The lecture hall smelled of old paper, polished oak, and the faint metallic bite of impending rain. Norman Reed slipped through the heavy double doors exactly three minutes before the clock struck nine, heart already hammering against his ribs like it wanted out. He had chosen the seat in the third row, center aisle, not because he liked being seen, but because he wanted to see everything. Everything.
Evergreen University's main literature building had always felt more like a cathedral than a classroom block. High vaulted ceilings, stained glass windows throwing fractured reds and golds across the rows, and rows upon rows of tiered wooden seats that creaked under the slightest shift of weight. Norman dropped his backpack beside the chair, slid down, and immediately regretted the decision to wear the new white button-up his mother had insisted on. The collar felt too tight, the sleeves too crisp. He looked like someone trying very hard to belong here.
He didn't belong here.
Not yet.
He was nineteen, barely out of the small coastal town where the biggest scandal was Mrs. Delaney's roses being stolen for the third year running. Evergreen was supposed to be his fresh start, his chance to become someone sharper, someone bolder. Someone who didn't blush when a professor called on him. Someone who could sit in a room full of trust-fund kids and old-money legacies and not feel like the scholarship kid wearing borrowed confidence.
The clock struck nine.
The side door at the front of the hall opened with a soft, deliberate click.
And then Professor Duke Brandon walked in.
Norman forgot how to breathe.
He had seen the man's picture on the faculty page, of course. Everyone had. A single, professionally lit headshot: dark hair swept back, jaw carved from something harder than bone, eyes the color of storm clouds over open water. The photo had been handsome in the distant, untouchable way professors always were. Safe.
This was not safe.
Duke Brandon did not walk like a man who taught poetry for a living. He moved like someone who had once known violence and decided never to let it show again. Long strides, shoulders squared beneath the charcoal blazer, sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms corded with quiet strength. His tie was black silk, loosened just enough that the top button of his white dress shirt had been left undone. A sliver of collarbone showed when he turned his head. Norman's mouth went dry.
The professor set his leather satchel on the podium with careful precision, then looked up.
The entire room seemed to still.
Duke's gaze swept the hall in one slow, unhurried arc. Not searching. Assessing. Like a predator deciding whether the herd was worth the chase. When those dark eyes passed over the third row, Norman felt the contact like a physical touch. Heat bloomed under his skin, sudden and humiliating. He ducked his head, pretending to rummage in his bag, but the damage was already done. His pulse thundered in his ears.
"Good morning," Duke said.
His voice was low, smooth, and carried without effort. It wrapped around the room like smoke, intimate even when addressing sixty students. Norman risked another glance. The professor had turned to the whiteboard, marker already in hand, writing the course title in sharp, decisive strokes.
Introduction to Modernist Poetry.
Norman had chosen the class on a whim. He liked words. He liked how they could cut or cradle depending on how you arranged them. He had not chosen it because he expected the man teaching it to look like he could ruin someone's life with a single raised eyebrow.
Duke capped the marker and faced the class again.
"Most of you are here because this is a required credit," he began, tone dry enough to make several people chuckle nervously. "Some of you are here because you think poetry is romantic. A few of you might even believe you already understand suffering." He paused, letting the silence stretch until it felt deliberate. "You don't. Not yet."
He walked to the edge of the podium, hands sliding into his pockets.
"But you will."
Norman's fingers tightened around the edge of his notebook. He could feel the flush creeping up his neck. The professor hadn't looked at him again, not directly, but every word felt aimed somewhere deep inside Norman's chest, like Duke knew exactly where the soft spots were.
Duke continued speaking, voice never rising, never rushing. He spoke about fragmentation, about the collapse of certainty after the Great War, about how T.S. Eliot had taken the pieces of a broken world and refused to apologize for leaving them jagged. He quoted lines from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" without looking at the book, as if the words had been carved into the marrow of his bones.
And then he stopped.
Mid-sentence.
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing slightly.
"Someone in the third row is staring."
The room went deathly quiet.
Norman froze.
He felt every pair of eyes swing toward him. Heat flooded his face so fast it hurt. He wanted to sink through the floorboards, wanted to disappear, wanted anything except to be the center of this man's attention.
Duke didn't smile. He didn't scold. He simply waited, patient and merciless.
Slowly, deliberately, Norman lifted his gaze.
Their eyes met.
For one endless second the rest of the lecture hall vanished. No creaking seats, no muffled coughs, no rustle of pages. Just those storm-gray eyes locked on his, unblinking, unreadable, and yet somehow stripping him bare. Norman's heart slammed against his sternum so hard he was sure the entire room could hear it.
Duke held the stare for another beat.
Then another.
Then he broke it, turning back to the class as though nothing had happened.
"Eyes on the page, not the professor," he said mildly, almost amused. "We'll have plenty of time to dissect each other later."
A ripple of uneasy laughter spread through the room. Norman couldn't join in. His hands were shaking too badly to hold the pen steady. He stared down at the blank page in his notebook, pulse roaring, skin prickling with the aftershock of being seen.
He had come to Evergreen to reinvent himself.
He had not come to fall apart in the first five minutes of his first class.
The rest of the lecture passed in a haze. Duke moved between the podium and the whiteboard with the same controlled grace, dissecting Pound, quoting Yeats, asking questions that sounded deceptively simple until someone answered and realized they had just been flayed open. Norman tried to take notes. He really did. But every time Duke turned to face the class, Norman's gaze snagged on the line of his throat, the way his fingers curled around the marker, the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw when the light hit just right.
By the time Duke dismissed them with a curt "Read the first three poems in the anthology and come prepared to argue why they matter," Norman's notebook contained exactly seven words.
Professor Duke Brandon.
And beneath that, in smaller, shakier handwriting:
I'm in trouble.
He stayed in his seat long after most of the students had filed out, pretending to organize his things. The hall slowly emptied until only the echo of footsteps remained. Norman finally stood, slung his backpack over one shoulder, and started down the aisle.
He was almost to the door when he heard it.
"Mr. Reed."
The voice was quiet. Too quiet for the size of the room.
Norman stopped.
He turned.
Duke Brandon stood at the podium, gathering his notes, not looking up.
Norman's throat closed.
"Yes, Professor?"
Duke finally lifted his head.
The expression on his face was unreadable, but there was something in the set of his mouth, something almost imperceptibly tight, like a wire pulled too taut.
"You were very attentive today."
Norman swallowed. "I… I try to be."
A pause.
Duke studied him for a long moment, eyes tracing Norman's face with slow, deliberate care. Then he gave the smallest tilt of his head, the barest hint of something that might have been approval. Or warning.
"Keep it that way."
He turned back to his satchel.
Dismissed.
Norman stood there for another three heartbeats, rooted to the spot, before his legs finally remembered how to move. He pushed through the doors and into the corridor, cool air hitting his overheated skin like a slap.
He walked. Fast. Faster. Until he was outside, until the drizzle had started, until the campus quad blurred around him.
He didn't stop until he reached the edge of the old stone fountain, the one with the cracked cherub that never stopped dripping.
Only then did he let himself breathe.
Only then did he press the heels of his hands against his eyes and whisper to the empty air,
"What the hell just happened?"
Behind him, the lecture hall doors opened again.
Footsteps.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Coming closer.
Norman didn't turn around.
He didn't need to.
He already knew who it was.