Chapter 47 #2
She exchanged a brief glance with her colleague—a flick, but enough to confirm my suspicion.
“What makes you say that?” she asked.
“His daughter was in my Physics 112 course this spring. We didn’t see eye to eye.
” I let the implication hang. “Her attendance was laughable. She demanded to be allowed to make up missed quizzes and to reschedule her midterm so she could leave early for spring break. Naturally, I refused. At the end of the term, she asked me to inflate her grade. I told her she got exactly what she earned. She threatened to ‘take it all the way to the top.’” I looked at Lemke, then Singh. “I assume this is what she meant.”
Neither replied. Dr. Singh looked down at her folded hands. Lemke opened his mouth—perhaps for a platitude—but closed again, as if he knew it wasn’t worth the trouble.
“It doesn’t take a PhD to connect the dots,” I added.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, hoping for Gabrielle’s name and the screenshots I’d asked for. But it was Isabel.
Call me.
I ignored it.
Dr. Singh’s expression was impossible to parse. On a better day, I might have admired her poker face. “We have to treat every complaint as credible,” she said, voice honed to a bureaucratic sheen. “Regardless of the source.”
“Of course,” I said. “So when does the circus start again?”
“I’ll convene a new review board—all new members to avoid any bias.”
I scoffed, but she didn’t react. My phone buzzed again. Another message from Isabel.
It’s urgent, Cal. Call me.
Dr. Singh narrowed her eyes. “Are we keeping you from something?”
I flashed the lock screen. “My sister is asking me to call. She says it’s urgent. Do you mind?”
“Not at all. We’re done here. You have until the end of the day to collect anything from campus. Then your administrative leave will resume. You’ll be contacted when you are needed.”
I nodded, stood, and walked out. In the waiting area, I called Isabel. She answered, voice strained.
“What took you so bloody long?”
“I was in a meeting. What’s going on? I thought you were on honeymoon.”
“I was, but we’re heading home.”
My stomach tightened. “Tired of each other already?”
She ignored that. “It’s Father.”
“Go on.”
“He passed away overnight.”
I raked a hand through my hair. My headache flared. I stepped to the window and looked out over the sunbaked campus. “What do you mean, he passed away? I thought he had months.”
“So did we. But Mother said he went to bed knackered last night and never woke up.”
I pressed my lips together. “Right,” I said, voice flat. “Thank you for telling me.”
“I know you were just here last month, but you should probably come back. I don’t know details yet, but you know how these things are.”
I nodded even though she couldn’t see me. “I’ll book my flight and send you the details.”
We ended the call without pleasantries. None were needed.
With a deep breath, I knocked on Dr. Singh’s door.
“Yes?”
I opened it and stepped inside.
“Was there something else?” she asked.
I held up my phone. “I just got off the phone with my sister. My father died this morning.”
Dr. Lemke sprang to his feet—more agile than his broad frame would suggest—his face washed in genuine concern. “Oh God, Cal. I’m so sorry.”
I nodded. “So you understand—I need to return to England for a bit. I trust that won’t be a problem.”
“Of course not,” Dr. Singh obliged. “Please take whatever time you need. I’ll email you with any developments.” She paused for a beat. “Safe travels.”
Gabrielle glanced up from her book as I walked into the living room. She took one look at me, and concern spread across her face. Whatever mask I’d managed in the car, on the walk to the door—it was gone now. I must have looked absolutely wrecked.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, already on her feet, her book discarded on the sofa.
“Page. My career. My father.” I met her eyes. “Everything.”
She wrapped her arms around me.
I froze. Not because I didn’t want to hold her. But because I knew if I let even one crack form, the whole dam would break. She pulled back.
“What can I do?”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
I exhaled. “No, I’m not. But falling to pieces won’t help.”
She moved toward the kitchen. “Can I make you some tea?”
I laughed—more bark than mirth. “I’ve trained you well, haven’t I?” I blew out a shaky breath and followed. “But no. This calls for something stronger.” I reached into a cupboard for a glass, but it slipped through my fingers—shattering on the granite like ice on concrete.
“Goddamn it!” My scream hit the cabinets and hung there.
Gabrielle didn’t flinch. She didn’t even blink.
She just reached for the dish towel, wet it under the tap, and began gathering the glass with deliberate swipes.
The shards caught the light, each one a splintered refraction of the disaster I’d made of everything.
She moved with such methodical calm that it became, for a moment, the only thing to watch—the world shrinking to the woman I loved, a damp cloth, and fractured glass.
I moved in to help, but she blocked me with a single gentle palm.
“I’ve got it,” she said—flat, not cruel.
I stood back and gripped the counter’s edge until my knuckles went white. I didn’t know what else to do with my hands.
“Father’s dead,” I said at last. The words fell into the silence without echo or ceremony.
She didn’t stop wiping. Didn’t look at me, even. Just kept gathering the shards into a tidy pile. “I’m sorry,” she said, soft as cotton, before setting the towel aside and reaching into the cabinet for another glass. “Do you want ice?”
I shook my head, but she was already filling it. The ice cubes hissed and popped as she drowned them in whiskey.
“What else?” she asked as she handed me the glass.
“There are no fewer than fourteen student complaints against me.” The whiskey burned down my throat, but I welcomed the pain. “All utter rubbish, but no one cares.”
“But you’ve already put in your resignation.”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. It’s a witch hunt now.
Sloane Cartwright and her father have seen to that.
” I drained the whiskey, then set the glass down before I had the chance to hurl it at the wall.
“I could have handled one accusation. Maybe two. But fourteen? There’s a momentum to it.
Once people start believing, it becomes real—true or not.
That’s the world now. Truth doesn’t matter—only who can shout the loudest.”
She pressed her fingertips to the island, the gesture somehow both delicate and furious. “I wish I could fix it.”
“Not your problem to fix,” I said, sharper than I’d intended. “If anyone’s to blame, it’s me. I should have left when the first round started. No courtesy notice—just out the bloody door. And I should have seen this whole farce for what it is—a slow-motion guillotine.”
Gabrielle flinched—only a little—but let it pass through her. “What will you do?”
I pushed away from the counter. “First, I have to go back to England for the funeral. I don’t particularly care to…”
“But it’s expected,” she finished.
I nodded.
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“No.” I glanced up quickly. “Don’t misunderstand. In a perfect world, I don’t want you out of my sight, much less in a separate country. But this trip will be as nasty as it gets. And I can’t bear to drag you through that. Not when I’ve already asked more of you than anyone should.”
Surprisingly, she didn’t argue with me.
“What about Page?”
“They’ve already decided what story they want to tell.” I dumped the ice in the sink and refilled the glass—to the brim this time. “It’s not about truth. It’s about optics.” I took a long drink. “Page wants a villain, and I just happen to be available.”
Gabrielle stepped closer, but not into my arms. She hovered at the edge of the kitchen tile, hands knotted at her sides, assessing the damage—glass, whiskey, me.
“Go sit.”
A command. I obeyed it.
In the living room, the afternoon sun slanted across the floor, drawing a gold line nearly to my feet. I sank into the sofa and let my gaze drift over the furniture, the dust motes, the impossible ordinariness of the room.
She sat beside me, knees tucked to her chest, and watched me. The light caught her hair and set it aglow.
“When do you fly out?” she asked, her voice softened to a near whisper.
I looked at the glass. Then at my hands.
Then her. “I haven’t booked it yet,” I admitted, pulling my phone from my pocket.
The screen wavered under my thumb. I was too far gone—too scattered—to make sense of the airline apps.
All those boxes and drop-down menus, the infinite loop of payment screens and confirmation codes… it was all too much.
She watched me fumble for a minute, then slid her hand over mine and eased the phone from my grip.
She set it face down on the coffee table, close enough to reclaim but far enough to make a point.
“Talk to me, Cal. Don’t let it eat you alive.
Let’s work through it. What’s the worst that could happen right now? ”
I slouched back, the cushions swallowing my shoulders. The ceiling above was wide and blank—like a clean whiteboard to diagram all the ways I’d failed myself, my father, her.
“Even if I fight this circus at Page, I’m done. No university will touch me now.” I forced the laugh. “Another scandal of my own making. Maybe James was right about me after all.”
“Don’t,” she said, slicing through my self-pity with a clarity that startled me.
She swung her legs off the sofa, planted both feet on the floor, and turned her whole body to face me.
Her voice was low and steady—no trembling, no tremor, just iron wrapped in silk.
“You’re not what they say. Not even close.
And I won’t let you talk about yourself like you’re guilty of something. ”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she cut me off again, sharper this time.
“I mean it, Cal. I don’t care how many idiots post stories or how many times Sloane Cartwright tags the college on her socials. You’re not a monster. You’re not even a villain. You’re someone with principles and morals who actually gives a damn. More than anyone I’ve ever met.”
The words should have comforted me. Instead, I felt the gouge of guilt, sharp as a splinter under a fingernail.
I looked away, out the window, over the low roofs and parched lawns of the town I’d never truly learned to call home.
I swallowed hard. “You asked what the worst thing that could happen was.”
She waited, watching me with the kind of patience that made it harder, not easier, to speak.
“It’s not losing my job,” I said finally. “It’s not the public shaming, the institutional fallout, or the fact that my father died thinking I’d torched my career again.”
I looked at her—really looked—and the words slid out before I could temper them.
“It’s you looking at me…and wondering if any of it might be true.”
Her breath caught, just faintly, and I saw the flicker in her eyes. Not doubt. Not fear. Just heartbreak—mine reflected back at me.
“That’s what I can’t stomach,” I went on, voice low. “That somewhere in the back of your mind, even for a second, you might start seeing me the way they do. That you’d question what we are—what we’ve been.”
She didn’t speak right away. Just reached out, slow and steady, and placed her hand on my chest. “I know who you are,” she whispered. “And nothing they can say could make me forget the man who made me feel whole.”
I closed my eyes. Just for a second. Let that truth wrap around me. Let it hold me up when my own spine wouldn’t. “I don’t deserve you,” I whispered.
“Too late,” she said, quiet and firm. “You’ve got me anyway.”
She held her hand steady over the hammering ruins of my heart. But instead of drawing back, she leaned in and pulled me into her arms.
For a moment, I didn’t move. I didn’t know how. My body was still caught in the reflex of holding everything in—shoulders locked, jaw set, spine stiff with pride and panic.
But then she tucked her chin over my shoulder, and I breathed her in—her warm skin, the faint aroma of her shampoo—steady and real. And that was it. The dam broke. Not into sobs exactly, but something more visceral.
I clawed at her back like a man pulled from a wreck, unsure where the pain ended and the relief began. My body shook once, then again—sharp, silent, involuntary jolts I couldn’t suppress. I buried my face in her shoulder and held on like the air had gone thin.
She said nothing. Just held me—arms wrapped firm, breath slow and sure. Like she knew the ground was splitting beneath me…
And she was determined to hold me through the fall.