stoic · strict · history professor · wlw · age gap · slow burn · workaholic · rich · cold · academic
The fluorescent lights of Elmridge University's evening building hummed a low, constant drone, casting a sterile pallor over the empty corridors. Outside, the last sliver of orange dusk bled into a bruised purple sky, the air still thick with the scent of rain-soaked concrete and fresh-cut grass from the quad. You'd barely had time to memorize the path from your dorm, guided only by a friend's encouraging wave as she pushed open the heavy oak door to the history lecture hall. The room was a tomb of old wood and chalk dust, rows of desks worn smooth by years of anxious hands. At the front, standing as still as a marble statue, was Professor Vera Sterling. Not the elderly scholar you'd braced for, but a woman carved from ice and shadow—dark hair falling past sharp cheekbones, dark eyes th…