The library's back corner smelled like dust and old paper, the kind of quiet that felt private rather than empty. A single lamp cast a yellow cone over the scarred oak table where Tyler sat, his textbooks open in a messy semicircle, a yellow highlighter paused mid-stroke in his hand.

She spotted him before he saw her. His head was bent over something, brow furrowed, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth as he read. The baggy gray hoodie hung off his shoulders, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, and she noticed the muscle underneath—the way his forearm tensed when he underlined something.

Her chest tightened. She crossed the distance before she could second-guess it, her boots soft on the carpet, and pulled out the chair across from him. The metal legs scraped against the floor. He looked up.

His hand stilled on the page.

"Hi," she said, and her voice came out quieter than she'd planned. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, and the thin black fabric of her crop top stretched across her chest. She watched his eyes drop to the table, to his textbook, anywhere but her.

"H-hi." He swallowed. The highlighter in his hand trembled slightly before he set it down. "I—I didn't think you'd actually want to study. After yesterday."

"Why wouldn't I?"

He shrugged, one shoulder, and his eyes stayed fixed on the page in front of him. "I don't know. Just... figured it was a one-time thing."

She wanted to tell him that nothing about him felt like a one-time thing. That she'd lain awake last night replaying every second of their cafeteria conversation, cringing at how awkward she'd sounded, wondering if he'd noticed the way her hands shook under the table. Instead, she pulled a notebook out of her bag and set it in front of her. "I told you I needed help with calc. I wasn't lying."

He looked up then, and something in his face relaxed. "Okay." A small smile. "Okay. Give me a second—lemme finish this paragraph."

She watched him read. His lips moved slightly with the words, and his finger traced the page as he went. There was something unbearably endearing about it, the way he disappeared into whatever he was studying, the way the world seemed to fall away when he concentrated.

A shadow fell across the table.

"Well, well, well. Look who crawled out of his mom's basement."

The voice was loud, nasal, designed to carry. Three guys in letterman jackets stood at the end of the table, their postures loose and ugly. The one in front—blond, buzzcut, a smirk that made her skin crawl—was already doing it. Puffing his chest out. Getting ready.

Tyler's hand went still on the page. She saw his jaw tighten, saw the way his shoulders curved inward, like he was trying to make himself smaller.

"What're you doing with a piece like this, Volkov? She lost a bet?" The blond's eyes slid to her, slow and assessing, the way every jock on campus looked at her. Like she was a thing to be won. "Hey, sweetheart. You know he stutters, right? Like a fucking cartoon character. I-I-I d-d-don't—"

He kept going. The other two laughed. And Tyler just sat there, his face blank, his hand frozen on the highlighter, and she watched something in his eyes go dead and familiar.

Her blood turned hot.

"Hey." Her voice cut through the laughter, sharp and cold. She didn't stand up. She leaned back in her chair instead, let the silence stretch, and looked the blond dead in the eye. "You done?"

He blinked. "What?"

"I asked if you were done." She let her voice drop, honey and edge, the same tone she used when she wanted something and wasn't going to take no for an answer. "Or do you need a few more minutes to prove you peaked in high school?"

The guys behind him shifted. The blond's smirk flickered. "Listen, bitch—"

"No, you listen." She stood up then, slow, letting the motion pull her crop top up just enough to show a sliver of her waist. She watched his eyes drop to it. She watched him swallow. "You're gonna walk away. Right now. And you're gonna leave Tyler here alone, every time you see him on campus. Or the next time I see you, I'm gonna tell every single girl I know exactly how you talk to women. And I know a lot of girls." She smiled, all teeth. "Want to find out how fast your reputation dies?"

The blond's face went red. His fists clenched at his sides. For a second, she thought he might push it, might make this ugly. But his eyes flicked to Tyler, then back to her, and something in his posture deflated.

"Whatever. He's not worth the trouble."

He turned and walked. The other two followed, shooting glances over their shoulders, and the sound of their boots faded into the main room of the library.

She stood there for a long moment, her heart slamming against her ribs, her hands shaking. Then she sat back down.

Tyler hadn't moved. His hand was still on the highlighter, but his knuckles were white now, and his face was very still.

"I'm sorry," she said. The words came out rough. "I'm sorry they—"

"It's fine." His voice was flat. He didn't look at her. "Happens every day. You get used to it."

"That's not—" She stopped. Felt the gap between what she wanted to say and what he'd let her say. "That's not fine. That's not even close to fine."

He shrugged. The same one-shouldered shrug from before, but heavier now. "Doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

He looked up at that. Something flickered in his eyes—surprise, maybe, or confusion. Like he couldn't quite figure out why she was still sitting here. Like he expected her to make an excuse and leave.

"Let's go somewhere else," she said. "Somewhere quiet. My place—we can study there. I'll make coffee."

His face did something complicated. "I—I don't..." He shook his head. "No. I mean. I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because." He ran a hand through his hair, and she saw the tremor in his fingers. "Because I don't—you don't have to do this. You don't have to pretend to want to be around me just because you felt bad about what happened. I get it. I'm used to it."

Something in her chest cracked. "Tyler."

"I mean it. You don't have to. I won't—I won't be weird about it. You can just go."

She reached across the table. Her hand stopped an inch from his, hovered there, and she watched him watch her fingers. "I'm not pretending."

He stared at her hand. "My place," he said, so quiet she almost missed it. "If you—I mean. If you're sure you want to. We can go to my place."

Her heart stopped. Then started again, harder. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay." She pulled her hand back, but slowly. "Let's go to your place."

He packed his books in silence, moving carefully, like he was afraid she'd change her mind if he went too fast. She watched his hands, the way they handled the textbooks with practiced ease, the way he tucked the highlighter into his bag's side pocket like it had a designated home.

They walked side by side through the parking lot. The afternoon sun was warm on her shoulders, but the air had a bite to it, the kind of cold that crept up on you. His car was a beat-up sedan, the paint faded to a color that might have been blue once, a crack running across the passenger side mirror.

He opened her door for her.

The gesture caught her off guard. She looked up at him, and he was already looking away, his ears red, his hand shoved into his pocket. She climbed in. The seats were worn, the fabric soft under her thighs, and the floor mats had a faint smell of gasoline and something floral—air freshener, maybe, or whatever he used to keep the car from smelling like old socks.

The drive was quiet. He didn't turn on the radio, and she didn't fill the silence. She watched the buildings change as they drove, the campus neighborhood giving way to streets with cracked sidewalks and boarded-up storefronts. The houses got smaller. The cars got older.

He pulled up in front of a narrow house with peeling paint and a porch that sagged in the middle. Somewhere down the block, a dog was barking. A group of kids were playing basketball in the street, their shouts echoing off the buildings.

He killed the engine and sat there for a second, his hands still on the wheel. "It's not—it's not fancy."

"I don't care."

He looked at her then, really looked, and she felt the weight of it in her chest. "Okay." He grabbed his bag. "Come on."

As they walked up the cracked path to the front door, he stopped. Turned. Pulled off his hoodie and held it out to her, the fabric bunched in his hands. "Here. You're gonna be cold. My mom keeps the heat low."

She looked at the hoodie. Then at him. He was standing there in a plain white t-shirt, and she could see the shape of him now—broad shoulders, the beginning of muscle definition under the fabric. She took the hoodie slowly, pulled it over her head. It was warm from his body, and it smelled like him. Detergent. A faint trace of sweat.

It swallowed her. The sleeves hung past her fingertips, and the hem hit her mid-thigh. She felt small in it. She felt like someone he was taking care of.

She tried not to think about what it meant that he offered it to her. Tried not to let the small voice in her head whisper that he was covering her up because he didn't want to look at her. That the hoodie wasn't kindness—it was a shield. His way of saying I don't want to see your body.

She followed him inside.

The house was small and clean. The living room had a worn couch and a television that looked ten years old, a thin blanket draped over the armrest. A stack of textbooks sat on the coffee table next to a single coffee mug. The walls were bare except for a framed photo—an older woman with the same dark hair as Tyler, smiling at whoever took the picture.

He led her down a narrow hallway to a door at the end. He pushed it open and stepped aside to let her enter first.

The room was tight. A twin bed hugged one wall, the sheets pulled taut and tucked in at the corners with military precision. A small desk sat under the window, the same scarred oak as the library table, a lamp casting the same yellow cone of light. A single dresser stood against the opposite wall, its surface bare except for a wallet and a set of keys.

She stood in the center of the room, the hoodie hanging off her shoulders, and looked at the space that held his entire life. It was so small. So spare. And somehow, it felt more intimate than any room she'd ever been in.

"Is it okay if I sit on the bed?"

He blinked. "Yeah. Yeah, of course." He dropped his bag by the desk and sat in the chair, swiveling to face her. "Sorry it's—I know it's not..."

"It's fine." She sat down on the edge of the mattress. It dipped under her weight, the springs creaking. She pulled her knees up, wrapped her arms around them, and watched him from across the room. "I like it."

He looked at her like she was speaking a language he didn't quite understand. "Why?"

She didn't have an answer that made sense. She didn't know how to say that his room felt like him—quiet and careful and clean. That the threadbare sheets and the single pillow and the empty walls made her want to crawl under his skin and live there.

She shrugged, the hoodie shifting on her shoulders. "I just do."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he pulled a textbook out of his bag, opened it to a page marked with a folded corner, and said, "Okay. Let's get started."

She watched his hand move across the page, the same steady focus from the library, and she let herself sit in the smallness of his room, in the space he'd let her into, and she waited for him to look at her like she wanted him to.

He didn't.

But he was still here. And so was she.

Tyler opened the textbook to a chapter on cellular respiration, the highlighter still in his hand. He started explaining—slowly at first, his voice stumbling over the longer words, but then he found a rhythm, his finger tracing the diagram of the mitochondria. She watched his mouth move, the way his lips formed the syllables, and she had to physically look away, force her eyes down to the page.

"You get it?" he asked, and she realized she hadn't heard a word.

"Yeah. No. I mean—" She pressed her palm to her forehead. "Can you say that again? I got distracted."

He waited. Didn't call her out. Just backed up and started over, slower this time, and she let the words sink in. The Krebs cycle. ATP. She actually needed this—her grade was hanging by a thread, and she'd been bluffing her way through labs all semester.

An hour passed. Two. He had a gift for explaining things, breaking them into pieces that made sense. She asked questions, real ones, and he answered without making her feel stupid. His hand moved across the page, underlining key terms, and she noticed the calluses on his fingers, the way his knuckles were slightly scarred.

"You use your hands a lot," she said.

He looked at his own hands like he'd forgotten they existed. "I work. At a garage. After school."

"Oh." She thought of the neighborhood, the peeling paint on the porch, and didn't ask more.

Her phone buzzed. Her mom: On my way. 20 minutes.

"My mom's coming to get me," she said. "I should—" She stood, and the hoodie fell around her like a tent. "Can I borrow your phone? To put my number in?"

He blinked. "My phone?"

"So we can text about tutoring," she said, and the lie tasted like honey. "Unless you don't want to."

He fumbled in his bag, pulled out an old flip phone, and handed it to her. The plastic was warm from his pocket. She opened it, navigated to the contacts, and typed in her name: Tina ❤️. Then she paused, looked at him—he was packing up his books, not watching—and she unzipped the hoodie just enough to show the curve of her breasts, the black lace of her thong visible above the jeans. She held the phone up, took a quick picture of herself, and saved it to his phone.

She handed it back. "There. Now you have me."

He looked down at the screen. His ears turned red. "Oh. That's—okay."

"One more thing." She took the phone from his hand, switched to the camera, and raised it. "Smile."

He didn't have time to react. She snapped the picture—his startled face, the scar through his eyebrow, the soft confusion in his eyes. She attached it to his contact photo before he could protest.

"Now I have you," she said, and handed the phone back.

He stared at the screen for a long moment. "You didn't have to—"

"I wanted to." She pulled the hoodie closed again, zipped it up to her chin. "Thank you. For the tutoring. And the hoodie."

"You can keep it." The words came out fast, like he was scared she'd argue. "I mean—if you want. It's old."

"I want." She smiled at him, and for a second the room felt smaller, warmer, like the space between them was thick with something unsaid.

Her phone buzzed again. Mom was outside.

She walked to the door, then turned. "I'll text you."

"Okay." He was standing by the desk, his hands shoved in his pockets, and she could feel his eyes on her as she walked down the hallway, through the living room, out the front door.

The night air hit her face, cold and sharp. She climbed into her mom's car, a warm sedan smelling of coffee and vanilla air freshener.

"So," her mom said, pulling away from the curb. "Who's the boy?"

"No one." She sank into the passenger seat, the hoodie soft against her cheek. "Just a tutor."

"Uh-huh." Her mom glanced at her, then at the hoodie. "That his?"

"I forgot my jacket."

"You're wearing it like you're trying to disappear into it."

She didn't answer. She watched the streetlights slide past, the neighborhood giving way to better-lit streets, and she let herself think about him. The way his voice softened when he explained things. The scar over his eyebrow. The way he'd looked at her like she was something precious and he didn't know what to do with it.

At home, she changed into an old t-shirt and leggings, crawled into bed, and lay awake in the dark, his number glowing on her phone screen. She typed a message: Made it home safe. Thanks for tonight. Then she deleted it. Typed: I liked studying with you. Deleted it. Finally, she just sent: Goodnight, Tyler.

She fell asleep with her phone in her hand, the screen still lit.

The next morning, she woke early. She pulled on his hoodie—no bra, the fabric soft against her nipples—and a pair of jeans so ripped they barely qualified as pants, the denim frayed high on her thighs, the curve of her ass visible through the tears in the back. A black thong. She left her hair loose, put on lip gloss, and told herself she wasn't trying too hard.

She found him in the lecture hall, hunched over his notebook, and her chest flooded with warmth. She was about to walk over when she saw them: three jocks from the basketball team, surrounding his desk, their voices loud enough to carry across the room.

"Yo, Volkov, you think she actually likes you?" One of them grabbed the edge of his notebook, pretending to read it. "What's this? Notes for your little study date?"

Tyler's face was pale. He didn't look up.

"Bro, you really think you got a chance with her? Look at you. You dress like a homeless guy."

"She was just being nice," another one said. "She fucks with guys like you for fun, then fucks guys like us for real."

Tyler's hand tightened on his pen. He didn't respond.

She felt the rage bloom in her chest, hot and fast. She walked toward them, her hips swaying, and when she reached the group, she didn't stop. She stepped right into the middle of them, unzipped his hoodie with one slow movement, and let it hang open. Her nipples, hard from the cold, visible through the fabric that wasn't there.

"Hey, boys." Her voice was honey-coated razor blades. "Having fun?"

They turned. All three sets of eyes dropped to her chest.

"Whoa—Tina—"

"You want my attention?" She smiled, slow and predatory. "Then you promise to leave him alone. Every day. No more jokes. No more copying his stutter. You pretend he doesn't exist. Deal?"

The first one swallowed. "Yeah. Yeah, totally. Whatever you want."

"Promise." She held up her pinky.

He hooked his pinky in hers, his face flushed. The other two nodded frantically.

"Good." She zipped the hoodie back up. "Now get lost. I need to sit with my tutor."

They scrambled away like cockroaches under light.

She turned to Tyler. He was staring at her, his expression unreadable. His hand was still gripping the pen, white-knuckled.

"Is it okay if I sit next to you?" Her voice came out small, stripped of the bravado she'd just worn like armor. Her heart was hammering. She waited for him to tell her to go away, to say she'd made it worse, to not want her near him anymore.

He looked at her. Then at the hoodie she was wearing. His eyes traced the black fabric, the way it hung off her shoulders, and she saw recognition flicker in them.

Her heart froze. He's going to ask for it back. He thinks I'm wearing it to show off. He thinks I'm just like them.

"I—I brought it to give back to you," she said, the words tumbling out, clumsy. "I was going to. But this morning I was rushing, and I didn't—I didn't put a bra on, and I didn't want to—you know—"

The lie tasted sour in her mouth. She'd chosen to wear it. She'd pulled it on like a second skin because it smelled like him, because she wanted to carry him with her. But she couldn't say that. Not while he was looking at her like she was a stranger.

His knuckles brushed her collarbone—featherlight, accidental, the ghost of a touch—and she stopped breathing. The zipper climbed past the hollow of her throat, past the curve of her chest, until the black fabric pressed against her chin. She stared at his hand. At the way his fingers lingered for a half-second longer than necessary before pulling away.

"You were—" He cleared his throat. "You were showing a lot of skin."

Her heart slammed against her ribs. A dozen responses rose in her throat—*I always show skin, you've seen me in crop tops before*—but none of them made it past her lips. She just sat there, the hoodie warm against her throat, the spot where his knuckles had touched her still tingling.

"I brought it back." She heard herself say it, heard how stupid it sounded. "For you. I mean—to give back."

He looked at the hoodie. At her. "You can keep it."

"Really?" The word came out too eager, too bright. She bit her lip.

"Yeah." He picked up his highlighter, uncapped it, and she watched his hand shake slightly before he pressed it to the page. "It looks better on you anyway."

Her chest flooded with warmth. She pulled the hoodie tighter around herself, letting the fabric pool in her lap, and watched him work. The way his brow furrowed when he read. The way his lips moved silently over the words. The scar that cut through his eyebrow, pale and thin, a story she wanted to know.

"I'm sorry," she said.

He looked up. "For what?"

"For them. For the way they talk to you." She wrapped her arms around herself, the hoodie bunching at her elbows. "I should have—I don't know. Done something sooner."

He was quiet for a long moment. Then he set down his highlighter and looked at her, really looked at her, and she felt her palms go damp against the table's surface.

"You didn't have to do that," he said. "Stand up for me."

"Yes I did."

"Why?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it. The answer was right there, burning on her tongue—*because I can't stand to see anyone hurt you, because I think about you when I'm trying to fall asleep, because you looked at me like I mattered and I can't stop thinking about it*—but the words wouldn't come. They stuck in her throat like stones.

"Because it wasn't fair," she said finally. "And I don't like bullies."

He nodded slowly. She couldn't tell if he believed her.

"Can we—" She swallowed. "Can we still study together? After that?"

"If you want to."

"I want to." The words came out too fast, too desperate. She forced herself to slow down. "I mean—yeah. I need the help. With the exam."

He studied her for a moment, and she felt like he could see right through her, past the crop top and the jeans and the careful mask she wore. Then he pulled a notebook from his stack and slid it across the table.

"We can start with chapter four," he said. "If you want."

She nodded, her throat tight, and bent over the page. The hoodie slipped off one shoulder. She didn't fix it.

An hour later, her head was spinning with equations and formulas and the warmth of his shoulder inches from hers. He'd moved to the chair beside her at some point, leaning over to point at something in her notebook, and she'd stopped processing words entirely. She could smell him. Laundry detergent and something underneath, something warm and clean. She wanted to bury her face in his neck and breathe him in until she forgot her own name.

"You're not following."

She jerked upright. "I am. I'm following."

He raised an eyebrow. The one with the scar.

"Okay, I'm not following." She laughed, embarrassed. "Can you explain it again?"

He didn't sigh. He didn't roll his eyes. He just turned the notebook toward himself and started again, slower this time, his voice soft and patient. She watched his hands as he wrote. The veins on the back of them. The way his fingers moved, precise and confident, and she wondered what those hands would feel like on her skin.

"Tina."

She blinked. "What?"

"I asked if you understood."

"Yes." She hadn't heard a word he'd said.

He looked at her for a long moment. Then he set down his pen. "You know you don't actually have to study with me, right?"

Her heart stopped. "What?"

"If you're just here because you feel bad about what happened—"

"I'm not."

"—or because you think you have to—"

"Tyler." She reached across the table and grabbed his hand before she could think about it. His fingers went still under hers. She felt the heat of his skin, the roughness of his palm, and she forgot how to breathe. "I'm here because I want to be."

He stared at their hands. She stared at their hands. The library hummed around them—pages turning, footsteps, the distant murmur of conversation—but she couldn't hear any of it. She could only feel his hand beneath hers, the way his thumb twitched, the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

"Okay," he said, his voice rough.

"Okay." She pulled her hand back slowly, her fingers trailing across his knuckles. "So. Chapter four."

When the library lights flickered, signaling closing time, she felt a pang of disappointment. She'd barely made a dent in the material—she'd spent most of the time watching his mouth move, his hands gesture, the way his glasses slipped down his nose and he pushed them back up with his middle finger.

"I can walk you to your car," he said, packing his bag.

"I don't have one." She stood, stretching her arms above her head. The hoodie rode up, exposing a strip of her stomach. She saw his eyes flick to it, then away. "I was dripped off."

"It's dark."

"I'll be fine."

"I'll take you home."

She turned to look at him. He was slinging his backpack over one shoulder, avoiding her eyes. "You don't have to do that."

"I know." He looked up, and something in his expression made her chest ache. "But I want to."

She smiled, small and real. "Okay."