Chapter 23 Lottie
I step into the classroom and immediately stiffen.
It’s not subtle. My entire body tightens as if bracing for impact — shoulders locking, spine straightening, breath catching halfway into my lungs. The reaction is instantaneous, instinctive, like crossing some invisible boundary flips a switch inside me.
He’s here.
Professor Hale stands near his desk at the front of the room. His posture is composed — hands loosely clasped, shoulders squared — but there’s something not quite relaxed about him. A tension held just beneath the surface.
He’s looking at me. Not casually. Not absently. Really looking.
His chest rises and falls a fraction too quickly, like he’s been holding his breath and just remembered to let it go.
And then it hits me.
His scent.
It crashes over me in a single, devastating wave — warm citrus brightened with honey, threaded through with something softer beneath it. Something almost vulnerable. It fills my lungs before I can stop it, thick and enveloping, like stepping into a room dense with steam.
My breath stutters. My pulse misfires. For one disorienting heartbeat, my vision narrows at the edges.
I just stand there, caught in it, trying to fight the reaction that smelling him always pulls from me — that deep, instinctive pull that feels older than logic.
Somewhere through the fog, I hear my name.
“Lottie?”
The sound reaches me like it’s traveling through water — distorted, distant. I blink but don’t respond. I can’t. I’m suspended in that dangerous space where instinct surges forward and reason scrambles to keep up.
He says it again. Softer.
“Lottie? Is everything okay?”
The concern in his voice slices through the haze just enough to sting.
How can he ask that?
As if he doesn’t feel it too. As if he isn’t fighting the same undertow pulling at both of us.
I know he knows. I can see it in the way he holds himself too still, as if any sudden movement might break him. I can smell it in the subtle flicker of his scent — those tiny, involuntary shifts that betray strain. I can see it in the way his throat moves when he swallows, like he’s steadying something inside himself.
We’re both fighting. We’re both losing ground.
And we can’t give in. We can’t even lean toward it.
Because this isn’t just about want.
It’s about everything I’ve built. My grades. My reputation. The future I’ve been carving out piece by piece. One reckless mistake could fracture it all beyond repair.
I shake my head — a small movement, but enough to break the paralysis.
Reality slams back into me like air after being dragged under the surf. I inhale sharply, the breath tearing through my lungs.
The room sharpens into focus.
Students scattered in their seats. A few curious glances. The scrape of chairs. The low murmur of pre-lecture chatter.
The ordinary world that has no idea what just detonated inside me.
I blink hard and force my feet to move.
I am not unaffected. Not even close.
And every time I walk into this room, I’m less certain how long I can keep pretending I am.
I move toward my seat, each step feeling strangely heavy, like I’m wading through something invisible and thick. The same question loops in my mind with stubborn persistence:
Why me?
Why this?
Why this relentless longing that I can’t act on?
Why must I sit here day after day pretending I’m fine while my entire body goes on high alert the moment he’s near?
I lower myself into my chair and grip the edge of the desk. My fingers tremble. I press my palms flat against the cool surface, grounding myself in something solid.
Breathe through your mouth.
Shallow. Controlled.
Dull it.
And slowly — mercifully — it begins to work.
My heartbeat stutters, then settles into something closer to normal. The frantic pounding in my ears softens. The molten, restless feeling in my limbs cools into something manageable.
The fog in my head thins.
Just enough to think. Just enough to remember who I am.
The classroom hum builds around me — notebooks opening, pens clicking, quiet conversations fading. Ordinary sounds. Predictable sounds. They tether me back to the present.
I sit up straighter.
Ground yourself in the mundane.
But even as my breathing evens out, I can still feel him.
Across the room. Watching me. Trying just as hard to look like he isn’t.
That shared, silent struggle is its own gravity.
A pull I’m not sure either of us can resist forever.
He begins the lecture — neural signals, visualization techniques, pathways firing across synapses. His voice is steady, precise, carefully measured. It’s the same cadence he always uses, the one that makes students lean forward without realizing they’re doing it.
I write notes automatically, my pen moving without conscious direction.
But my attention isn’t on the material.
It drifts to him whenever he turns toward the board.
I watch the subtle shifts in his expression — the faint flicker of enthusiasm when he explains a concept he clearly loves, the slight crease between his brows when he searches for the right phrasing, the softening around his eyes when someone nods in understanding.
He’s expressive.
The way he moves is a language all its own — hands sketching invisible shapes in the air, shoulders easing when he settles into explanation, posture tightening when the topic grows more serious.
There’s warmth in him.
Even when he’s trying to maintain distance.
I watch him more than I listen.
It’s reckless. It’s foolish.
It’s the one thing I should not be doing.
But I can’t seem to stop.
Every time his voice dips, every time he turns his head, every time the faintest trace of his scent drifts across the room, something inside me responds. A quiet tightening low in my chest. A thread pulled taut.
I force my gaze down to my notebook, pretending to focus.
But the truth is simple:
I’m not listening to the lecture. I’m listening to him. Watching him.
Even from several rows back, I notice things no one else does.
The faint tremor in his hand when he adjusts the marker. The subtle pause before he speaks, like he’s steadying himself. The way his shoulders rise a fraction too high when he inhales.
To everyone else, he probably looks composed. Confident. Entirely in control.
But I see the cracks. Tiny. Hairline. Almost invisible.
I’m not searching for them.
I just… notice.
It’s as if my senses have tuned themselves to him — a private frequency only I can pick up. Every shift of weight, every breath, every hesitation registers somewhere deep inside me.
He’s trying to look unaffected. Trying to look like nothing has changed.
But it has.
And we both know it.
I lower my gaze again and pretend to write, pretending I’m not cataloging every small sign of strain like they’re clues to something I shouldn’t be deciphering.
The fact is unavoidable:
I notice him the way instinct notices danger. Immediately. Involuntarily. Completely.
And no matter how hard I try to convince myself this is one-sided, my body keeps proving otherwise.
He’s fighting it too.
And the more I watch, the more I realize how precarious this is becoming — how easily my attention slides toward him, how instinctively I respond, how fragile my self-control feels.
I’m supposed to be learning about neural pathways.
Instead, I’m tracing the outline of him with my eyes, memorizing the way he moves through the space as if it belongs to him. As if, somehow, he belongs to something in me.
And that thought is the most dangerous.