Duke Brandon closed the lecture hall door with the heel of his shoe, the soft click echoing longer than it should have in the suddenly empty space. He stood there for several seconds, one hand still on the brass handle, the other curled loosely at his side. The room smelled faintly of chalk dust and the lingering citrus of someone's too-sweet perfume. Sixty students had just passed through here, and yet the only scent that lingered in his mind was the clean, almost boyish trace of cedar and laundry soap that had drifted up from the third row.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and deliberate.
He should not have noticed that.
He should not have noticed anything.
Duke crossed to the podium, movements measured, almost mechanical. He gathered the scattered pages of his notes, tapping the edges against the wood until they aligned with military precision. The satchel waited open on the chair beside him. He slid the papers inside, zipped it shut, then paused with his fingers resting on the leather flap.
His gaze drifted to the third row, center aisle.
The seat was empty now, of course. Just a faint indentation in the cushion where Norman Reed had sat for the last fifty-three minutes, spine straight, pen hovering over the page as though he were afraid to commit anything to paper. Duke had seen the boy's face flush crimson when their eyes met. Had watched the way his throat worked on a hard swallow. Had catalogued the way his fingers had trembled around the pen afterward, inkless scribbles turning into frantic little loops.
Duke pressed the pad of his thumb hard against the bridge of his nose.
This was not happening.
Not again.
Not after everything.
He slung the satchel over his shoulder and started up the aisle, footsteps deliberately loud against the polished floor. The building was quiet now, only the distant murmur of the heating system and the patter of rain against the stained glass windows. He passed row after row of empty seats, each one reminding him how small this world had become. How confined. How suffocating.
Outside the lecture hall, the corridor stretched long and shadowed. Afternoon light filtered through the high windows in watery gold, catching on the brass nameplates beside each door. Professor Duke Brandon, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Modern Literature. The title still felt borrowed, like a coat that had once belonged to someone else.
He had not wanted to come back to teaching.
Not after the funeral.
Not after the hospital rooms that smelled of antiseptic and dying flowers.
Not after the nights he had sat in the empty house on Maple Street, listening to the clock tick past three a.m., waiting for a voice that would never answer again.
But the university had offered him the position with a gentleness that bordered on pity, and Duke had accepted because the alternative was worse. Silence. Stillness. The slow rot of grief left unattended.
So he taught.
He lectured.
He graded.
And he kept every door locked, every window shuttered, every crack in the armor sealed with careful indifference.
Until this morning.
Until a nineteen-year-old boy with wide blue eyes and a too-white shirt had looked at him like Duke was something worth seeing.
Duke pushed through the side exit into the covered walkway. Rain sheeted off the overhang in steady silver curtains. He turned up the collar of his coat, stepped out into the wet, and started across the quad.
The campus was beautiful in the rain. Evergreen had been designed by someone who understood melancholy. Old stone buildings draped in ivy, cobblestone paths slick and shining, maple trees bleeding crimson leaves onto the grass. Students hurried past beneath umbrellas, laughing too loudly to cover their nerves. Freshmen, mostly. Still shiny. Still believing the world owed them something.
Duke kept his head down, shoulders hunched against the damp. He did not want conversation. He did not want eye contact. He wanted the cold to seep through his coat and remind him that feeling anything at all was optional.
He almost succeeded.
Until he heard the footsteps.
Quick. Hesitant. Trying very hard to sound casual.
Duke did not slow.
The footsteps matched his pace.
He felt the presence at his left shoulder like heat through a window.
"Professor Brandon?"
The voice was softer than it had been in the lecture hall. Less certain. There was a catch in it, a tiny fracture that made Duke's jaw tighten.
He kept walking.
"Mr. Reed," he said without turning. "Office hours are Tuesday and Thursday, three to five."
"I know. I just—"
A pause. The sound of someone swallowing.
"I wanted to say I really liked the lecture."
Duke's stride faltered for half a step before he caught himself.
He stopped beneath the stone archway that led to the faculty parking lot. Rain drummed against the overhang above them, a steady, impatient rhythm.
He turned.
Norman Reed stood three feet away, soaked through. His dark hair clung to his forehead in messy spikes. Water dripped from the ends, tracing slow paths down his temples. The white shirt was no longer crisp; it had turned translucent in places, clinging to narrow shoulders and the faint outline of collarbones. His backpack hung heavy on one shoulder, straps digging into wet cotton.
He looked miserable.
He looked beautiful.
Duke's throat closed on a sudden, vicious inhale.
He forced his gaze back to the boy's face.
Norman's eyes were enormous, the blue of them almost painful in the gray light. His lashes were clumped with rain. There was a flush high on his cheekbones that had nothing to do with the cold.
Duke spoke carefully, each word measured like a step across thin ice.
"Thank you for the compliment. Now if you'll excuse me—"
"I meant it," Norman interrupted, voice cracking on the last syllable. "About the lecture. The way you talked about Eliot. About how the world broke and he just… refused to pretend it hadn't. I've never heard anyone explain it like that."
Duke stared at him.
The boy was trembling, either from cold or nerves or both. His lower lip had caught between his teeth, white marks blooming where he bit down too hard.
Duke felt something shift inside his chest. Something old and rusted and dangerous.
He took one step forward.
Norman did not retreat.
Another.
The space between them shrank to arm's length.
Duke could smell the cedar again, sharper now, undercut with rain and the faint sweetness of whatever shampoo the boy used.
Duke's voice came out rougher than he intended.
"You're going to catch pneumonia standing out here like this."
Norman blinked up at him, startled, then let out a small, breathless laugh.
"I'm from the coast. This is nothing."
Duke did not smile.
He reached out.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
His fingers brushed the soaked collar of Norman's shirt, lifting it away from skin that had gone gooseflesh.
Norman stopped breathing.
Duke's thumb grazed the hollow of the boy's throat, just once, barely there.
Then he let go.
Norman's eyes had gone impossibly wider. His pupils had swallowed the blue.
Duke stepped back.
The distance felt colder than the rain.
"Get inside," he said, voice flat. "And next time, bring an umbrella."
He turned and walked away without waiting for an answer.
Behind him, Norman stood frozen beneath the archway, hand pressed to the place Duke had touched, fingers trembling.
Duke made it to his car.
He slid inside, shut the door, and gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
He stared at the rain streaking down the windshield.
He told himself it was nothing.
A moment of weakness.
A lapse.
He told himself he would not look at the third row again.
He told himself he would not remember the shape of that throat beneath his thumb.
He told himself many things.
None of them were true.
He started the engine.
The wipers swept across the glass in slow, accusing arcs.
And somewhere behind him, in the covered walkway, a boy with rain-soaked hair and shaking hands whispered to the empty air,
"I'm going to ruin my life for you."
Duke did not hear it.
But the words landed anyway.
They landed hard.
And they stayed.