Page 176 of The Professor's Wife

“Why not?”

“I will stop loving you.”

“I’m still the same professor you met,” he returned, softly. “The same man who is trying to enlighten you. You’re in a dark place. I’m trying to free you from it. Help you see the light. It’s my calling, Daisy, to be the best mentor, to have the best student. You are it, Daisy. And right now you are failing. Let me pull you out of this grief.”

I shook my head, feeling like my heart was tearing apart all over again. “No. I don’t want to. I don’t want this, Oliver.”

His jaw tightened as he narrowed his eyes at me. “Don’t wantwhat, Daisy?”

“You,” I whispered, numbly. “I don’t wantyou,Oliver.”

The words had barely left my mouth when his face turned a shade of red. Anger seeped out of him. He smashed the glass of water on the floor beside me before lunging at me once more. His hands were everywhere. Gripping my hair, squeezing at my cheeks. I felt pain everywhere, but I was powerless against him.

I tried to move, but he climbed over me, straddling my body, his rage exploding out of him. He forced his fingers into my mouth, stretching it wide. I let out a garbled scream as he forced the pills into my mouth. I gagged and tried to twist my head and spit them out, but he closed my mouth tightly, until my teeth ached.

I couldn’t move.

Trapped beneath him with my mouth forced shut, I felt the pills crawl down my dry throat. I immediately stopped moving when they were too far down to stop the inevitable. He seemed to understand because he immediately let go and climbed off me, not a care in the world.

He let out a calming breath as I sobbed on the floor, attempting to turn and crawl away. He didn’t stop me. He knew how fast the pills would work in my system. I’d never been this conscious before when taking them, so I didn’t know. I crawled and then stood on wobbly legs. I attempted to hurry across the house, but my legs shook, and the rooms began to spin. Within moments, exhaustion slammed into my body, and I fell to the floor, feet from the front door.

Everything went black.

By the time I came to, I was in the back of Oliver’s car. Like last time, my body wouldn’t cooperate. I could hardly move. Tears slid down my face as I lay there, helpless, feeling the jerky movements of the car as it drove around the potholes in the bumpy off-road trail to the cabin.

He’s going to kill you, Daisy. Maybe you should let him.

This was going to be different. He didn’t have Rowe to dangle before my eyes. He would be cruel. He would use different tactics, but I didn’t know what.

Oliver was stronger. He didn’t care about my screams. The walls of that cabin had long since learned not to listen to my cries.

The door opened. Arms gathered my limp body. Oliver picked me up with ease and carried me. His touch was gentle. His words sweet as he uttered, “Everything’s going to be alright, Daisy. You just wait. We’ll go back to the way it was in the start. We just have to go through this teething phase.”

I could do nothing but cry. The path through the woods was muddy and cold, the sky above smothered in dark clouds. His feet were steady over roots and uneven rock; he didn’t slow down. Not until we reached the old shed behind the cabin—the one he called the lesson room.

Inside, the air was damp. Mold darkened the corners of the walls. The only light came from the four oil lamps, already lit—waiting for me, like he’d planned this long before our argument.

One lamp was placed beside the thin mattress on the floor. The other flickered just out of reach. Cruel in its distance. He knew what he was doing.

My throat was raw by the time he locked the door.

“You’ll stay here,” he said, voice echoing in the hollow space. “Three days. One glass of water. Same rules. You read. You answer. You learn.”

I didn’t reply.

I just curled into myself, arms around my knees, my heart loud enough to drown out his words. There would be no rescue. Just me, the cold, and the ghost of my son.

He left the texts he always made me read in the corner. The ones full of twisted philosophies and scribbled annotations in his beautiful handwriting.

The door slammed shut. The bolt clicked.

And then I was alone again.

No Rowe.

No sunlight.

Just the lamp by my side, flickering and fading by the minute.