Chapter 1
ARCHIE
Sometimes it felt like my life had already happened, and I’d been dropped into the aftermath without anyone bothering to explain how I got there.
Cool.
A dramatic break would have been easier to understand—something I could point to say, yep, that’s where it broke.
Instead, everything just… piled up. Unresolved moments stacking on top of each other until the original wound was buried beneath all the shit that followed.
Pain didn’t come with rules.
I used to believe it did.
I thought if I worked hard enough, stayed useful enough, exhausted myself thoroughly enough, eventually I’d earn my way into feeling normal.
Total. Bullshit.
Standing in the middle of Wexley’s campus, I felt strangely out of place in my own life.
I wasn’t visiting. I wasn’t new. I’d been here four years already, and now graduate school sat on top of that, as if the extra degree magically transformed me into someone who belonged here.
Wexley loved people like me.
More accurately, it loved the version of me that fit inside brochures.
A poor kid with good grades and a tragic background.
Look how well the system works.
Most days, I could move through Wexley without thinking too hard about it. I kept my head down and watched the way everyone else carried themselves—how naturally they occupied spaces that still made me hesitate before entering.
That hesitation never fully went away.
Standing in the quad that afternoon waiting for my interview, I felt it worse than usual.
My pulse sat too high in my chest while my fingers tightened around the strap of my bag hard enough to make them ache.
Heat rose off the stone pathways in waves, baking through the soles of my shoes. The air smelled aggressively expensive—fresh-cut grass, clean linen, and cologne that probably cost more than my monthly grocery budget.
It made me nauseous.
A dark window caught my reflection as I walked past, and I slowed before I could stop myself.
My glasses were crooked, because of course they were.
I pushed the wire frames back into place, pressing harder than necessary and holding them there for a second too long.
I looked overly alert and way too aware of myself. Like someone bracing for impact in situations that didn’t technically require bracing.
Not exactly interview-winning energy.
All the work, and I still looked like someone people explained things to carefully. Someone they underestimated first and apologized to later.
My thumb dragged across the seam of my sleeve.
Fifteen minutes.
This wasn’t just another meeting. It was the kind of thing that changed the trajectory of your life.
And it wasn’t just any office.
It was Henry fucking Rothwell’s.
You couldn’t exist at Wexley without knowing who he was. Not just the professor part—the mythology attached to him.
I read his memoir when I was fourteen.
I still couldn’t fully explain what it had done to me, only that something about it lodged itself beneath my ribs and refused to leave afterward.
Rhys never let me live it down.
“Trauma crush,” he called it after finding my copy shoved beneath my mattress with half the pages bent and highlighted within an inch of its life.
“Henry Rothwell turns you into a Victorian woman staring longingly out a rain-covered window.”
It wasn’t that dramatic.
The memoir definitely altered my brain chemistry a little, sure, but it also didn’t help that Henry Rothwell was offensively attractive.
Rhys would’ve had a field day if he could see me now, standing here rubbing my sleeve raw while I ran through my own introduction on a loop, repeating it in my head as if my name might disappear the second I tried to say it out loud.
Hi, yes, hello, I’m Archie.
Hargrove Hall rose ahead of me, and something in my chest tightened again—not panic exactly, but the kind of hyper-awareness that made my entire body feel a little too awake.
Nothing about the building looked welcoming, but I supposed it didn’t need to when it rose up in dark stone and sharp lines.
It looked less like an academic building and more like the setting of a Victorian ghost story where somebody definitely died of tuberculosis.
Very on brand for Wexley.
Iron-framed glass doors stretched across the entrance, the handles so heavy and decorative they looked fake. My reflection warped slightly in the curved glass as I reached for one, and the door resisted just enough to irritate me before finally giving way.
Cool air wrapped around me the second I stepped inside, cold enough to raise goosebumps across my arms and down the back of my neck.
My shoulders tightened automatically.
To the left, a wide staircase curved upward beneath dim lighting, the railing carved with intricate patterns that looked expensive enough to make me nervous about touching it.
Which was ridiculous.
Probably.
Portraits lined the walls beside me as I walked—old men preserved in oil paint and generational wealth, all of them wearing the same vaguely disapproving expression.
Every step I took echoed harder than it should have.
My phone buzzed suddenly in my pocket.
I froze.
For one deeply humiliating second, genuine panic flashed through me before my brain caught up and reminded me it was literally just a text message.
Get it together.
I dug the phone out and saw Rhys’s name.
Rhys: u breathing or did u faint in front of the rich people building
Rhys: blink twice if Henry Rothwell is haunting u
Rhys: good luck tho fr
A nervous laugh scratched at my throat.
My thumbs hovered before typing.
Me: I’m walking in.
Me: Stop calling it that.
Rhys: sorry
Rhys: a mausoleum for generational wealth
Rhys: go charm ur trauma husband
Heat crept up my neck.
Me: If I die in there I’m haunting you.
Rhys: perfect
Rhys: u already haunt me
I stared at that for a second, feeling steadied in the stupidest way possible, then locked my phone and put it away.
Somewhere behind me, the elevator let out a low mechanical hum that immediately had my heartbeat climbing the walls.
Enclosed spaces weren’t happening today.
Hard pass.
I took the stairs two at a time instead, falling into the same steady pace as everyone else around me—the kind of pace that said I belong here. I do this every day. I’m not actively unraveling in a historic building.
By the third floor, the air changed into something cooler and quieter. It was the kind of silence that pressed against the back of my neck.
The hallway stretched out ahead of me with fewer doors and too much empty space between them. Everything up here felt more important somehow.
I checked the time before I could stop myself.
Too early.
Of course I was early.
Early was what happened when you cared too much and had anxiety severe enough to qualify as a personality trait.
I stopped near the closest window and looked down at the quad below.
Students crossed the pathways in loose groups, laughing, carrying coffee cups, and existing with the kind of ease I kept trying to imitate but never quite managed to replicate naturally.
Meanwhile, my entire future was attempting to exit my body through my ribcage.
You’re fine.
You’re literally fine.
My phone buzzed again.
Rhys: don’t pass out before u meet him
Rhys: fainting is not a personality trait
Me: I’m not fainting.
Rhys: archibald
Rhys: ur the human embodiment of an 18th century illness
I exhaled through my nose, something almost like a smile threatening my cheek before I shut it down and turned back toward the hall.
Focus, Archie.
His door waited at the end of the hallway, his name printed clean and sharp against dark wood.
My fingers found the edge of my sleeve again before I forced my hand back down, adjusting my glasses as I closed the last few steps between us.
HENRY ROTHWELL
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY / CRIMINOLOGY
Psychology came first.
Of course it did.
Henry Rothwell didn’t study crime as a theory. He studied people right before they broke.
And because my brain was apparently committed to ruining my life, my first thought was: I wonder how fast he’ll figure me out.
As I knocked, I had the sudden urge to curtsy, and what the fuck was that?
Dr. Rothwell pulled the door open and leaned one hand against the frame.
His posture was locked down so tight I wondered if every violent thought inside him had been ordered to stand still.
Crisp, white shirt sleeves were rolled to his forearms, veins faint beneath the skin. I stared half a second too long and sort of hated myself for knowing exactly where I wanted his hands.
Damn.
I’d had him as an instructor before, but “had” was generous. Rothwell’s lectures were basically academic concerts—hundreds of students, impossible waitlists, and me somewhere twelve rows back pretending I wasn’t psychologically rearranged every Tuesday and Thursday.
Distance had done absolutely nothing to prepare me for him up close.
Wexley presented Henry Rothwell as polished and untouchable, but standing here, only a few feet away, the cracks were easier to spot.
Faint exhaustion shadowed his eyes. A pale scar cut along one side of his jaw.
He looked less like a professor and more like someone who knew exactly how capable he was of ruining your life.
Henry Rothwell was beautiful in a way that made rational feel optional.
Not safe. Not soft.
Built like a bad decision with tenure.
“Archibald Quinn?”
“Yes.” The word came out too fast. “Yes, sir.”
Ohmygod.
Bury me under the rich people stairs.
I did not just sir him in the doorway.
His mouth twitched, but it wasn’t a smile. Not exactly.
“You’re one minute early.”
I couldn’t tell if that was criticism, observation, or the conversational equivalent of putting a hand around my throat.
“I… like to be prepared.”
His eyes held mine. “Come in.”
I noticed the desk first, all heavy mahogany and old money, the kind of piece that looked like it had been dragged out of a queen’s office.
It didn’t feel like a professor’s office the way Wexley wanted offices to feel. This place had teeth. Shelves were packed tight, spines cracked and softened from being pulled down too many times.
Even the air in here felt different, smelling of coffee, paper, and something faintly smoky underneath. It was the kind of scent that made the room feel more like a hideout than an office. This was where Henry Rothwell came to be left alone with his ghosts.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
I should’ve been thinking about the interview—about what to say, how to hold myself, and how to make this count.
But standing there, taking in the imprint of him, I felt something low and stupid shift in my chest.
I wasn’t just inside his office.
I was inside his world.