The Polar Night Won't Shine on the Faithless
My twin sister Selena was the most troublesome grad student my fiancé, Professor Adrian Hall, had ever taken on.
Skipping class, showing up late, doctoring observation curves. Every time she walked into his lab, the two of them seemed ready to set the whole college on fire.
I told Adrian to stop using that tribunal tone with her. But he explained, "Eve, if she keeps drifting like this, sooner or later she'll ruin herself."
When he looked at Selena, his gray-blue eyes were as cold as a lake on a winter night.
"Have every raw record on my oak desk before eight tomorrow morning. One page short, and you don't set foot in the observation tower for the rest of the month."
I felt embarrassed for Selena, and grateful that I'd fallen for the right man.
Adrian Hall was the youngest tenured professor at St. George's College. Tall and lean, always in a dark gray cashmere coat, shirt buttoned to the very top. He could dismantle an entire model in the calmest voice, and still hold an umbrella over me on a rainy night, so gentle it made me believe I was the one exception outside his academic world.
Until the day we were preparing the wedding invitations. I borrowed his tablet, and my finger accidentally slipped into a document buried under layers of folders.
Inside were five hundred and twenty memos.
[Punishment No. 519: Selena talked back to me again. I kept her in my office and fucked her until three in the morning;by the end she didn't have the strength left to even look up at me.]
[Punishment No. 520: She got jealous. She insisted I leave something behind inside Eve's wedding dress — to prove that the white gown meant to symbolize purity could be dirtied by her too.]
With trembling hands, I scrolled to the video at the very bottom.
On the screen, the aloof and untouchable Professor Hall was down on one knee on his office carpet, kissing the rose tattoo on Selena's ankle.
"Selena, stop torturing me. Whatever you want, I'll give it to you, alright?"