“What? I’m just saying. You’ve got that post-emotional-apocalypse glow.”
“Shut up.”
“Ladies,” Lewis’s voice cut through our whispered chaos like a scalpel. “If you’re finished solving world hunger, we can begin.”
Cleo slid lower in her chair. “Oops.”
I smirked because apparently self-preservation wasn’t on my agenda today.
Lewis launched into the lecture, something about duality and self-destruction in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Subtle as a brick to the face, really.
“The central question,” he said, voice carrying that smooth authority that made my brain go temporarily offline, “is whether a man can live with both his darkness and his virtue without one eventually destroying the other.”
My hand shot up with the kind of reckless abandon usually reserved for drunk texting exes.
“Is that a philosophical question or just your dating history?”
The class erupted. Someone actually clapped. I’d achieved academic comedy gold.
Lewis turned to look at me with the kind of slow, predatory focus that suggested I’d just signed my own death warrant. His jaw ticked once-a tell I’d learned meant I was either about to get lectured or fucked, possibly both.
That glare hit like lightning, carrying about seventeen different kinds of threat mixed with muscle memory. My body responded before my brain could tell it to chill, heat flooding places that had no business responding to academic intimidation.
I smiled sweetly, because going down in flames might as well be entertaining.
He turned back to the board, but the chalk cracked in his grip like my self-control.
Cleo whispered, “You are so getting detention.”
“I think that was a silent promise of academic murder.”
The lecture continued, tension thick enough to cut with a knife. He quoted passages, scribbled annotations, called on students with the kind of impatience that screamed ‘I didn’t sleep either and you’re all paying for it.’
I tried not to look at his hands. Or his mouth. Or remember how it felt when those hands were-
The door exploded open.
Everyone turned like we were watching the world’s most dramatic tennis match. Dean Halbrook walked in, followed by two men in what were definitely not academic robes. Dark uniforms. Official badges. The kind of accessories that turn regular Tuesday mornings into life-altering disasters.
Murmurs swept through the room like wildfire through dry grass.
Lewis turned slowly, chalk still gripped in what was probably now powder. “Dean?”
“I need you to come with us,” Halbrook said, voice tight enough to snap.
“For what?” Lewis asked with the kind of cool that suggested he’d been expecting this moment.
One officer stepped forward. “Adrian Lewis, you’re under investigation for misconduct and abuse of power within the college system. Please step away from the podium.”
The room fucking exploded.
“What?!”
“Is this actually happening?”
“Holy shit, he’s getting arrested?”
Gasps, phones lifting like we were documenting the academic apocalypse, chairs scraping as people repositioned for better angles. Cleo’s grip on my arm could probably cut off circulation.
“Holy shit,” she breathed. “Sophie…”
Lewis stood perfectly still, scanning the room like he was memorizing faces for some kind of psychological hit list. Then his gaze found mine and held. Like he was downloading my entire soul through eye contact. Like he already knew exactly how we’d gotten here.
“You have no proof,” Lewis said to the officer, voice cold enough to freeze hell.
“Dr. Lisette Vaughn filed a formal report. You’re being placed on academic leave pending investigation.”
More chaos. Chairs scraping, people whispering my name like I was patient zero of this academic plague. Did they know? Did everyone fucking know?
Lewis dropped the chalk.
“I’ll come quietly,” he said, which was possibly the most ominous thing he could have chosen.
He looked at me one more time-a look that felt like a promise and a threat and a goodbye all wrapped in psychological warfare.
Then he let them lead him out.
The door slammed. Dead silence.
Until Cleo whispered, voice trembling with the realization that our lives had just become a cautionary tale: “What the hell did you do, Sophie?”
And honestly? I was starting to wonder the same thing.
The second Adrian was escorted out, the classroom went full fucking nuclear. Chairs scraped back like students were evacuating a disaster zone. Whispers flew across rows like ammunition, phones materializing faster than you could say “academic scandal.”
“Did you see his face?”
“Someone said he was sleeping with a student.”
“Is it true? Is it her?”
I sat frozen, jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth, hands curled into fists that could probably punch through my desk.
My pulse was doing this thing where it forgot how to function normally, but I heard Cleo’s voice cutting through the chaos like a foghorn.
“What the actual fuck does Dr. Vaughn have on him?” she asked, eyes wide as dinner plates. “Like, what did she even report? And does she- Oh fuck, does she know about you two?”
I swallowed what felt like broken glass and lied, “I don’t know.”
Cleo leaned closer, voice dropping to that stage whisper that somehow carries better than regular talking.
“Sophie. Babe. I know we joke about your thing for masks and emotionally unavailable men with possible criminal records, but this is serious. The police took him away. In actual handcuffs.”
“I fucking know that,” I snapped, sharper than I meant to.
Her expression crumpled like I’d just kicked her favorite puppy.
I exhaled slowly, trying to find some semblance of human decency in my emotional wreckage. “I’m sorry. I just- I need a minute.”
She nodded, but I could see the worry radiating off her like heat from asphalt. “Okay. Just… be careful.”
I grabbed my bag and practically sprinted from the room, heart doing its best impression of a dying star collapsing in on itself.
The hallways felt too bright, too normal, too full of people going about their regular Tuesday bullshit while my entire world had just imploded in front of thirty witnesses with camera phones.
I didn’t stop walking until I reached her office. Dr. Lisette Vaughn’s name was still polished on the door like nothing had happened.
Like she hadn’t just detonated a nuclear bomb in the middle of my life for reasons I was starting to understand with horrifying clarity.
I didn’t knock. Fuck politeness.
She looked up, startled, as I burst through her door like an avenging angel with serious anger management issues. “Sophie?”
“You turned him in,” I said, because subtlety was apparently not on today’s menu.
She stood from her desk with that practiced grace that suggested she’d been expecting this conversation. “I did what needed to be done.”
“Don’t give me that sanctimonious bullshit,” I spat. “You reported him to the fucking police. You couldn’t just go to the academic board? You had to make it a public execution?”
