The freezing, relentless rain violently battered the concrete steps all around her, but the heavy drops no longer hit her skin.
Roxy kept her face buried in her scraped, trembling hands for a long, agonizing second. She was completely terrified that if she opened her eyes, the sudden reprieve would vanish, proving her mind had finally, permanently snapped.
But the rain did not return. The air above her remained completely still, blocked by a dark, heavy canopy.
Water dripped from her dark eyelashes as Roxy slowly, painfully tilted her head back.
She looked up the length of a sleek, silver-handled umbrella. Standing over her on the cold library steps was a man. He was older, perhaps in his late sixties, dressed in a thick, slightly frayed tweed coat that seemed to belong to a different decade entirely. His hair was a wild, unruly shock of gray, plastered slightly to his forehead by the damp air.
But it was his eyes that completely arrested her.
