Chapter 6
Dakota
My fingers curled around a cheap blue ballpoint pen, my face turned towards the window of the classroom.
This type of pen was my favorite; not retractable, but with a simple plastic cap.
Students filed in slowly, sitting at the long tables arranged on ascending steps.
I was in the last row, sitting with the windows at my right, the coldness outside seeping through the glass and making me feel especially cozy in my sweater.
I leaned forward, looking down at my phone laying flat on the table as my hair cascaded around my shoulders, curtaining me in my own world like a waterfall.
Mila : I heard your professor is really hot
Me : Well, I wouldn’t know. He isn’t here yet. How did you even hear that?
Somehow, Mila just knew things. She was well-connected.
We couldn’t have been more opposite in that regard, but I loved her for it.
Ludmila and I had known each other since high school, even though she was a grade above me—and nobody really called her Ludmila, except her family.
We’d been in the same friend group, then coincidentally went to the same college.
She knew my entire reason for picking this school was because of the scholarship money I’d been offered, but we sometimes liked to pretend I’d just been following her here like an obsessed stalker. It was part of our friendship flirting routine.
Mila : Somebody was talking about something and his name came up. His name is kinda hot too. Micah Killshaw. Like what? Anyway, tell me if it’s true
Me : Of course. I hope you’re right. Maybe it’ll make this class bearable
I took a deep breath, flipping my phone over so the cracked screen was touching the table, then plucked out my earbuds and neatly bundled them up.
And that moment was when the man himself decided to make an appearance.
Micah Killshaw. Doctor Killshaw.
He strode into the classroom, wearing charcoal-gray slacks that fit him perfectly, a crisp white button-up with the sleeves rolled back to expose his strong forearms. He ran a large hand through his dark blond hair, pushing it back off his forehead.
Shit. Mila was right again.
I couldn’t stop staring at his broad shoulders, the way they tapered into a narrow waist. The perfect, tailored cut of his trousers. Dr. Killshaw was a far cry from every engineering professor I’d had thus far.
My heartbeat stuttered as his eyes flicked up to the back of the classroom, and connected instantly with mine. Some look passed through his gaze, but it was gone too quickly for me to identify it, his eyes already scanning over the rest of the classroom.
The class was Unit Operations, one of a few left for me to take to meet my graduation requirements—technically this was Unit Ops II; I’d taken the first one last semester.
It hadn’t been a horrible class the previous semester, and I knew I could expect more of the same from this class. Which was somewhat reassuring.
Dr. Killshaw opened his laptop and got it plugged into the projector while students chattered around me.
I recognized a lot of the faces in the room; since we’d all been doing the same degree for four years, we’d all been taking similar classes.
Not that I’d really become friends with any of them…
but the familiarity was nice. I saw the three other people who’d been in my lab group for Unit Ops I, but none of them were sitting together either.
Once the introductory slideshow was up on the projector screen, everyone quieted down, watching our professor stand again to his full height and turn his attention back on the room.
“Hello, everyone,” he started. “I’m Dr. Killshaw, and this is Unit Operations 5776.”
A few people shifted in their seats. I ran a strand of long hair over my fingers, looping it then letting it fall free.
The longer I looked at my professor, the more familiar he felt—which was weird because I was one-hundred percent confident I’d never seen him before in my life.
Maybe on some faculty website at some point?
I wasn’t sure. I flattened my palm on the top of my closed laptop, wrapping my fingers around the edge as he started the slideshow.
His introductory slide was short, with very little personal information—save for a picture of him hiking, standing in front of Mount Rainier—and then we moved into the basic class structure.
He explained when office hours would be held, gave us all the major dates for labs and exams, and briefly went over the general topics that would be covered over the course of the semester.
I was listening to him explain a slide about PPE when I realized why he was so familiar to me.
He looked like Mason.
Well, he didn’t physically look like him much at all. Dr. Killshaw’s hair was dark blond, where Mason’s was brown, and I couldn’t see the color of his eyes from here but they looked light—nothing like the deep brown of Mason’s irises.
But it was that same intangible thing I’d sensed about Mason on the only day we’d met. Whatever that thing was, it existed in my professor too. Or maybe I was losing my mind.
A shiver cascaded down my spine.
Memories of all the things Mason did to me in the backseat of his car filled my skull. Every place on my body he’d put his tongue, the way he’d made me black out. My knife on his throat. Him not listening to me.
I hugged my arms around myself, my eyes skimming to the side to look out the window.
Dark boughs of pine swayed in the ever-present breeze, misty rain clinging to the air stubbornly and forming tiny jewels of water on the tips of the pine needles.
The sky was as cloudy as ever, looming over everything like a shadow.
At the time, I’d never wanted to see him again. I’d wanted to get out of his car and go home. I’d wanted to be alone. Safe.
I’d felt better knowing he would never really know me. Because as dangerous as it’d been with him like that, it would only be worse the more secrets he learned about me.
But now there was this craving in my blood. A craving for that type of violence.
It’d always been there, lurking, but he’d woken it up. Woken up that awful fantasy. Because he could actually give it to me.
And it wasn’t like he gave me his phone number, or his last name, or any other way to find him again. He’d messed me up then disappeared into the fog, leaving me isolated in the uneasy aftermath.
I was trying not to think about it. I’d gotten out of his car of my own free will, after all.
Even through the whirlwind of thoughts about Mason, I could still remember what’d caused me to start thinking about him in the first place. My professor. Like before, I couldn’t put my fucking finger on it, but that similarity was there.
Paranoia wrapped around my body like a cloak and I flattened my lips, trying to ignore the nonsensical connections my mind was working out.
The true explanation was laughably simple.
Mason and Dr. Killshaw were both very attractive men, more scientifically perfect than any other men I’d seen in my lifetime, and I’d just seen them both within a few days of each other.
That was the similarity. It was weird to see people who looked like that in real life.
Nothing more.
“You all have already taken this class before, so I’m not going to spend much time explaining how lab works.
” My professor’s voice drew my focus back to the front of the room.
“We’ll rotate through the different labs week by week, and I’ll get all the schedules posted soon.
There are a few kinks the department has to work out, so until then… ”
He flipped to the next slide, dragging a hand through his hair again. I stared at the brutal line of his side profile as he turned towards the projected screen.
“We’re just going to start with lecture.
First topic is Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams, P&IDs.
This will be on the first exam, and you will encounter these in your career.
A lot of things we teach in Chem E in undergrad aren’t applicable to the real world, but meant to build skills. This is extremely applicable.”
Dr. Killshaw went through a few more slides, describing the typical standards the diagrams followed, explaining a bit of why they were necessary, then going into some specifics.
He showed several examples of lead sheets, pointing out what was important on each one, and how we could learn to read them on our own, then use them to understand the P&IDs.
By the time lecture ended, I was starting to get antsy.
I almost wanted to transfer out of this class and find some other way to meet this graduation requirement, because—as much as I tried to ignore it, to convince myself otherwise—I was weirdly unsettled by Dr. Killshaw in the same way I’d been weirdly unsettled by Mason.
And look how that turned out. With his face between my legs and his cum on my stomach. By far the riskiest hookup I’d ever had. One that’d always be in my head now.
Maybe for that reason alone I should be steering clear of my professor.
All the students filed out of the room, lingering in little groups as we all made our way down the wide steps and to the exit door near the front of the room. As I neared Dr. Killshaw’s desk, I could feel his eyes on me, somehow. I couldn’t fathom why he’d even be looking at me, though.
When I turned and caught his eye, the look on his face wasn’t what I’d expected. It felt like some strange, visceral curiosity, and it was bleeding all over his expression. Like before, it didn’t last long, and he was turning back to his laptop before I could make sense of anything.