By nine in the morning, the line already snakes to the door and the espresso machine sounds like it’s about to file for workers’ comp.
I steady the milk pitcher with one hand and nudge my battered notebook farther from the danger zone with the other. Foam, swirl, finish the heart. Slide the cup across the counter with my best I-swear-I-slept expression.
“Hazelnut latte for Jenna,” I call.
The bell over the café door jingles again. More footsteps, more murmurs, the familiar low hum of The Stacks at rush hour. Above us, somewhere past the ceiling and ten or twenty floors of glass and steel, the Hale Global tower looms—sleek, terrifying, full of people in suits who never misplace anything important.
Unlike me.
“Order up, Mia,” Ben says, sliding a fresh stack of cups toward me. He’s the owner, fifty-something with a permanent coffee stain on his apron and the patience of a saint.
“I see it,” I answer, nudging my glasses up. My notebook edges closer to the register as I turn. “Four-shot espresso, extra—”
The line shuffles. Someone’s briefcase bumps the counter. My pen rolls, I reach—
—and the notebook goes over the edge.
“No, no, no,” I mutter.
It lands with a soft smack on the floor, pages fanning open like it’s exposing every unchecked box and anxious doodle to the entire café.
“Got it,” a low voice says.
A hand appears in my peripheral vision, long fingers closing around the worn cardboard cover before I can vault the counter like an uncoordinated gymnast. The man straightens slowly, the black of his wool coat absorbing the morning light that filters in through the windows.
For a second, everything else blurs.
He’s tall—ridiculously tall, at least a head above everyone else in line. Dark hair, trimmed close at the sides, more unruly on top, like he pushes a hand through it when he’s thinking. Clean-shaven, sharp cheekbones, the kind of jaw that would look at home on a Roman statue or a magazine cover. He’s not wearing a tie, just a charcoal shirt under the coat, open at the throat.
But it’s his eyes that snag me. Gray, cool, not bored exactly…aware. Like he’s taking in every detail, including the ink smudge on my wrist and the fact that my hands are definitely not steady anymore.
He turns my notebook in his hand, thumb brushing over the corner where the cardboard’s peeling.
“Mia Collins,” he says, reading my scrawl on the first page. His voice is rich, smooth, and somehow quiet and cutting through the café noise at the same time.
Heat climbs up my neck. “That’s—that’s me. Sorry, it keeps trying to escape.”
One side of his mouth twitches. Not quite a smile, but it shifts his whole face from carved-from-marble to almost approachable.
“It doesn’t look like the problem is the notebook,” he says.
If anyone else said that, I’d probably wither. From him, it lands somewhere between teasing and observation.
“Occupational hazard,” I manage. “My brain needs training wheels.”
His gaze flicks past me to the menu board, then back. “You’re the one who writes in the margins.”
My fingers tighten around the milk pitcher. “Sorry?”
He nods toward the book wall behind him, where secondhand novels line the shelves, all of them dotted with neon flags and pencil marks.
