Teasingly, I said, “I thought you didn’t believe in love.”

“I don’t.” Seth frowned. “This isn’t about love, it’s . . . attraction.

It’s just chemistry: hormones and neurotransmitters and—”

“I get it, you’re too cool to have feelings,” I laughed.

“This has nothing to do with being cool, it’s science—”

“It’s depressing!”

“Whatever it is, I can’t blame you,” Noelle threw in. “He’s pretty attractive, isn’t he?”

“God, so attractive,” Seth said with a miserable look on his face.

“I think it’s the French accent,” Noelle mused.

“Right? How is that even allowed?”

“He’s all right,” I murmured.

At that, Seth cracked a grin for the first time that day.

However, it crumbled when footsteps suddenly neared us and Jasper sauntered into the room, wearing his glasses—which was something he had only recently started doing—and a long dark coat over his school uniform.

“Salut,” he said. Stepping behind Seth, he bent down to press a kiss to his cheek. “Is everything okay? You disappeared so quickly after class.”

“Yeah,” Seth breathed. It had taken all but one sign of affection from Jasper to bring the color back into his cheeks. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“I noticed you didn’t eat anything at breakfast and I didn’t see you at lunch either,” Jasper said. “So I asked Mrs. Whitworth if we could leave the castle tonight to have dinner in town and she said yes. Of course we don’t have to do that if you don’t want to though. It was just—”

“I’d love that,” Seth interrupted.

“Perfect,” Jasper said and slipped his hand into Seth’s.

And just like that, Seth was back to his usual self, as if Jasper’s fingers intertwined with his were enough to stop the frantic buzzing that I knew was going on inside his head.

° ° °

Unsurprisingly, we were even less productive now that Jasper and Seth had joined, so we didn’t finish our task in time for dinner and had to take the worksheet up to our room with us after we left the Great Hall.

Noelle pulled me through the door by my hand, locking the door behind us before she led me over to her bed; I sank down on one end, she on the other, our notes and my copy of Wuthering Heights lying between us on the sheets.

This time, we went through the questions efficiently and without interruptions, both of us wanting to get it over with now that night was quickly falling.

“Good job!” I said when Noelle had answered the last of the questions. “See, that wasn’t even that bad, was it?”

“It was all right,” she acquiesced as she shut the book. Meeting my eyes again, she asked, “I still don’t really get it though. What do you like so much about reading?”

I thought about it for a moment, my chin propped in one hand. “I don’t know, I . . . I like that it’s an escape. And I like that in almost every story, there’s a lesson to be learned, you know? There have been books that have completely altered the way I see the world, like, through fiction, I’ve come a little bit closer to understanding reality. And especially with these older books, I just love how they’re written. I know you find the language off-putting, but once you’ve grown accustomed to it, it’s so pleasant. There’s this flow to it, and the phrasing is so . . . I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s so delicate.” I broke off, my cheeks heating up when I noticed that Noelle’s eyes had glazed over. “Sorry, that was a really boring ramble, wasn’t it?”