"Please tell me you brought caffeine," I muttered, dragging my half-dead corpse across the campus quad like a zombie who'd made questionable life choices and was now paying for them in sleep deprivation.
Cleo practically bounced beside me like she'd been mainlining Red Bull since dawn. "I brought something better."
I blinked through my exhaustion-induced brain fog. "What's better than caffeine? Because if you say cocaine, I'm calling your therapist."
"A man with breakfast."
"Hi, ladies." Ayden materialized behind us like some kind of rom-com fairy godmother with perfect timing. "Thought you might need fuel for Lewis's daily psychological warfare session."
He held up two cups of coffee and a brown paper bag that smelled like salvation wrapped in bacon grease.
"Oh my God," I gasped, suddenly finding religion. "Marry me immediately."
Cleo snorted. "You're pathetically easy."
"Only for coffee and food. I have standards." I grabbed the cup like it was life support. "What else would I possibly need a man for?"
Ayden grinned, handing over what looked like a breakfast sandwich designed by angels. "Sorry Soph, I'm already contractually obligated to Cleo, but I remembered your usual—bacon-egg-and-cheese with enough hot sauce to strip paint."
I almost cried actual tears. "If Lewis gets arrested for academic war crimes, I'm nominating you to teach literature. You understand human needs."
The joke landed wrong. Even to my own ears. Because the truth was, I'd spent every day since the bookstore incident counting down the hours until graduation.
Eighteen months. Eighteen months of navigating hallways like a battlefield, of strategically timing my coffee runs to avoid certain office hours, of feeling my heart lurch every time I caught a glimpse of dark hair and broad shoulders in my peripheral vision.
Eighteen months of pretending I didn't still think about him every night before I fell asleep.
I wished I could fast-forward through all of it. Wake up tomorrow with a diploma in my hand and a thousand miles between us. Never have to walk into another lecture wondering if today would be the day I finally cracked.
We reached the lecture hall just as the bell delivered its daily death knell. Seats were already half-occupied by my fellow academic prisoners.
Lewis stood at the front, writing something on the board in that tight, controlled script that somehow made everything feel like a philosophical death sentence.
He didn't look at me. Not even a glance.
Good. That was the arrangement now, wasn't it? I'd used our safe word. I'd drawn the line. And for once, he was respecting it.
So why did his indifference feel like a knife twisting between my ribs?
I forced my gaze away, settling into my usual seat with the kind of deliberate nonchalance that probably fooled no one.
"Take your seats," he said, tone clipped like he was addressing particularly disappointing lab specimens.
His voice washed over me, and I hated how my body still responded to it. Hated the way my spine straightened, the way my breath caught, the way some Pavlovian part of my brain still associated that voice with pleasure and pain and everything in between.
Cleo nudged me as we settled in. "You two are really committed to this whole 'pretending the other person doesn't exist' thing, huh?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," I whispered back.
"Sure you don't. And I don't know what orgasms feel like." She rolled her eyes. "The tension in here is so thick I could spread it on toast."
"Shut up."
"Ladies," Lewis's voice cut through our whispered chaos like a scalpel. "If you're finished solving world hunger, we can begin."
I didn't look at him. Kept my eyes fixed on my notebook like the blank page contained the secrets of the universe. But I could feel his gaze pass over me—brief, clinical, deliberately dismissive.
It shouldn't have stung. I'd asked for this.
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."
I stared at my notebook, jaw tight, refusing to take the bait. He wasn't talking about us. He was talking about literature. This was a lecture, not a coded message.
Even if it felt like one.
The minutes crawled by like hours. I took notes I wouldn't remember, pretended to care about Victorian anxieties, and counted down the seconds until I could escape this room and the gravitational pull of the man at the front of it.
Eighteen months. I could survive eighteen months.
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.
My stomach dropped through the floor.
No. Not yet. Not like this.
Murmurs swept through the room like wildfire through dry grass. I sat frozen in my seat, every nerve ending screaming with a panic I couldn't name.
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.
But I knew him now. Knew the micro-expressions he couldn't quite hide. And beneath that mask of indifference, I saw it—a flicker of something that looked almost like resignation.
Like he'd known this was coming. Like he'd been waiting for the axe to fall.
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?"
“Someone record this!”
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.
But I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't do anything except watch as the man who'd systematically dismantled every wall I'd ever built was about to be led away in front of thirty witnesses.
"Holy shit," Cleo breathed. "Sophie..."
I barely heard her. My entire world had narrowed to Adrian—the set of his shoulders, the controlled stillness of his hands, the way he stood like a man facing a firing squad with nothing left to lose.
"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 erupted around me. Chairs scraping, people whispering, phones recording. Someone said my name, I heard it ripple through the crowd like a disease, but I couldn't tear my eyes away from Adrian.
Lewis dropped the chalk. The sound was barely audible over the noise, but I heard it like a gunshot.
"I'll come quietly," he said, which was possibly the most ominous thing he could have chosen.
The officers moved in. One of them reached for Adrian's arm, and I watched him flinch, just barely, just for a fraction of a second, before allowing himself to be guided toward the door.
Don't go, something inside me screamed. Don't let them take you. Fight back. Do something.
But I stayed silent. Stayed frozen. Stayed exactly where I was while the man who'd owned me, body and mind and soul, was led away like a criminal.
The door closed behind him with a sound like a coffin lid. Dead silence.
Then Cleo's voice, trembling with the realization that our lives had just become a cautionary tale: "What the hell did you do, Sophie?"
I knew exactly what I'd done. I just didn't know how to survive it.