Ms.Beaumont

Twenty- two-year- old
Annabelle rivers has perfected the art of pretending she's fine. At college, she smiles, studies, stays quiet. At home, she endures a mother whose love comes laced with cruelty-cut's disguised as concern, wounds disguised as lessons. Annabelle carries the pain in silence, hidden beneath long sleeves and late-night tears, just trying to survive her final year without falling apart.

Then she walks in.

Ms. Beaumont-thirty-nine, brilliant, wealthy, and carved from ice-arrives as the new mathematics professor with a reputation as sharp as her heels. Students fear her. Staff avoid her. She is the kind of woman who seems untouchable, unreachable, and uninterested in anything beyond her immaculate walls.

But Annabelle notices the cracks.

And Ms. Beaumont notices her.

What starts as tension-dangerous, electric, wrong-slowly coils into something neither of them should want. Annabelle is drawn to the darkness behind Ms. Beaumonts eyes, the soft trembling beneath her cold exterior. And Ms. Beaumont despite every rule she's built her life around, can't seem to stay away.

Their stolen moments become confessions. Their glances become obsession. Their connection becomes a secret that could ruin them both.

Because this isn't just forbidden-it's destructive. A professed hiding old scars. A student burying new ones. A love that feels like the only safe place they've ever known...and the most dangerous choice they could make.

As Annabelle spirals deeper into her own shadows and Ms. Beaumonts past threatens to surface, one truth becomes impossible to ignore:

Some people aren't meant to love each other.
And some can't survive without it.