Sweet Romance14 min read
The Cold Tutor and the Snake in the Display Case
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I hate the new tutor because his skin feels cold and slick when he touches me.
"I told you, Giana, stop being dramatic," Denver said, handing me a slice of pizza.
"Not dramatic," I snapped. "He touched my hand and it was like ice."
"Who touched your hand?" Denver asked, eyes bright.
"Bowen Volkov." I pushed my hair behind my ear.
Bowen had come to our house because my father wanted me to pass advanced math. Geoffrey McCormick thought a private tutor would save me from failing again.
"He looks like he walked out of a fashion magazine," Geoffrey said the night he brought Bowen home. "Cambridge mathematics, very impressive—Giana, be polite."
"Polite," I repeated, and climbed the stairs because I had no choice. Geoffrey warned, "If you run, your allowance drops."
"I will live on ramen," I muttered, but I went down the stairs anyway.
Bowen stood in the foyer like a statue.
"Hello, Giana." He smiled, small and exact. "You must be our student."
He looked like a model. He smelled like wood and something deeper. He had pale skin that seemed almost blue in shadow. When he extended his hand, it was colder than the summer air.
"Call me Bowen or Mr. Volkov," he said.
"Mr. Volkov," I echoed, trying not to let my fingers tremble. His hand closed around mine and it felt like pressing my palm to a block of cold marble.
"You're shivering," he observed. "Are you alright?"
"I hate math," I blurted out.
"Then we'll change that," he said, and his smile was polite and certain like a promise.
"You're staying here?" I asked later, when Geoffrey told me Bowen would be staying upstairs in the guest room.
"Yes," Bowen said calmly. "It is more convenient."
"My house? The guest room?" I heard the outrage in my own voice. "That's private."
"Geoffrey insisted." Bowen's eyes flicked to my father, then back to me. "I will be an excellent tutor."
He was. He taught in a way that left no corner of confusion. He always sat very close. He would use his long, cold fingers to point at a step in a proof, and my skin would prickle.
"Do you understand this part?" he asked one afternoon.
"I think so," I said, lying. "Maybe."
"Try it out," he instructed, soft and patient.
I scribbled, he watched, and when I hesitated his hand brushed mine—light, almost accidental—and something in me tightened like a drawn wire.
"You're not trying," he said once. "You're hiding."
"I'm not hiding," I said, although I was. I wanted to hide from his eyes. "I just—I concentrate better alone."
"Then poof, no hiding." He smiled. "I don't leave until you understand."
That was how the summer went. Lessons, pauses that felt too long, Bowen's eyes on me like a study. He had a peculiar way of being everywhere at once: in the living room, in the small hall, in the shadow of the display case with the giant snake sculpture.
"Don't go in there," my father said with a laugh the first time he showed Bowen the small study behind the living room. "Our family has a story about that statue. My grandfather said a snake once protected our family."
"A guardian," Bowen murmured, staring at the black stone snake coiled in the glass case. The statue's mouth seemed ready to close on the world.
"It looks creepy," I said. "Why keep it here?"
"Because it is ours," Geoffrey said. "It helped us. We respect it."
Bowen watched me watch the sculpture like someone interested in a map. "Do you like snakes, Giana?"
"No," I said quickly. "They are cold and slippery. They scare me."
He smiled then, odd and soft. "Cold and slippery," he repeated, as if tasting the words.
I laughed when no one else did. Something about that smile made me uneasy.
The strange thing was that Bowen wasn't only cold in the hand. The room felt colder when he was near. At night I would wake up and find my sheets damp under the blankets where his presence had been, though he slept in the guest room. I told myself I was being silly.
"I'm staying at Donna's tonight," I lied once to Geoffrey. "Group study."
"Fine," Geoffrey said. "I trust you."
But I went to Denver's place and slept on her living room floor in a tangle of blankets. I made up excuses and ran errands, anything to avoid the long afternoons with Bowen and his cool hand.
One evening, I woke from a nap with the memory of a dream still clinging. In the dream something cold wound around my legs like wet rope. I heard a voice whisper my name over and over, soft and patient.
"Giana," Bowen would say sometimes, in the quiet.
"Stop," I whispered into the pillow.
We had a small housekeeper, Kora Carlson, who kept everything neat. She told me not to worry. "He's a fine young man," she said. "Good for you—study well."
I didn't tell Kora I thought he was a snake.
He was not human, and I learned that in the worst possible way.
One afternoon Geoffrey was late to a meeting. "Take Bowen around," he said. "Show him the collection. The guest room is at the end—"
I dragged my feet and led Bowen to the little study. He stopped in front of the display case and stared at the snake statue.
"It belonged to your great-grandfather," I said, nervous.
"I know," Bowen said, and he didn't take his eyes off the sculpture. "He made a bargain."
"What bargain?"
"Not everything needs to be explained," he said. "But the statue—your family promised something long ago."
"That's nonsense." I tried to pull away, to sound brave. "Families make stories to make themselves feel important."
Bowen's smile was a small, dangerous thing. "Perhaps." He turned to me then so close that I could see the tiny pattern in his iris. "Were you ever told that a promise can last a very long time?"
"What are you talking about?"
"You don't remember the older stories?" He had a tone of surprise, as if I were guilty of forgetfulness. "Everyone in your family knew."
"No one told me anything!"
He reached out and tucked a stray hair behind my ear with one cool finger. "You were a child. You were kept safe."
"I don't want to talk about it," I said, but my voice trembled.
He dropped his hand and kept watching me like I was both a puzzle and an answer he had been waiting for.
A few days later, Bowen didn't come down for dinner. He said he wasn't feeling well. Kora told me he had closed the curtains and slept all day.
"I'm going to check on him," I said. "Just to make sure he's okay."
"Don't go alone," Kora warned.
"I'll be quick."
Bowen's door was closed but not locked. I saw a sliver of dark under the door. From the corridor I could smell him—deeper now, almost sweet and thick like tree sap warmed by sun.
I peeked inside.
He lay half-covered by the duvet, only his head and shoulders visible. His face was flushed with an odd red, and his lips moved.
"Giana," he whispered.
My heart slammed. He was saying my name in that low, soft way.
I stepped inside.
The room was dim, the curtains drawn. Bowen's hand—thin and pale—stroked something under the duvet. I thought it was his knee.
Then a black tail slid from the covers.
I froze.
It was a long, glossy tail, scaled like a fish but dark as pool water. It moved like a shadow that had learned to breathe.
Bowen's face didn't change. "You see," he said to me, slow and sure, as if he had been waiting until I had the courage to meet the truth. "You recognize me."
I started toward the door without thinking, but my feet felt rooted to the floor.
"Don't run," Bowen said softly. "Please."
"Why should I stay?" My voice sounded small.
"Because I am not what you think." He smiled, and the smile was a promise and a threat. "Because I have waited for you."
"You are a monster," I said. It came out louder than I'd meant.
"A protector," he corrected. "A guardian."
He told me the story then, in pieces and images. Once, long ago, a man climbed a mountain and found a giant black serpent. The man begged for mercy for his family. The serpent gave a bargain: protection in exchange for a promise—the first child of a certain line would be bound to it. Your great-grandfather agreed because he was poor and desperate. The serpent watched over the family for generations, prosperity following where they went.
"You are the line," Bowen said. "You are the child promised."
A cold laugh escaped me. "That's impossible. People don't trade human lives with monsters."
"They do," Bowen said gently. "Sometimes when hunger is sharp and hope is thin."
I pushed him then, more from fear than anger, and he didn't move. His eyes were a strange yellow in the dark. "Let go of me," I said.
He didn't move. "I have watched you," he said, every word measured like a teacher's. "You have been little and big. I have seen your scraped knees and your first day at school. I have been patient."
"You're lying," I said. "You can't be at my kindergarten, at my birthdays, at my bedside. You're not—"
He leaned in. "I am older than your house. I promised, and I keep promises that mean something. I came to teach you math because your father asked. I came because I wanted to be close."
I felt something shift in the room. The air thickened, heavy as lacquer.
"You're dangerous," I whispered. "You're going to hurt me."
"Not if you say so," Bowen said. "If you accept the bargain, if you agree, we will be together. If not—"
He left the sentence hanging, and I couldn't tell if he meant he would leave, or something worse.
I didn't know what to do. He had spoken like a priest and a lover. He spoke like something that had watched centuries unfurl.
I ran.
I packed a small bag and I ran out that night, mud on my shoes and a silence behind me that felt like an animal tracking.
Geoffrey called, then texted, then begged. "Giana, where are you? What happened, is Bowen bothering you?"
"He is a snake," I wrote, then deleted it. I wrote, "At a friend's," then "I need space."
Geoffrey said he checked Bowen's room later. Bowen had left. He had sent money for part of the lessons back, polite and precise. My relief was sloppy and thin.
I tried to forget him. I told myself it had been a hallucination, a trick of my nerves. But when the semester started I sat in the big lecture hall and looked up.
Bowen was at the front of the class. He stood tall and bright in the sunlight that fell through the windows. The board behind him read, in bold handwriting, "Dr. Bowen Volkov."
My face turned red as a tomato. I ducked and wanted to crawl under my chair.
"Dr. Volkov is covering for Professor Zhang this week," a girl whispered.
"He's gorgeous," someone else said.
"I know," Denver muttered. "He was our house tutor."
He said my name in class that day like a bell. "Giana, could you come to the office after class?"
I froze. "I can't," I blurted, and fled the hall.
"You're being childish," Denver said later. "Go. Figure out why he looks at you like that."
"I will not," I said. But later, curiosity and fear knitted into a stubborn thread and I went to the office.
"You're avoiding me," Bowen said when I entered.
"You're everywhere," I shot back. "You keep switching roles! Tutor, teacher—what are you? Why are you doing this?"
"I told you," he said softly. "I am what I am."
"You're a snake!" I said it like a slur.
"A guardian." He took a step closer. "I am patient. I have waited longer than your great-grandfather's grandchildren. You are lovely when you are angry."
"I'm not a prize to be claimed," I said. "I'm a person."
"You are," he agreed. "And yet we were promised to each other."
"Which gives you the right?" I demanded.
"I don't expect you to understand now." He smiled that small, terrible smile. "Do not be cruel to yourself, Giana."
I left because I couldn't bear the way he watched me. Later, outside the building, I could hear laughter from the students around him—so many girls around him, bright and expectant. He was the center of attention, and my small, resentful heart felt squeezed.
"You're jealous," Denver teased when I told her later. "Admit it."
"I'm terrified," I said.
"Because he's a snake," Denver said, and shrugged. "Or because he knows too much."
The semester passed like a slow tide. Bowen taught, and his presence shaped everything. He knew my schedule, sometimes sat in a corner of the hall, sometimes stopped me in the corridor with a textbook question that had nothing to do with me.
"Why can't I make you believe me?" he asked once in the hallway, voice low.
"Because you're frightening me," I said.
"Because I want you," he said. "Because I am old and tired and patient and certain. Because when I saw you for the first time as a small child I decided." His eyes were unblinking. "I decided to wait."
"Wait," I echoed. "For what? You can't just decide my life."
"I don't demand," he said. "I ask."
"But you stalk me," I accused.
"To keep a promise is not stalking." He touched my arm then, light enough to be a ghost. His skin was cold and slick like river rock after rain, but I couldn't rip free. "Giana, try to understand."
"I won't be your bargain," I said. "I won't be 'the promised one.'"
"You won't be," he said. "Not if you choose not to be."
The oddest part was that most days I hated him and most nights I dreamed of his voice. Once, I found myself in the little hall with the snake statue. It seemed to breathe. I stood before it and ran my fingertips over the cold stone.
"I hate snakes," I told the dark glass.
A whisper like silk slid through my mind. "You do not hate all snakes."
I jumped. Bowen stood in the shadow, closer than the statue. "I wanted you to meet your guardian," he said quietly.
"You led me here," I said.
"To remember," he said. "And to offer you a choice."
"A choice?" I laughed, bitter. "I thought you claimed everything."
"If you refuse, I will go," he said. "I will take myself far away. Your family will keep its good fortune. You will be free."
"Really?" I squinted. "You would let go so easily?"
"I am not a tyrant," he said. "I make promises, and I keep them. I asked, you decide. There is no forcing—unless you choose otherwise."
We spoke for a long time in that hall, between the glass and the statue. He told me more of the bargain, of the snake who had watched our family prosper, and of a loneliness that had grown heavy with years.
"I watched you," he said. "You were a child I observed. I liked the way you looked at things. I liked the way you tripped and kept smiling."
"You say you watched me," I said. "That sounds like obsession."
"It was better to call it devotion," he said.
"Better for you," I said.
"Better and worse," he admitted.
"I can't stay," I said finally. "I won't be part of whatever this is."
"Then leave," he said. "And I will leave too."
"I won't tell anyone," I said. "I won't make a scene."
"Good." He smiled, and the smile did not reach his eyes. "Go."
I left the house again, but something in me had shifted. I couldn't tell if it was fear or the easing of a pressure. Bowen stayed at the university. I kept my distance. He taught a few classes, and I ignored his gaze.
Then one afternoon, something happened I couldn't ignore.
A student burst into the office, red-faced and furious. "He kissed me!" she cried. "He told me he loved me!"
Word spread like spilled ink. Students whispered. A small crowd gathered on the steps outside the department office.
"He promised me…" the girl sobbed. "He told me he would be with me. He said he only loved me!"
I watched from the doorway, stomach twisting as the story became a spectacle. Bowen stood in the middle of the crowd, hands raised in a slow, useless gesture.
"I never promised you anything I did not offer," he said softly.
"You lied!" another student screamed. "He lied! He plays with us!"
It was messy. Accusations flew. Phones were out, cameras flashing. A female professor passed by and stopped, eyes hard.
"Explain," she said. "This is unacceptable."
Bowen said nothing for a long moment. Then he began to tell the truth.
"What he said was different," he explained. "I told some things that are difficult. I told of a promise long ago. I told my feelings. But I never forced anyone. If someone was hurt, I am sorry."
"You're careful with words," the student said. "Don't you tell us what you did last night? You were in her room, she said."
"She followed me," Bowen said. "She was lonely. I am not proud of the confusion that caused. I did not force flesh or will. I asked, she was offered. But I did not abuse."
The crowd murmured.
"You were inappropriate," the professor said. "As a staff member, you are held to standards. You cannot pursue students."
Bowen bowed his head. "I will accept judgment."
He left the campus that day, escorted by security. I stood in the hallway and wanted to run after him and also wanted to flee forever from the memory of his voice. People debated and argued. Video clips circulated. Some students said they had felt attracted, others said they felt used.
In time, the university suspended Bowen pending inquiry. In public, he was accused of misconduct. He had to stand before panels and explain himself. The news spread beyond our campus. I read the comments and felt sick. People called him a predator. They said he manipulated. Some defended him, saying he had been honest. It was an ugly, loud thing.
I watched from the sidelines because I did not know what to do.
One afternoon, the campus courtyard filled. A woman who had been his student walked up to the stage in front of the assembled crowd. She took a microphone. Her voice was steady.
"He told me he loved me," she said. "He said my name in my sleep. He told me stories of promises. But he also hurt me. I was naive. I forgive nothing."
She looked at Bowen in the crowd. He had been allowed to return, permitted to speak the truth at last. His face was pale and thin. The public that had watched him like a spectacle now also watched him without mercy. I saw his expression change: from calm to shocked, then denial, then the slow crumbling of something once held steady.
"You're lying," he mouthed at her once. Then he covered his face and sat down.
The crowd was merciless. Some cried; some took photos. The woman who spoke walked off the stage with a small, fierce dignity. People clapped. Others booed. Someone shouted for him to be fired.
Bowen stood and left before the noise became unbearable. He moved without hurry, his back straight. I followed, unexpectedly, down the steps.
"Bowen!" I called out.
He paused, then turned slowly.
"You should have left when I asked you to," I said. "You promised you'd go."
"I couldn't," he said. "I couldn't leave."
"You should have left," I said again. "You dragged this into the open."
He looked at me like someone seeing a map of a wound. "You could have said something."
"What would I say? 'My family's bargain turned its guardian into a man, and he loves me'?" I made a face. "I would have sounded crazy. They would have laughed."
"They did laugh at me," he said. "They laugh at everything I cannot explain. But I hurt people. I cannot take that back."
"Then face it," I said. "Stand there and accept what you did. Don't use 'promise' as an excuse."
He nodded. "You are right."
A week later the public hearing happened on a low stage in front of the main hall. It was not a legal court but a moral one, full of students and staff. Bowen stood in the center while the crowd gathered. The woman who had confronted him came forward again.
"I trusted him," she said. "I thought he was my tutor. I thought he was different. Then I found myself alone in a room with promises I didn't understand."
Her voice trembled, then steadied with a fury that opened doors. More students came forward, each with a different hurt—confusion, shame, regret. Bowen stood with his head bowed. He did not deny the pain anyone felt. He had moments of shock as more accusations piled up—some true, some misremembered through rumor.
At one point an older alumna stepped forward. She spoke with a slow calm that was older than the rest of us. "You are like all men who wield charm without consent," she said. "You have a duty to change."
Bowen looked up then, eyes full of an old fatigue. "I made choices," he said. "I hurt people. I apologize to those I harmed. I cannot restore what was broken. I can only be honest from now on."
His admission was small and cold, but honest. The crowd did not grant easy forgiveness. Some left shaking their heads. Others stayed to meet the woman who had spoken.
I watched his face change during that morning. He went from a pale, controlled mask to something like a man being peeled. At the end he stood alone on the stage and said, "I accept any sanction the university assigns. I accept that I used my position poorly. I cannot change what I am, but I can choose what to do."
The gathering dispersed. People left with their phones and their gossip. Some came to shake Bowen's hand. Others spat words.
His ruin was public and necessary. He didn't get dragged off in chains, but he got something sharper: the loss of the respect that hid his edges. He had to answer for what he had done to many women, and he did. He stood there and faced their anger until it had no energy left.
I felt an aching hollowness, not triumph. I felt sorrow for the mess of people made by one being's failure to separate desire from consent.
After the hearing Bowen left town again. This time he did not send money. He left no note. Geoffrey told me quietly, "He apologized. He said he would come back, but I don't know."
Weeks passed. Life returned to a normal rhythm of classes and late-night noodles. Somehow the snake statue seemed smaller, more like a polished stone than a breathing being. Sometimes Kora dusted its glass and gave it a polite, worried glance.
One evening I went to the little study alone. The lights were low. I stood before the snake statue and placed my hand lightly on the glass.
"Did you ever mean to hurt anyone?" I asked the stone.
I had no answer. But I had changed. I had learned that promises were not a free pass to wreck people, no matter how old or how binding they seemed.
Years later I walked past the display case and paused.
There, in the glass, a faint glint caught the light. A single, tiny scale—a dark little thing as smooth as polished glass—sat wedged at the base of the serpent's mouth, like a small offering.
I did not know who had placed it there. Maybe no one had. Maybe I had dreamed it. But when I left the room that night I felt the weight of things shifted. The statue remained, silent and black. The promise could not be simply unmade; some bargains last beyond one life.
I kept moving forward. I kept my friends close. I learned to say no without guilt. I studied harder than before. I learned the coldness of hands and the warmth of a steady yes.
Sometimes in a crowded lecture hall I think I see someone out of the corner of my eye—pale, polite, waiting. I look away.
I keep my hand away from cold things now. I leave the statue to the past. I am not a bargain. I am Giana Ellis, and I decide how I live.
The End
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