Page 7 of Sweet Violence
I was fucking bored.
But that had been the point.
Those first eleven interviews had been a courtesy—a concession to Randolph and the fiction of fair competition. I’d let them in, listened, nodded, and watched them exhaust themselves trying to earn something that was never really on the table.
The outlier had been obvious from the start.
Archibald Quinn.
I recognized him from my larger undergraduate lectures—wire frames, observant eyes, always sitting far enough back to disappear if he wanted to.
I’d saved him for last on purpose. His application hadn’t fit with the others. There was no reverent framing or worship disguised as research. Archibald submitted a clean, precise writing sample that didn’t try too hard to ingratiate itself with my work or soften the edges of what it was describing.
He wasn’t auditioning. He was reporting.
Archibald came into my office quietly, filling the space in a way that immediately disrupted my expectations. My attention caught before I could stop it, tracking the way he crossed the room and took the chair across from my desk as if I put it there just for him.
His stare unsettled me—not because of its intensity, but because I fuckinglikedit.
Gray eyes met mine through the round frames sitting low on his nose. He didn’t touch them or correct their awkward angle, as if he were accustomed to seeing the world slightly askew and had learned to compensate.
His eyes dropped briefly, lashes brushing his cheeks as he took in the space between us.
His throat moved when he swallowed, the line of it exposed and unprotected for a fraction of a second before his gaze returned to mine. The moment settled between us, heavier than it had any right to be.
Fuck.
He’d barely spoken, and I was already paying closer attention than I meant to.
“I’ve read your work,” he blurted, then paused, the smallest stumble breaking the rhythm of his voice before he recovered. A faint flush climbed his cheekbones, and his fingers tightened together once in his lap before easing again.
“Not just the memoir. The academic journals, too. The early publications.”
I didn’t respond right away.
Every applicant who had sat in that chair had arrived armed with my citations. They praised the work, praised the survival, and layered on politeness so thick, I nearly choked on it.
“It’s so nice to meet you.”
“Your work changed my life.”
“You are so brave.”
It was all over-rehearsed bullshit.
“Everyone who applied for this position has read those journals, Mr. Quinn.”
His surname tasted too clean in my mouth. I used it anyway.
Distance had its uses.
Archibald absorbed my dismissal without interrupting, but his jaw set just enough to register, like he was biting back a reflex.
“I didn’t mean it as a credential.”
I let the silence stretch.
His knee drew inward beneath the chair.
