Fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. The clatter of trays. Someone’s phone playing TikTok videos on full volume two tables over.

Y/n had found the corner booth—the one with the cracked leather and the flickering lamp—because it had an outlet and a sightline to the door. Strategic. She’d learned to always keep the exit in view when holding a sleeping baby.

The baby smelled like lavender lotion. Warm and soft and perfectly still for the first time in hours.

A shadow fell over her textbook.

She turned.

Standing by the doors, holding a coffee cup he absolutely wasn’t drinking from, was a guy she’d seen exactly three times in her life. Once at the rink, dropping off Lacie’s forgotten keys. Once walking past her in the science building, surrounded by teammates. And once—memorably—at 2 AM in the 24-hour CVS, buying Gatorade and looking like he’d just been hit by a truck.

He was looking at her now.

Not in the passing, glance-away way most people did. Full focus. Like she was the only person in a room full of two hundred.