All Chapters of Lessons After Dark: Shadows Between the Lines: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

Eldridge Falls is still the town that hums quietly under its breath. A place that wears normalcy like a pressed Sunday dress—lawns trimmed, porches painted, neighbors waving with hands that know when to hold back. On the outside, it is all pleasantries and potlucks, the kind of town where everyone knows just enough about each other to make small talk sound easy.But if you’ve lived here long enough, you know better. You learn to hear the spaces between words, the pauses that stretch too long. You understand that this town runs on the unsaid.Secrets are its currency. And no one pretends otherwise for long.At the center of it all stands the college annex and its library, a building older than the town’s memory. Its stone steps sag with the weight of decades, its windows narrow and watchful, its halls carrying the faint smell of paper, dust, and something else that lingers—something that feels like waiting. The shelves here lean in toward each other as if they have overheard too much,

By the time Maya finally pushed herself up from the library chair, her body was still humming, her pulse refusing to calm. She stuffed her papers into her bag in uneven stacks, telling herself she’d focus now, get something, anything done before the night was gone. And somehow she did. Fueled by adrenaline and the lingering ache between her thighs, she finished a few pages of her assignment, scribbled notes until the words blurred, and snapped a quick photo of the draft to prove to herself it hadn’t all been wasted.Before leaving, she pulled out her phone. One message, short and necessary. Alive. Don’t worry. She sent it to Lena, knowing her friend wouldn’t ask for details but would breathe easier just the same.The night was still young, too young to go straight back to her empty apartment. So she let herself be pulled along when the group chat lit up, three girlfriends and one guy bestie, all headed to a local bar just off campus. The kind of place that smelled like sticky citrus a