He stood at the front of the room, every inch of him composed, unshaken, and immaculately precise. The board behind him was already covered in half a lecture’s worth of notes, order where my morning had been nothing but ruin.
His gaze found mine. A single look, and the air in the room shifted. I shut the door softly, but the click still seemed to echo.
“Miss Carter,” he said, his voice cutting through the quiet with surgical precision. “How gracious of you to join us.”
“I—” My throat caught. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Take a seat,” he interrupted smoothly, already turning back to the board. “And do try not to disrupt the rest of the hour. I’m sure whatever delayed you was worth being nearly fifteen minutes late to a class that began at nine precisely.”
A few students snickered. The sound burned. Shame settled low in my stomach, heavy and hollow. I walked to an empty seat at the back, keeping my eyes down. My pulse was still racing, my thoughts still tangled, and my hands refused to stop shaking. I didn’t look up. Not at them. Not at him.
Especially not at him.
Chapter Four
Edwina
ProfessorHaydenStonestoodnear the edge of his desk, one hand spread across the polished surface in quiet dominion, the other buried in the pocket of his charcoal slacks, his stillness so deliberate it felt rehearsed. The motionless composure he held wasn’t born of calm, it was command, a measured possession of the space that left no room for disruption. Every inch of him radiated control, the kind that didn’t need to assert itself aloud. He simply existed within that stillness, and the room bent around it.
His eyes found me and held there, unwavering, their focus so unrelenting it pressed the air thin between us. There was no flicker, no falter, only a steady, cutting concentration that carried through the quiet rustle of pages and shifting students until everything else seemed to dissolve. The weight of hisattention felt merciless, his restraint sharpened into something colder than disapproval. A discipline honed to precision, carved into the marrow of who he was.
“Miss Carter.”
My name left his mouth in a tone that left no room for response. It fell into the silence and settled there, final, immovable. I froze mid-step, the strap of my bag carving into my shoulder as I tightened my grip until the leather groaned. Around me, the faint movements of students slowed to nothing. Even the air seemed to hold itself still, as though waiting for something to break. My lungs constricted under the tension, the breath trapped and shallow, refusing to move past the point of my collarbone.
Aster’s seat beside me was empty today, she had texted early that morning, and for the first time, her absence felt heavy. If she were here, she would have thrown me a look that made me laugh under my breath, would have diffused this unbearable pause. But there was no one. Just me, standing in front of him, caught beneath a gaze that made escape impossible.
His voice came next, calm yet edged in tempered steel, every syllable measured with surgical restraint. “Next time,” he said, the words too quiet to be shouted yet too precise to be ignored, “don’t be late. And if you are, don’t bother walking through my door at all. You won’t be permitted to attend my class.”
The silence that followed struck harder than the reprimand itself. I swallowed, the motion rough, catching somewhere behind my throat. It wasn’t the volume of his words that stung; it was the certainty that came with them, the ease with which he reduced me to an inconvenience. His tone wasn’t raised, his face wasn’t angry, and yet the authority in his delivery carried the weight of judgment. He didn’t see a student who had been delayed, he saw a fracture in the flawless order he demanded, and I was the cause of it.
My pulse pounded against my ribs, uneven and hot beneath my skin. His gaze pinned me in place, dissecting rather than observing, stripping away the layers of composure I had wrapped around myself until I felt exposed in a way that had nothing to do with lateness. Around me, others watched, but their eyes barely registered. His were the ones that held me there, sharp and inescapable, the only ones that mattered.
I wanted to respond. To speak. To claw back the ground he had taken from me with a single, casual sentence. But my mouth betrayed me, my voice caught somewhere between fury and humiliation. I forced a single nod, small and tight, my lips pressed together so firmly it hurt. Turning away took effort I could barely summon, but I did it, slowly, carefully, because even that movement felt observed.
Each step toward the door carried the echo of his voice across the back of my neck. The classroom air was suffocating, the silence too absolute, broken only when the door gave a faint creak as I pushed it open. The corridor beyond was no warmer, no kinder. The fluorescent lights hummed above me, the sound too bright, the space too wide. My spine stayed straight, though anger had already started burning beneath my skin, a low, steady heat that refused to cool.
That man. That insufferable, self-absorbed bastard. Who did he think he was, standing there in his perfect stillness, acting as if the world itself had interrupted his rhythm because I dared to exist outside his schedule? His arrogance crawled beneath my skin with every memory of his tone, that smooth, detached authority that didn’t need to shout to humiliate.
“Fucking prick,” I muttered under my breath, the words bitter and grounding. “Smug, condescending bastard. Probably times his own breathing to stay symmetrical.” I kept walking, the sharp sound of my heels cutting through the hallway. “He looks at people as if they’re inconveniences that haven’t learnedmanners yet. I hope his pen leaks across one of those pretentious lectures. I hope his coffee burns his tongue. I hope his perfect calm finally cracks.”
The anger expanded until it filled every inch of me, a pulse that had nowhere to go. My hands trembled as I reached for the stairwell railing, gripping until the skin across my knuckles turned pale. Each step down felt heavier, the sound of my boots echoing upward in steady, furious rhythm.
By the time I reached the doors, my chest felt tight, my thoughts fevered, and the winter air beyond hit me with a shock that did nothing to soothe the heat rising through my veins. I drew in a long breath, forcing it past the tightness in my throat, the exhale coming out sharp, clouding in front of me.
“I hate him,” I whispered, each word dragged from somewhere deep. “Arrogant fucking prick.”
The wind caught the sound and tore it away, scattering it into the cold. Yet even as it left my mouth, I could still feel him lingering behind my ribs, the memory of that voice, that gaze, that infuriating composure that refused to leave me in peace.
I told myself it was anger. Only anger. But something inside me refused to believe that lie.
I pulled my coat tighter around myself as I crossed the courtyard, the cold sinking into my bones despite the layers I wore. My breath escaped in short, irritated bursts that dissolved into the frozen air, and I tried to unclench my jaw, though the tension refused to release. The scene from class replayed in my mind, his voice still echoing in that infuriatingly composed register, measured, restrained, faultlessly controlled, each word delivered with the kind of care meant to wound without raising a hand.
Gwen’s voice broke through the chill before I saw her. She waved from a bench near the student union, her brown hair pulled into a loose bun, strands falling around her flushedcheeks as she cupped a steaming drink between her palms. “There she is,” she called, her tone cutting through the cold with impossible brightness. “The girl who faced the devil and lived to tell.”
I forced a smile that barely reached the surface. “Survived is more accurate.”
Aster appeared a moment later from behind a stone pillar, her light brown hair sleek in a low ponytail, a thick scarf wrapped around her neck like armor. “You look murderous,” she observed, her gaze sliding over me. “Should I call the authorities or the press?”
