Page 2 of Sweet Violence
More accurately, it loved the version of me that fit inside brochures.
A poor kid with good grades and a tragic background.
Look how well the system works.
Most days, I could move through Wexley without thinking too hard about it. I kept my head down and watched the way everyone else carried themselves—how naturally they occupied spaces that still made me hesitate before entering.
That hesitation never fully went away.
Standing in the quad that afternoon waiting for my interview, I felt it worse than usual.
My pulse sat too high in my chest while my fingers tightened around the strap of my bag hard enough to make them ache.
Heat rose off the stone pathways in waves, baking through the soles of my shoes. The air smelledaggressivelyexpensive—fresh-cut grass, clean linen, and cologne that probably cost more than my monthly grocery budget.
It made me nauseous.
A dark window caught my reflection as I walked past, and I slowed before I could stop myself.
My glasses were crooked, becauseof coursethey were.
I pushed the wire frames back into place, pressing harder than necessary and holding them there for a second too long.
I looked overly alert and way too aware of myself. Like someone bracing for impact in situations that didn’t technically require bracing.
Not exactly interview-winning energy.
All the work,and I still looked like someone people explained things to carefully. Someone they underestimated first and apologized to later.
My thumb dragged across the seam of my sleeve.
Fifteen minutes.
This wasn’t just another meeting. It was the kind of thing that changed the trajectory of your life.
And it wasn’t just any office.
It was Henry fucking Rothwell’s.
You couldn’t exist at Wexley without knowing who he was. Not just the professor part—the mythology attached to him.
I read his memoir when I was fourteen.
I still couldn’t fully explain what it had done to me, only that something about it lodged itself beneath my ribs and refused to leave afterward.
Rhys never let me live it down.
“Trauma crush,” he called it after finding my copy shoved beneath my mattress with half the pages bent and highlighted within an inch of its life.
“Henry Rothwell turns you into a Victorian woman staring longingly out a rain-covered window.”
It wasn’t that dramatic.
The memoir definitely altered my brain chemistry a little,sure, but it also didn’t help that Henry Rothwell was offensively attractive.
Rhys would’ve had a field day if he could see me now, standing here rubbing my sleeve raw while I ran through my own introduction on a loop, repeating it in my head as if my name might disappear the second I tried to say it out loud.
Hi, yes, hello, I’m Archie.
