Zinnia

Falling for a stranger over coffee? Fine. Learning he’s your art history professor? Problem.

Nick is guarded, intense, and so tightly wound I ache to unravel him. I know it’s wrong to pursue my professor, but he keeps showing up anyway—at the coffee shop, outside of class—as if he can’t stay away any more than I can. As if this is inevitable.

I’ve never been a person who stays. I wouldn’t even know how. But the more I try to let him go, the more I realize he might be the one I’m finally ready to choose.

Nick

I don’t blur lines. I don’t indulge feelings.
And I definitely don’t get involved with students.

But I met Zinnia before I knew who she was. Before the lecture halls, before the rules, before I had anything to lose. With her, I forgot myself. The restraint. The control. The life I built to keep everything, especially desire, in check.

Now she sits in my classroom, looking at me as if she knows exactly who I am beneath it all.

I should end this before it starts. Because she’s not only a risk to my career—she’s a risk to everything I thought I was.

Tropes:
Age gap (she’s 25, he’s 42)
Professor & student
Curvy, confident heroine
Sensitive, artsy hero
Repressed MMC has sexual awakening
No third act breakup