I’ve never spoken in his class, never turned in a paper. Never enrolled, until now. I was just a shadow in the back row, a girl with a stolen seat and a stolen hour. I was careful. I was quiet.
So how does he know?
My heart stutters. My skin prickles. I stare at the back of his head as he turns away, chalk dust clinging to the cuff of his sleeve like ash.
He shouldn’t know me, but he does.
And that means one of two things: either he looked me up, or he never stopped watching.
“I wasn’t hiding,” I announce. “I was listening.”
He turns back, and his mouth twitches. Not a smile. Something darker. Something that knows.
“Then let’s see what you’ve learned.”
My heart stumbles. Not a flutter, a collapse. Like it missed a step and forgot how to recover.
His voice is exactly how I remembered it. Smooth. Designed to dissect. It doesn’t rise, doesn’t rush. It just lands right in the center of my chest, where I keep the memory of that first lecture like a relic.
I look up.
He’s watching me now. Fully. Intentionally. Like I’m not just a student, like I’m a subject. A question he already knows the answer to.
Julian Kincaid is tall. Six-four, maybe more. He doesn’t slouch, doesn’t soften. His body is lean, tailored, deliberate—black button-down rolled to the elbows, slacks pressed sharp, watch matte and silent. His hair is dark, clipped close, with silver threading through the temples like time tried to touch him, and he let it.
He turns back to the board. The chalk breaks in his hand. He doesn’t react.
But I do.
Because I remember everything.
The quote, the cadence, the way his voice dipped when he said ‘recognition is just obsession in disguise’.
I was eighteen. Sunburned. Uninvited. And I’ve been building my life around that hour ever since.
Now I’m here. Enrolled. Named. Seen.
And he’s still the voice I can’t stop chasing.
As I gather my thoughts the air shifts again, and I catch his gaze lingering on me—just a fraction longer than necessary. It sends a jolt through my chest, a reminder that I’m not just a name on a roster. I’m a question he seems eager to explore.
“Miss Dawson,” he utters again, his voice low and rich, “I expect great things from you.”
The weight of his words hang between us, heavy with implication. My heart races, not just with fear but with something darker, an exhilaration that feels dangerously close to desire.
I nod, but inside I’m spiraling. What does he expect? And why does the thought of disappointing him feel like a sin?
Three Years Ago. Summer.
The lecture wasn’t on the schedule. I stumbled in by accident, seeking refuge from the laughter and camaraderie that felt foreign to me. Sunburned from hours spent in the courtyard, I was still unsure if I even belonged at Blackmoor. I hadn’t planned on being here; I hadn’t even applied. It was a whim, a desperate escape from a life that felt suffocating.
Room 214 was open—cool, dim, and filled with books that smelled like dust and secrets long forgotten. I slipped inside like a trespasser, a shadow in the back row, hoping to fade into the silence. The air was thick with the weight of unspoken thoughts, a sanctuary for the restless.
And then he spoke.
A Professor of Literature. His voice was velvet over a blade, slicing through the stillness. He didn’t greet the room or smile; he simply began quoting Jane Eyre, Dorian Gray, and Lolita. His words twisted around me, wrapping me in a cocoon of fascination. He spoke of power like poetry, of desire like war, of obsession as recognition in disguise. Each phrase was a spell, casting shadows over my heart, rewriting me in ways I didn’t yet understand.
And then he said it;
