The Architect of Obsession
By L.B. Martin
Chapter One
River
* * *
I’ve sat through his lectures before. Back row. No name on the roster. No voice in the room. Just a shadow with a notebook and a need.
But today, I’m on the list.
Today, I count.
Julian Kincaid doesn’t know I’ve been orbiting him for two years, I rearranged my schedule just to audit his classes, and I’ve memorized the way he speaks about repression like it’s a love language. I’ve watched him dismiss students with a single glance, and wanted to be the exception.
He doesn’t know I’ve built entire routines around him. That my OCD doesn’t come with handwashing or light switches, it comes with fixation, with the need to understand something until it stops hurting. With the belief that if I can just get it right, just say the perfect thing, read the perfect line, be the perfect student, I’ll finally feel safe.
But nothing about him feels safe.
He’s the only variable I can’t control. The only one I don’t want to.
And now I’m here.
In his line of sight.
And I don’t know if I want him to see me or ruin me.
I’m early. Of course I am. The hallway outside room 214 smells like varnished wood and old paper, like memory. My fingers tighten around the strap of my bag, knuckles white, pulse loud. I’ve stood here before, but today my name is on the roster.
Today, I’m not invisible.
My heart is pounding. Not fast, but hard. Like it’s trying to break through bone. I count the beats. I’ve trained myself to. It’s the only way I know how to stay still.
I chose both of his classes: Lit 301 (Sinners and Saints: Guilt, Judgment, and Redemption in American Literature) and Lit 417 (The Architecture of Seduction: Obsession and Transgression in the Modern Novel). I didn’t have to, but I want to see how he teaches sin in the morning and seduction in the afternoon. I want to know if his voice changes when the subject does.
I take a deep breath and step inside.
The room is cold. Not in temperature, in tone. The walls are lined with books that look like they’ve never been touched. The windows are tall and narrow, like they’re watching. And at the front of the room, back turned, chalk in hand, is him.
Professor Julian Kincaid.
He’s writing something on the board—Latin, sharp and deliberate. His sleeves are rolled to the elbow, and his forearm flexes with each stroke. He doesn’t look at me. Not yet, but I feel it. The shift in the air. The weight of being seen, even when I’m not.
I take my seat. Third row, center. Not the back anymore. Not the shadows. I want him to see me. I want him to know me.
He turns.
His eyes land on me like a verdict, steel-gray, unblinking, surgical.
“Miss Dawson,” he observes, voice low and precise. “I see you’ve finally decided to stop hiding.”
My name in his mouth doesn’t sound like a roll call.
It sounds like a judgment.
I need to answer him with a steady, practiced response but inside, something cracks because he shouldn’t know my name.
