Page 9 of The Naughty Professor

Chapter Eight

Felix

The moment Professor Carr left—with Joan Stanwyk’s perfume still lingering in the air like a curse—I wanted to slam my head into the lab table.

Why did I always do this? Why did I always reduce myself to a bumbling idiot in front of him? I’d dropped glassware, babbled about bleeding in the lab, and nearly set myself on fire with nerves. He must have thought I was insane. No—worse than insane. Incompetent and pathetic.

And why had he even been here? Carr never came down to the chemistry wing. Philosophy lived upstairs in its ivory tower, all chalk dust and moral hypotheticals. Why would the golden boy of the faculty wander into my disaster of a lab?

I couldn’t let myself believe it was to see me. That was laughable. No one like Thorne Carr—handsome, brilliant, composed—would ever come here just to talk to Felix Sterling, the man who once wore anal beads as a bracelet.

Still, the thought wormed in. What if? What if he had?

I shoved it away before it could take root. It didn’t matter. I’d blown whatever chance I might have had. I always did.

My hands shook as I gathered the shards of the broken beaker, dropping them into the disposal bin. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, drilling into my skull. The echo of Joan’s heels was gone, but the shame she left behind clung to me like static.

I hated myself. Hated that around Carr I turned into a malfunctioning wind-up toy—arms flailing, words collapsing into gibberish. I could recite the periodic table backwards, but when it came to speaking to a man I wanted… nothing.

Unless.

My gaze slid to the bottles I’d lined up earlier, the notes scattered across the table, equations scrawled in multicolored ink. The beginnings of a miracle—or a disaster.

The serum. I needed this serum now.

I shoved my glasses up my nose and pulled the stool closer to the bench. “All right,” I muttered, my voice shaking. “Let’s make history.”

I set out the components like a religious ritual: cobalt chloride, acetylsalicylic acid, lithium carbonate, a telomerase inhibitor I’d smuggled from the medical lab upstairs. Each chemical was dangerous in its own right. Together, they could be catastrophic—or transcendent.

I began with the stabilizer, a pale blue powder that clung to the spoon as though reluctant to let go.

I tipped it into the beaker, watching it dissolve into the clear solution with a hiss.

My pen scratched furiously across the page beside me—measurements, reactions, little arrows pointing to half-formed ideas.

Next, the dopamine agonist. A clear liquid that shimmered faintly under the lights.

My pulse quickened as I drew it into the pipette, each drop falling like molten silver.

I imagined it coursing through my veins, switching on confidence like a lightbulb, burning away the hesitation that had ruled me my entire life.

“Confident,” I whispered, almost to the beaker itself. “Smooth. I will be the kind of man who never has to beg to be noticed.”

I added the halogenated chain, a thin crystal lattice that fizzed violently the moment it touched the solution. Smoke curled upward, acrid and sweet. My heart leapt, half with fear, half with exhilaration.

This was it. This was me tearing down the walls of my own prison.

In my mind’s eye I saw the man I’d become: Felix, but taller somehow, straighter, his jaw defined instead of hidden by nervous stubble. Felix, walking into Badlands not as a shadow but as fire. Men turning and staring, wanting him.

No—not Felix. Jax. The name came to me unbidden, sleek and dangerous sounding.

Jax would know how to smile without apologizing for it. Jax would never drop a beaker in front of Professor Carr. He’d pin Carr with his magical blue eyes, lean in close, and murmur something wicked that would make him laugh. Jax would make Thorne Carr want him.

I stirred the solution gently, watching it shift from clear to a deep, hypnotic violet.

But the fantasy wavered, cut through by a memory. Dr. Hargreaves’s broken voice on the phone.

She’s twenty-eight years old, Dr. Sterling. She stares at a wall all day because I thought I could play God.

My stomach twisted.

What if that were me? What if I injected this and never woke up?

Or worse—what if I woke up but couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, trapped in my own head?

I pictured Grandma getting the call. Juniper shaking her head, saying she knew this would happen.

Thorne Carr never knowing that the bumbling professor had only wanted a chance.

My hand trembled, the glass stirring rod clinking against the side of the beaker.

“Is it worth it?” I asked the empty room.

The serum bubbled softly, as if mocking me.

I thought of the boy on the curb with his shredded book, shoulders hunched against the laughter of others. I thought of myself year after year, invisible, overlooked, ridiculed. A ghost haunting my own life.

And I thought of Professor Carr, standing in my lab today, his voice warm even when I was making a fool of myself. He’d looked at me, I think. Like, really looked at me.

Yes. It was worth it.

No, I was worth it.

I set the rod aside and lifted the beaker carefully, the violet liquid catching the light like a jewel. My reflection warped across its surface—wide eyes, glasses slipping, lips pressed tight.

“Not anymore,” I whispered. “I won’t be him anymore.”

I funneled the serum into a vial, sealed it with a trembling hand, and held it up to the light. It glowed faintly, pulsing like a heartbeat.

Confidence in a bottle. Freedom in a syringe.

The door to the lab creaked open, and I nearly dropped the vial.

Juniper leaned against the frame, her arms crossed over her chest. “What the hell are you doing, Dr. Sterling?”

My brain scrambled. “I—uh—nothing. Just… seeing if I could replicate the formula. It’s purely theoretical.”

She strode forward, plucked the notes off the counter, scanned them, then gave me a look that could melt steel. “This isn’t theoretical. This is you about to fuck yourself, and not in the warm and friendly way.”

I forced a laugh, way too high-pitched. “No, no. I wasn’t actually going to use it. Just curiosity, you know. For science.”

She didn’t look convinced. For a moment I thought she’d hurl the whole setup into the sink. Instead, she surprised me. Her expression softened, the sarcasm slipping at the edges.

“You’re a good guy, Dr. Sterling,” she murmured, voice low and strangely gentle. “A great guy. You don’t need a sketchy serum to make people see it. Everything you’re looking for? It’s already in you. Trust me.”

My throat closed. Juniper never spoke like this. She was sarcasm personified. But for a moment she looked at me like she actually believed in me, more than I ever had myself.

Then, predictably, she ruined it. Her mouth quirked. “And if you’re really desperate for confidence, just borrow one of my strap-ons. Both guys and girls love it.”

I sputtered, half a laugh, half a cough. “Juniper—”

She winked, tossed the notes back onto the bench, and sauntered to the door. “Don’t blow yourself up, Dr. Sterling. I don’t have time to train a new professor.”

The door slammed behind her, and I looked down at the vial in my hand, violet liquid shimmering like a promise. Juniper’s words rattled in my head, but they weren’t enough to stop me.

Confidence in a bottle. Freedom in a syringe.

I opened the drawer to my right and pulled out a syringe, then prepared the injection.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I muttered, my breath ragged, and my palms slick with sweat. Every cell in my body screamed, and the rational part of me yelled that I was about to end my life on a tiled floor surrounded by broken glass.

But another voice whispered louder.

No one will ever ignore you again.

I pressed the syringe into the vial, drew the liquid up, and sat down hard on the stool. My hands shook so badly I nearly dropped it.

“This is it,” I breathed. “It’s now or never.”

The serum shimmered in the barrel, violet as twilight. I brought the needle to my arm, then hesitated, fear clawing at my chest.

“What if—” I began, but the words stuck in my throat.

And then I thought of Thorne again. Damn it, I want him to look at me—not with pity, or with amusement, but with desire.

I clenched my teeth, drove the needle home, and pushed the plunger.

“Oh my God,” I moaned as fire roared through my veins. My vision blurred, then the world went dark.