Office hours were supposed to be about my midterm.
I told myself that the whole walk across campus, hugging my paper to my chest like it could save me. The English building smelled like old heat and floor wax. Third floor. Last door on the left. The nameplate still looked wrong.
Dr. Julian Crowe.
Miles’s best friend. The man who used to sleep on our basement couch and steal bacon out of the pan. The man who showed up to my high school graduation in a suit and then disappeared into graduate school until he came back as the thing I had to sit in front of three times a week and pretend I wasn’t wet for.
I’m Tessa Ward. Twenty-one. Junior. I should have dropped his section the first week, when he said my name like it already had a weight on it.
I knocked.
“Come in.”
He didn’t look surpr
