One dark brow lifted. “So youdidlook into me?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. “No. Well, not exactly. I just…” I grimaced. “I’m a history TA. I’m not really supposed to?—”
“Date students?” he supplied, with the faintest trace of a smile.
“It’s not forbidden,” I said. “But it’s definitely frowned upon.”
“Then you can stop worrying.” His gaze held mine. “And I’m glad we agree this is a date.”
I looked down at the cutlery before he could see too much on my face.
“I’m a senior,” he said after a moment, either taking pity on me or simply deciding I had been flustered enough. “Business and international relations.”
I looked back up, absurdly grateful for the reprieve.
“That explains why you were lurking near the boring section of the library.”
“Exactly. Nobody ever sits near the history shelves.” He tilted his head slightly. “No offense.”
“None taken. It’s not the most glamorous field.” I toyed with the edge of my napkin. “Although if I remember correctly, you were the one trying to steal a book from my very boring section.”
“I needed it,” he said. “I’m writing a paper on the Medici banking network and the way financial power translated into political influence in Renaissance Italy.”
I blinked. “That’s…more interesting than I expected.”
“I’ll try not to take that personally.”
“You should.”
“I’m looking at how merchant families used finance, marriage, and diplomacy to build influence beyond the limits of formal office. It turns out power likes disguising itself as legitimacy.”
I stared at him. “That is almost exactly how I described my thesis to you.”
“I know.”
“You were listening.”
“I was.”
The simplicity of that did something unpleasantly fluttery to my stomach.
“And what’s the plan after you graduate?” I asked, mostly because I needed to redirect my thoughts.
He did not hesitate. “I’m going back to Chicago at the end of the year. I’ll join the family business.”
“Oh. Right. That’s nice.”
The answer took some of the air out of me before I could stop it. I knew logically that whatever this was could not be anything serious. We had spoken properly for all of five minutes in a library and were now sharing dinner in a restaurant I could never afford on my own. Still, hearing that he would be gone in six months gave the whole thing an edge I did not expect. An ending before there had even been a beginning. It turned the butterflies in my stomach into lead.
And if I was being honest, there was something else too. Based on Hawthorne alone, I had assumed he was around my age, maybe a little younger. But the confidence, the money, the intensity — none of it felt especially twenty-one.
“How old are you?” I blurted out.
One corner of his mouth lifted. “Twenty-three. A little older than most seniors, I admit. I took an extended sabbatical to travel through Europe. It was allegedly meant to make me more cultured.”
I let out a small sigh before I could stop it. “I’m twenty-five, and the farthest I’d been from Seattle before moving here was…well, here.”
His gaze sharpened with interest. “You’ve never been abroad?”
