"Do you feel a bit better?" Raphaël asks. The question is gentle. Genuinely curious. Not the performative concern of a man asking because he thinks he should, but the attentive inquiry of someone who tracked me to an empty training room because he could not rest until he confirmed I was whole.
"Yes, actually." I straighten up, wiping my forehead with my wrist. "And I am surprised you are funny. Nobody warned me about that. The intimidating European coach thing led me to expect brooding silence and stoic one-word answers, not Parisian street fight origin stories."
His smile spreads further, but a softer quality enters his gray eyes, a vulnerability that he allows to surface with the careful deliberation of a man who does not display softness often and chooses his moments with intention.
"Most people do not know what to expect from me," he admits quietly. "Rafe has a bad reputation here, and the association follows me whether I endorse it or not. People see the last name and assume they know the personality. Very different from when I am in Paris or Italy or Germany, where my friends know the real version. The one who tells terrible jokes and gets into bar fights and coaches with too much intensityand cares about people in ways he is not always equipped to express."
He shrugs.
"But I have to be cautious here because the judgment is constant. Every interaction is filtered through the lens of who my brother is and what he has done, and the effort of proving I am not him is exhausting in a way that I did not anticipate when I agreed to this consulting trip."
The admission settles between us with a weight that reshapes my understanding of the man standing in front of me. Raphaël Calder, who walks into rooms with the authority of a professional captain and the composure of someone who has never questioned his place in the world, is performing the same exhausting dance that the rest of us are. Proving. Justifying. Earning the right to be seen as himself rather than a reflection of someone else's failures.
"Are you going to stay here long, then?" I ask, the question carrying more weight than its casual phrasing suggests.
"Does she want me to?"
His gray eyes hold mine, and the directness in them is not flirtatious this time. It is sincere. A genuine question from a man who has been navigating this university as a temporary visitor and is starting to wonder whether the temporary designation still fits.
I stare at him.
Long. Hard. Letting the question sit in the space between us while I examine what my honest answer looks like, stripped of the protective deflections and the instinctive caution that I wrap around every emotional admission like bubble wrap around a fragile thing.
"I came here to steer my parents away from marrying me off," I say slowly. "That was the original mission. Survive five weeks. Secure enough independence to prove I did not needa pack arranged by people who stopped caring about my happiness the day my designation arrived. Get in. Get out. Keep my head down and my expectations lower."
I pause.
"But is it weird that I want to see where this team can go?"
He shakes his head.
"Not weird at all."
"It is not just the team," I continue, the words gaining momentum as honesty builds its own gravity. "It is all of it. The pack. The people. This strange, messy, completely unplanned life that has assembled itself around me in the span of two weeks. I am not used to any of this. The pack dynamics. The emotional investment. The vulnerability of letting people close enough to hurt me and trusting that they will choose not to."
My hands fidget with the velcro of my gloves, peeling and resealing the strap in a repetitive motion that gives my nervous energy somewhere to go.
"I do not know if this is pack bonding or falling in love or just the normal experience of being around people who treat you like you matter for the first time in your adult life. I lack the reference point. I have no baseline for comparison because every relationship I have had before this has been either transactional or temporary or both."
I take a breath.
"I really like Etienne." The admission is quiet and certain, carrying the warmth of a feeling that has been growing steadily since the ice cream shop, since the bracelet, since the first kiss that he gave me with trembling hands and a courage that his gentle nature made look effortless. "I like the quiet moments. The way he sits beside me between classes without needing to fill the silence. The lunches where we share food and he tells me about the books he is writing and I tell him about thechoreography I used to practice, and neither of us is performing for the other."
"And Cal," I continue, my lips curving into a smile that carries fondness and surprise in equal measure. "I am starting to learn who he actually is beneath the persona. The glasses. The vulnerability he hides behind sarcasm. The fact that he kneeled on a cold floor to apologize for years of silent complicity and meant every word. It has been really nice. Getting to know the real versions of people instead of the roles they play."
I stare at the mat beneath my feet.
"Two weeks. That is all it has been. And I have discovered more about myself and what I want to tolerate than I did in the previous four years combined. What I will accept. What I will not. Where my boundaries are and what happens when someone crosses them."
The locker room flashes through my mind. The papers. The fury. Rafe's face.
"Tonight was the first time I have ever publicly talked back to Rafe like that," I admit, the realization still fresh enough to carry a charge. "To put him down the way he has spent years putting me down. To stand in front of an audience and refuse to be the person he decided I was. And it felt good. God, it felt incredible. Powerful and righteous and terrifying all at once."
I pause.
"But it also made me angrier. Because it forced me to see how long I have been a pushover. How many years I let people define my limits and accepted those definitions as truth instead of opinion. I came to this university to discover more about myself. My hobbies. My interests. The person I might have become if circumstances had not intervened at every critical juncture."
My throat tightens.
