The address was a brick walk-up twenty minutes from campus, far enough that I didn’t recognize anyone on the street. I stood on the stoop for a full minute with my finger over the buzzer, telling myself I could still leave.
I pressed it.
Professor Hale opened the door in a black T-shirt and dark jeans, hair slightly damp, looking less like a faculty member and more like the man who had locked his office behind me. For a second neither of us spoke. Then he stepped aside.
“You came.”
“You doubted it?”
“I hoped you would be smarter.” His mouth twitched. “I’m glad you weren’t.”
The apartment was quiet. Books. Dark furniture. A single lamp. No photographs of a life I wasn’t supposed to enter. He took my coat, hung it, and only then touched me—hands on my waist, forehead against mine, like
