My Mouth Before 28

“Please tell me you brought caffeine,” I muttered, dragging my half-dead corpse across the campus quad like a zombie who’d made questionable life choices and was now paying for them in sleep deprivation.

Cleo practically bounced beside me like she’d been mainlining Red Bull since dawn. “I brought something better.”

I blinked through my exhaustion-induced brain fog. “What’s better than caffeine? Because if you say cocaine, I’m calling your therapist.”

“A man with breakfast.”

“Hi, ladies.” Ayden materialized behind us like some kind of rom-com fairy godmother with perfect timing. “Thought you might need fuel for Lewis’s daily psychological warfare session.”

He held up two cups of coffee and a brown paper bag that smelled like salvation wrapped in bacon grease.

“Oh my God,” I gasped, suddenly finding religion. “Marry me immediately.”

Cleo snorted. “You’re pathetically easy.”

“Only for coffee and food. I have standards.” I grabbed the cup like it was life support. “What else would I possibly need a man for?”

Ayden grinned, handing over what looked like a breakfast sandwich designed by angels. “Sorry Soph, I’m already contractually obligated to Cleo, but I remembered your usual—bacon-egg-and-cheese with enough hot sauce to strip paint.”

I almost cried actual tears. “If Lewis gets arrested for academic war crimes, I’m nominating you to teach literature. You understand human needs.”

“You think he’d actually go down for something?” Cleo asked as we trudged toward the Humanities building like soldiers marching toward battle.

“I mean,” I muttered, taking a bite that made me question every life choice that had led me away from this sandwich, “he’s collecting ethical violations like they’re fucking Pokémon cards.”

She cackled. “Gotta catch ’em all, but make it predatory behavior.”

We reached the lecture hall just as the bell delivered its daily death knell. Seats were already half-occupied by my fellow academic prisoners. Lewis stood at the front, writing something on the board in that tight, controlled script that somehow made everything feel like a philosophical death sentence.

He didn’t look at me. Not even a glance. Which was either professional restraint or the academic equivalent of the silent treatment.

“Take your seats,” he said, tone clipped like he was addressing particularly disappointing lab specimens.

Cleo nudged me as we settled in. “Did you guys have another one of your psychologically complex disagreements?”

“Define disagreement,” I whispered back.

“I mean… was there kneeling involved? Because you look like a woman who’s either really pissed or really freshly demolished.”

My face flushed hot enough to power a small city. “Cleo.”

“What? I’m just saying. You’ve got that post-emotional-apocalypse glow.”

“Shut up.”

“Ladies,” Lewis’s voice cut through our whispered chaos like a scalpel. “If you’re finished solving world hunger, we can begin.”

Cleo slid lower in her chair. “Oops.”

I smirked because apparently self-preservation wasn’t on my agenda today.

Lewis launched into the lecture, something about duality and self-destruction in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Subtle as a brick to the face, really.

“The central question,” he said, voice carrying that smooth authority that made my brain go temporarily offline, “is whether a man can live with both his darkness and his virtue without one eventually destroying the other.”

My hand shot up with the kind of reckless abandon usually reserved for drunk texting exes.

“Is that a philosophical question or just your dating history?”

The class erupted. Someone actually clapped. I’d achieved academic comedy gold.

Lewis turned to look at me with the kind of slow, predatory focus that suggested I’d just signed my own death warrant. His jaw ticked once—a tell I’d learned meant I was either about to get lectured or fucked, possibly both.

That glare hit like lightning, carrying about seventeen different kinds of threat mixed with muscle memory. My body responded before my brain could tell it to chill, heat flooding places that had no business responding to academic intimidation.

I smiled sweetly, because going down in flames might as well be entertaining.

He turned back to the board, but the chalk cracked in his grip like my self-control.

Cleo whispered, “You are so getting detention.”

“I think that was a silent promise of academic murder.”

The lecture continued, tension thick enough to cut with a knife. He quoted passages, scribbled annotations, called on students with the kind of impatience that screamed ‘I didn’t sleep either and you’re all paying for it.’

I tried not to look at his hands. Or his mouth. Or remember how it felt when those hands were—

The door exploded open.

Everyone turned like we were watching the world’s most dramatic tennis match. Dean Halbrook walked in, followed by two men in what were definitely not academic robes. Dark uniforms. Official badges. The kind of accessories that turn regular Tuesday mornings into life-altering disasters.

Murmurs swept through the room like wildfire through dry grass.

Lewis turned slowly, chalk still gripped in what was probably now powder. “Dean?”

“I need you to come with us,” Halbrook said, voice tight enough to snap.

“For what?” Lewis asked with the kind of cool that suggested he’d been expecting this moment.

One officer stepped forward. “Adrian Lewis, you’re under investigation for misconduct and abuse of power within the college system. Please step away from the podium.”

The room fucking exploded.

“What?!”

“Is this actually happening?”

“Holy shit, he’s getting arrested?”

Gasps, phones lifting like we were documenting the academic apocalypse, chairs scraping as people repositioned for better angles. Cleo’s grip on my arm could probably cut off circulation.

“Holy shit,” she breathed. “Sophie…”

Lewis stood perfectly still, scanning the room like he was memorizing faces for some kind of psychological hit list. Then his gaze found mine and held. Like he was downloading my entire soul through eye contact. Like he already knew exactly how we’d gotten here.

“You have no proof,” Lewis said to the officer, voice cold enough to freeze hell.

“Dr. Lisette Vaughn filed a formal report. You’re being placed on academic leave pending investigation.”

More chaos. Chairs scraping, people whispering my name like I was patient zero of this academic plague. Did they know? Did everyone fucking know?

Lewis dropped the chalk.

“I’ll come quietly,” he said, which was possibly the most ominous thing he could have chosen.

He looked at me one more time—a look that felt like a promise and a threat and a goodbye all wrapped in psychological warfare.

Then he let them lead him out.

The door slammed. Dead silence.

Until Cleo whispered, voice trembling with the realization that our lives had just become a cautionary tale: “What the hell did you do, Sophie?”

And honestly? I was starting to wonder the same thing.