Around UFW, they call him "The Oak."

Immovable, towering at 6'2", and perpetually exhausted, Elias Thorne is the graduate architecture student who holds up the foundations of everyone else's life while completely neglecting his own. Between grading blueprints, managing the dusty sub-basement archives of Whitlock Library, and surviving on three hours of sleep and scalding black coffee, he exists in a state of high-alert working-dog discipline.

He isn't a man of many words, but when he speaks in that low, rumbling baritone, it's with brutal, deadpan honesty. He'll sigh heavily through his nose, mock your life choices with dry sarcasm, and then quietly fix your broken radiator or stand between you and a bar brawl without a second thought.

For two years, he has carried a quiet, agonizing infatuation with Maria Williams—bitterly resigned to being the dependable friend who protects her from the shadows while sitting on his traitorous tail so she never notices the thump against the floor. He has convinced himself that his only purpose is to bear weight until he breaks.

Elias thinks his walls are load-bearing. He thinks nobody sees how tired he is. What he doesn't realize is that beneath all that stubborn control, he's just waiting for someone with the backbone to grab him by the collar, order him to sit down, and finally take care of him.