3. Haven
Chapter 3
Haven
I’ve never been inside a lecture hall before. It’s not huge, but it still feels intimidating as hell to be shoved into. And I wish I could have made a quiet entrance, but the door crashes closed behind me.
Guess its hydraulic hinge is keeping it together as well as I am right now.
The teacher’s chalk screeches over the board as he turns to look at me.
My body goes into autopilot.
Screw the whole fight, flight, or freeze thing…I go straight to fawn.
“Hi,” I mumble at a volume way too low to stand a chance of reaching the man in front of the enormous chalkboard.
The teacher lifts his chin like I’m a baby animal that just wandered obliviously into his den. There’s a soft chuckle somewhere in the crowd of students, then a giggle. Probably because I look like a loser.
I tug the two halves of my cardigan closed and hurry to the closest seat, my cheeks already burning from the millions of eyes on me.
“More interruptions?” There’s a soft tap-tap-tap on the chalkboard. “See how easy it is to summon the devil?”
An outright laugh, some giggles, and another few chuckles break out, which I’m sincerely hoping aren’t aimed in my direction.
I plop down on the seat as the teacher drags his chalk under the word written on the board.
LUCIFER
Um…what? Did I fall down a rabbit hole? Hit my head and get amnesia? Because I swore this was supposed to be a social studies lesson.
Oh shit.
The help desk lady said the second door on the right, right?
What if I’ve just joined some random theology lesson?
If so, I should add it to my electives
Are all college professors so devastatingly handsome and mouth-dryingly earnest? He’s tall, like six-foot-something tall, with a runner’s build, a dark crew cut, and a touch of silver at his temples, more sprinkled through his thick eyebrows.
I never thought I’d ever think this way about someone in a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows, but…damn. Why wasn’t I born ten years ago when even the thought of dating someone like him wouldn’t have been wildly inappropriate?
He studies me for a beat before turning to add another word to the board.
EFFECT
He draws another line under that, and then scrawls
Prof Rooke - Lessons in Cruelty
I breathe out a slow breath through pursed lips.
Thank Lucifer.
“For the lady who’s so fashionably late, she even missed yesterday’s class.” Professor Rooke taps his chalk against his name, staring straight at me. “I don’t enjoy repeating myself, which you’d know if you bothered to show up yesterday.”
“Sorry,” I call out. “My phone died, so I only got the text?—”
He cuts me off with a deadpan, “I doubt a first year can come up with an excuse I haven’t heard before, so don’t even try.”
He sweeps his hand to the cluster of students sitting in front of the lectern, raising his eyebrows. “I also don’t like to shout.”
I scramble up and pick my way through the empty seats to where he pointed. A girl around my age with a sleek red bob glances at me, but she must keep her flawless face in the freezer overnight because not a muscle moves, even after I give her a timid smile.
My eyes dart back to the lecture room door. I can still feel Kai’s hand between my shoulders, shoving me inside.
you’re not staying
What the actual fuck was that all about? I’ve seen Kai on a bad day. Like a really, really bad day. And this came nowhere close. What the hell’s happened to him? Is he on crack?
Professor Rooke’s voice demands my attention return to him, and I do my best to keep it on him.
“What is cruelty?”
His eyebrows shift up when the class remains silent.
“Oh, come on. No one’s going to pass off a Merriam-Webster definition they’ve quickly googled on their phones? I’m shocked,” he says dryly, as he picks up a paper coffee cup from the corner of the desk near the lectern.
There’s a satchel thrown haphazardly over the table, a neat stack of A5 spiral-bound notebooks, and a laptop neatly positioned in front of a chair behind the desk.
He takes a slow sip from his coffee cup, taking his time to scan his class before his gaze reaches me. This close, I can see dark irises, specks of silver in his closely cropped beard, veins standing proud from the back of his pale hands.
“Is it cruel of me to enjoy this cup of warm, rich coffee in front of all you woefully un-caffeinated students so early in the morning?” He addresses everyone in class, but those eyes remain fixed on me.
I swallow hard. “Um…I guess not. We could have had coffee if we wanted?”
“You don’t sound very sure,” he says, taking another slow sip, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. “It’s almost like you traveled back in time to yesterday’s lesson when I told my students that I don’t allow any eating or drinking in my class.”
There’s a snicker somewhere in the back of the class, sending a flush of heat up my neck.
“Then yeah, that’s pretty fucking cruel,” I mutter, crossing my arms over my chest. When I hear myself swearing, I squeeze my eyes closed and murmur, “Shit.”
Rooke drums his fingers against the side of his cup. “If I didn’t have that rule, would you still feel the same way?”
I glance away as I shrug, refusing to be drawn into another trick question, but I can still feel his eyes on me. I lick my lips, trying to force my brain to figure out an answer, but thankfully the door swinging open diverts Professor Rooke’s attention.
My heart sinks into my chest.
He’s back.
I quickly pat my face, making sure I wiped all his spit off.
What the hell is he doing in this class, anyway? He must be a senior by now. Unless he got held back a few years.
Shit, is that why he’s so upset to see me? Is he embarrassed because we’re at the same level, when we’re nowhere near the same age?
Kai is so busy staring at his phone that he doesn’t see me looking at him. I expect him to come and sit beside me, and my entire body tenses as I’m hit with dread.
Professor Rooke glances over at him, then dismisses him with an unreadable expression in his brown eyes.
But instead of sitting with me and the rest of the students, Kai climbs onto the podium and flops down into the chair behind the desk. Eyes still glued to his phone screen. So I stare at him, confused, until he shoves his phone in the pocket of his joggers and looks up.
Straight at me.
And he smirks.
An electric shock jolts through my body.
Shit. He’s a teacher’s assistant, isn’t he?
I quickly turn back to the professor, who’s still looking for a student to answer his question.
Someone really brave says, “Hurting someone on purpose is cruel.”
Professor Rooke focuses on him with laser precision. “Is it? Tell me, is a surgeon being cruel when he slices into his patient to perform life-saving open-heart surgery?”
The student stammers, “N-no, but?—”
Professor Rooke points at him with one of the fingers holding his coffee cup. “Precisely. Intent plays a crucial role. What other factors should you consider when defining cruelty?”
I stick the end of my pen in my mouth, obliterating the cap as I keep my eyes intentionally fixed on the professor as he ambles up and down the raised platform, one hand on his cup, the other tucked behind his back.
I swear I can feel Kai’s eyes burning a hole in me.
Fuck him. I won’t give him the satisfaction of looking.
Also, I’m kinda too scared to check.
“Power?” a student in a red rock-band t-shirt ventures uneasily.
“Power…as in authority?” Rooke’s thumb caresses the side of his coffee cup, his pinkie finger keeping it balanced in his grip.
“Yeah, like…if you have power over someone else, they don’t always have a choice about stuff, and that’s cruel.”
I’m getting a crick in my neck looking back and forth between them, so I keep my eyes on Rooke and try to keep my mind on college work.
Not Kai.
Not if Professor Rooke is this passionate about other things in life. Eating, drinking.
Sex.
Because, damn, this guy knows how to work a room.
Kai stretches out his legs, bumping the desk, and it makes me glance over at him.
Shit. He is staring.
Heat blooms on my cheeks, and I quickly flip open my pink STFU notepad so I don’t have to look at my teacher or Kai anymore.
CRUELTY = INTENT + POWER? +
My pen hovers, because I’ve only known Professor Rooke for a few minutes, but I can tell there’s more. This is all leading up to something big.
Something…mind fucking.
“So a parent disciplining a child is being cruel?”
I frown, risking a peek at the other students. A few of them are frowning too.
The guy in the band tee looks confused for a moment. “Well, no, that’s different?—“
“Because we’ve normalized certain forms of cruelty to the point of acceptance,” Rooke says. “So doesn’t perception play a role in defining true cruelty?”
There’s an uneasy murmur from the class. I tap my pen against my chin, pursing my lips for a moment.
I mean, he has a point. I remember getting the odd smack or two if I tracked mud into the trailer after Mom had cleaned, or if I woke Dad up from one of his naps. Were they being cruel? I thought so at the time…but I wiped my feet and never ran around indoors again.
Wow. I haven’t thought of my mom in over a decade.
We were never close. I mean, she died when I was four, so I barely have any memories of her.
CRUELTY = INTENT + POWER? / PERCEPTION +
Professor Rooke’s voice drops. “What about impact?”
Wide eyes—mine included—blink at him.
Even Kai, hands tucked under his armpits and feet crossed at the ankles, watches Rooke with an unwavering stare.
Our teacher swallows down the last of his coffee and then crumples the paper cup with a single powerful flex of his hand. He drops it to the floor and kicks it under the desk.
Kai flinches and runs his hands through his hair, our eyes meeting for a split second before he wrenches his gaze back to Rooke.
“Was I cruel to discard that cup?”
Silence.
Professor Rooke walks up to the desk and leans against it, crossing his arms as he shrugs. “No one has any objections to the violence they just witnessed? This appalling crime of littering?”
The girl beside me with the ultra chic bob lifts her hand. “It’s an inanimate object. It doesn’t have the physiology to feel pain. Or cruelty.”
If Rooke’s impressed, he doesn’t show it.
He shrugs again. “I was done with it, anyway. Someone’s bound to pick it up and toss it in the trash.”
“No harm, no foul,” I blurt out.
Rooke’s gaze snaps to me. There’s an almost feverish glee sparkling there as he pushes away from the desk, snapping his fingers in my direction.
“Impact.”
He picks up his chalk and scratches on the board.
INTENT
IMPACT
INTERPRET
“If we don’t understand the intention behind the act?—“
He taps his chalk on the first word.
“How it impacts the alleged victim of said act…”
Another furious round of tapping on the second word.
“Or how both participants interpret the act?—”
The chalk screeches as he circles the last word.
He turns to us, shaking his head, the beginning of a smile teasing his mouth.
I’m not the only one who’s spellbound. I swear I hear his paper coffee cup slowly uncrumpling under the desk.
“How can we definitely say someone is being cruel?”
He lifts a finger, turning and heading back to the board. “You’re not the only ones having a tough time putting a cage around this thing. Ancient philosophers grappled with it. Plato spoke of a man ruled by his basest desires who inflicted suffering on others for his own gain.”
Rooke raps his knuckle beside the word INTENT. “That’s an easy one. He didn’t have the best intentions, and someone suffered for it.” He raps beside IMPACT. Shrugs. “Two out of three ain’t bad.”
I take notes, alternating between chewing my pen and tapping it against my chin.
If this is what college is like, I’m fucking hooked. I still don’t know what the Lucifer Effect means that the teacher had been scrawling on the board when I walked in, but maybe I’ll have scrounged up enough guts to speak to him after class.
He lectures about Aristotle, Freud, Seneca, Nietzsche.
Some names I’ve heard before, others are brand new. Time slips away, his lecture so riveting that I forget I’m in a class with forty other students.
And a boy who would giggle with me as we jumped into rain puddles together.
How did we go from that, to him spitting on me?
Okay, he’s done it before. But in a whole different context. There was mutiny involved, and a very grubby bandana that was supposed to be an eye patch. And he kept saying, “Aargh, me matey.”
My head is reeling when Professor Rooke glances at his watch before sighing and setting down his chalk. He keeps his back turned, and I can see students slowly emerge from his spell. Some stretching, others taking quick peeks at their phones.
But as soon as he starts speaking in a low voice, everyone is straining to listen.
“No matter where you think it comes from, how you want to define it.” He turns, arms crossed. “If you want to label it evil or neutral or ‘it’s complicated.’” He puts air quotes around the word, and I hear the redhead beside me huff out an amused little laugh.
“We all have a cruel streak inside us.” He holds out his hand, then slowly closes it into a fist. The veins under his skin are a dark blueish-green, and in that moment I suddenly get all the fuss about vampires.
“It’s a muscle we’re born with, much like any other. The difference is who chooses to let it waste away…” he opens his hand and shows us his palm. “And who hits that gym five times a week to pump iron.”
When he claps his hands together, my soul leaves my fucking body.
“Unnecessary,” I mutter, tugging in a breath to replace the air in my lungs.
The redhead turns and gives me a little smile, her hand still pressed to her chest.
“Right,” Professor Rooke announces. “I touched on some assignments you’ll be completing for me this semester, but I left the best for last.” He extends his index fingers, hands still clasped, and points at us. “Journals are all the rage these days. Or maybe you kept a diary as a kid?” He laughs, but the sound is sardonic. “Christ, what am I saying? You’re all still kids.”
There’s a smattering of laughs and a few groans.
He gives us a genuine smile, and damn it if I don’t feel that warmth all the way down into my toes when he glances over at me.
But his voice is frosty when he say, “Mr. Jordan?”
There’s a jolt inside me. It’s as if Professor Rooke is asking me what the hell my deal is with Kai.
But then my all-grown-up childhood friend stands, snatches the stack of notebooks off the desk, and saunters over to us.
Even though I’m the closest, he walks right past me and starts handing them out at the far end of the row, working his way up and telling the students to pass the notebooks along until everyone has one.
Except me.
I guess because he waited until last to come and give me mine…in person.
Oh, God, is he going to spit in my face again? I doubt he’d get away with it in front of Professor Rooke.
But there’s still a nervous flutter behind my belly button as he heads in my direction a couple of notebooks dangling from his fingers, the other hand shoved in his pocket.
Kai locks eyes with me as he swaggers over, and it’s like time slows down so I can properly appreciate how much he’s changed.
God, he’s even more handsome than when I last saw him.
His freckles are still there, though. His golden brown tan.
And here I am, still exactly the fucking same. I spend little time outdoors these days, so my skin’s lighter and my hair darker than it used to be.
I’ve gained weight, physically and emotionally.
The corner of Kai’s mouth twitches, and I’m flung back in time to us playing in the woods behind our trailer park. He’d get this same look on his face when he was about to suggest a new game for the afternoon.
Does he still have such an active imagination? We would come up with the most awesome roleplay scenarios together.
His favorite was Columbus and Jane. A brave explorer and his wife traversing jungles teeming with savage animals. We’d be swatting mosquitoes and complaining about how thirsty we were the whole afternoon as he hacked at whatever foliage got in our way with a blunt kitchen knife he’d found in a dumpster outside the trailer park.
Sometimes I’d object to being the wife. But anything was better than staying at home with Dad. I was terrified he’d take a nap and never wake up. That I’d have to call the ambulance. They’d get there and tell me he was already dead. To know that I’d been sitting next to a corpse.
Kai walks up to my chair…and just keeps going.
Past me, onto the podium.
Flopping down onto his seat and tossing the last few notebooks back onto the desk. Running his hands through his hair like he just used up the last of his energy. He hooks his hands behind his head and stares at Professor Rooke, completely ignoring my flabbergasted face.
“Everyone got one?” Rooke asks.
I turn to him, shaking my head, but he’s looking at the top row of students.
“Good. In the coming weeks, you’ll be keeping a diary. For those of you with experience, this is going to be a little different.”
I look back at Kai. He’s still watching Rooke.
What the actual fuck? I’m glaring so hard at Kai, Professor Rooke’s voice zones out.
“…three criteria for each entry, making sure…”
Three years is a long time to hold a grudge, Kai.
“…help you determine…”
Yeah, I’m one to talk. I was never good at letting go either.
“…are there any questions?”
Shit. What just happened?
My attention snaps back to Professor Rooke. He’s smiling at the class again, and it might be petty as hell, but I feel totally left out.
I lean over to the red-head beside me. “What does he want us to do?” I whisper.
She frowns at me. “Which part?”
Geez, how long did I zone out for?
“Good. Class dismissed.” Rooke flicks his fingers toward the door, a wry smile on his lips. “Now get the hell out of my sight.”
Students pause to put away their laptops or speak to a classmate, but most head straight for the door. Kai is already on his phone, a deep eleven between his brows as he frowns. I stand, my notepad smothered against my chest. The redhead nods at me before she leaves, and I quickly turn to follow her.
“A moment please, Pink Notepad.”
I freeze in my tracks when I realize Professor Rooke is speaking to me. When I glance over my shoulder, his eyebrows twitch up as he drops his chin. “Yes. You.”
For some reason, I glance at Kai. And his smirk has just doubled in size.
Oh, God.
What are the chances there’s a fault line right below this building that can open up and swallow me whole?