Teach Me |18+

"You stand in front of that class and call me Mr. Kozlov like I didn't used to fall asleep with your fingers in my hair, baby. Like I don't have eight years of your handwriting memorized on my own skin. You think a desk between us is a wall. It's not. It's a countdown. Grade my papers, professor. Take attendance. Pretend you don't feel me watching you the way I used to watch the door of that church, waiting for you to walk through it. I let the whole world believe I died for you once. I will let this entire academy burn to the ground before I let you convince yourself I'm your student and nothing else. So go on. Write my name in red ink at the top of the page. I'll take every single failing grade you hand me - as long as it's your hand that's shaking when you write it, baby."
- Alexei Kozlov

To St. Jude's Academy, Alexei Kozlov is exactly what he looks like - golden, reckless, criminally charming, the heir every parent warns their daughter about.

To Professor Christina George, he's a ghost sitting in the front row of her first lecture.

She built an entire life on the other side of grief, on a promise she swore she'd keep no matter what it cost her. He built an entire life on the other side of a grave, on a devotion that never once asked permission to stop.

Some things don't stay buried. Some love doesn't know how to end just because everyone agreed it should. And some students don't take no for an answer - not from their professor, not from the world, not from eight years of silence they never chose.

She has one job: survive the semester without letting him find out she never stopped loving him.

He has one goal: make her say his real name - the one only she ever used - before the term ends.

Every rule at St. Jude's exists to be broken by somebody. Alexei Kozlov has simply decided the rule in question is going to be her.

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"TEACH ME" is Book One of the "ME" Series.(A standalone book)