"Yes," he said.
Alistair set down his coffee.
He shifted on the counter — a small adjustment of position that brought him slightly closer.
Not dramatically. An inch.
"You were twenty-two," he said. "And you've been running from it for—" "How old are you?" "Thirtyone."
"Nine years." He looked at him steadily. "Tav. You've been punishing yourself for nine years for being a twenty-two-year-old who made a mistake."
"It wasn't—"
"I know it doesn't feel like a mistake from inside it," Alistair said. "I know it feels like a failure of a fundamental kind. But from the outside—" "You were twenty-two. And you've been carrying it alone."
"I don't like needing people," Tav said.
Alistair held his gaze.
"I know," Tav said. "I'm aware of the—" "I'm aware."
"And?"
"And I need you to stay," Tav said. The words came plainly, without the scaffolding of performance.
"Not for the operation. For—" He stopped.
Alistair held his gaze.
"I know," he said softly. "I'm not going anywhere."
They were quiet for a while.
The city outside continued its patient brightening.
"The message," Alistair said eventually.
"Yes."
"What we do about it."
"Yes." Tav looked at his hands on the counter. "Together."
"Together," Alistair agreed.
He reached out and covered Tav's hand with his own — the same loose certain contact that had become a habit between them.
They stood in the kitchen and watched the city come back to itself, and for the first time in nine years Tav stood at the edge of something he didn't know how to manage and found that not knowing how was not the same thing as not being able to.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The foundation gala occupied two floors of the university's oldest building, a Georgian pile of sandstone and leaded windows that had been converting itself between purposes for two hundred years and had arrived at donor events with the same indifference it had brought to everything else.
Dean Laurent Voss was supposed to die at 9:30 p.m.
Tav arrived at 9:12.
He had been on the adjacent building's roof since 8:54, which gave him eighteen minutes to confirm the sight picture, assess the wind from the river, and perform the methodical mental sequence that preceded any action he took seriously: the complete walk-through of the plan, every step forward and every step back, every contingency and its response. He did this not because he was uncertain but because certainty required the work. You didn't confirm that something was correct by assuming it.
