Page 75 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

I turn far enough to touch his wrist. “I will come back.”

He studies my face, then lets Dash guide him back against the seat. The promise follows me when I open the door.

I look at them through the side mirror, then at the building ahead of me. Inside those doors, I am Calliope Monroe, PhD. I talk about ethics and literature with surgical precision. I argue over syllabus language and budget allocations and whether a required text earns its place through challenge or tradition. Outside those doors, my bond still aches under my shirt, and the men who didn't reach me in time are waiting in a truck because I asked them not to come closer.

“I’ll take Theo straight back to the house once you’re inside,” Dash says. “Sloane and Idris will stay in the lot unless you ask for them. When the meeting ends, you can ride back with them or call me to return. You don't have to decide that part now.”

I nod. My fingers aren't quite steady as I reach for the door. Dash touches my hand once, quick and grounding, then lets go before the contact can become another thing to untangle. “Professor Monroe,” he says, and the title steadies me more than sweetheart would have.

The air-conditioned chill of the building hits my face like cold water. My shoes click against the hallway tile, and the ordinary sound nearly makes me laugh because my life has become so strange that the hallway to a faculty meeting feels like a dare.

The meeting is already half assembled when I arrive. Dr. Mendez is sorting handouts near the head of the table. Allison from composition gives me a small wave. Someone has brought muffins in a cardboard bakery box, and the smell of sugar and lemon hangs over the room like there is no such thing as forged letters, failed keys, or police reports with stolen names.

I take my usual chair and for nearly an hour, I manage to seem normal.

I nod through budget approvals. I take a pen from the bottom of my bag and underline a sentence in the curriculum packet even though I have already read it twice. I argue for keeping a specific text in the ethics module because discomfort isn't the same as harm when the classroom gives students the tools to name what unsettles them. My voice is steady. My posture holds. I even manage to ask Dr. Mendez whether the department intends to clarify the assessment language before adjunct contracts are finalized.

It is ordinary, mundane, beautiful machinery. The kind of life I built with my own hands. The kind Garrett tried to turn into a hiding place and a punishment.

Under the table, my fingers keep finding my shoulder.

The bond bite is quiet beneath my shirt, but quiet no longer feels the same as dead. It has edges now. It hums faintly when I think of Sloane waiting in the lot, flares low when I remember Idris sitting with his hands visible, and aches when Theo’s face rises in my mind from the bathroom floor, determined to believe I will come back because I said I would. None of that tells me what to do. It only tells me the lie is losing its monopoly on my body.

When the meeting breaks, the hour of pretending has used up more of me than I expected. People stand. Chairs scrape. Papers slide into folders. Someone asks if I am settling in all right, and I hear myself say I am, thank you, the words polished enough to pass inspection. By the time I step into the hallway, my skin feels too tight around my bones.

Sunlight flashes hard off the parked cars when I push through the building doors. The wind has teeth, sharp enough to cut under my blazer, and I stop on the top step because my knees don't trust themselves yet.

Sloane is leaning against the tailgate of his truck with a cardboard coffee carrier in one hand.

He sees me immediately. His whole body reacts, but he does not run over. He does not call my name across the lot. He pushes away from the truck slowly, his coat open in the cold, and waits where I can decide whether the ten feet between us stays ten feet. Idris stands near the driver’s side door, arms at his sides instead of crossed, watching the perimeter with the controlled focus of a man who is trying to protect without turning protection into a spectacle.

I walk toward them because standing still feels harder.

Halfway there, the shaking starts in my knees. It climbs fast, burning through the last of the professional mask I wore inside. My satchel strap digs into my shoulder. My throat tightens. I feel suddenly small in the open air, like a ghost who spent an hour pretending she still remembered how to haunt her own life.

Sloane takes one cautious step forward and holds out the coffee. Steam rises in a thin white curl from the cup. “I have you, baby,” he says, voice low and thick enough to go straight through every defense I have left. “If you want me. If you are ready to let me hold you up for a minute.”

The if is the bridge.

I don't think about the faculty building behind me or the truck or the legal mess waiting beyond this parking lot. I go to him because my body has been starving for him since before I had proof it was allowed. Sloane receives me without grabbing. His arms close only after mine circle his waist, and then I am against his chest, face buried in the heavy wool of his coat while smoked cedar and brown sugar surround me, familiar enough to hurt.

He shakes when he exhales. I feel it through my cheek, through the hand he lays carefully across my back, through the restraint in every inch of him. Behind me, Idris moves closer but does not touch until my shoulder angles back toward him.Then his hand comes to the nape of my neck, thumb resting just beneath my hairline, and the black tea and rain of him settles over my skin with a steadiness that makes my throat close.

“We can stay steady while you find your footing,” Idris says. “You don't have to trust the whole room at once.”

I let the satchel slide from my shoulder. It hits the pavement with a dull thud, and none of them reach for it right away. That should annoy me. The bag has grading inside. Notes. My calendar. The proof that Professor Monroe existed for an hour inside a room that didn't know how much it cost to keep her spine straight.

But Sloane does not look at the bag. Idris does not look at the bag. They are watching my breathing like it is the only assignment that matters.

“I thought I would feel stronger after the meeting,” I whisper into Sloane’s coat. “I thought if I proved I could still do my job, the rest of me would stop feeling so fragile.”

Sloane’s hand flexes once, then smooths over the middle of my back with careful pressure. “You were strong in there,” he says. “You are allowed to fall apart after. The falling apart does not erase the part where you walked in.”

The words hurt because I want to believe them. I pull back enough to look at him, and his eyes are rimmed red, the old ferocity softened into something rawer and more frightening to trust. Idris bends to pick up my satchel only after I nod toward it, and the fact that he waits makes the gesture feel like care instead of management.

“How is Theo?” I ask as Idris lifts my satchel from the pavement.

“Back at the house with Dash,” Sloane says. “The drive here was enough for him. Dash took him home as soon as you went inside, and he settled once he was back near your room.”