Chapter Eight
Edwina
The days unfolded in a strange suspension, as if I had stepped outside the rhythm of time and everything around me moved at half-speed, refusing to catch up or slow down.
I told myself it didn’t matter, that the title meant nothing, that assistant was just a word on a résumé, a technicality, a harmless formality.
I repeated that it was fine, that I didn’t care why Professor Stone had chosen me, or what quiet tension had taken root between us since that unnerving meeting in the lecture hall.
But beneath all those careful lies, I knew the truth had already begun to ache through the cracks.
By Thursday, I gave in and went with Aster to the art course she’d been pestering me about for days, claiming it would be good for my head, that it might even loosen whatever knots I refused to admit were there.
The class was tucked into a forgotten annex of the Fine Arts building, its walls glowing faintly with filtered daylight and carrying the scent of turpentine and clay, a soft, tangible quiet that made every sound feel deliberate.
Students hunched over their sketchbooks, lost in the concentration of shadow and line, the hush between them almost reverent.
I sat at the far end of the room, a stick of charcoal smudging my fingers, my lines uncertain and my shapes uneven, until the page looked as though it had been dragged through frustration itself.
But for the first time in what felt like weeks, my thoughts, the ones that circled endlessly around him, devouring everything else, finally began to dull.
Not fade, exactly, but recede into the distance, softened into something that no longer demanded to be heard.
Aster, of course, was effortless. Her movements carried that unteachable grace, the kind that belonged to people who didn’t have to second-guess their instincts.
Still, she didn’t hover. She only smiled when my paper tore under the weight of my hand, passed me another without comment, and said quietly, “It doesn’t have to be good. Just draw like no one’s watching.”
I didn’t tell her that I already felt watched, that even in stillness, something in me remained alert, as though his gaze lingered somewhere beyond reach.
It wasn’t imagination, it was memory, threaded through the small moments of every day.
I thought of him while standing in line for coffee, while flipping through unread novels, while brushing my teeth under fluorescent light, while reheating food I wouldn’t touch.
I thought of him most when the world went quiet, at three in the morning, my phone dark on the nightstand, a faint song whispering in my ears while I lay motionless, trying and failing to drown out the sound of his voice in my head.
Aster and Gwen noticed, of course. Aster kept trying to pull me back into the art studio, offering brushes with soft insistence and small, knowing smiles that carried the patience of someone who understood exactly what kind of unrest lived beneath my skin.
Gwen, on the other hand, waged her own brand of intervention from behind a screen.
Hourly texts filled with memes and mock suspicion.
How’s working for your mortal enemy going?
On a scale from one to setting his office on fire, how tempted are you today?
Their concern reached me through the static of my detachment, and I appreciated it more than I would ever say.
But I didn’t answer. The truth was simple.
Hayden had already taken up residence in my mind, a quiet occupation that spread until there was no space left untouched by him.
I despised that intrusion, and I despised him for making it happen.
By Monday morning, the cold had sunk into the bones of the city.
The sky hung low and colorless, pressing against the skyline with the weight of something unsaid.
I arrived at the university earlier than usual, my breath ghosting in the air, my coat wrapped tightly around me as though it could muffle the restless ache beneath my ribs.
The corridors were sharper that morning, emptied of warmth, each step echoing louder than it should have, threading through the silence until it felt like the building itself was holding its breath.
I stopped before the frosted-glass door, eyes lingering too long on the name etched across it in black serif:
Professor H. Stone.
The sight alone drew a tightening in my stomach. I knocked once.
“Come in,” came his voice, low and even.
I stepped inside. He didn’t look up immediately, though I could sense that he knew exactly when I entered.
The office was awash in pale winter light spilling through the blinds, thin beams cutting across the walls and dissolving into shadow.
He sat behind the desk in his usual black shirt, slacks, sleeves rolled to the elbow, every detail exact.
A pen moved between his fingers with deliberate precision, tracing lines across an ivory notepad.
His composure was complete, the kind that belonged to men who had turned restraint into a kind of art.
“I said noon,” he murmured, still focused on the page.
“It’s eleven fifty-eight,” I answered, keeping my tone smooth but letting a quiet provocation thread beneath the civility.
“Then you’re early.”
I lingered near the door, allowing my gaze to trace over him for just a moment. “I thought professors appreciated punctuality,” I said, my tone smooth, teasing with just enough edge to test the line.
His head lifted then, his eyes locking on mine, cold and clear. “I appreciate precision,” he said, the words carrying weight far beyond their simplicity.
Something in the air shifted. His stare held me in place, unreadable and unwavering, until my spine felt uncertain beneath it. There was no warmth in his expression, only scrutiny, sharp, consuming, relentless.
“Sit,” he said finally.
I crossed the room and obeyed, setting my bag beside the chair, fingers brushing the worn leather as I tried to ground myself.
The folder in my hands was still warm from being held against my coat, I focused on its edges, on the neat alignment of papers, anything to keep my thoughts from unraveling under his attention.
He didn’t move, but his focus did. I could feel it.
Careful, constant, dissecting without mercy.
His stillness was not indifference, it was study.
I drew a shallow breath and slid the folder toward him across the polished desk, the soft sound of paper on wood seeming louder than it should have been.
He closed his notebook with unhurried precision, fingers moving over the cover before interlacing his hands and resting them atop it.
The silence that followed was not accidental, it was a held thing, heavy, intentional, a control I could almost feel pressing against my skin.
“Did you bring the abstract index?” he asked.
“Yes, Professor.”
I handed the folder across the desk, careful to maintain that narrow, fragile distance between our hands. Even so, the nearness of his skin carried its own quiet voltage, a faint hum of awareness I couldn’t entirely suppress.
He glanced through the pages, his eyes moving with clinical rhythm down the columns. “Prioritize any submission that interrogates canonical misinterpretations, Hawthorne, Eliot, the usual suspects. Mark them A-one. Everything derivative or self-indulgent goes to the bottom.”
“That’s… diplomatic,” I murmured, unsure whether I was teasing him or testing him.
“One must be precise.” The faintest curl touched his mouth, not quite a smile, closer to a warning. “I trust you can distinguish rigor from pretense.”
“Is that a question or a test?”
“A prelude,” he said, sliding the papers back across the desk. “You’ll also draft the preliminary schedule. Room capacities are in the appendix. Handle the conflicts and bring me a clean version by Wednesday.”
I nodded, already gathering my notes, but his next words halted me mid-motion.
“You’ll be assisting with the symposium as discussed,” he continued, his tone cool, assured, “but you’ll also deliver one of the keynote presentations. The department chair agreed this morning.”
For a second, I forgot how to breathe. “A keynote?” I repeated, the word catching somewhere between disbelief and protest.
He looked up then, the smallest glint in his eyes betraying the satisfaction of catching me off guard. “You’re capable of handling it,” he said simply, as if it were the most obvious fact in the world. “It will serve you well.”
“I wasn’t aware I’d been consulted.”
“I didn’t ask for your comfort, Miss Carter,” he replied, rising from his chair with the measured grace of someone accustomed to being obeyed. “I asked for your competence.”
He circled the desk as he spoke, every step deliberate, the sound of his shoes against the floor an unhurried cadence that filled the air between us.
When he stopped beside me, the space felt thinner, charged.
“I value efficiency,” he said quietly, “but I value discernment more. Don’t confuse haste with ability. ”
“I never do,” I said, keeping my tone even, though the defiance in it tasted sharper than intended. “Is there anything else?”
His gaze traveled across my face, not hurried, not indulgent, just assessing, as though searching for the exact point where control might break. When his attention settled briefly on my mouth, the air seemed to constrict. I refused to give him the satisfaction of looking away.
The air seemed to constrict, every breath drawn thinner beneath the weight of his gaze, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of looking away.
“We’ll walk the conference venue Friday afternoon,” he said at last. “I want your assessment of the space. Dress for the cold.”