Chapter 3

The photo had been live for six hours before I found out about it.

I found out the way I found out about most things I wasn't supposed to know — Jade, standing over my bed at seven forty-five, holding her phone at the precise angle required to make ignoring it impossible.

"Look at this," she said.

I looked.

A lecture hall photo, taken from the back row with the particular grain of a long-distance shot. In it, Professor Callum Drake sat mid-session, papers untouched, phone in hand. He wasn't reading the papers.

He was smiling.

Not the almost-smile I'd catalogued twice — that controlled, fractional motion his composure immediately reclaimed. This was the real thing. Unguarded. The kind that rearranges a face entirely.

The caption read: our most terrifying professor checking his messages like this. someone explain. asking for 300 witnesses.

Five thousand interactions.

I took the phone and scrolled.

he has NEVER smiled in three years of office hours

it's the projector girl isn't it. it has to be.

someone find her. we just want to talk.

"I need coffee," I said.

"You need to tell me what's going on."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive."

By the time I'd showered and made it to the dining hall, the photo had migrated to three aggregator accounts and spawned a dedicated thread titled Westmoor's Ice Professor: A Study in Contradictions. Someone had cropped it, enhanced it, created a side-by-side comparison of his seminar face versus the phone face with the caption two photos, one man, zero explanations.

I read the entire thread over breakfast.

I was aware this wasn't strategic behavior. I did it anyway — with the focused compulsion of someone picking at something they knew they should leave alone.

My phone sat face-up on the table.

No new messages from Blackridge_A since last night's someday.

I put my phone away and went to class.

The thing about required credits is they're non-negotiable.

Advanced Calculus II met Tuesdays and Thursdays at nine. I arrived early, took the middle section — not the back, I'd apparently learned something — and opened my notebook to a clean page.

Then the door opened.

That specific involuntary hush fell — every wolf in the room registering the shift before consciously processing it.

I knew that silence now.

Callum Drake set a folder on the lectern and said: "Your regular professor is unwell. I'll be covering today."

The room reacted. Someone behind me whispered no way. Someone else got immediately shushed.

I looked at my notebook.

The page stayed blank. My pen wasn't moving. I was aware of exactly where he was at all times — not looking directly, but unable to fully ignore it either.

He taught calculus the way he taught everything else. No performance, no unnecessary enthusiasm. Just precision, and occasional pauses that suggested genuine interest rather than obligation. Three people who'd arrived planning to sleep were now taking notes.

I filled an entire page and retained nothing on it.

At minute thirty, my phone lit up on the desk.

Blackridge_A: Third row, center section. Better sight lines than the back.

I turned it face-down so fast the person beside me glanced over.

When I looked up, Drake was writing on the board with his back to the room. Completely neutral posture. He could have been texting his dry cleaner.

The lecture ended. I packed efficiently, kept my head down, made it to within three feet of the exit.

"Miss Voss."

I stopped.

Half the room looked over. I turned around.

He stood at the lectern, folder closed. "You didn't submit last week's boundary mapping assignment."

"I'm not officially enrolled in this course."

"You are as of this morning." Brief pause. "I checked the portal." He gathered his materials without hurry. "Office hours are Tuesday and Friday. Come with what you have."

He looked back down at his folder.

I walked into the corridor and stood against the wall and stared at the ceiling.

He had enrolled me.

Between stay after class and third row, center section, he had located my student record, accessed the system, and formally made me his student. Either the most deliberate thing anyone had ever done for me, or the most alarming. I couldn't determine which.

My phone buzzed.

Blackridge_A: Tuesday. Office hours. Bring whatever you have.

Blackridge_A: And Nina —

Blackridge_A: I saw the forum post.

A pause.

Blackridge_A: For the record. I was smiling because you'd finally texted back.

I stood in the corridor and read that twice, thinking about the voice note and someday and the way he'd said little wolf like it wasn't a choice but a conclusion he'd already reached.

Then I thought about Tuesday.

His office.

Just the two of us.

Whatever I'd been telling myself about distance and sensible decisions had, somewhere between the projector screen and this moment, quietly become irrelevant.

Tuesday was four days away.

It felt like nothing at all.