[POV Sophie]

The air in the apartment was heavy, saturated with the faint chemical scent of my new textbook and the burnt, metallic tang of the cheap coffee Cleo insisted on brewing at 6:00 a.m.

I sat at our small, wobbly kitchen table, my spine ramrod straight, staring down at a volume dedicated to the Romantic poets. The pages were a meaningless blur of black ink against a yellowing background. I was trying to focus, trying to absorb the intellectual challenge, trying to perform the role of a diligent student, but the truth was, I was performing my entire life.

That was the only way to describe the last five months—one long, exhausting, carefully curated performance of normalcy.

The new semester was supposed to be my clean break, my official return to the “Sophie Hale: Responsible Student” persona I had meticulously crafted before Adrian Lewis had walked into my life, ripped the mask off, and then, conveniently, disappeared.

Five months of silence. Five months of agonizing over the police investigation, which had resulted in nothing more than Lewis being quietly excised from the faculty directory.

He hadn’t been indicted, the charges filed by Dr. Vaughn were effectively shelved, and he was simply gone. Erased.

I had spent the entire summer convincing myself that this silence was healing. I dove back into my familiar life, managing my younger sisters’ predictable chaos, patching up disputes, and shielding my father from the everyday stresses of running the household. It was the role of the family crisis manager, the burden I carried, the thing that gave my life structure and a safe, if suffocating, purpose.

But every time I successfully solved a small, domestic problem, the deeper, uglier truth resurfaced.

Without Adrian’s extreme demands, without the terrifying structure of his control, I had absolutely no idea what my own desires were. I was free, and freedom felt like a vast, empty expanse, cold and terrifying.

The buried truth, the one I guarded with a fierce, almost religious devotion, was that I was desperately, devastatingly lonely. It wasn’t just physical; I missed the intensity. I missed the absolute, undeniable claim.

I missed the terror and the thrill of being someone else’s property, of having every choice stripped away so I could finally shed the crushing weight of my own lifelong responsibility. I missed the feeling of my world fracturing against the wall in his Red Room, the clean, pure release of being commanded into oblivion.

Adrian had elevated every intellectual challenge and every physical demand into a high-stakes power game, and now, regular life felt utterly pedestrian. My classes were dull, my friends’ gossip was flat, and the challenges I faced—a difficult paper, a cranky sister—were trivial. Adrian Lewis had spoiled me for ordinary existence.

“Are you breathing or just meditating on the mortality of Romantic poets?”

Cleo, magnificent in a bright yellow sweater and armed with her ever-present thermos, nudged my shoulder. She was my constant, my moral compass, and the only person who knew even half the devastating truth. Her presence anchored me, even as her ceaseless judgment of Adrian grated on my nerves.

“Just trying to absorb the socio-political context through osmosis,” I mumbled, rubbing my tired eyes. I couldn’t meet her gaze. I knew she was looking for signs of relapse, for the shadow of Lewis’s influence.

“Right. Look, I’m heading to the library early. You need to keep your head down today, Soph. Dr. Vaughn’s lecture is your first class, and trust me, she’s already on high alert. She won’t stop staring at you. It’s unnerving. Like she expects you to confess all your sins to the Dean suddenly.”

Cleo’s voice tightened when she mentioned Dr. Vaughn, and a familiar surge of defensive anger flared inside me. I hated Vaughn’s pity. I hated that she saw me only as a victim, a repeat of her own sad history.

“She can stare all she wants,” I said, my voice flat and cold. “I’m her student. Nothing more. She lost. She couldn’t hold onto him, and she couldn’t take him down. She’s just a frustrated ex-submissive who is now forced to teach the class he used to dominate. She thinks she was trying to save me, but she only robbed me of my choice.”

“She filed the report because he’s a predator, Soph,” Cleo countered, her tone sharp, unforgiving. Her thermos landed on the counter with a metallic clang. “Don’t you dare romanticize the man who tied up your ex-boyfriend and forced him to watch! He systematically dismantled her, and he was doing the same to you. That was abuse, not a choice.”

The shame rushed in, swift and choking, followed by the terrifying, perverse thrill of that memory. Ethan’s horror, Adrian’s possessive fury, my own explosive climax. “It was my choice to be there,” I insisted, pushing the chair back, needing to escape the small space. “It was my choice to go back to him when he came to my driveway. That whole disaster was my catastrophe, and she had no right to interfere. I’m just saying Dr. Vaughn isn’t a savior. She’s a rival.”

Cleo let out a long, suffering sigh. “You’re right. I don’t understand why you need to outsource your will to feel free. But he’s gone. It’s done. It’s a new semester. I need you to put Lewis and that Red Room nightmare behind you, or you’re going to fail out.”

New Message from Unknown Number.

Just look. It’s nothing. Delete it and go to class. The responsible voice was weak, pleading.

The other voice, the dominant, demanding one I had internalized, cut through the noise. Look at what you want.

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