Chapter 3

Maya heard a soft laugh and a smile curled on her lip, but the line disconnected before she could say another word. Maya placed her phone back on the counter, finished drinking her water and decided to take a shower.

By the time she made her way to bed later that night, her body still felt tired, but she wasn't exactly sleepy either. So she simply changed into pajamas and crawled onto the bed, grabbing her laptop. She'd decided to do some editing on the videos Gabrielle had recorded for her last week, 

Her fingers expertly scrolled through the mouse, her eyes searching the bright screen for the folder. When she found it, she scooted closer to the edge of the bed and began to work on editing the videos  After spending what felt like hours on editing she finally sent the finished files to Gabrielle for review.

The girl always had good eyes for things like these and with Gab being her personal manager and all, it was essential she ran every video through with her.

Maya had been an active YouTuber for years now, her channel had first started as a healthcare site, then she'd gotten only three subscribers; one from her mom, her dad, and Gabrielle. She soon realized that nobody wanted health advice from an eleven-year-old child, and that was when she developed a passion for cooking and makeup artistry. At first, she would get random new subscribers and comments, Maya remembered how giddy she felt back then.

Nine years later, her channel had skyrocketed to more than one million subscribers. People started watching her videos as soon as she uploaded them. Soon, she'd found herself working in front of cameras, making cameos for various youtube channels and blogs and she was slowly starting to gain recognition on her I*******m page. She'd also gone viral with some of her content on there, mainly her cooking tutorials and exercise tips.

If she were being honest, she owed everything to her family They kept pushing her to continue especially when she was on the verge of giving up. 

 Maya smiled fondly remembering how her father and her mother would watch her YouTube videos together and sometimes even help her cook.

Maya yawned and closed her laptop after checking for the second time that the message was delivered. She laid on her back and stared at the ceiling, her mind unconsciously drifting to a certain dark-haired man. She couldn't forget the way his arm felt when he caught her or the dark glimmer in his eyes whenever she caught him staring.

Maya knew she lied to Gabrielle, her professor was more than just attractive. The man was practically 'sex-on-legs' and she honestly wondered why he would confine himself to teaching at a university. He could have been a model or heck, a movie star if he wanted to.

Doctor Alexander Grey

Maya silently wondered what the man was like and why he had a cold exterior. She grabbed her phone before her rational self could kick in and logged into Faceb**k. It took forever to load and she began to wonder if she was making the right decision. The man didn't even like her and yet here she was, about to stalk him.

She shook her head, ridding the thoughts away. She wasn't stalking him per se, Maya simply wanted to know what he was like, she knew everything about the professors of the courses she was offering, down to their irks and likes, even their pets, and for this man, however hot he may be, to ruin her perfectly strategized plan ...she wasn't going to allow it.

Maya decided that she would just casually search for him and then once she learned something of interest, she'd leave him alone and pretend it never happened. She sighed deeply and stared at the wall as her hand tapped anxiously against her knee. The page finally loaded and she quickly tapped the search icon and typed his name into it.

 She was surprised at how many results popped up as a result and almost instantly went through them, finding nothing about the professor. After searching for a few minutes, she was about to give you when something caught her eye that caught her by surprise.

There, on the top of a page with tons of profiles, one, in particular, stood out. There was no picture on it, just a colorful logo of Umass on it.  A familiar emblem she saw everywhere around campus, 

She tapped on it and waited for the page to load, luckily it was quicker and when she read his feed, an excited grin lighted her face. So he did have a Faceb**k page. Maya spent the next hours scrolling through his feed and even checking his photos. She was disappointed to see he had none except for one but it was simply a silhouette of a person reading a book. 

Maya did not doubt that he was the one.

Her fingers were beginning to feel numb and her eyes were slowly dropping shut but she didn't want to fall asleep yet. Not when she hadn't found anything on the professor, at least something new or private. It would be nice to have something to hold against his head, knowledge was power after all.

But despite that fact, nature won and  Maya soon fell fast asleep. She dreamed of fire, black wings, and a pair of deep coal-colored eyes.