27. Dante
Dante
We win the regional final Friday night.
Four-three in overtime. Cole's wrister from the slot with eleven seconds left, the puck threading through traffic and snapping into the net. I score twice. Cole scores twice. Four thousand people scream hard enough to rattle the glass.
Addison cries in the hallway after, where he thinks nobody can see him. Looking for Maya through the press-box glass, I find him in the corridor beyond it instead, one hand braced against the wall, head down, shoulders pulling tight before he gets himself under control.
Maya is in the press box, in the seat she earned, the one where Ashford getting within fifty feet of her would have put him inside my sightline.
Campus security is doubled for the game.
Adrian's briefing holds the line. Ashford's face is flagged at every entrance. Every flagged entrance stays clear.
The arboretum path doesn't have a checkpoint.
I think about that while the horn sounds and Cole crashes into me on the ice and four thousand people scream like the world has narrowed to hockey, overtime, victory, sweat, blood, ice.
Richard's emergency motion doesn't produce a warrant Friday. The DA's office says they need the full hearing to act. Maya chooses the legal route over my family's way, and the legal route moves one stamped document at a time.
Monday morning, Ashford is still in Briarcliff.
The daytime plan is working. Richard files the protective order Monday.
Gio's parole research gives it teeth: geographic restriction violation, documented escalation, the campus visit Clara's Title IX report corroborates.
Campus security has the photo, the name, the vehicle, the plate.
The paperwork is moving. The plan Maya chose is doing exactly what it's supposed to do.
Tuesday, Richard calls. The DA's office is reviewing.
The parole officer has been notified. Hearing scheduled for next Wednesday.
The timeline is reasonable. Appropriate.
Civilized people make calendar entries for a man who broke his daughter's ribs and showed up at her workplace with a business card and a smile.
Maya's father is still in Briarcliff.
The thought follows me to practice, where I put three pucks through the net so hard Adrian skates over and asks if I'm trying to kill the goalie.
During film session, it sits behind my teeth while Addison breaks down our power play for the Frozen Four and my jaw locks tighter with every replay.
At dinner, Cole and Maya sit on either side of me and Maya laughs at something Cole says.
The laugh is real.
Even now, she can still laugh, still lean into Cole's shoulder, still pass me the salt while her father moves through the same town, down streets nobody is watching. Then she crosses campus the next day and maps every walkway before she puts her foot on it.
I watch her do it Wednesday afternoon.
On the walk from the Chronicle to the rink, I'm thirty feet behind her because I leave Addison's building at the same time. She doesn't know I'm there.
At the library steps, her head turns left. Bench by the fountain. Arboretum entrance. Eastern path. Two-second hold before she moves on. Her bag shifts higher on her shoulder, and her hand lands closer to her phone.
Her stride never changes. That's what fucks with me.
Anyone else would miss it. They'd see Maya Maddox crossing campus with her chin up and her bag on her shoulder and think she looks fine. One sweep in six seconds. The route to the rink doors already mapped. Every plan Maya approved says she should be safe.
The plan is working. She still scans every walkway between the Chronicle and the rink.
Marco's people are watching. Maya knows about it. She set the rules. Full visibility. Show me every text before you read it. Marco's men, the part she grudgingly accepts, are tracking David Ashford's general movements. Location pings. Broad strokes.
It's not enough.
Wednesday night, I can't sleep.
Beside me, Cole sleeps with Maya between us, in the bed that holds three. Their breathing has fallen into the same slow rhythm, each inhale answering the other in the dark. Cole's hand rests on my hip. Maya's back is against my chest, warm through her shirt, her hair tucked beneath my chin.
They sleep with Maya's pulse beating soft against my forearm. My eyes stay open.
Six days, the Chronicle entrance, the arboretum path, the distance between the press-box stairs and the nearest unlocked door—I count all of it.
The hearing is next Wednesday. Six days. In six days, a judge will review the evidence and decide whether a piece of paper is sufficient to keep a man who already violated a no-contact order, already found his daughter's address, already found her campus, already walked into her building.
That kind of paper didn't stop him before.
The original no-contact order was issued when Maya was thirteen.
He found her anyway. He found the new name, the new city, the new campus mailbox.
He found all of it because men like him don't stop.
My father treats the legal system as an obstacle to be navigated; Ashford has learned the same language.
Marco's people produce general awareness. Richard's plan produces a hearing in six days. Neither plan tells me whether David Ashford is parked outside the Chronicle right now.
I slide out of bed carefully. Maya shifts but doesn't wake. Cole's hand falls from my hip to the mattress, his fingers flexing once against the sheet before going still. After pulling on sweats, I leave the bedroom.
The hallway is dark. The house is quiet. The kitchen clock says 2 AM.
This is the room where Maya sits on the counter and I stand at the stove while Cole sits at the table. Maya's mug waits in the drying rack. Cole's jacket hangs over the chair. A draft slips under the back door I keep meaning to fix.
My phone is on the counter.
The number is not in my contacts. I deleted it six years ago, but the ten digits stayed where Marco put them in my head after Milan, after espresso, after a seventeen-year-old version of me understood that some lessons in my family were never written down.
Men like this ask for an address and a timeline.
My jaw aches. I've been clenching it in my sleep, waking with the muscles locked and pressure buried behind my molars while my hands stay open at my sides.
Six days until the hearing. David Ashford found the Chronicle in one. One visit. One card. One polite conversation with a receptionist.
Campus security monitors entrances and parking lots.
It monitors flagged doors and plate numbers and the places civilized people expect danger to announce itself.
A man can park three blocks away and walk.
The arboretum path stays open. Eight years in a cell is enough time to study how systems breathe.
My hand closes around the phone. My thumb hovers over the keypad.
Maya is asleep.
Then I dial the number.
It rings three times. A male voice answers, flat and without greeting.
"I need information on a man in Briarcliff, Massachusetts," I say.
My voice is steady, the same voice I use on the ice when everything narrows to the next play.
"His name is David Ashford. I need his current address.
His daily patterns. Where he goes, who he sees, what he drives. Surveillance only. For now."
"Timeline?" the voice asks.
"Two days."
"Payment through the usual channel?"
The family's payment route, the one that moves through three shell companies before reaching its destination. Using it means the payment will register where my father can see it. My father will see it. My father will know exactly what I purchased and for whom.
"Yes," I say.
The call lasts ninety seconds.
When it ends, I set the phone on the counter and stand there with my hand still open beside it. The kitchen is quiet enough for the draft under the door to sound like breathing.
I go back to bed and slide in beside Maya.
She shifts, murmurs, and presses her palm to my chest, directly over my heart. Then she settles again, trusting my body in her sleep while the call I made still burns under my skin.
My stomach turns.
Her palm warms my skin, and I have to keep my breathing even so I don't move away from it. Cole reaches across her body and laces his fingers through mine. His grip is steady, heavy, familiar.
I close my eyes.
Sleep doesn't come.
Thursday, the legal plan continues.
Richard sends the hearing confirmation. Next Wednesday. Six days. The evidence packet is strong: Gio's parole research, Clara's Title IX filing, the documented escalation pattern, the letters. Richard is confident. Richard says the case is moving.
Cole catches me in the hallway after lunch.
His hand closes around my arm. His eyes move over my face, my shoulders, the set of my mouth, the quiet inventory that strips me down faster than anyone else's interrogation ever could.
"You look like you haven't slept in two days," he says.
"I slept."
"You slept the way Maya sleeps. With one eye checking the perimeter." His grip tightens on my arm. "What's going on?"
"Nothing. The hearing's Wednesday. Richard's confident."
He watches me.
Still watching, he searches for the thing I'm hiding the same way he'd search for a gap in a defensive line. My eyes drop to his hand on my arm for half a second before I catch myself and bring them back to his face.
Half a second is enough. His fingers tighten once on my arm before he stills them.
"D," he says. "Whatever you're carrying. Share it."
"I'm fine."
"You're performing fine." His hand stays on my arm, steady and waiting. "I can tell the difference."
I can't tell him. Telling him means telling him what I did at 2 AM.
"Wednesday," I say. "After the hearing. When the legal plan resolves. I'll tell you everything."
"Everything?"
"Everything."
Cole nods. His hand lingers on my arm before dropping.
He lets it go.
At 3 PM, I sit in Addison's office for me.
Adrian's voice sits in my head: Talk to Addison. About your thing.