He nods, satisfied.
“That is your arena,” he says. “No one else’s.”
We sit like this for a moment, breathing the same air, his hands wrapped around my wrists like bracers.
“Whatever happens,” he adds softly, “when you come back out, the fight is over. You will have done your part. They can only decide for themselves if they want to live with how they answer.”
My chest tightens, but not in the panic way. In the way it does when someone names something I’ve never had words for.
“I wish my college advisor had been a Roman gladiator,” I say.
“Your college advisor sounds weak,” he says dryly.
A startled laugh bursts out of me for real this time.
The tension breaks. Not vanishes—just eases.
“I’ll walk you there,” he says. Then he waits.
He doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t assume.
I think about it for a real moment—the pull of wanting him beside me, his steadiness, his certainty. And then I think about what I actually need the committee to see.
“Thank you,” I say first. “For offering. It means everything that you would.”
He nods once, waiting.
But I want to do this alone. Just me in the room. My words. My case. I meet his gaze. “Your memory is exact—I know that. If I walked in there with you, they’d lean on you instead of my documentation. I need them to see the evidence stands on its own. That I stand on my own.” I pause. “Your memory already did its work. Every conversation you confirmed, every date you corroborated—it’s all in my notes.”
Something shifts in his face—pride, relief, the barest flicker of what might be disappointment quickly folded away.
“Yes,” he says simply. “That is right.”
“I know,” I say. “I want to do this myself. I’m ready.”
“Good.” He squeezes my fingers once. “Then I will be outside. Close. Not in the way. When you are finished, you find me. Yes?”
“Yes,” I say. “I’ll find you.”
He lifts my hand as if he might kiss it, then seems to think better of it and instead presses my knuckles briefly to his chest, over his heart. Some wordless vow.
“Let them ask their questions,” he says. “You just tell the truth. That is enough.”
It doesn’t feel like it will be.
But I nod anyway.
Because if I can’t trust that, I can’t trust anything.
The conference room is too bright at first—clinical, impersonal—but at least it looks like a place where serious work belongs. No rumpled bed in the background, no soft cabin clutter, nothing that reads as unprofessional on camera. Just neutral walls and a table that could belong to any university office. Exactly the kind of backdrop I need them to see.
Fluorescent lights glare off the polished table. The air conditioner hums with the kind of mechanical buzz that makes me clench my teeth. Someone in admin tried to make the space friendly—a fake plant, a framed print, and a little bowl of individually wrapped mints.
It still smells like bureaucracy.
Laura set up the Zoom link already. The laptop waits, lid half-closed, camera eye like a tiny black pupil.
I force my feet to move.
