I know what I want, and I know what it takes to get it. It takes a lot of hard work and sacrifice—but it also takes a clean record. No arrests, no scandals, no sex pictures on the Internet.

I don’t need anyone going around beating people up on my behalf. I can’t chance it happening again.

I need to talk to West.

I find him on the fourth floor of the library.

It’s all journals up here, the shelves shoved together in the middle and study desks lining the outside walls, plus a Xerox machine where I spent way too much time copying literary criticism of T. S. Eliot last year.

West is standing by a cart full of books with his back to me, shelving a fat red volume of something. It takes me a minute to realize he’s him. I’d already looked all over the first three floors, and I was starting to panic that he might not be here. I’ve noticed that I often see him with his cart on Thursday afternoons, but that doesn’t mean much.

He’s got earbuds in, and I don’t think he’s seen me, so I take a second to think about what I want to say to him. I feel kind of sweaty and unkempt, even though I took time after lunch to change my shirt and slick on lip gloss.

I’ve never done this before.

I’ve never initiated a conversation with West.

It feels more intimidating than it should, not only because of who he is—the forbiddenness of him—but also because this is the fourth floor. It’s an unwritten rule of Putnam that the fourth floor of the library is a space of sacred silence.

West grabs another book. He has to reach above his head to shelve it, which means his shirt lifts and I see he’s got a thick brown leather belt holding his jeans up. It doesn’t match. His boots are black, and so is his T-shirt. It’s got this big jagged orange seam sewn across the back, as though a shark came along and bit a giant rip in it and then he handed it over to a seven-year-old to fix.

I can’t imagine how such a T-shirt even happens. Or why anyone would wear it.

West’s clothes are sometimes like that. Just … random.

I kind of like it.

When he lowers down to his heels and bends over the cart, his shirt rides up again, exposing some of his lower back.

I clear my throat, but his music must be too loud, because he doesn’t turn toward me. I step closer. He’s got his head down, his hand reaching for a book on the lower shelf.

Crap. Now I’m so close that I’m bound to startle him when he finally figures out I’m here.

There’s nothing I can do to prevent it. I reach out, meaning to touch him just long enough to get his attention, but I end up pressing my palm flat against his lower spine instead.

It’s an accident. I’m almost sure it’s an accident.

Eighty percent sure.

He doesn’t jump. He just goes completely, utterly still. So still that I can hear the music playing over his earbuds. It’s loud, with angry vocals and an insistent, pounding beat that matches the sudden pulse between my legs.

Oh, I think.

Maybe it’s not an accident, after all.

West’s back is indecently hot beneath my palm. I stare at my fingers, ordering them to move for several long seconds before they actually obey. When I pull my hand away, it feels magnetized. Like there’s this drag, this force, tugging it back toward West.

I’m pretty sure the force is called lust.

West straightens and turns around, and I know even before he does it that I’ve miscalculated, and now I’m totally at his mercy, which means I’m doomed. I’m not sure he has mercy. He sure didn’t seem like he did when he was hitting Nate hard enough to make me physically ill.

He pulls out his earbuds, and I try to think something other than the word doomed. Doomed, doomed, doomed.

I try to remember what I was going to say to him—I had a whole speech planned—but I can’t. I can’t.

I stare at his belt instead. I think about grabbing it and yanking him closer. As if this is a thing I could do. A thing I have ever done, with anyone, much less West Leavitt.

Doooooomed.

“Hey,” he says.

Which isn’t fair, because it means I have to look up.

I do, eventually.

Our eyes meet. His pupils are huge, and there’s something so intense about the way he’s looking at me, it’s kind of scary. Only scary is the wrong word. I’ve felt a lot of scary in the past few weeks, and this is different.

This is scary like pausing at the top of the steepest hill on a roller coaster, bracing yourself for the drop.

“Hey,” I say back.

“What’s up?”

“Can I talk to you?”

He considers this request. “No.”

It’s not what I was expecting him to say. All I can come up with is “Oh.”

Then it’s silent again except for his music, and there’s this … this atmosphere. I think it must be him. I think he’s making the atmosphere with his skin and his eyes, which look almost silver right now, and maybe he’s also making it with all the muscles in his forearms, which are clenching and unclenching his hands in this way that’s just—

It’s just something. Intense, I guess. Menacing, but without the menace.

I have never stood this close to him before. I’ve never been alone with him since the day he parked his car right next to my feet and made me pass out.

I’ve never felt this excited, awkward, and senselessly worried in my whole entire life.

Until he takes a step toward me. That’s worse.

Better, too.

Better-worse. It’s totally a thing.

I back up.

He’s supposed to stop stepping toward me when I back up, but he doesn’t. He keeps coming. He moves right into my zone of personal space, and I get pinned up against the stacks, my butt pressing against a low shelf, West’s hands braced on either side of my head.

“I’m working,” he says. As though I’m a book, and he’s shelving me.

I try to say, I’ll come back later, but instead I make this sort of clicking, gargling noise that makes me sound like a bullfrog. I can feel my throat flushing—always a dead giveaway that I’m embarrassed. I clear it and manage to say, “That’s fine. I can … come back. Or I’ll c-call you.”

I don’t have his phone number. Or any intention of calling him.

I don’t know why I’m imagining I can feel the heat off his skin, because that’s impossible. He isn’t that close, surely. I cast my eyes up, trying to visually measure the number of inches between our faces.

It’s not very many inches at all.

West doesn’t touch me, but he is much closer than he needs to be, and the way he’s looking down at me, his chest rising and falling rapidly, color high in his cheeks—I can’t help but think about his fist connecting with Nate’s mouth. The way Nate fell to the floor, heavy and limp.

He did that for you, I think.

I came here to ask him, but I already know.

He did it for me, and this is how he looked afterward. Dilated everywhere, his skin warm and his breathing rapid and shallow.

This is how he would look in bed.

I close my eyes, because I need to get my bearings. I had imagined a businesslike talk with West. Please don’t do that again, I would say. Okay, if that’s the way you feel about it, he’d reply. Yes, that’s the way I feel, I would tell him. Then maybe I’d give him a lecture about the importance of settling conflict without violence, followed by a brisk handshake.

I didn’t imagine the ruddy skin of his neck right by the collar of his shirt. The stubble on his jaw where it curves into his ear. I didn’t anticipate his smell, like spearmint and library books, detergent and warm skin.

God, he smells fantastic, but he’s also kind of scary, and I have no idea what the rules are right now. No idea at all.

I need rules to get through this. I’m a rules kind of girl.