"Thought you'd like to know your professor has excellent taste :)"
The text hits my phone at 6:47 AM. It's not from Kilian's number, but I know it's him. The attached screenshot makes my internal organs rearrange themselves.
There's the original email interface "To: Victor L..." sitting there like evidence at a crime scene I definitely committed.
I shoot up in bed, sheet pooled around my waist, staring at proof that Kilian still has everything. That he's watching. That he knows about Victor.
If he sends them to the admin, to the dean, to Liv…
My spiral gets interrupted by another text: "Some investments mature with time."
My hands shake as I block the number, which won't help. Men like Kilian collect burner phones.
By noon, I'm in the student services office under fluorescent lights.
"It's for a paper," I tell the counselor, whose cardigan is having an aggressive love affair with cat prints. "About digital harassment. Hypothetically, if someone had intimate photos used against them—"
"Hypothetically?" Her voice carries that special brand of gentle skepticism.
She slides a brochure across the desk: "Know Your Rights: Digital Privacy on Campus."
Great. A pamphlet. That'll fix everything.
"If someone's being harassed, they should absolutely come forward. We have protocols." She taps another pamphlet. "But they'd need proof. Documentation. The original threats, ideally."
Proof. The proof is sitting in Victor's inbox. The proof that makes me the villain in this story, not the victim.
"And if the photos were sent to... someone in a position of authority?"
Her expression sharpens. "That would depend on the response. Did this authority figure report it? Delete it? Act on it?"
"Delete it."
"Then they followed protocol. But…"
She points to a poster: UNIVERSITY POLICY ON STUDENT-STAFF RELATIONSHIPS in red letters.
"Any subsequent contact of a romantic or sexual nature would be grounds for immediate termination. For the staff member. The student would face academic review."
Academic review.
Such a sanitized phrase for having your entire future fed into a wood chipper.
"Thanks. For the research."
I'm halfway to the door when she calls out, "The offer to talk, really talk, is always open!"
Sure. Let me explain how I'm being blackmailed over photos that ended up with my best friend's professor father.
That'll go over well.
The hallway outside Victor's office smells like instant coffee. I'm pretending to read the same Rousseau paragraph for the fifth time when his door opens.
"Miss Valenti." He looks exhausted. "We need to talk."
The corridor is empty. He can't figure out where to stand—too close, then too far.
He can't figure out where to stand—too close, then too far. Like he's trying to calculate the exact distance that says "professional concern" instead of whatever this actually is.
"There will be no more private sessions," he says, each word measured out like he's rationing them for winter. "No tutoring outside of office hours. No additional help."
"Because of the photos?"
His jaw does that thing that makes me want to either run away or run toward him.
"Because anonymous emails of that nature could become evidence if anyone looked too closely. Whatever game you think you’re playing, I won't be a pawn in it."
Game? You think this is a game? You're the one who looked at my Instagram. You're the one who was hard under the table while your daughter was ten feet away.
"So you're abandoning me?" The words come out smaller than I intended, like they shrunk in the wash.
"I'm protecting us both. You do the work, or you fail. That's the arrangement." He turns to go, then stops. "And Miss Valenti? Keep your distance. For both our sakes."
You're scared. Good. You should be. Because I know what you are underneath all that propriety.
I walk away without responding because what's the point?
Twenty feet down the hall, I glance back. He's leaning against the wall, head in his hands.
He doesn't call me back. Of course he doesn't.
Men never chase what they think they can't have.
"Family dinner tonight. Command performance." Liv appears beside me in the quad. "Mom's forcing us all to play happy family. It's going to be a bloodbath disguised as pot roast."
"Sounds delightful."
"Come with me? Please?" She grabs my hands with the desperation of someone drowning in suburban dysfunction. "They behave better with an audience. Plus, you could basically be family anyway, right?"
Family. I'm having impure thoughts about your father while your parents' marriage goes through a garbage disposal.
"I can't. I have to study."
"For what? It's Tuesday."
"Chen's midterm is frightening me."
Her face falls. "Right. Of course." She laughs bitterly. "Everyone bails eventually. I just thought maybe you'd be different."
"Liv—"
"No, it's fine. I get it. Who wants to watch the Larsen family implode in real-time?"
She's backing away.
"Just... don't disappear on me completely, okay? I'm running out of people who stay."
The guilt sits heavy in my chest.
By six PM, the sky is dark and threatening. I grab the small black umbrella from beside my door and head to Victor's evening lecture.
I text Liv: "Rain check on dinner? Promise I'll come next time."
Nothing. Radio silence.
She's probably already preparing to sit at the world's most uncomfortable family meal, watching her parents perform their marriage like dinner theater nobody asked for.
The lecture hall fills with students. I tuck the umbrella under my front-row seat because I'm a masochist who needs to sit where Victor can't avoid seeing me.
He enters looking exhausted. He sees me in front, pauses for exactly half a heartbeat, then launches into Hobbes.
"The state of nature," he says, looking everywhere but my corner of the universe, "is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Sound familiar? It should. It's just Tuesday in late-stage capitalism."
Nervous laughter ripples through the room. I take notes I'll never read, too focused on how his hands shake slightly when he reaches for his coffee.
Even your hands are betraying you, Professor.
When class ends, I leave quickly, needing distance.
The bus stop is a glass shelter. Rain starts hitting the roof.
I think about my umbrella, left in the lecture hall like a breadcrumb.
My phone lights up with a new message.
Still nothing from Liv.
Nothing from Victor.
One new message from another unknown number: "Big storms blow secrets loose. Sleep well."
Kilian, you dramatic bastard. Did you minor in ominous texting?
The rain starts in earnest. My hair immediately plasters to my skull, and the white blouse I definitely didn't choose for its transparency begins its inevitable betrayal.
Come on, Professor. Find the damn umbrella. Do the math.
Thunder rolls across campus. The lights make everything look sick and unreal.
I wrap my arms around myself, not entirely for warmth. The shivering helps sell it—poor helpless student caught in the storm, definitely didn't plan this, definitely didn't wear her thinnest bra on purpose.
This is insane. I'm insane.