Chapter 5 5

Celine's POV

I stumbled toward the car, and the world leaned over to one side. My head pulsed, my heart raced and every breath tasted of cheap vodka & shame. Professor Reed’s hand hovered near my elbow, not quite touching but so close I could feel the warmth of his skin.

"Get in," he said quietly.

I didn't argue. My legs were rubbery and the adrenalin rush from Dave's attack was sapping rapidly and I was cold and trembly. I settled into the passenger seat of his car, a smooth black number that smelled like leather and something starkly male. Cedar, maybe. Or sandalwood.

With a restrained click, he shut the door, walked around to the driver's side and got in without speaking. The engine roared into action, so smooth and expensive.

It became very quiet, the silence between us stretched like a rubber band.

I stole a glance at him. His jaw was firm, sharp enough to slice through glass. His fingers went white gripping the steering wheel like he was choking something. His face flickered in the streetlights as we drove and what I could see was so foreign that he looked at once almost otherworldly. Dangerous.

My stomach twisted. Not from the alcohol. From him.

"Thank you," and at long last I whispered my voice cracking.

He didn’t take his eyes off the road. "Don't thank me."

I blinked. "What?"

"Just be more careful." His tone was flat, clipped. As if he were reciting lines from a stilted script he’d memorized but couldn’t bring himself to believe.

The words hurt more than they should have. I looked away as the cool window met my forehead. The city rushed around us, neon and emptiness. I felt a tightness in my chest, emotions tumbling too fast for me to neatly name them all. Embarrassment. Gratitude. Confusion. And something else. It was something that made my skin feel too warm.

I didn’t say you could help me, I brashly told him.

"No," he agreed. "You didn't."

Another mile of silence. I chewed on my lip, suddenly exuding blood and remorse. Why was I being defensive? He'd saved me. If Reed hadn’t shown up, God alone knows what Dave would have done. But the frostiness in his voice — how he refused to even look at me — made me feel small. Stupid.

"Why were you there?" The query popped out of me before I could reel it back in.

His grip on the wheel tightened, fingers curling up. I thought for a moment he wouldn’t respond. Then, "Wrong place, wrong time."

Liar. The word lay on my tongue, but I swallowed it. Because what evidence did I have? Maybe it really was coincidence. Perhaps I was being melodramatic about the way he’d materialized out of nowhere, like some dark angel just in time.

We parked in front of my dorm building. The engine was rumbling softly at idle in the quiet of night. I was struggling with the seatbelt, where my fingers were fat and uncoordinated.

"Celine."

My name on his tongue made me shiver. I looked at him, properly this time, and caught him already watching me. Those hazel eyes, unreadable and intense, held me in place.

“I don’t ever want to see you in a predicament like that again.

It wasn't advice. It was a command.

I should have been angry. I should have said he wasn’t my father, he wasn’t my boyfriend, he wasn’t anything to me but a professor I hardly knew. But the words died in my throat, because below that icy tone I’d heard something else. Something that was almost fear.

"Okay," I breathed.

He looked away first. "Get some rest."

I stumbled down the ground and out of the car, slamming the door shut behind me, panting as he drove off. The taillights vanished into the dark and I stood there like a dummy, cuddling myself against the night cold.

What the hell just happened?

---

Morning arrived too early, and it was too bright. The sunlight pierced through curtains like a personal accusation, and my head chimed as if someone had beaten it with a drum. “Ugh,” I groaned as I flipped over to smother my face in a pillow.

"Rise and shine, sleeping beauty!"

Maddie sounded way too cheery. I opened one eye to see her seated at the edge of my bed, arms crossed, face drawn in concern and guilt.

"Go away," I mumbled.

"Not happening." She leaned closer, examining my face as though I were a specimen under a microscope. "Victor told me what happened. About Dave. Oh my God, Cee, I'm so sorry. I'm such an idiot. I thought he was nice. Victor swore for him, and I—well, I guess…"

It’s all right,”I interrupted, sitting up gradually. The room spun a little. "Not your fault."

"It is my fault!" she insisted, her voice cracking. “I left you alone with a fucking creep. If something had happened—"

"But it didn't." I took her hand and squeezed it a little. "Professor Reed showed up."

Her eyes widened. "Reed? Really, as in scary, hot, unsgsible Professor Reed?

"The one and only."

"What was he doing there?"

“Good question.” I shrugged, grabbing at my water bottle on my nightstand. "No idea. Wrong place, wrong time, apparently."

Maddie’s concern turned into suspicion. "Cee. The club is across town. What is the likelihood that your professor just could be in there at the time you need help?”

I drank deeply, buying time. Because she was right. The odds were astronomical. But how could I say that? That I suspected he may have been watching me? That he seemed so contrived, so pristine?

“Maybe he was meeting someone,” I weakly suggested.

"Uh huh." Maddie wasn't buying it. She looked at me for a long second, then squinted her eyes. "You're thinking about him."

"What? No."

"You are! Oh my God, you totally are. You've got that look."

"What look?" I asked, my face reddening with the heat.

“That sort of dreamy, confused, ‘I don’t know what I’m feeling’ look.” She grabbed my shoulders.

"Harrie, listen to me very closely. That man is dangerous. Not just stern professor dangerous. Like actually dangerous."

My stomach flipped. "What do you mean?"

“I am not sure,” she conceded, freeing me. “But Victor said some weird stuff last night. All about how Reed isn’t just a professor. Of how people in the know keep their distance. He wouldn’t say more, said it wasn't his place to gossip, all that jazz, but Ceei the way he said it? It scared me."

I wanted to laugh it off, gently tell her not to exaggerate. But I couldn't. Because I'd seen it too. The violence that had been in Reed's calm when he'd caught Dave. The efficiency and brutality of his movements. The sheer command in his voice when he ordered me into the car.

There was, as it turned out, more to Professor Caelum Reed than lectures and office hours.

“Yeah, well I’m not crushing on him,” I immediately replied, desperate to convince myself more than her. I’m the one who’s supposed to be seducing him, you know? For revenge? This is what it’s all for.”

Maddie's face softened. "Is it though? Because as far as I can tell, it seems things are getting complicated.”

She muttered something about getting breakfast and left me alone after that. I lay in bed on my back, looking at the wall, a knotted mess of thoughts.

She was right. Everything was getting complicated.

I needed to be using Reed against Amaya, to show I could do better than dumb Jason. But somewhere between his icy rebuffs and that moment outside the club, the game had changed. I wasn’t sure who was playing whom at that point.

My phone vibrated on the nightstand. I snatched it without looking, assuming it was a text from Maddie, or maybe even my mother.

Instead, I got a text from an unknown number.

I opened it, and my blood ran cold.

There was a photo. Me and Dave, out the front of the club, his hands on my waist, my face contorted with pain. The shot was perfectly framed, as if whomever took it had been watching, waiting.

Underneath the image, a small bit of text: “You should be more careful about who you hang out with.”

My hands shook. I blinked at the screen, reading the message in increasingly dire iterations until it seemed my heart might pound through my chest and crack a rib.

Who sent this? How did they get my number? And why do the words seem to sound a lot like something Reed would say?

I attempted to answer, but it didn’t let me. I tried calling the number. It didn't exist.

Anonymous. Untraceable. Deliberate.

I threw down the phone as though it had burnt me and hugged myself. The walls of my dormitory suddenly seemed too close, the air too thin.

Someone was watching me.

And I had a sickening feeling I knew exactly who.