Chapter 22 Sep 17, 2025 I let Alex's threat finish echoing through the car before I turned on what Emma called my Pearson voice-that cool, predatory calm I'd absorbed from watching my father dismantle competitors over breakfast meetings. "You will not touch him." Each word landed like a gavel strike. "You will not make phone calls. You will not leverage your family name. You will not play Whitmore prince defending your territory. If you do-if you so much as send an email to anyone about Professor Green-you will lose me permanently. Not temporarily, not until you apologize enough. Forever." Alex's hands tightened on the wheel again, his knuckles creating a mountain range of bone. "You're defending him? After what you've done to us?" "I'm defending myself from becoming the kind of woman who watches her fiancé destroy careers over wounded pride." I reached for the door handle, needing distance from this version of him. "Sit with everything I've said tonight. Really sit with it. I'll do the same with your words." "Ruby-" "We need a pause. Not a breakup, not a dramatic scene for your mother to dissect over brunch. A pause." I opened the door, letting air cut through the suffocating atmosphere. "Don't call tomorrow. Don't show up with flowers. Don't hunt me down just to fight the same fight with different words." He grabbed my wrist as I moved to exit. "I need to know you won't see him." "And I need to know you won't destroy him." I pulled free with deliberate calm. "I expect no confrontation with Professor Green. None. Promise me." "I'll think about it," he said, jaw clenched. "Promise me, Alex." "I said I'll think about it." The repetition carried less conviction, as if saying it twice might make it true enough. I left him there, his BMW idling in visitor parking like a trapped animal. The night air hit like baptism-cold, clean, necessary. The campus emerged from the urban maze like a familiar shore. The academic buildings stood dark except for security lights, creating pools of amber in the general blue. My feet found their own path-past the library where I'd hidden from my life in study carrels, past the business school where everything had started, finally stopping at the athletic field. The pull-up bars stood empty, silver in the moonlight. I sat on the bench where I'd watched him train, pulled out my phone, and played Aiden's video again. Brief, unapologetic, his body moving through light like he knew exactly what it would do to me. Me: Come to the playground? The message sent before wisdom could intervene. The hour was late enough that the space felt lawless, unowned by daylight's rules. Twenty minutes later, he emerged from the shadows at the track's far end. His stride carried that particular unhurried quality that suggested deliberation rather than laziness. Hands in jacket pockets, collar turned up against the wind, he looked like danger dressed for a casual stroll. "Ruby." He stopped three feet away, reading something in my posture that made him maintain distance. "It's late for pull-ups." "I don't understand what's happening." The words tumbled out, unplanned. "There's this storm inside me and I can't find the edges of it. Clarity keeps sliding away every time I think I've caught it." "What kind of storm?" He moved closer, close enough that I could smell him. "The kind that makes me do things I know are wrong but feel completely right when I'm doing them." I looked up at him, finding his eyes in the dark. "Under different circumstances-if you weren't my professor, if I wasn't engaged, if we'd met at some bar or gallery opening-I might have fallen for you properly. Expected a real invitation to dinner, a beginning that wasn't already an ending." His arms came around me, solid and warm against the wind. "I've thought about that too. More than once. Meeting you somewhere neutral, having the luxury of time to do this right." His voice dropped, rougher. "But our circumstances aren't different. They are what they are." The wind cut through my coat with surgical precision. A tremor took my shoulders, though cold was only half the reason. "Come home with me," he said against my hair. "Just for tonight. No pressure, no expectations. Just somewhere warm where we can stop pretending for a few hours." I was exhausted-bone-deep tired of being correct for everyone except myself, tired of measuring every action against consequences, tired of denying what my body demanded. "Yes." The word escaped like a sigh. "I like who I am around you, even when that person terrifies me. Especially then." His apartment materialized twenty minutes north, in one of those prewar buildings that whispered old money. The interior balanced spare and generous: tall bookshelves holding first editions and academic journals, a patient leather sofa that had clearly hosted long reading sessions. "Hungry?" He moved through the space with easy ownership, switching on lamps that pooled golden light. "I have leftovers from Zabar's, or I could make something simple." "Just tea." My voice sounded foreign in his space, too soft. "Something calming, if you have it." He disappeared into what must be the bedroom, returning with a soft gray T-shirt that would clearly swim on me. "Bathroom's through there. Take your time." The bathroom carried his signature minimalism-white subway tile, a single towel folded with military precision, expensive products in amber glass. I changed slowly, the shirt falling to mid-thigh, soft as whispers against my skin. When I emerged, he stood barefoot at the stove, sweatpants riding low, steam rising from a copper kettle. The domesticity of it-Professor Aiden Green making tea in his kitchen-struck with unexpected force. Maybe it was the accumulated chaos of the day finally demanding release. Maybe it was the memory of his video, the way his body moved through light. Maybe it was simply him, standing there under warm kitchen light, looking like every dangerous thought I'd entertained since the first day of class. Want surged through me clean and certain, washing away Alex's threats and my mother's advice and every careful plan I'd made. I crossed the space between us in three strides, rose on my toes, looped my arms around his neck, and kissed him like the apartment was on fire and this was the only way out.