Chapter Two

Adrian Hale had always believed discipline solved everything—grading schedules, research deadlines, sleep routines, even the raw edges of emotion he refused to indulge. Structure was his armor, his salvation, the quiet rhythm that made him untouchable.

But nothing in his carefully curated life had prepared him for the way Eden Marlowe lingered in his thoughts long after the classroom door had closed behind her.

The night before their scheduled meeting, he sat in his study with a stack of papers in front of him. By all accounts, he should have finished grading within an hour—two at most. He’d done this a hundred times.

Instead, he read the same paragraph three times and couldn’t recall a single sentence of it.

He leaned back in his chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses.

This is ridiculous, he told himself. She is simply a student. An adult, yes, but still—your student.

But his mind didn’t obey logic. It drifted back to the way she had looked at him earlier, unafraid, utterly present, like she saw something beneath the surface he’d kept hidden from the world for years.

He pushed the papers away.

Maybe a walk would clear his head.

He stepped outside into the cool night air, hands shoved into his coat pockets as he made his way down the quiet street. The city hummed around him, distant and indifferent, but it only made her presence in his thoughts feel sharper.

He remembered the little things.

The tilt of her head when he challenged the class.

The way her pen twirled between her fingers when she was thinking.

The intensity of her eyes—dark, aware, unflinching.

It wasn’t attraction in the simplistic sense.

It was recognition, unsettling and magnetic, the kind that cracked old walls without permission.

He walked for an hour. He returned home feeling no lighter.

Sleep eluded him. He tossed, turned, stared at the ceiling until the pale light of dawn seeped through the curtains. He still felt her under his skin.

This is nothing, he insisted to himself. Just a momentary lapse. You’ll be fine once the meeting is over.

But morning didn’t bring clarity. If anything, the heaviness grew—an awareness coiled low in his chest, warm and restless.

He tried to bury himself in work. He answered emails, drafted lecture notes, reorganized an already-organized bookshelf. None of it helped.

Every time his thoughts drifted—every time his breath caught for just a moment—her face appeared behind his eyes.

By noon, he found himself checking the time too often.

By one, he started pacing his office.

By two, he tried to sit and failed, rising again after barely ten seconds.

By two-forty-five, he was certain he was losing his composure entirely.

He didn’t want her to know.

He didn’t want anyone to know.

He also knew—painfully, undeniably—that she would notice the moment she walked in. Eden saw things others missed. She read between the lines, listened beneath the words. She would feel the tension the moment the door clicked shut behind her.

Adrian stood at the window, hands braced on the sill, watching students cross the courtyard below. None of them were her.

He exhaled slowly, eyes closing as the truth settled over him like a whisper he shouldn’t hear:

He wanted three o’clock to come faster.

And worse—far worse—

He wanted her to walk in wanting him just as much.