Chapter Twelve #2
That made him look back at me, fully. For a suspended moment, he didn’t speak. He simply watched, and the silence that stretched between us wasn’t soft. It wasn’t even cruel. It carried an ache that demanded to be felt, a precision that pressed against the ribs and refused to ease.
I followed him into the main hall, the rhythm of my heels finding its pattern behind his longer strides.
Each sound, each measured echo, seemed to pull me further into his orbit.
I told myself to focus, to breathe, to hold onto the version of myself that was calm and composed, but that illusion had already begun to slip.
I hadn’t been myself since the first time he said my name, and I suspected I wouldn’t be again.
We moved through the hall without speaking.
Not in the silence of strangers, but in something charged, an unspoken current that hummed low between every exchanged glance, every pause too long to be accidental.
He moved with the same contained authority I had come to recognize, every step purposeful, his hands clasped loosely behind his back as he gave quiet directions to the staff.
I trailed him, clipboard in hand, noting changes to the layout, minor adjustments to the podium, the subtle way he stopped near the rear window, pausing long enough for thought to look like calculation.
And all the while, the tension persisted.
When I bent forward to check a name tag in the front row, I felt his attention shift toward me.
It wasn’t overt. It wasn’t crude. It was relentless and consuming, the kind of gaze that didn’t skim over skin but pressed through it, mapping where to linger, where to leave untouched.He didn’t watch me in passing, he studied me, quiet, assessing, the kind of gaze that knew exactly where the heat of skin gave way to fabric and where the breath caught beneath it, as though the memory of that boundary already lived in him.
I forced myself to stand straighter, to break whatever current was running between us, and found him still holding my eyes. He didn’t blink. Neither did I.
Then he moved, turned sharply toward the center of the room, voice cutting through the charged silence. “Come with me.”
The words carried more weight than volume, they left me no room for refusal.
I followed, the echo of his steps leading me through the side exit into a narrow back corridor.
It smelled faintly of old paper and polish, air that seemed to cling to forgotten places.
The lights hummed above, yellow and dim, casting everything in a suspended sort of stillness.
He stopped at the far end and faced me. The distance collapsed in an instant.
No clipboard between us now, no professional armor, nothing to hide behind except breath and pulse.
His gaze locked on mine, sharp enough to feel.
“You seem distracted,” he said, his voice roughened by restraint, though something beneath it was coming undone.
“So do you,” I answered, the words slipping out before sense could stop them.
His eyes darkened, the shift almost imperceptible but enough to drag the air tighter.
I took a step back, small, instinctive, only to meet the wall behind me.
The chill pressed into my spine, unrelenting, as if the wall meant to remind me where I stood.
He didn’t have to move closer, the lack of space did the work for him.
His hand lifted, resting on the wall beside my head, not touching, not yet, but close enough for the warmth of him to reach me.
“You know this isn’t going to end well,” he said, voice gravel-low, every syllable coiled and restrained.
The heat in my body climbed higher, defying logic. “Then why did you choose me?” My voice came out quieter than I wanted. “If you already knew.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Because I thought I could handle it,” he said, tone slow and tight. “Thought distance would be enough.”
The honesty hit harder than it should have. “And now?”
“Now I want you closer.”
The air fractured. I felt it in my chest, in my knees, in the tremor that chased through my breath. I turned my face toward him, the challenge already forming. “Then take what you want, Professor. Isn’t that what you do?”
He went still, gaze burning through the space between us. “I’m not the one against the wall, trembling,” he said, his voice softer but scalding. “You’re not as unaffected as you pretend to be.”
“I never said I was unaffected,” I whispered.
His eyes fell to my mouth. “Then tell me to stop.”
I didn’t. Couldn’t. The words refused to form. I looked up at him, lashes heavy, breath uneven. “You wouldn’t listen.”
“I would,” he said too fast, the sound of it rough, almost desperate. “Don’t think I wouldn’t.”
“Then why are you still standing here?” My pulse was chaos under my skin.
He leaned closer, just enough for his breath to slide against mine, a heat that tasted of want and defiance. “Because I want to ruin you,” he murmured. “And I hate myself for it.”
My throat closed around air. “You’re not alone in that.”
The silence that followed burned. The space between our mouths felt thinner than thought. Every heartbeat carried the threat of movement. Then he pushed away from the wall, not far, just enough to gather control back into his shoulders.
“We’ll meet here again before the keynote,” he said, voice re-sharpened into the cold cadence of a professor. “Ten sharp. Don’t be late.”
I nodded, pulse still hammering where his nearness had been.
He turned, leaving me with the echo of his footsteps and the taste of everything we hadn’t done still heavy in the air.
Then he added, quiet enough for the air itself to carry the weight of it. “Dress warm. The venue runs cold. But not too warm.” His gaze slid to my mouth, lingering. “Tight is better.”
And then he left, unhurried, as if he hadn’t just stripped the air from the room.
The sound of his footsteps faded before my pulse did.
I stayed where I was, pressed against the wall that now felt more alive than I did, breath snagged in my chest, every nerve still humming with the echo of his voice, a thread woven too deep to be pulled loose.
I didn’t move. My spine had molded to the wall, my body betraying me in its need to stay grounded in the space where he’d been. The stillness felt rehearsed, but it wasn’t. It was survival.
I closed my eyes and forced the breath out slowly through my nose, the way Aster always told me to do when I was spiraling.
It didn’t help. Not when the memory of his voice coiled around my ribs, soft as silk and twice as dangerous.
Not when the heat of his gaze still burned beneath my skin, invisible and unmistakable.
You seem distracted.
So do you.
God, I was. Not just distracted. Unraveled. Dismantled. As if he’d reached inside me without touching, stolen something vital, and left me walking around missing it.
I forced movement into my limbs, the kind that didn’t feel like mine anymore, and each step across the tiled floor sounded sharper than it should have, heels striking rhythm against the silence, discipline masquerading as composure.
There were people beyond the corridor, faculty, students, eyes that could see too much, and still I felt him everywhere.
The way he leaned in. The sound of his breath close enough to taste.
That near-moment when touch became threat, then restraint.
My reflection caught me in the tall window as I passed.
Flushed cheeks, mouth drawn tight, eyes hollowed by something I didn’t have language for.
Wrecked, but still standing. I’d spent years learning how to look untouchable, and now I couldn’t even convince the glass.
My fingers twitched with the urge to trace my own lips, to check if they were still swollen from what hadn’t happened.
I didn’t. Instead, I swallowed the tremor, tightened my grip on the clipboard, and walked faster. The cold outside met me again, but it wasn’t the temperature that made me shiver. It was knowing that he could undo me with only a few words. And that a part of me wanted to let him.
The café sat in its midmorning lull, half-empty, caught between the chaos of commuters and the buzz of students skipping class.
The scent of roasted beans and vanilla hung in the air, steam curling from the espresso machine like breath.
I spotted them instantly, Aster curled in the corner booth, her sleeve stained with a smudge of cobalt paint, and Gwen across from her, stirring honey into her tea with slow precision, her hair a curtain of soft control.They both looked up when I approached.
Gwen’s eyes caught mine first, bright with mischief.
Aster smiled, that wide, unguarded kind of smile that always felt like sunlight through fog.
“Finally,” Aster said, nudging her cup aside so I could slide in beside her. “We were about to put your name on a missing persons list.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, shrugging off my coat. “Didn’t sleep much.”
Gwen studied me, head tilted, a spark of teasing under her tone. “You’ve got that post-existential-nightmare look again. It’s very academic chic.”
I gave a low laugh. “Perfect. Exactly what I was going for.”
Aster’s gaze lingered longer. She didn’t ask, not directly. She just pushed a croissant toward me, the gesture quiet and steady. “Eat,” she said. “You look like you’ve been living off caffeine and regret.”
“I have,” I murmured, but I took the bite anyway. Warmth spread across my tongue, and for a moment, I let it ground me.
We talked after that, about deadlines, about absurd student emails, about Gwen’s ongoing argument with Zayn over who had better taste in playlists.
Their laughter filled the space, softening the edges of my thoughts.
They always did that, brought me back to something resembling balance, to the version of myself that existed before midnight corridors and professors who spoke in warnings that felt like foreplay.
Aster was halfway through a story about a studio critique gone wrong, something involving a misplaced nude study and a mortified teaching assistant, when she suddenly paused, dug through her coat pocket, and pulled out a folded flyer.
“Oh. This,” she said, unfolding it and sliding it across the table. “Almost forgot.” She grinned. “Ski trip. Next weekend. Some of the lit department’s going. A few professors, too. Thought it might be good for all of us to breathe actual mountain air for a change.”
Gwen leaned over, examining it. “Wait, is this the one with the cabins and hot tubs?”
Aster nodded. “That’s the one. Cozy, snowed-in, mildly irresponsible. Perfect.”
I blinked at them. “Skiing? You both know I can’t ski.”
“Details,” Aster said, waving off my protest. “You don’t have to ski. Just come. You can drink cocoa and watch Gwen and me make absolute fools of ourselves on the slopes.”
“I don’t know…”
Her tone softened. “You’ve been distant lately. Come with us. No research. No symposium prep. No mysterious dark-haired distractions.”
Gwen snorted into her cup.
I sighed. “It’s not—”
“Don’t even finish that,” Gwen interrupted. “We all saw the meeting. There was enough tension to power the entire university.”
Aster reached across and squeezed my hand, gentle but firm. “Say yes. Just one weekend. Let something else exist for a while.”
I looked back down at the flyer, the cheerful font promising snow, laughter, stillness. All the things that felt too far away lately. A part of me knew I should say no. But another part, the one that hadn’t stopped burning since he first looked at me, was already reaching for escape.
“I’ll think about it,” I said finally. And maybe, for once, thinking would be my undoing.