Professor Caspian Grey was everything I wanted.

My crush on him had started as a tiny little attraction but every hour I spent with him turned it into something more, something intense, something forbidden.

It wasn’t my fault, though, nope.

I hated touching in general, my exceptions being limited to Daniel and Rhys, but every time Grey touched me, I couldn’t help but relax into his touch and crave more.

I wanted him hands on mine. I wanted his hugs, his pecks, his kisses. I wanted to know how his body would feel pressed again mine and how his lips would feel in the crook of my neck. I wanted to taste him and say ‘I told you so’ to my mind who was completely against my heart who screamed that we were meant to be.

Six years wasn’t too big of an age gap. No, I refused to let something as stupid as numbers tell me that I couldn’t be with him.

Not with the way I felt around him.

Between Daniel and Rhys, I used to ask myself if I wanted the peace or the chaos, but Caspian, he was…

He was the chaos that wrecked through my body and left peace in his wake. His touch lit me on fire yet put my body at an ease I had never felt. I needed his touch both emotionally and physically. I liked the way my heart raced in his presence and not because I was overwhelmed, but because I knew how right it felt. How right he felt right.

He gave me electric sparks and a calm at the same time in a way that I would never be able to describe.

I had known that man for barely a few weeks, yet he’d found out everything about me, and had managed to make me feel safe, despite how stalker-y he seemed.

If he wasn’t the one, then I didn’t know who was.

It was so weird. I always snickered at people falling in love so quickly in romance books yet three weeks after meeting Grey I just had this feeling that he was right for me.

I looked at him in the eye as we sat in the car right in front of my house.

“I…” I stuttered. I was supposed to wave him goodbye and get out of his car but I wanted to thank him for every rescue, for the tutoring and for sending me dinner every time I forgot, but a ‘thank you’ seemed insufficient.

He looked at me, and smiled, as if he could read my mind and see what I was thinking, and understood how lost I was for words, but still, I wanted to let him know.

I reached out for his hand that was lying idle on his seat and squeezed it. “Thank you, Mr Grey. For this, and for everything,” I retreated my hand quickly, opened the door and bolted, but I felt the heat of his gaze burning my back as I entered the house.

I turned on the lights and gave him a soft wave before closing the door and taking in the house.

The mess on the floor reminded me that my mother was still home, she was still right upstairs, ready to punish me for the littlest of my mistakes.

I snuck into my room without making any noise, and flipped open my bible: Campbell.

Neil Campbell- if that man had been alive, I would’ve married him for writing a book that beautiful. There were plenty of Biology textbooks, but none as beautifully written as Campbell.

I was almost through a chapter on Genetics when my phone lit up with a notification.

          Grey: Go to sleep, January.

In my head and on my phone, he was no longer ‘Mr Grey’ for me. He was just ‘Grey’. The man I was unofficially seeing. The man who I was whipped for.

          Me: How did you know that I was awake?

I texted back, genuinely curious.

          Grey: I know a lot about you, Ms Decembers. It’s time you realize that.

I was so stupid because I found the fact that he stalked me ‘hot’.

          Me: Stalking me, are we now?

          Grey: I don’t care much for labels. I am just making sure that you are okay at all time.

          Me: Aw, how fatherly of you. Anyways, I wouldn’t mind calling you daddy.

          Grey: How cooperative of you. Looking forward to hearing it from your mouth.

          Grey: After all, I do intend to assume the position of your guardian. Soon.

What. The. Actual. Fuck.

I put away my phone after that and turned my attention to the textbook, forcing myself to not think about it, only to realize that I was super tired. Rubbing my eyes, I got to my feet and stretched my aching limbs.

After a yawn that would get me thrown out of etiquette classes, I forced my eyes to focus for a minute, only for them to catch a shadow in the distance.

A figure stood in a nearby apartment. I couldn’t see the face but I had an unnerving feeling that whoever that was, he was looking right at me.

The figure moved his hang and the phone lit up in his palm. In the phone’s dim light, I saw him type something. Moments later, my own phone lit up, and it was a message from Grey.

          Grey: Don’t be scared, my noctiluca. It’s just me.

I pulled the curtain close and immediately turned off the lights before letting myself collapse on the bed.

Suddenly, stalking, that had felt hot a moment ago, seemed terrifying.

That man had started living in a tiny apartment to keep an eye on me. He wandered around my house, and knew things like my favorite color and pizza flavour that I had never told him.

I clenched my chest, forcing the panic to stay down along with my heartrate. A shrill sound broke through the silence and I realized it was my ringtone.

It was Grey.

I cut the call and ran to the windows. They were unbreakable according to the interior designer, so, I just checked that they were locked properly.

After confirming it, I fell back on the bed and hugged my knees, my eyes never leaving the windows.

He could come at any moment.

Maybe he had something that could break the windows too.

After taking a few minutes to push the thoughts out of my head, I grabbed Campbell and reread the whole thing on the bed in the light of a small table lamp.

After I was done, I grabbed Guyton, my other sacred book and basically flipped through a chapter before taking a romance novel, not allowing myself to sleep in the fear that something would happen if I were to fall asleep.

Somehow, despite the lack of caffeine, I got through the night. In the morning, I took a bath with cold water and made myself ice-cold coffee to get through the day.

I had a thick layer of makeup on my face to hide the eye bags and my muscles felt tense-too tense for my liking.

I put a caffeinated aerated drink in my bag for safety before peeling a cucumber and walking outside the door.

In the Grey drama I had completely forgotten that Rhys had hit me earlier, and had almost done it again and there was no chance that he was going to drive me to school.

I opened my phone to book an Uber when a car stopped in front of my house. I looked up at the car’s abrupt halt to find a man- to find Grey stepping out of it in a hurried motion.

I instinctively took a step back, being overly faithful in my balance and in my consciousness, because I almost tripped over a stray stone. Grey rushed over and enclosed my wrists in an iron grip to prevent me from tripping, but I pulled away, magnifying the impact.

I fell on my butt, and pebbles grazed my soft skin through my thin cotton dress, but I managed to point a finger at him and order, “Stay away from me,”

He stopped walking and hurt flashed through his eyes before he gathered himself and spoke, “Let me drive you to school, Decembers,”

“I…My cab’s on the way,”

“Don’t lie to me. I know you haven’t booked one yet,”

“Have you hacked my phone as well?” Is what I refrain myself from asking. He could be dangerous and angering him…well, I didn’t want any more bruises.

I got on my shaking legs and quietly walked to his car and sat in the backseat, right behind his seat so he wouldn’t be able to see me properly.

He gave me a glare before starting the car.

I made him stop the car outside the school gate so no one would see that we’d come together and quietly snuck into the school and found Rivika.

“Jan, are you okay?” she asked me as soon as she saw me, and I realized that the trembling had only made my dead-looking face worse.

“I didn’t sleep last night,” I replied shakily. “I am fine apart from that,”

“Jan, your heart!” Rivika scolded and grabbed my wrist to measure my pulse rate. Sleeping less made it worse, and coffee just added that rotten mixture.

Caffeine and adrenaline were the foes of anyone with anxiety that affected their heart.

“It’s one-twenty. You need to go home and sleep, January. You know what will happen if it gets too high,”

I knew what would happen. My blood pressure would drop and drop until I would pass out so that my brain would get some blood.

I had to avoid that.

“I’ll be fine,” I muttered, before making way to my first class: biology. I took a seat in the second to the last bench, far away from Mr Grey’s eyes.

He gave me an eye-over and I saw his jaw clench, but he swiftly masked it before looking away.

The lack of sleep paired with caffeine and fear was the worst thing for my heart. I took deep breath before diverting my focus to the book in front of me.

He started the class soon, but every now and then I felt his eyes on me. I didn’t look back at him for the sake of my safety, or at least that’s what I told myself. I didn’t let myself believe that if I were to look at him in the eye, there was so way I would be able to look away and it won’t be cause of fear.

It’ll be cause of how much I was attracted to him despite the fact that he was stalking me.

I couldn’t let myself accept that, no.

He kept on asking questions openly to the entire class, and I knew the answers and the fact that he was only asking them so I would answer.

At one point, he called my name and asked me to answer, but I merely shook my head in response.

As soon as the bell rang, I ran out of the door and to my locker, just to escape from his vicinity, reminding myself that he could very well  be harmful, to stop my heart that seemed to have a disagreement with me leaving his presence.

It was a stupid organ.

I had a few minutes before the next lecture, and I used that time to visit the counsellor.

“Ms Jane,” I knocked on the open door to get her attention before walking me. We were close due to how often I visited her. My dream college was Oxford. When I got into romance novels, I came across one with a British lead.

After that, I had my historical romance movies era where there were endless male leads with an accent so hot that hearing them set me on fire.

Needless to say, I decided that day to go to Oxford to witness that accent and the gentleman-ly behaviour.

Perhaps that was part of the reason why I fell for Mr Grey like that. It couldn’t be because I liked him, no.

He was my stalker.

“Hi, Jan, what brings you here?”

“I want to drop biology,”