Page 55 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

The thread isn't official. That is the point and the danger of it. Four department chairs from three campuses, all of us dragged into overlapping accreditation committees and regional conference planning often enough that asking a careful question doesn't look strange. I typed it badly the first time, deleted it, and tried again with less heat in my fingers: I have atransfer faculty member from Briarwick whose prior record was restricted before it reached us. Trying to understand whether there are professional concerns I need to be aware of.

The first answer came from Evan at Briarwick’s history department, who wrote that everyone had been advised not to discuss the matter and that he knew very little beyond campus security involvement. The second came from Elise, who warned me to be careful because she heard there had been a pack-related complaint and some sort of protective order. The third, from Priya in comparative literature, arrived ten minutes later and contradicted the shape of every warning before it. Calliope was sweet, prepared, and very good with students, Priya wrote. I never saw anything concerning from her. I still don’t understand what happened, and nobody who claims to know will say where they heard it.

Then Evan came back with a rumor about her old pack breaking up badly.

I stare at the screen for a long time. The messages sit there in polite professional language, each one careful enough to be useless and worried enough to be worse. Nobody knows. Everyone has heard. No one can tell me what Callie did, only that something happened around her loudly enough to make people lower their voices.

I type, Did anyone actually speak with her before forming an opinion? Then I delete it because the anger in the sentence is too visible.

A knock taps against my open office door. Callie stands there with a folder hugged to her chest and her hair pinned up in a way that has already started losing the argument to gravity. She has changed cardigans since this afternoon, deep blue now, soft around her shoulders. The scarf is gone. The bite is covered by fabric, but I know exactly where it is, and I hate myself a little for tracking an old wound with this much attention.

“You’re working with your murder face on,” she says, then winces as if the sentence came out more familiar than she meant it to. “Sorry. I was going to ask about the midterm rubric before Mara gets here, but I can come back.”

I close the laptop slowly. “Stay.”

Her fingers tighten on the folder. “I mean, I’m done with this for now. Show me the rubric.”

She comes in and takes the chair across from my desk instead of hovering near the door. The first month, she stood for every conversation as if sitting might make leaving harder. Now she opens the folder on my desk and slides a marked-up sheet toward me, leaning close enough that I catch the clean warmth of her, honeyed pear under vanilla tea, threaded with the ink-and-paper scent of her long day.

“I think the third prompt is asking for three essays wearing a trench coat,” she says, tapping the page. “It says compare, evaluate, and apply, which is ridiculous for seventy-five minutes unless we want them to panic and start inventing philosophers.”

I read the prompt because looking at her mouth would be a mistake. “You’re right. Cut the application piece and make that part extra credit.”

“That’s what I thought.” She leans closer, following my pen as I cross out one line and rewrite another. Her shoulder brushes mine because the desk is narrow and neither of us moves quickly enough to prevent it. The contact settles between us with a quiet, dangerous warmth.

She notices. So do I.

Callie turns her head a fraction. There is a tiny ink smudge near her cheekbone, likely from touching her face while grading, and the impulse to wipe it away hits with enough force that I have to press the pen flat beneath my hand.

“You have ink,” I say, because I won't touch her without giving her the room to refuse it. I lift my hand only halfway. “May I?”

Her throat moves. “Yes.”

I touch her cheek with two fingers, light enough that she could step back and keep most of her pride intact. The ink comes away easily. Callie’s eyes half-close before I finish, and she exhales into the contact, not quite a sigh and not quite surrender. It goes through me so hard I stop breathing.

For one second, she leans toward me.

It would take almost nothing. A tilt of my head. My hand turning under her jaw. One stolen inch dressed up as inevitability. She's warm under my fingers, closer than she has ever let herself be, and every Alpha instinct I have spent my adult life disciplining wakes with a quiet, devastating certainty.

I want to kiss her. I want to put my mouth to the bite at her shoulder and tell the man who left it there that I have questions he won't enjoy answering. I want to gather every name and rumor and careful half-truth from Briarwick and lay them at Callie’s feet until she can decide what deserves to matter. I want to hear her laugh in my kitchen again. I want to be the reason her breath catches for something other than fear.

I lower my hand.

Callie’s eyes open, and the expression in them is raw enough that I nearly apologize for doing the right thing. Instead, I step back to my side of the desk and pick up the pen. “This version gives them a fair exam.”

She looks at the page for a few seconds before she manages to look down properly. Color touches her cheeks, soft and uneven. “Good,” she says, her voice quieter than before. “I’ll update it before I send the review packet.”

“Mara still coming at seven?”

“Yes.” Callie gathers the folder against her chest like it can hold the moment closed. “She found some old committee notes that may help with spring placement. And she says the pizza place has been warned about basil restraint.”

“I’ll believe that when I see it.” I keep my face calm because she needs my restraint more than she needs my honesty about how badly I want to follow her when she leaves. “I’ll finish here and meet you at the house.”

She nods and turns toward the door. At the threshold, she pauses with one hand on the frame, and for a breath I think she might say something about the touch, the almost, the thing we both stepped around and left alive in the room. Instead, she looks back with a small, careful smile that hits me worse than confession.

“Don’t work with your murder face too long,” she says.

“I’ll be home before the pizza gets cold.” I let home stand because she doesn't flinch from it this time. She only nods again, then leaves me with the ghost of her cheek against my fingers.