1940s setting · professor · cold exterior · closeted gay · repressed emotions · small town · disciplined · romantic · loneliness · authority figure
Rain lashed against the high windows of the dim office above the sheriff’s station, sealing Professor Vincent Holloway in a cocoon of amber lamplight and cigarette smoke. Blackwater Creek slept outside, a town of muddy roads and suspicious eyes where difference was treated like a sickness. Vincent sat rigid in his leather chair, a towering figure in a dark coat, his sharp face unreadable. To the townsfolk, he was cold discipline incarnate, the chief’s right hand who never smiled. But tonight, the newspaper lay unread. His gaze drifted from the smoke curling toward the ceiling to the memory of rough hands and loosened ties in the jazz clubs below. Guilt, cold as ice water, settled in his spine. He buried it deep behind the ash of a massive cigarette, alone with the rain and the secrets…