," she said slowly, not looking at him. "But I'm free after. Around nine."
She could feel his smile. "Nine it is. We can continue… dissecting the failings of civilized society."
He stood up, gathering his pristine book. "Don't stay up too late, Reed. Your arguments need to be sharp for tomorrow."
And then he was gone, his footsteps fading into the silence.
Amelia stared at the space where he'd been. The library felt different now. Quieter, but also less like a sanctuary and more like a stage. The skirmish was over. A temporary, intellectual truce had been called. But as she looked at the empty chair opposite her, she had the unnerving feeling that the real battle was just beginning. And for the first time, she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to win.