Page 39 of Slashed Bonds

The drive in was worse.

Blackridge sits on the far side of a town that exists to serve it, and the road climbs for the last four kilometers through stands of black pine, then opens all at once onto the campus like a curtain going up. Gothic stone. Towers with actual gargoyles on them, lit from below so the shadows go the wrong direction. A chapel with a rose window the size of my house. Then, wedged between all that old money, the new money: glass and steel athletic buildings shoved up against the stone like somebody grafted a spaceship onto a cathedral and dared the architecture board to object.

It should look ridiculous.

It looks like a place that gets whatever it wants.

I drove past a group of students crossing the quad in matching black Vipers hoodies, laughing about something, and every single one of them had the loose, easy posture of a person who has never once wondered where the exits are.

I hated them for about four seconds.

Then I remembered I was one of them, once. Braid in. Team jacket. Laughing on the way to a bus.

Four seconds is the right amount. Any longer and it starts to look like envy.

The sun went down forty minutes ago. Late September, and the dark arrives faster every week now, which is the part of the season I never learned to like. Coming this late was a bad call. I know it was. The lot is mostly empty, the trees are close, and the wind coming off the lake behind the building smells of cold water, diesel, and something metallic I can’t name.

But it was here or the gym.

The kickboxing card is still in my jacket. Unlimited. Omega-only floor. One-on-one instruction from people who would apparently ring a masked man if I asked them to.

Or…

The pole.

My whole body reacts to the word, and I don’t appreciate it. A small, stupid thrill goes down my spine and settles low. Excited. I’m excited about a class taught on a chrome bar in a room full of mirrors.

Excitement is dangerous.

Excitement is how I end up committed to things. And where did commitment land me last time?

Out a window. Two floors. Still in therapy.

I bite down on my bottom lip, hard, feel the ring there roll against my teeth, and know I’m ruining the lipstick.

Blackened burgundy tonight. Four hours of sleep and a grudge.

Accurate.

I stare at the building with eyes I’ve spent five years teaching to stay cold, and my hands twitch inside my gloves, and none of that changes the conclusion.

This is where I need to be.

Not because they invited me. Not because a woman in a wool coat found me in a barn and handed me a card.

Because this is where I always belonged. They took the address. I’m taking it back.

I swallow the nerves down whole.

“Okay,” I say, mostly to the dog. “I ain’t no weak bitch.”

He looks up at me.

“I ain’t a scaredy cat, either. I’m not quaking because some rich kids with a nice rink might judge me.”

Knox blinks.

“I’m a walking billboard for judgment. Look at me.” I gesture at myself with my free hand. Black tights, black boots, black tank under a leather jacket, hair down to my waist with red bleeding through it, silver in my face and up my ears and stacked at my throat over the moth. “People judge me in grocery stores. What’s the ice going to do that the cereal aisle hasn’t?”