“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 ofhandling 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.”
Then, after a beat that lingered too long to be accidental, his mouth curved slightly. “I wouldn’t want my assistant catching cold before the conference. It would be a shame if my most competent presenter couldn’t stand beside me.”
The warmth beneath his tone was a quiet provocation, a thread of amusement woven through the authority, and it slipped under my skin before I could guard against it. My pulse answered, sharp and traitorous, as though it recognized something my mind refused to name.
I forced a careful breath and shaped my response with the same restraint he had perfected.
“Understood,” I said, though the word trembled faintly against my lips, more confession than acknowledgment.
He didn’t move, didn’t retreat to his desk. The room seemed to wait with him, suspended in the faint scent of ink and something darker, clean and winter-sharp. For a moment, it felt as though he might reach out, touch the folder, my wrist, anything, but he didn’t. He simply watched, silent, until the quiet began to press against my pulse.
I rose, collecting the papers. “I’ll have the draft to you by Wednesday,” I said, more for my own steadiness than his approval.
“See that you do,” he answered, every syllable unflawed.
I turned and crossed the room, each footstep sounding too loud in the stillness. My hand
closed around the door handle, but before I could leave—
“Miss Carter.”
I stopped. His voice carried just enough restraint to make the command sound personal. I looked back, and his gaze held mine, unwavering, impossible to escape. “Silence,” he said, his tone calm but edged, “is only useful when you’re the one controlling it. Remember that.”
