The silence there is wrong. Empty. The control I just earned in the gym feels abstract. Data is essential. Talia’s pattern needs to be known. I head for my truck. Slide into the cab. Turn the key. The engine rumbles, a low steady presence under my feet.
I tell myself I’m driving to clear my head. Checking traffic patterns around campus. Cooling the engine. Logical route.
But I know where I’m going.
I didn’t forget the search result from Monday night.
Academic Services. Proctor schedule. Library, Room 3B. Sunday nights.
I take the long way around the quad.
Lights glaze the sidewalks in sodium orange. Clusters of students move in loose knots—backpacks, hoodies, the glow of phones.
I turn down the road that runs between the library and the academic center. Study Hall is tonight.
It’s mandatory for the whole team this year—Coach’s new rule to keep Adrian from being singled out while Clara tutors him—but usually, I dread it. Usually, I sit in the back and endure the two hours of enforced quiet.
Tonight, the mandate feels like a gift.
I scan the crosswalk.
There.
Under the streetlamp at the corner.
Talia.
She’s walking beside Clara, backpack over one shoulder, hands deep in the pockets of her coat. Her hood’s up, but I’d know her anywhere by the way she moves—economical, shoulders slightly rounded like she’s always expecting impact.
I ease off the gas. Let a car length open between us and the group ahead so my headlights don’t spotlight them.
At the curb, she pauses. Looks left, right, then—quick, precise scan—back over her shoulder into the shadows. It’s not dramatic. Not paranoid. Just… efficient.
Checking exits.
Checking threats.
And checking them alone.
She steps off the curb only when she’s satisfied. When a group of guys laughs too loud on the opposite side of the street, she angles herself closer to Clara, turning them into a two-person wall.
My grip tightens on the wheel until the tape on my fingers creaks.
She isn’t chaos. She’s a pattern I didn’t build. A variable that dropped into my world and somehow fits the equation better than half the shit I’ve been clinging to for years.
My breathing, which has been clipped and shallow since I left the ice, evens out as I watch her head toward the academic center doors.
Talia’s upright. She’s with someone who would burn the world down for her. She’s walking a well-lit route I now know by heart.
Safe.
Safer than she was in the parking lot Monday. And not because of me.
I let the knot in my chest loosen half a fraction and turn into the lot behind the building. Park. Kill the engine.
My phone buzzes on the seat beside me.
Father:Dinner tomorrow. Bring Beatrice.
