Aaliyah Mercer never planned to catch the eye of the campus's most respected professor. She was just trying to survive her sophomore year balancing track, six siblings, and a past she never asked for. Professor Malachi Rothwell wasn't supposed to notice her. Nine years older, painfully disciplined, raised on intellect and family expectations-he never crossed lines. Not with students. Not with anyone. But over the school year, something shifts. Not all at once. Slowly. Intellectually. Quietly. Until she is the only thought he can't outrun. Their attraction grows in silence in late-night library shadows, in classroom debates that feel too charged, in the soft places where she lets him see her and the hard places he never shows anyone. One semester becomes two. Winter turns to spring. Spring becomes summer. And on chapter fifteen, a line finally breaks. Now they must survive what happens when a forbidden love becomes the only truth that makes sense.