Manchester, the first week of an economics degree.
Ewan Carrick is eighteen, three days off the train from Lewisham, already certain he's leaving. The halls smell of damp. The grey is non-negotiable.
Then Dr Laurence Halliday walks into a lecture theatre and uncaps a marker.
Halliday is thirty-one. Oxford-trained. Held together by rolled sleeves and rigid self-control. He doesn't touch students. He doesn't bend rules. He doesn't look twice at the boy in the back row who sees the answer before anyone else and refuses to raise his hand.
Except he does. And Ewan looks back.
Office hours become dangerous. Problem sets become pretexts. And what neither of them can prove on paper could end one career and unmake the other.
Slow burn. Single POV. UK English. HEA. ~107k words.