Chapter 7 7

Chapter 7 7

Celine's POV

There was a palpable sense of apprehension in the lecture hall. Everyone knew what was coming. Professor Reed was at the front, clipboard in hand and a face like stone. He seemed more untouchable than ever, in a black button down that made the dark of his eyes seem darker, more menacing.

“Your next job, he announced, his voice slicing through the hubbub like a knife in butter, will be in twos. You will be examining relationship compatibility the way stars align in the sky. I want full blown "This is all done below the line," not headlines.

A murmur rippled through the room. In a partner project, you were forced to mingle with someone who wouldn’t do any of the work or who’d take over everything and the only work anyone had time for was just gathering research.

I moved uncomfortably in my seat, hoping I wouldn’t be matched up with someone terrible. Not Amaya, who was in the front row with her perfect posture and designer notebook. None of the guys who looked at me like I was a problem they wanted to solve. Just someone normal.

“I’ll be pairing you up at random,” said Reed, and my stomach sank. Random meant no control. Random was fate, and lately, fate had a sick sense of humor.

He started calling names. "Martinez with Chen. Foster with Williams. Davis with Parker."

Every match felt like a countdown. My leg bounced up and down, under the desk. Maddie would have laughed at how nervous I appeared. When did I start giving a damn about collaborative assignments?

"Henderson with Montgomery. Thompson with Richards."

My name was coming. I could sense it, the way you sense a storm gathering before the first raindrop falls.

"Moretti."

I straightened, my heart hammering.

Reed’s eyes met mine from across the room. There was a pause and then it was silent. And then he said, as quiet as death, ''You will work for me.''

The hall exploded in whispers.

My jaw dropped. "What?"

He didn't repeat himself. Just blithely went on to the next name as if he hadn’t just bombed us all in class. "Sullivan with Baker. Lee with Anderson."

I sat frozen, my mind racing. Working with him? Alone? For hours? This was either a blessing from the universe or a trap about to snap shut.

Amaya swiveled, and her expression at me was inscrutable. Jealousy? Suspicion? Maybe both.

The rest of the lecture was a blur. I didn't hear a word he said. My mind was spiraling out of control, seeking to answer the same question on a loop.

Why me?

When the bell rang and class ended everyone spilled into the hallway in clusters talking about their partners, moaning or rejoicing in their luck. I then began to gather everything and tried to play it calmly even though my hands were shaking.

Reed filled his duffel bag with meticulous care, never once glancing my way. But I felt that he must be aware of my being there. He was always aware.

"Professor?"

"My office. Tomorrow at three." He didn't look up. "Don't be late."

Then he turned and left, leaving me standing there while a dozen questions flamed on my tongue.

\---
The following afternoon I arrived outside his office door at two fifty eight, flattening my shirt again for the third time. I’d spent an hour that morning deciding what to wear. It would be too much work to look like you didn’t care. Then not enough would look like I didn’t give a fuck.

I’d decided on a pair of dark jeans and the fitted black top. Simple. Casual. Safe.

Precisely at three o'clock I knocked.
"Come in."

His voice ran a cold shiver down my body. I pushed the door open.

He was at his desk which was cluttered with papers and open books. Afternoon light filtered through the window behind him, his dark hair almost gold on the edges. He lifted his face, and I was held by those hazel eyes.

"Miss Moretti. Sit."

I closed the door then sat down in the chair opposite him. The desk between us might have been a barricade. Intentional, probably.

“I have drawn up the specifications,” he said, passing a folder across the desk. “We’ll study the relationship between contrasting astral energies. Namely, how gravity causes orbit rather than collision.”

I flipped open the folder and read through the notes. His handwriting was precise, controlled. Like everything else about him.

“Why did you choose me to be your partner?” The question popped out before I had a chance to retract it.

His jaw tightened. "I didn't pick you. The pairing was random."

“Random,” I said again, not believing him for a minute.
"Do you have a problem with the set-up?"

“No.” I leaned over, towards a diagram in the notes. “It’s just that I think it’s interesting that of the thirty students, you’re the one who was assigned to me.”

“Mathematics does not respect your suspicions, Miss Moretti.”

"Neither do I, Professor Reed."

The air between us crackled. I was playing with fire, and I knew it. But there was something about him that inspired recklessness, made me want to push until that careful control splintered.

We inadvertently touched when we both grabbed the same page.

The contact lasted just moments, probably less than a second, but it felt as if Gertsman had touched a live wire. A wave of heat travelled up my arm and I let out a little gasp.

He pulled back as though I’d burned him, his chair scraping against the floor. His knuckles whitened as he grasped the desk’s edge.

“Sorry,” I gasped, my heart pounding.

"Don't." His voice was rough, strained. "Just focus on the work."

But I'd seen it. The glint of something raw in his eyes before he’d shut it away again. He felt it too. And whatever this was, it wasn’t one-sided.

I studied him, logging each tell. The tick in his jaw, when he was trying to maintain a state of calm. The way his fingers drummed once, twice, against the desk before he drummed his hands no more. The way he flared his nostrils ever so slightly when I moved in close.

He was fighting himself. And losing.

"Why astronomy, Professor?" I asked, my voice soft. “It’s not really a normal hobby for someone who looks like they would prefer to be doing something dark.”

His eyes met mine, dangerous and beautiful. 'Just because I look like something, doesn't mean I am anything is Miss Moretti.'

"I'm starting to realize that."

A long silence, thick with lead in the middle settled between us. He stood quickly, walking to the window, as though that might have created space between us.

“We’re going to meet twice a week,” he said, with his back to me. “I should hope you’re bringing that kind of game. "Keep in mind this assignment is thirty percent of your overgrade."

"I'm always prepared, Professor."

He turned, and the look he shot at me was part warning, part hunger. "Then prove it."

\---

Twenty minutes later I left his office, my head spinning. The project timeline was tight and the research was vast. We would be spending hours working together over the next month.

Hours alone.

The idea excited and frightened me.

I had made it halfway down the hallway when a voice I knew well made me freeze.

"Playing teacher's pet now? That's low, even for you."

I looked behind me and saw Jason leaning against the wall with Amaya next to him. She seemed uneasy, glancing back and forth between us.

"What do you want, Jason?" I had my voice steady, trying not to let him see me rattled.

He pushed away from the wall, smiling. "Just making an observation. You always did like attention. Guess you realized professors make easier targets than, you know, real boyfriends.”

Heat flooded my face. “You’re wrong.

"Don't I?" He stepped forward, lowering his voice. "Everyone's talking about it, Cee. How Reed ended up with you. How you’re suddenly his special project buddy. It's pathetic."

"Jason, stop." Amaya’s voice was low, but he didn’t listen.

"What's the plan? Seduced him for a higher grade? Or is it just that you’re so hungry for —”

"Mr. Andrews."

We all froze.

Professor Reed was at his door, his expression so icy that blood would turn to ice. He gazed at Jason like a predator at prey. Calm. Patient. Lethal.

“Unless you’re registered in my course, I would like to ask you to stop lingering in this department.”

Jason's smirk faltered. "I was just—"
"Leaving." Reed’s voice was low, soft, but there was a finality in it. "Now."

The command hung in the air. Jason paused, his ego in a grapple with common sense. Common sense won. He muttered something and stormed off with Amaya.
She looked back at me once, her face inscrutable.

I froze, heart thudding in my chest. Then Reed’s gaze met mine and held for a beat too long. Something passed between us. Recognition, maybe. Or understanding.

Then he retreated into his office and shut the door.

Stunned, I made my way back to the dorm room, Jason’s words ringing in my ears. There was nothing else that everyone wasn’t saying about me and Reed. Which meant everyone was watching. Or at least that is what I had to be even more careful of.

But once I arrived back at my door, all of my wary regard dissolved.

There was a book sitting on my doormat.

I picked it up carefully. It was old, the leather no longer stiff with youth. It was stamped in gold on the spine: "Celestial Mechanics: A Study of Universal Harmony."

I flipped it open, and my breath caught. It was a first edition. The sort of book that would have been at home in a museum, not on the doorstep of a college student.

The hot lines I knew, and sure enough when 1 opened the envelope there were a few brief words in writing l was familiar with.

"For your research. Don't ask questions."

No signature. No explanation. That is the whole speech, Reed in that same tight script.

I clutched at the book, my heart pounding. This wasn't just a textbook. This was personal. Valuable. The sort of thing you didn’t abandon unless it meant something.

Why would he do this?

I entered the room, locked the door and sat on my bed, fingering the leather cover. Its pages smelled old and papery, and something else. Cedar, maybe. The same odor that was all over Reed’s office.

Maddie burst in an hour later, glanced at my face and groaned.

"Oh no. You've got that look again."
"What look?"

“The look that says you’re in way over your head and you know it but are going to dive deeper anyway.” She dropped onto her bed. "What happened?"
I showed her the book.

Her eyes went wide. "Holy shit. Is that what I think it is?"

"A first edition, yeah."

"And he just gave it to you? Out of nowhere?"
I nodded.

She looked at me for a long time. "Cee, this is getting serious. You know that, right? Whatever game you play, he’s playing it 10 times better.”

"I know," I whispered.

But knowing was different from caring.

That evening, I lay in bed, the book bedside me and the two young women alternating in my mind, trying to make myself believe that this was still about revenge. So much for proving I could do better than Jason. Still thinking he’s going to win some unreal race against Amaya.

But my heart, the voice of intuition or maybe truth, would not let it go.

At some point along the line, Professor Caelum Reed had become something other than their quarry.
And began to be something far more dangerous.