I was so completely fucked, and not in the fun way.
I burst into the restroom like I was fleeing a fucking crime scene.
My chest was doing that thing where it forgets how to work properly, and my reflection looked like I’d been hit by an academic truck.
Red cheeks, eyes that had apparently been crying without my permission, lips trembling like I’d just escaped something that wanted to eat me whole.
“What the actual fuck is happening to me?” I whispered to my disaster reflection.
My brain was stuck on repeat-his voice, the way she just dropped to her knees like muscle memory. My stomach was doing Olympic-level gymnastics, and not the good kind.
Was that my future? Was I next in line for whatever psychological mindfuck had just played out in Vaughn’s office?
I splashed cold water on my face, trying to shock my system back to normal. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. Nothing was going to work because my thoughts were having a full-scale riot in my skull.
Maybe I was already halfway gone. I’d let him crack me open like a fucking walnut, let him see parts of me I didn’t even know existed. And here’s the really fucked up part-I liked it.
God help me, I craved it like caffeine in the morning.
But what if this wasn’t about pleasure? What if it was about systematic destruction of everything I’d worked to build?
I’ve always been the control freak. Color-coded planners, strategic life choices, every checkbox ticked with military precision. I had a five-year plan, for Christ’s sake.
Then Adrian Lewis walked into my life and apparently decided to use my carefully constructed existence as his personal demolition project.
The terrifying question I couldn’t stop asking: What if I couldn’t pull myself back out?
A knock on the bathroom door made me flinch like I’d been electrocuted. I wasn’t ready to face anyone-not Cleo with her inevitable interrogation, definitely not Lewis with his mind-reading bullshit.
But hiding in bathrooms is for high schoolers, and I was done being a coward.
If I was going to spiral into complete psychological collapse, I at least deserved to know how deep this rabbit hole went.
My feet carried me straight to Dr. Vaughn’s office like they had their own agenda.
When I passed by, Lewis was gone-probably off manipulating some other unsuspecting academic victim.
But Vaughn was still there, perched on the edge of her desk, flipping through a binder like she hadn’t just been on her knees five minutes ago.
Her posture was museum-quality elegant, but something in her eyes when she looked up screamed exhaustion. Like she’d been fighting a war for years and was tired of pretending she wasn’t losing.
“Can I come in?” My voice came out smaller than intended.
She blinked, genuinely surprised. “Of course. Sophie, right?”
I nodded, stepping inside and shutting the door with the kind of finality that suggested we were about to have a conversation that couldn’t be overheard. Her office smelled like old books and expensive perfume-roses mixed with something sharper, more dangerous.
“Have a seat,” she offered, but I stayed standing. My legs didn’t trust anything right now, especially not furniture that might trap me in place.
“I need to ask you something,” I said, folding my arms across my chest like armor. “What exactly is going on between you and Professor Lewis?”
Her mouth did this weird twitch thing. Not quite a smile, not quite a denial. More like recognition.
“You overheard us.”
It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer.
She stepped away from her desk, needing space to think or maybe just to breathe. “It was five years ago. I was finishing my dissertation. He was my advisor.”
“You were together?” The words came out smaller than I’d planned.
She laughed, but it was the kind of laugh that suggested nothing was actually funny. “Not in the way you’re thinking. It was never flowers and romantic dates. It was intense. Private. And very… specific.”
I knew what she meant. Felt it in my gut like recognition. “BDSM.”
Single nod. “It started with consent. Clear boundaries, safe words, all the textbook stuff. But when you’re young and he’s like that-” She gestured vaguely, like Lewis was some kind of natural disaster. “It’s easy to mistake control for care. I thought I could handle it. Thought I was special.”
Her voice caught on that last word like it was barbed wire.
“What happened?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know.
“He left.” Simple words that hit like bullets. “Right after my defense. One day he was my entire world, the next he was gone. No explanation, no goodbye. Just… silence.”
She looked at me then, and I saw past her perfectly constructed professor facade to something raw and bleeding.
“I thought I was losing my mind. I’d built my career around him, my identity, my future. I loved him. Or thought I did. Hard to tell the difference when someone’s been systematically rewiring your brain for two years.”
I stayed quiet because what the fuck do you say to that?
“You want to know why I pulled you into my office, Sophie?” Her voice went harder, more focused. “Because I recognize the signs. I see how you look at him, how he looks at you. It’s happening again. I couldn’t stop it the first time because I was too busy drowning. But maybe I can stop it now.”
“I’m not like you,” I whispered, but even as I said it, I knew it was bullshit.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she snapped, then immediately softened. “I don’t mean that cruelly. You’re smart, ambitious, you have an actual future. But those things won’t protect you from him. He knows how to twist your boundaries until you can’t tell where you end and he begins.”
I wanted to argue, to scream that she was wrong. But she wasn’t-not completely. I’d already felt that terrifying surrender, that blurring of lines between who I was and who I was becoming under his influence.
“But I chose this,” I said weakly.
“So did I.”
The silence stretched between us like a bridge neither of us wanted to cross.
“Do you still love him?” The question slipped out before I could stop it.
Her laugh was broken glass. “No. But I never stopped feeling him. And I never stopped regretting how much of myself I gave away.”
My throat felt like it was closing. “Thank you,” I managed, turning toward the door.
“Sophie.” I paused. “Promise me something. Don’t lose your voice. Not for him. Not for anyone.”
I nodded and walked out, carrying the weight of her warning like a stone in my chest.
I stared at my reflection in the lecture hall window long after everyone else had escaped to their normal, non-psychologically complicated lives.
My notebook was still open to a completely blank page because apparently I’d spent the entire class having an internal crisis instead of taking notes about Victorian poetry.
“I’m nothing like her,” I whispered to my ghost reflection, pressing my fingers to my chest like I could physically slow the panic building there.
But that didn’t stop the questions from multiplying like rabbits in my brain.
What the fuck had I actually witnessed in Vaughn’s office? What did it mean for me? And why couldn’t I stop thinking about the way she’d dropped to her knees like muscle memory?
My feet carried me toward Lewis’s office before my brain could talk them out of it. Heart pounding, mouth desert-dry, fingers curled into fists as I knocked on his pretentious heavy door.
“Come in.”
I stepped inside and shut the door with the kind of finality that suggested we were about to have a conversation that couldn’t be interrupted.
He was buttoning his jacket like he’d been about to leave, but his eyes met mine-calm, unreadable, giving away absolutely nothing.
Classic Lewis. Emotional Fort Knox in a perfectly tailored suit.
“Miss Hale,” he said, switching into full professor mode. “Did you need clarification on the lecture?”
I fucking hated how he could flip that switch.
Professional, detached, like he hadn’t been systematically rewiring my brain for weeks. But I caught the flicker in his gaze-the storm brewing just beneath that controlled surface.
