Nicholas did not explain Dominic that night.
Sophie noticed.
She also noticed that he paid the bill without looking at it, walked her to her building, checked both ends of the street before saying goodnight, and waited in his car until her apartment light came on.
These were not ordinary habits.
But Nicholas was not an ordinary man.
Over the next month, Sophie discovered that being around him was like reading a novel with half the chapters sealed shut.
He revealed small things.
He cooked.
Badly.
He preferred old jazz to anything recorded after 1995.
He hated people touching his watch.
He called his aunt every Sunday.
He had an almost absurd ability to remember details.
“You changed shampoo,” he said one afternoon.
Sophie nearly dropped her coffee.
“What?”
“Your hair smells different.”
“You cannot say things like that in public.”
“Why?”
“Because normal people don’t notice shampoo.”
“You keep accusing me of being abnormal.”
“You had a rare book tracked across state lines because I mentioned it once.”
“You liked the book.”
“That is not a defense.”
He smiled.
They were walking through Boston Common.
Sophie had resisted calling what they were doing dating.
Nicholas had solved the problem by never asking what to call it.
He simply appeared.
Coffee on Tuesday.
Dinner Friday.
A walk Sunday.
Then one evening he came to the library ten minutes before closing.
Sophie was sitting on the carpet with twelve children around her.
She was reading Charlotte’s Web.
Nicholas stopped beyond the glass partition.
A little boy named Ben noticed him.
“Miss Sophie, that guy looks like a movie villain.”
Every adult in the room heard it.
Sophie pressed her lips together.
Nicholas heard it too.
His eyebrow lifted.
“Ben,” Sophie whispered.
“What? He does.”
Nicholas entered.
“Which villain?”
Ben studied him.
“One who has a secret underground headquarters.”
Nicholas removed his coat.
“Reasonable.”
The children laughed.
Sophie stared.
She had expected Nicholas to look uncomfortable.
Instead, he sat cross-legged on the carpet in a suit worth several thousand dollars and listened while she finished the chapter.
Afterward, a seven-year-old girl handed him a picture she had drawn of a pig.
Nicholas accepted it with grave seriousness.
“Thank you.”
“You have to keep it forever,” the girl said.
“I understand the terms.”
Sophie nearly laughed.
When the children left, Nicholas found her watching him.
“What?”
“You’re surprisingly good with kids.”
“That sounded insulting.”
“It was complimentary.”
“You looked shocked.”
“I was.”
He helped her stack chairs.
That was when Sophie told him about the upcoming Family Reading Night.
“We’re trying to get more adults involved,” she said. “A lot of these kids don’t have somebody at home who reads with them.”
Nicholas stopped.
“When?”
“November twenty-first. Six-thirty.”
“I’ll come.”
Sophie blinked.
“You don’t have to.”
“I said I’ll come.”
“You’re going to sit in a room full of elementary-school kids and read?”
“Yes.”
She smiled.
“I would pay to see that.”
“You work for the library. Isn’t admission free?”
“That was almost a librarian joke.”
“I’m learning.”
Sophie wrote his name on the volunteer sheet.
NICHOLAS FALCONE.
Megan saw it the next morning.
She nearly choked on her coffee.
“Is that who I think it is?”
“He volunteered.”
“For children’s reading night?”
“Yes.”
“Sophie.”
“What?”
“Do you know who his family is?”
“I know the rumors.”
“They aren’t just rumors.”
Sophie closed the supply cabinet.
“Have you met him?”
“No.”
“Then maybe don’t decide what he is based on whispers.”
Megan looked unconvinced.
“You like him.”
Sophie busied herself with markers.
“That’s irrelevant.”
“Oh, wow. You really like him.”
Sophie did.
More than she wanted to admit.
Nicholas made her feel noticed.
Not watched.
There was a difference.
He remembered when she had a difficult staff meeting.
He remembered her mother’s surgery date.
He remembered she hated raisins but loved oatmeal cookies.
Yet every time Sophie tried to ask about his family, invisible walls appeared.
“What does Dominic do?” she asked over dinner one night.
Nicholas’s fork stopped.
“Why?”
“You’ve mentioned him.”
“Once.”
“Exactly. You remember everything I say. I’m returning the favor.”
“He’s my cousin.”
“Are you close?”
“No.”
“Were you?”
Nicholas looked toward the restaurant window.
“When we were younger.”
“What changed?”
“Business.”
There it was again.
That word.
Business.
A locked door disguised as an answer.
Sophie let it go.
For then.
Family Reading Night arrived on a rainy Thursday.
Sophie reached the library at eight in the morning.
By six, the children’s section had been transformed.
Paper stars hung from the ceiling.
Floor cushions surrounded a makeshift stage.
Parents arrived carrying toddlers, coats, umbrellas, and paper cups.
Sophie wore a green sweater and the silver-tree necklace Nicholas had given her after finding the book.
At six-fifteen, she placed a RESERVED card on the front-row chair.
Megan noticed.
“He’s really coming?”
“He said he would.”
At six-twenty-five, Sophie checked the doors.
Nothing.
Six-thirty.
She welcomed everyone.
Six-forty.
No Nicholas.
At seven, she checked her phone.
No message.
She told herself traffic was bad.
At seven-fifteen, Ben whispered, “Is the villain guy coming?”
Sophie smiled.
“Maybe he got delayed.”
Seven-thirty.
The final story began.
The chair remained empty.
Sophie stopped looking toward the door.
Or tried to.
At eight-fifteen, the last child left.
The custodian began stacking chairs.
He reached for Nicholas’s.
“I’ll get that one,” Sophie said.
She removed the RESERVED card.
Folded it once.
Then again.
Her embarrassment surprised her.
It was not that Nicholas missed the event.
People had emergencies.
Plans changed.
It was that he had not called.
Not texted.
Not sent two words.
Can’t come.
Sophie had defended him.
Trusted him.
And somewhere beneath the anger was an older wound she hated admitting existed.
She had spent her whole life being the person people assumed would understand.
Mom forgot? Sophie understands.
Ryan canceled? Sophie understands.
Coworker needs a shift covered? Sophie understands.
Nicholas had promised.
And Sophie had believed that his attention meant she would not become invisible to him too.
At eleven-fifty-three that night, someone knocked on her apartment building’s exterior door.
Sophie looked through the upstairs window.
Nicholas.
She went down.
He stood behind the locked glass door in a black coat.
She opened it but did not invite him inside.
“You’re awake,” he said.
Sophie stared at him.
“That’s your opening line?”
His expression shifted.
“Sophie.”
“You missed it.”
“I know.”
“The kids asked about you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not.”
His eyes hardened slightly.
“Don’t tell me what I feel.”
“Then tell me what happened.”
He paused.
“Family business.”
Sophie almost laughed.
“Of course.”
“I couldn’t leave.”
“You have a phone.”
“It wasn’t that simple.”
“It was exactly that simple.”
“Sophie—”
“No. You remembered a sentence I said once in a courthouse, but you forgot the one night I asked you to show up.”
His jaw shifted.
“I didn’t forget.”
“Then you chose not to tell me.”
Silence.
For once, Nicholas Falcone had no polished answer.
Sophie folded her arms.
“What happened tonight?”
“Go inside.”
Her anger sharpened.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn into somebody else the second I ask a real question.”
A black sedan waited across the street.
Headlights off.
Two silhouettes inside.
Sophie noticed them.
Nicholas noticed her noticing.
His posture changed.
“Inside. Now.”
“Who are they?”
His phone vibrated.
Nicholas looked down.
Sophie saw the name.
Dominic.
Nicholas declined the call.
Three seconds later, the sedan’s rear door opened.
A tall man stepped onto the sidewalk.
Nicholas moved instantly between Sophie and the street.
“Go upstairs.”
“Nicholas—”
“Please.”
The word stopped her.
He almost never said please.
The man across the street remained beside the car.
He wore a dark overcoat.
Even from twenty yards away, Sophie could see his smile.
“Nicky,” he called.
Nicholas went still.
The stranger looked past him toward Sophie.
“So that’s the librarian.”
Sophie’s stomach tightened.
Nicholas’s voice dropped.
“Dominic, leave.”
Dominic Falcone smiled wider.
“Does she know?”
Sophie looked at Nicholas.
“Know what?”
Nicholas did not answer.
Dominic laughed softly.
“That’s what I thought.”
Nicholas took one step toward the street.
Dominic raised his hands.
“Relax. I came to give you a warning.”
“I don’t need one.”
“You do now.”
Dominic’s eyes returned to Sophie.
“Because she has something you need.”
Sophie felt cold.
“I don’t even know you.”
“No,” Dominic said. “But your father knew us.”
Everything inside Sophie stopped.
Nicholas turned sharply.
“Enough.”
But Sophie had already heard it.
“My father?”
Dominic opened the car door.
Nicholas crossed the street, but Dominic slipped inside.
Before the door closed, he looked directly at Sophie.
“Ask Nicholas why he really found that book.”
The sedan pulled away.
Sophie stood beneath the apartment light.
Nicholas slowly turned toward her.
The cracked green book was upstairs on her nightstand.
The birthday gift that had made her feel remembered.
For the first time, Sophie wondered whether it had been a gift at all.