Chapter 26
Haven
TWO WEEKS LATER
Here I am, attending Bastian’s Lessons in Cruelty course like I didn’t spend Halloween night in a threesome-adjacent situation with him and my boyfriend in a literal crypt.
Said boyfriend of mine is sitting beside me, listening attentively…
as if he didn’t have Bastian’s cock in his mouth fourteen days ago.
My professor, meanwhile, is happily droning on about masochism, acting like he doesn’t still have scratches on his face from where I clawed him. He was absent a couple of days after Halloween, and came back with a story about a rock climbing accident—and everyone believed him, of course.
We’re all so good at pretending everything’s normal.
No one seems to find it weird that Kai’s sitting on this side of the class instead of behind the T.A.’s desk. Says a lot about this school and the amount of fuckery that goes on here on a daily basis for them to not bat an eye.
Kai’s warm thigh presses against mine. He’s been finding every excuse to touch me lately. Not in the desperate, possessive way he used to, but as if he’s checking I’m still here.
I don’t know what’s going on inside his head. He won’t talk about Halloween, and I’m too chickenshit to push. The morning after, he’d been quiet, as if he was deep in thought.
Or utterly fucking traumatized.
I kept waiting for him to explode, to rage, to do something that made sense. Instead, he made love to me that night with a tenderness I’d never experienced from him before. Soft kisses, gentle murmurs, his eyes locked on mine the entire time, like he was memorizing my face.
I came so hard I cried.
Then he held me tight against him, his heartbeat steady under my cheek, fingers tracing patterns on my back until I fell asleep.
We haven’t talked about it.
It felt like a wall crumbled that night, and what it exposed still feels painful and raw.
“When we think of cruelty, we typically imagine it directed outward toward another being.” Professor Rooke’s smooth voice cuts through my spiral, all calm and sophisticated.
“A perpetrator…and a victim.”
He moves to the blackboard, tossing his piece of chalk up before catching it easily in his palm.
“An aggressor…and a target.” Bastian continues, scrawling on the blackboard.
SELF-DESTRUCTION
“But what happens when those roles collapse into a single person? The same person?”
He turns back to face the class, dark eyes sweeping the room. They hardly ever linger on me during lectures. He’s too careful for that these days.
We asked him for space, and he’s giving it to us in spades.
“Self-sabotage. Self-harm. Self-destruction.” He ticks each phrase off on his fingers. “These behaviors seem counterintuitive. Because why the hell would anyone willingly inflict suffering on themselves?”
Because pain you inflict feels better than pain you can’t control.
Bastian catches my eye, holding my gaze just long enough for my body to tense before we both look away.
“Freud would argue it’s the death drive—“ he scrawls THANATOS on the board without missing a beat “—manifesting as aggression turned inward. A fundamental impulse toward dissolution. A return to an inorganic state.”
Kai shifts beside me. Usually he’s got his phone out, but today he’s paying close attention.
We spoke about it the first day I was due back in Bastian’s class. I told Kai I wasn’t going, but when he said he’d come with and make sure ‘Rooke didn’t pull anything’, I was out of excuses.
After all, my entire tuition hinges on the whims of the psychopath strutting around in front of that blackboard.
A psycho I scratched, slapped, and yelled at…and for some reason, he let me live to tell the tale.
Then again, he let Melissa go, too.
Fuck. Poor Melissa.
I haven’t seen her in weeks. The rumors say her parents shipped her off to rehab, and I’m not risking Kai’s freedom to check if they’re true.
I’ve wanted to message her so many times to find out if she’s okay, but Kai told me what Deputy Thatcher said about trying to contact her.
I’m not risking Kai’s freedom just to clear my conscience.
I did message Milo. Not for the job he promised me—just to check in and make sure he’s really okay.
He left me on read, and I’m still not sure how I feel about that.
Bastian’s voice drags me back into the present. “That explanation doesn’t satisfy me.”
Beside me, Kai scoffs quietly.
I stare at him, but my boyfriend just keeps watching our professor, twirling a sucker in his mouth.
Bastian sets the chalk down, rubbing his fingertips as his gaze becomes unfocused. “It treats self-destruction as pathology. An…aberration. In reality, it’s our psyche’s logical response to an illogical situation.”
A few students shift uncomfortably, but no one’s in the mood to question Professor Rooke today, it seems.
“Not convinced?” He shrugs, moving over to the T.A.
’s desk and perching on the edge. “Imagine, if you will, that you’ve grown up in an environment where you had no control.
Pain was inevitable, unpredictable, administered at the leisure of others.
Choosing to inflict that pain yourself becomes a form of agency.
” His voice drops, just slightly. “Why? Because now you’re not a victim anymore.
You’re the architect of your own suffering.
This is your world now, and you’re its God.
A wrathful, Old-Testament kind of god, but God nonetheless. ”
He should have had a mic, because then he could have dropped it.
Tingles prick my fingers, and a cold dread seeps into my toes.
It’s like Bastian just sawed open my skull and put a microscope to my brain.
My entire life, I’ve made choices I know will hurt me, and I never knew why. Is he seriously suggesting I did it just so the hurting happens on my terms?
Staying with family who treated me like shit.
Pushing away anyone who tries to be kind.
Messaging my stalker professor in the middle of the night, or after having a fight with my boyfriend.
And why? Because kindness felt like a trap? Because I’m so used to danger, I can’t bear to live without it?
Or just so I can say I made that choice?
“Right!” Bastian claps his hands.
Someone lets out a nervous titter from the back of the class. I’m guessing they’re one of the students who got their midterm essay back with as much red pen as I did.
Bastian was…unkind, to put it mildly.
Professional, polite, but fucking unkind.
“Take the next few minutes to reflect on a time when you engaged in self-sabotaging behavior. Think of any instance where you made a choice you knew would hurt you. What was your reasoning, if any? What did you gain from it? What did it cost?”
Someone raises their hand. “Do we have to share this with the class?”
“No.” For a moment, Bastian is the epitome of a benevolent professor. “This is purely for your own reflection. Discuss your insights with a trusted peer in your own time.”
The irony of him talking about ‘trust’ while standing at the front of a classroom he’s used as a hunting ground is not lost on me.
Students pull out notebooks or bow their heads over their laptops. The hush of reluctant self-examination fills the room as our professor takes out his phone.
Kai is staring at Bastian like he suspects our professor has bodies in his basement—he just needs to prove it.
I nudge his thigh with my knee. “You okay?”
He blinks, eyes widening as they slowly focus on me. “Yeah. Fine.”
He’s not fine, but I don’t know how to help him when he won’t speak to me.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. I slide it out, checking it stealthily under the desk.
When I see a notification from VibeFeed, my stomach flips over.
It’s from the group chat Bastian set up the day after Halloween.
Me, Bastian, Kai.
@inherentvice
Dinner tonight?
I know a place in Ashwood Crossing.
I stare at the message. Bastian’s been shockingly patient these past two weeks. He invites us, we decline, and he accepts it without pushing.
I type out a reply before I can overthink it.
@bssweetgirl
Can’t tonight.
Study group.
It’s not entirely a lie. I do have a study group. It’s just not the reason I’m saying no.
The reason I’m saying no is that every time Kai and I fuck, I think about Bastian. His hands. His mouth. The things he did and said in that mausoleum that turned my world—and Kai’s—upside down.
I have to figure out how to stop feeling guilty. The fact Kai won’t even acknowledge that any of it happened isn’t helping.
Chaos.
Bastian is pure chaos, and there’s no fucking logical reason I should be inviting any more of it into my life.
Except…like our dear professor so elegantly put it…I apparently can’t fucking help myself.
Three dots appear, then disappear. Then appear again.
@inherentvice
Another time, then.
No pressure. No guilt trip. No veiled threat.
Who the fuck is this man, and what did he do with Bastian Rooke?
Kai leans over, reading my screen. I don’t hide it. We agreed—no more secrets.
At least…no new ones. That’s how I understood it, anyway.
“He’s being weird,” Kai mutters.
“I know.”
“I don’t trust it.”
“Me neither.”
But Kai sounds less suspicious and more…disappointed? Like he almost wanted Bastian to push so he’d have an excuse to fight and—ultimately—submit.
Or maybe I’m projecting.
Okay, I’m definitely projecting.
“Time’s up.” Bastian’s voice makes both me and Kai look up at him.
“We’ll continue this discussion next week.
For those of you who found today’s topic uncomfortable—“ his eyes sweep the room, landing everywhere yet nowhere “—that discomfort is the point. Lean into it. And be on the lookout for moments where you’re tempted to become the architect of your own suffering. Chances are they happen more often than you realize. They might even be second nature to some of you.”
The rustle of bags and shuffling of feet fill the lecture hall as students pack up. Kai is already standing, shouldering his backpack with a tension in his shoulders that’s been there since Halloween.