"We'll walk you," Jace offers, standing with the unhurried grace that makes every movement look like a decision rather than a reflex.
The three of us navigate the Valenridge corridors in formation, and I find myself memorizing the geography not formy own benefit but for hers. Cataloguing the landmarks she will need: the fountain at the first junction, the stern painting of a founder whose name nobody remembers, the trophy case that I have walked past fifty times and never once examined because the trophies inside it represent a world that has not yet made room for an Omega with a stick in her hand and a point to prove.
We stop outside the administrative office.
Mae's luggage is where she left it. One suitcase and a duffel bag, the combined possessions of a woman who packed for six weeks of survival rather than six weeks of living.
"This is me," she says. "Paperwork round two. Timetable acquisition. Thrilling stuff."
I hug her.
Not a gentle hug. Not the measured, socially appropriate embrace that adults exchange when the relationship is professional and the physical contact is performative. I pull her against me with the fierce, full-body desperation of a woman who lost this person once and is physically incapable of releasing her without first confirming, through pressure and proximity and the tactile evidence of a body held against hers, that she is real and present and not about to dissolve into another thirteen-year silence.
"I'm so glad you're here, Mae." The words vibrate into her shoulder, muffled by fabric and the thickness building in my throat. "Seriously. This place just got a hundred times better."
She hugs me back. And the contact carries the specific quality of acceptance that only Mae has ever been capable of granting: unconditional, unearned, extended toward a person who disappeared without explanation and returned without justification and is being embraced anyway because Mabeline Mae Rose has always had a heart larger than the injuries inflicted upon it.
"Me too," she whispers.
I pull away before the tears can breach the perimeter, grinning with a force that converts grief into brightness through sheer muscular effort.
"Text me later? From your ancient phone?"
"Beatrice will do her best."
"That's all I ask."
Jace waves casually. "Good luck with the timetable, MaeMae. And the roommates. And the, you know." He gestures at the general concept of existence. "All of it."
"Thanks. I'll need it."
I grab Jace's arm and begin dragging him toward the east wing because my Omega league meeting starts in fourteen minutes and Coach Vasquez has expressed, through both verbal warning and the implied threat of physical conditioning, that tardiness will be met with laps of a quantity that challenges the structural integrity of human kneecaps.
"I'm going to be late and she's going to make me run until my legs detach!" I announce as I haul him down the corridor. "This is your fault for ordering a smoothie that took seven minutes to blend!"
"My smoothie is not responsible for your time management failures, Holloway!"
"Everything is your fault! Always! That is the foundation of our friendship!"
Mae is walking ahead toward the office, and I catch Jace's voice over my shoulder as the distance opens between us.
"Nah." He shakes his head, something knowing in his golden eyes. "I think you've got more going for you than you realize."
CHAPTER 11
Shoot Your Shot
~SAGE~
Five in the morning and the campus belongs to the ghosts.
Not literal ghosts. The atmospheric kind. The emptiness that settles over a university before dawn, when the buildings exhale the last of yesterday's noise and the corridors exist in a state of suspended animation between the chaos of one day and the inevitability of the next. My sneakers are silent against the tile as I move through hallways illuminated only by emergency exit signs and the pale gray suggestion of a sunrise that has not yet committed to the horizon.
The rink schedule is posted behind glass on the athletics complex wall, a laminated grid of colored blocks that parcels the ice into two-hour segments the way a butcher portions a carcass. I press my face close enough to fog the glass, scanning the morning slots with the focused urgency of a woman who needs to know whether the next hundred and twenty minutes belong to her or to someone else.
Hockey team: 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM.
Figure skating club: 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM.
