Yours to keep

Set in New York City, this is a slow-burn psychological romance between two women whose lives collide in the most dangerous place they could meet: a university

Victoria Adams is a 36-year-old professor of chemistry at a prestigious New York university. Brilliant, disciplined, and emotionally impenetrable, she has built her life around control. Known among students as the "Ice Queen," Victoria is feared for her precision, her high standards, and her inability to tolerate incompetence.

But beneath her composed exterior, Victoria is deeply private and emotionally guarded. She is asexual, has never been in a relationship, and has long since stopped engaging with societal expectations about love and companionship. As an intersex woman, she has spent much of her life navigating misunderstanding and unwanted scrutiny, leading her to build strong emotional boundaries. She does not let her identity define her.

Rebecca is a 21-year-old third-year chemistry student: intelligent, impulsive, and unapologetically alive. She is openly lesbian socially confident, physically fit, and balancing university life with work, friendships, and a relationship that is already beginning to fall apart.

At first, Rebecca sees Professor Adams as nothing more than an intimidating academic figure. But over time, fascination replaces indifference. She begins to notice the smallest details: the professor's controlled movements, her rare expressions of emotions the way she remembers students' names, and the quiet intelligence behind her cold exterior.

Victoria, in turn, finds herself increasingly aware of Rebecca-not as just another student, but as someone unpredictable, brilliant, and impossible to ignore. She recognizes Rebecca's potential immediately, but also her recklessness, and makes a firm decision to maintain professional distance.

However, emotional boundaries begin to blur.

What starts as academic curiosity slowly evolves into something far more dangerous: mutual fixation.