Lena hid in the library’s poetry section, pretending to read Neruda while her parents argued over the phone. She traced the lines of a love poem, wishing her own life had that kind of beauty—soft, simple, certain.

Across the aisle, Adam sat hunched over a tattered physics textbook. His father wanted him to be an engineer; Adam wanted to be anything else. The library was his escape, the only place where expectations didn't weigh him down.

They had seen each other before—silent nods exchanged between the aisles, shared glances over book spines. But today, as Lena sighed over her book, Adam finally spoke.

“Rough day?”

She looked up. His brown eyes held something gentle, something that said I get it.

“More like a rough life,” she admitted.

He smirked. “Yeah. I know the feeling.”

For the first time in a long time, Lena didn’t feel alone.

That afternoon, they didn’t just read books. They shared them. She handed him poetry; he offered her science. They scribbled notes in the margins for each other—verses and equations, both attempts at making sense of the world.

Over the weeks, the library became their third place—not home, not school, but somewhere in between, where they could just be Lena and Adam.

One evening, as the library lights dimmed, Adam found a slip of paper tucked into his physics book.

"If I were an equation, you’d be my solution."

He turned to find Lena smiling at him.

And in that quiet space, between the shelves and the stories, love found them both.