I slide down the wall and sit on the floor and wrap my arms around myself because suddenly I understand something I never let myself think before.
This isn’t about whether I can be a mother. It’s about whether the world will let me be one on my own terms. Ones I have fought for, given everything to.
And for the first time since I walked into that lecture feeling like I fit, I am terrified that belonging came with a price I didn’t see coming. Now I see that it did…
I think harder about that ‘version’ of him. He wasn’t loud or ultra-alpha like he is on the ice. He wasn’t performing. He was standing slightly apart from the group of professors, glass of wine untouched in his hand, listening like he was cataloging the room instead of trying to impress it.
I was still riding the high of the lecture when I drifted closer. My heart was doing that steady, confident thing it only does when I know that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be. I had asked a good question. One that made the visiting lecturer, Matthias Eberhardt, pause. One that earned a few nods. I felt… solid.
He, the man who startled me during the lecture, turned toward me as if he were looking for me because I was someone worth speaking to. Not scanning. Not assessing. Recognizing.
“You reframed his argument,” he said, accent thicker than the one he uses when he’s around his hockey family. “Not many people do that. They usually try to dismantle it.”
I was caught off guard. “I wasn’t trying to?—”
“I know,” he said with a small smile, like that was his point. “You were asking where the framing breaks down. What comes next?”
Something in my chest loosened. I didn’t feel defensive. I didn’t feel like I needed to prove anything.
“I think people underestimate how often legitimacy is mistaken for inevitability,” I’d said. “Just because something has endured doesn’t mean it’s neutral or unbreakable.”
His gaze sharpened. Not in a predatory way. In a focused one. Like I’d tuned into the same frequency he’d been on all night.
“That’s exactly the mistake,” he nodded. “Endurance gets confused for moral authority.”
We stood there, the hum of conversation around us fading into background noise. When he looked at me, he didn’t flick away to check who else might be more important.
It was unsettling, in a good way, for once.
“You’re a student,” he stated, not because he doubted me, but because he wanted to place me accurately.
“PhD student, defending in a year and four months.”
His smile deepened, just slightly. “That explains the precision. You’re still close enough to the material to be angry about it.”
I laughed, surprised. “And you?”
He hesitated for half a beat. Just enough to register. “I grew up around these systems. I like to understand the architecture before I’m forced to live inside it.”
It was an honest answer disguised as a vague one. I clocked that immediately. And instead of making me curious in a hungry way, it made me feel safe.
He asked about my research. Actually asked. Not the polite version where someone waits for a keyword they recognize. Helistened, head tilted slightly, eyes steady. When I finished, he didn’t respond right away.
“That’s thankless work,” he said finally. “Know that those intelligent enough to understand it know how important it is.”
No one had ever said it like that before.
I felt myself stand a little straighter. Not because I wanted him to want me, but because I wanted to stay inside this version of myself a moment longer. The one who belongs there without shrinking.
When he looked at me, there was no calculation. No appraisal of what I cost or what I offer.
He looked like he’s impressed.
Which is dangerously intoxicating when you’ve built your life on not needing that from anyone.
Later, much later, I’ll realize something else.
The way he looked at me wasn’t ownership. It wasn’t hunger. It was attention. The kind that assumes you’re worth the time it takes to understand you.
