“I try,” Malik said softly. He reached out and pat her hand, a gesture of genuine affection that made Lincoln’s throat ache. Lincoln reached out and placed his hand on Malik’s shoulder. Malik reached up and covered his hand, giving it a light squeeze.
She looked at their hands, then back to Malik’s face. “Don’t stay out too late. The snow is heavy.”
“We won’t,” Malik promised.
They turned to leave. As they reached the foyer, Lincoln grabbed his coat from the mahogany rack. He looked at the two sets of keys hanging by the door.
Lincoln reached for his keys, but his hand hovered over the brass hook. He looked at Malik, who was watching him with a quiet, challenging intensity.
“I’ll drive,” Lincoln said, his voice firmer than he expected.
Malik eyes softened. He reached out, his hand settling on the small of Lincoln’s back—a steadying pressure that felt more permanent than any academic tenure. It wasn’t for Emmy’s benefit, or his mother’s. It was for them.
“I’ll drive,” Malik said.
They walked out into the blinding white glare of the morning, side by side. Lincoln felt the antique brass compass in his pocket, a secret weight against his thigh.
The drive to the university was a study in transition. The city was struggling to dig itself out, the plows creating towering walls of white along the avenues. Malik drove Lincoln’s car, his handresting on the center console, his fingers occasionally interlacing with Lincoln’s.
The keynote hall was a cathedral of recycled air and hushed ambition. Desmond Irwin, a tenured professor of Comparative Literature and Psychology at Princeton, was already on stage, adjusting his spectacles. The room was packed with the heavy hitters of the field. The people who determined grants, chairs, and legacies.
Lincoln found seats in the third row. Typically, they would leave a buffer seat for their bags or a colleague, a polite fiction of distance. Today, Malik sat directly beside him, their thighs pressed together, their shoulders overlapping.
Desmond began his lecture, a sprawling, poetic meditation on “The Architecture of the Unspoken.”
“We spend our lives building walls of text to hide the things we lack the courage to name,” Desmond’s voice echoed through the hall. “But the past is not a silent tenant. It is a ghost that demands a seat at the table.”
Lincoln did his best to remain relaxed as the words resonated. He looked across the aisle. Emmy was there, sitting next to Shelly. She wasn’t looking at Desmond. She was staring at Malik and Lincoln.
She was staring at the way Malik had reached over and taken Lincoln’s hand.
It wasn’t a hidden gesture. It was right there, on the armrest, their fingers locked in a solid, unbreakable knot. Lincoln felt the heat of it, a defiant fire in the middle of the cold, intellectual hall. He saw the moment Emmy’s eyes went wide, her hand going to her mouth.
Lincoln turned his attention back to Marucs. “You sure you want to make this public? That changes things.”
Malik didn’t even turn his head. He squeezed Lincoln’s hand harder, his gaze fixed on the stage. “Things changed the moment we agreed to Emmy’s plan.”
Lincoln turned his attention back to stage. The moment the keynote ended, the room erupted into the chaos of the break. It was the most dangerous time. Time for whispers and frantic networking. Even though Malik was no longer holding his hand, Lincoln felt the eyes of a hundred colleagues on his back.
Malik caught him by the elbow, steering him away from the crowd.
“You okay?” Malik asked, his voice low and urgent.
Lincoln leaned back against the cold stone, the brass compass in his pocket pressing against his hip. He looked at the crowd, seeing the ripples of conversation they had just started. He saw Emmy standing by the exit, waiting for them.
“I’ve never been better,” Lincoln said, and for the first time in his life, he wasn’t avoiding the obvious. “Let’s go talk to her.”
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Chapter 6
February 14th | 10:30 AM
Malik
Malik felt like a physical weight had been lifted from him as they made their way over to Emmy. Lincoln walked half a pace ahead, his silhouette sharp against the winter sun refracting off the brushed metal stacks. He expected Lincoln to falter at any moment.
A glance at Lincoln revealed a man mentally bracing for a siege. The set of his jaw, the slight tremor in his fingers as he adjusted his cufflinks. It was the look of a man about to set fire to his own bridge while still standing on it.
