The rain starts exactly when I reach the library doors.
I'm not superstitious, but if I were, I'd say the universe is trying to tell me something. Thunder rumbles in the distance as I push through the heavy wooden doors of Riverside Academy's library, shaking water from my jacket.
October in Boston is unpredictable. This morning was sunshine. Now it's apocalypse.
I count my steps as I walk—a habit I developed freshman year when anxiety would make my chest tight. From the entrance to the back corner where the poetry section lives: exactly forty-three steps. Counting keeps me grounded. Reminds me I'm still here, still surviving this school full of people who belong here in ways I never will.
Aurelio Santoro is already at our table.
Of course he is. He's always ten minutes early to everything, like being late would somehow disappoint the universe itself. His dark curls fall into his eyes as he reads, and he pushes them back absently. I've watched him do this approximately eight hundred times in the past month. Not that I'm counting.
Okay, I'm counting.
"Hey," he says, looking up with that smile that makes my stomach do stupid things. "I got you coffee."
There's a cup from his family's café sitting on the table. The expensive kind that costs seven dollars and comes with actual cinnamon, not the fake powder they use at chain places.
"With cinnamon?" I ask, even though I already know.
"Always."
I sit across from him, wrapping my hands around the cup for warmth. Through the tall windows behind him, I can see the storm rolling in—dark clouds swallowing the afternoon light whole.
"We should probably finish this project before the weather gets worse," I say, pulling out my battered copy of *Wuthering Heights*. The spine is held together with tape and hope.
His is a first edition. Pristine. Probably worth more than my grandmother's monthly rent.
"About that," Aurelio says, and there's something different in his voice. Something that makes me look up from my book. "I have a question."
"About the project?"
"About forbidden love."
My heart does a complicated thing against my ribs. "That's literally the entire project, so you're going to need to be more specific."
"Do you believe in it?" He leans forward, elbows on the table. "The kind that destroys everything. The kind people write entire novels about."
Thunder crashes, closer now. The lights flicker once.
"I think people confuse destruction with passion," I say carefully. This feels like a test I don't know how to pass. "Just because love hurts doesn't make it real."
"Then what makes it real?"
The lights flicker again. Around us, students start gathering their things, mumbling about getting home before the storm hits. Within minutes, the library empties like someone pulled a fire alarm.
The building goes quiet. Just the sound of rain hammering the windows and my pulse hammering in my ears.
"I don't know yet," I whisper.
We're alone now. Completely alone in this massive library full of books about people who loved wrong and paid for it.
Aurelio stands up. Walks around the table. Sits in the chair next to me instead of across from me.
We've never sat this close before.
I can smell his cologne—cedar and something expensive I can't name. I can see the exact moment his chest rises and falls with breath. I can feel the heat coming off him even though there's still six inches of space between us.
"Cassia." Just my name. But the way he says it sounds like a question and an answer and a confession all at once.
Lightning flashes. For a second, the entire library goes white-bright, and I can see everything—the way he's looking at me like I'm something rare, the way his hands are trembling slightly on the table, the way this moment feels like standing on the edge of a cliff.
Thunder follows immediately. The lights go out completely.
Darkness. Total darkness.
I hear him move. Feel him closer.
"I've been wanting to do this for three weeks," he says, his voice so close I can feel his breath. "Tell me to stop."
I should stop him. Should remember that he's Aurelio Santoro, from the kind of Boston family where legacy matters more than love, and I'm Cassia Monroe, scholarship girl from Roxbury who steals pens from rich kids' desks and counts steps to keep panic at bay.
I should remember Grandma Rosa's warnings about boys like him. Should remember every book I've read where the poor girl falls for the rich boy and it ends in heartbreak.
Should, should, should.
But I don't say anything.
His lips find mine in the darkness.
The kiss is soft at first. Tentative. Testing. Like he's asking permission with his mouth. I answer by fisting my hands in the front of his expensive button-down shirt and pulling him closer.
Then it's not soft anymore. It's urgent and desperate and seven years of loneliness I didn't even know I was carrying. His hand slides into my hair. Mine find the back of his neck. My back hits the bookshelf behind me—the poetry section, I realize dimly. Neruda and Plath and all those poets who wrote about love like it was religion.
I understand now.
God, I understand everything now.
When the lights flicker back on, we break apart, breathing hard.
He rests his forehead against mine. I can feel his heartbeat racing under my palm, still pressed against his chest.
"I think I'm in trouble," he whispers.
"Why?"
"Because now I know what I've been missing. And I don't think I can go back to not knowing."
The rain continues outside, but inside, everything has changed. Every single thing.
"So what now?" I ask, my voice not quite steady.
He pulls back just enough to look at me. His grey eyes are searching my face like he's trying to memorize it.
"Now we see where this goes."
"Where what goes?"
"This." He gestures between us. "You and me. Whatever this is."
My practical brain kicks in. "You don't even know what this is."
"No. But I want to find out." His thumb brushes across my cheekbone. "Don't you?"
I should say no. Should protect myself. Should remember that stories like ours—scholarship girls and legacy boys—don't have happy endings.
But looking at him now, with his hair disheveled and his lips swollen from kissing me and his eyes holding something that looks dangerously close to hope, I can't make myself care about the ending.
Not yet.
"Yes," I whisper.
His smile could light up the entire city.
He kisses me again. Softer this time. Sweeter. Like a promise instead of a question.
When we finally gather our books and prepare to leave, the storm has passed. Just like that—violence and then calm. The afternoon sun breaks through the clouds, casting everything in gold.
We walk to the library entrance together. At the doors, he stops.
"Cassia?"
"Yeah?"
"I don't want this to be a one-time thing. The kiss. I don't want to go back to just being project partners who barely talk."
My heart is doing that impossible thing again. "What do you want?"
"You. I want you. However I can have you."
The honesty in his voice nearly undoes me.
"Okay," I say. It comes out as barely more than a breath.
"Okay?"
"Okay."
His smile is sunrise after the longest night.
"I'll see you tomorrow?" he asks.
"I'll be here."
"I'll bring coffee."
"With cinnamon?"
"Always."
I watch him walk to his BMW—the one his parents gave him for his seventeenth birthday. Watch him drive away. Then I stand there in the aftermath of the storm, trying to remember how to breathe normally.
My phone buzzes. A text from Poet, my best friend: *Where are you? You missed lunch.*
I type back: *Library. Got caught in the storm.*
*You okay?*
I look at the library behind me. At the poetry section visible through the windows. At the place where everything changed.
*Yeah,* I text back. *I think I am.*
But I'm lying. I'm not okay.
I'm terrified.
Because Aurelio Santoro just kissed me in the library during a thunderstorm, and I kissed him back, and nothing will ever be the same.
I count my steps on the way to the bus stop. Eight hundred and forty-seven exactly.
The number doesn't calm me this time.
Nothing can calm the storm that just started inside my chest.