Chapter 7. Let Them Look

Tessa’s POV

The library is packed, as if the whole campus knows what’s coming.

Midterms are four weeks out, which at Cadston means every table on the second floor is buried under laptops, highlighters, and coffee cups balanced on top of textbooks like they’re load-bearing. The wolves sit near the windows, where the air moves. The humans sit near the radiators. I’ve sat at the same corner table by the biography stacks since freshman year, because nobody ever wants it.

Today, I’m early. Eleven fifty-one.

I set up the way I always do: laptop centered, Marketing Management textbook on the left, three highlighters on the right, sorted by color. Yellow for definitions. Green for examples. Pink for things that will definitely be on the exam. My label maker sits next to them, because I’m about to make Wyatt Cooper a study binder whether he likes it or not.

Cole’s face is still on the inside of my eyelids. The look when he smelled his brother on me. The way his