“Oh god, yeah.”
“Now we just need to do that with everybody else. And I know where to start: the same place I went to, when I was sure you were something you’re not.”
“The library, then?” he asked.
“The library, then,” she agreed, so excited for a second that she wasn’t sure what happened. One moment she was Mina, cautious and unsure of what all of this was. The next she was reacting like someone else. Bram saidlet’s do book things and solve problems,and a new kind of glee overtook her.
It made her take hold of his sweater.
Two great fistfuls of it, until he was suddenly close. Very close. Closer than that even, because oh good god was that his mouth on hers? It was, and she had done it. She had made it happen. She had kissed him, all clumsy eager exuberance.
And Harker? Well, he was very not that.
He was cold. He was disdainful. He looked down on things like clashing teeth and explosive joy and passion.Oh god, she thought, as he made a sound of shock horror. Her face already heating, her excuses already lined up, her body leaning away from his.
And then his hand went to her waist.
And instead of letting her go, he hauled her closer.
It wasn’t horror; it was delight, her brain informed her.
This isn’t Harker, this is Bram, it tried to stress, Then for just one blissful moment, she let herself feel it. She sank into it, the same as he was doing, with one long groan of relief. At long last, that body language seemed to say.
Before he came back to his senses, and ripped himself away.
Chapter Twenty-Five
They sat opposite each other, at the same table she had been sat at when he had come to torment her, all that time ago. Annals of the right years piled up next to them. Both of them flicking through, studying pictures of students who looked suspiciously similar to anyone around now. Making lists of professors and patrons and members of the magical authorities in close proximity. Everything quiet and peaceful, until she found another picture of him.
And this one was something else.
It wasn’t just a side profile. It was dead on, and close up, over a caption that saidMost Prolific Library Patron 1988. Everything about it ridiculous, including the little placard he was holding, proclaiming his title. But his face—god, his face. For the first time, she didn’t just accept that he was handsome.
She understood what it was to feel desire over the kind of handsome he had been. And it made her blurt very foolish things out, before she could think. “Mygod, you were gorgeous,” she said. Then knew that he had snapped a look up at her. She practically felt it happen and cringed.
She couldn’t look at him.
Even though he didn’t laugh. He just stayed silent for a moment, then finally and rather carefully spoke, into the suddenlytense air. “So you think I was better the way I was then,” he said. While she did her best not to meet his gaze.
“Not for most people. I mean you are probably more classically handsome now.”
“Yes, but classically handsome isn’t the least bit attractive to you.”
“What does that matter?” she asked, confused enough that she looked up without thinking. But she wasn’t confused once she had, because suddenly the man in the picture and the one sat with her were the same.Exactlythe same. The softness, the sideburns, the messy hair. God, it was like seeing a ghost.
“I think you know why it does.”
“You shouldn’t do that. Someone else will see.”
“They won’t. This is just for you—if you want it to be.”
She shook her head, almost angrily. “No, okay? No. It’s not your exact features that matter, it’s not your hair being a certain way. I just—I like when I can see you, underneath. The good stuff, inside.”
“And now you can see it better.”
“I could already. The second you let yourself be kind.”
“Really warms up my face, doesn’t it? I was surprised by that, honestly. How much I changed, whenever I made myself cold and cruel. I really didn’t have to do much, to seem like a different person to anyone who saw me.”
