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Chapter 02
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2026-09-02 15:56:21Clara’s POV
Professor Vance talked like he had somewhere else to be.
I hammered away at my keyboard, trying to catch every word while also completely against my own will sneaking glances at him every few sentences. He paced the front of the room with his sleeves rolled to the forearm, dark hair a little too long to be tidy, and a jaw that looked like it had been carved specifically to make undergrads lose their train of thought. If Blackridge had a mascot for "walking Greek statue," it was him.
I hadn't picked this school for the faculty. That was just a very nice bonus I hadn't been expecting. Still, I had a bad feeling I wasn't going to absorb a single fact this semester, which was tragic, honestly, because mythology was the one subject I'd never gotten sick of.
"That's it for today," Professor Vance said, folding his arms and somehow making that look intimidating and unfairly attractive at once. "Don't skip reading chapters two and three, the syllabus has the page numbers."
I finished my last line of notes and looked up to find half the auditorium already funneling toward the exit, while the other half had formed an actual line at the front to introduce themselves. My advisor's voice was in my head, telling me it never hurt to put a face to a name early in the semester. I'd told her flatly that I wasn't the type. But he kept catching my eye through the entire lecture, and now I couldn't stop thinking about how I'd basically launched myself and my books at him that morning without so much as an apology.
I didn't plan to go up there. I told myself I wasn't going to. And yet somehow I found myself hanging back, letting every single person cut in front of me, stomach twisting tighter with each one that left.
Then the last student said her goodbyes and walked out, and it was just me. Just me and a man who had no business looking like that while explaining Homeric epithets.
He glanced up, hazel eyes catching mine, and something in his expression eased into a small smile. "Hi."
"Hi I'm Rue."
I rocked back on my heels, mentally scrambling for literally anything to say next. I hadn't rehearsed this. If I'd planned it, I would've stood in front of my dorm mirror running through it a dozen times until I didn't sound like an idiot.
"I wanted to, um"
He leaned back against the edge of his desk, hands sliding into his pockets, mouth curving. "Rue," he repeated, and the way my name sounded coming out of him did something entirely unreasonable to my pulse.
Heat crawled up my neck. My heart tripped over itself.
"Rue," I echoed back, like a complete fool, too busy being derailed by how good-looking my professor was to form an actual sentence.
He had to be pushing forty, at least a few threads of gray woven through the stubble along his jaw, faint lines carved between his brows like he thought too hard, too often. And here I was, barely out of high school, mostly on this campus because it was three states away from everything I'd been trying to outrun.
"Sorry," I blurted, cheeks burning. "I just wanted to say I'm really looking forward to this class. I've been into mythology since I was basically a little kid, so. Yeah. Excited for the semester." His attention was steady on me in a way that made my skin feel too warm, so I dropped my gaze to my sneakers and hitched my bag higher on my shoulder. "I should probably head out"
"What's your favorite?" he cut in, pushing off the desk and closing some of the distance between us.
The air caught somewhere in my chest. My heart was doing something reckless.
"My favorite?" My voice came out barely above a whisper, mostly because of how close he'd gotten.
"Favorite myth. Favorite god, if you've got one."
"Oh um. Hades isn't exactly my favorite, but I've read his stories more times than I can count."
"Any reason why?"
My cheeks were on fire at this point. I shifted my weight and fought the urge to look up into those eyes, like they might actually see straight through whatever answer I gave. I lost that fight almost immediately, and once I was looking, I couldn't make myself stop. The space between us had gone thin and charged, and I didn't move back. I didn't want to.
"I don't really know," I admitted quietly.
He tilted his head, one dark brow lifting, a smirk tugging at his mouth. "You've got the whole semester to figure it out. People don't gravitate toward a story for no reason." He raised his hand slightly, like he might tuck the loose strand of hair by my face back but stopped himself halfway and dragged his fingers along his jaw instead.
"What's yours?" I asked. "Favorite story."
A beat passed before another smile broke across his face, the kind that could probably get a person into real trouble. "You'll figure that out too. Eventually."
Hearing him say my name earlier had left a low hum under my skin, and hearing this now didn't help. "Right, well" I glanced down, willing the feeling to settle. "Sorry again for running into you. I'll actually watch where I'm going tomorrow."
"Bright and early," he said.
"Bright and early," I repeated, and with one last smile I couldn't quite control, face still blazing, I turned and made my way back up the auditorium steps, careful this time not to trip over my own feet.
"Pull it together, Rue," I muttered to myself the second I hit the hallway.
He was my professor. It was literally the first day of school.
This was a terrible, terrible idea.
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