Chapter Four – Library Bargain

Chapter 4 – Library Bargain (Dante POV)

The library wasn’t my place. Too quiet, too still, like the walls themselves demanded discipline. Give me the roar of the stadium, the thud of weights, the squeak of sneakers on hardwood—anything but this silence where even turning a page felt like a crime.

And yet here I was. Because of him.

Eli sat across from me, hunched over a spread of books like some chaotic professor who’d gotten lost in his own notes. His pen tapped against the page, his hair falling into his eyes as he mumbled half-sentences I couldn’t catch.

When he finally looked up, his grin was too wide, too knowing. “So,” he said, drawing out the word like he was about to propose a deal with the devil. “You need help. And luckily for you, I’m great with words.”

I leaned back in my chair, arms crossed. “I don’t need help.”

“Mm-hm.” He flipped through the battered lit anthology in front of me and stabbed his finger at a highlighted passage. “You underlined ‘the futility of man’s struggle against fate’ and then wrote ‘?? football??’ in the margin. That doesn’t scream mastery to me.”

Heat crept up the back of my neck. “I was… making connections.”

“You were making nonsense.” He slid the book back toward me, his smile too smug for his own good. “But that’s okay. I like nonsense.”

I should’ve walked away right then. Pride told me to. But the truth? Watching him light up, watching him poke at me like I was just another puzzle to solve—it pulled something out of me I couldn’t quite shove back down.

I drummed my fingers against the table. “Fine. Say you do help me. What do you get out of it?”

He tilted his head, curls falling across his forehead, eyes bright with mischief. “I’m glad you asked. See, you’re popular—”

“I’m not—”

“You are,” he cut in. “People look when you walk into a room. You don’t even notice it because you’re used to it, but I notice.” His voice softened, like the admission slipped out before he meant it to.

That did something dangerous in my chest. I ignored it. “So?”

“So…” His grin returned, sharper this time. “You’re gonna help me. Socially. Parties, people, not being the weird lit kid in the corner with my notebook.”

I raised a brow. “You want me to make you cool?”

“Basically, yeah.” He leaned forward, resting his chin on his hand like he had all the time in the world. “Think of it as… tutoring in opposite directions.”

The corner of my mouth twitched. I fought it, hard. “You really think I have time to babysit you at parties?”

“You really think you’ll pass Lit Theory without me?” His voice was low, teasing, but there was steel beneath it. He knew he had me. And worse, he knew I knew it.

I exhaled through my nose, shaking my head. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And yet,” he sang, stretching the word until I wanted to strangle him, “you’re not walking away.”

He wasn’t wrong. I stayed there, watching the way his pen spun between his fingers, how his sneakers tapped against the carpet in restless rhythm. Every piece of him was in motion, and I hated how much I wanted to track all of it.

“Fine,” I muttered. “Deal.”

The smile that spread across his face felt like victory, and for one stupid second, I didn’t care that it wasn’t mine.