Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Reese
The Title IX office is on the third floor of Whitaker Hall, wedged between Financial Aid and a storage closet. I’ve walked past it a hundred times without once looking at it. Now I’m outside the frosted glass with Tyler’s folder in my bag and my heart trying to get out through my sternum.
Bo and Gray flank me. Neither of them has said much since we left the house. Bo drove with one hand on the wheel and the other on my knee. Gray sat in the back and looked out the window the whole way.
“You don’t have to come in with me,” I say.
“We know,” Bo says. Neither of them moves.
“They might ask why two Alphas walked me up here to file a harassment complaint. It could undercut the whole thing.”
“Or it shows that the people around you take it seriously.” Gray’s voice is clipped. “We’ll stay in the waiting area unless you say otherwise.”
I push the door open.
The office is smaller than I expected. A reception desk, two chairs with worn cushions, a hallway back to what I assume are meeting rooms. The woman at the desk has reading glasses pushed up into her hair and a nameplate that reads JANET CROSS, INTAKE COORDINATOR.
“Can I help you?”
“I need to file a formal complaint.”
She pulls a clipboard out of a drawer without any change in her face, like students walk in here every day ready to detonate their own lives. Maybe they do.
“Have a seat. Fill out the intake form and somebody will meet with you about next steps.” She looks past me at Bo and Gray, who have settled into the waiting chairs like two very large, very tense bookends. “Are they with you?”
“They’re my teammates.”
“I see.” She hands me the clipboard. “The meeting itself is private, Ms.?”
“Callahan. Reese Callahan.”
Her eyes narrow a fraction. She knows the name. The crew swept the conference championship eleven days ago and my face was in every write-up of it, the only woman steering an eight in the conference, on a boat going to nationals.
“Take your time with the form.”
I sit between Bo and Gray and look at the first question. Describe the nature of the complaint. The box is about three inches tall. I could fill a notebook.
I write: Coordinated harassment, stalking, and hostile environment created by Kinsley Adams, Captain of the Sable Ridge Women’s Rowing Team, beginning shortly after I joined the men’s crew in February and escalating sharply over the past three weeks.
The form wants dates. I have them, because Tyler documents things the way other people breathe.
The restaurant filming. The photo collages taped up outside my Business Strategy classroom.
The dead animal left at my door. The afternoon Kinsley and two of her friends put me against a wall and left bruises on my arms. The whole slow campaign painting me as an Omega who manipulates Alphas into doing what she wants.
I write all of it down. My hand cramps by the second page.
“Here.” Bo hands me a pen. Mine was running dry and I hadn’t noticed. I take it without looking at him, because if I see his face right now I’ll lose the flat voice I need to finish this.
Twenty minutes later Janet takes me down the hallway to a small conference room. Bo starts to get up.
“I’m okay.”
He sits. Gray doesn’t try, but his eyes follow me until the door shuts.
The woman waiting inside isn’t what I pictured. Mid-forties, Black, close-cropped natural hair, a blazer that’s had a long career. Her nameplate reads DR. LORRAINE OKAFOR, TITLE IX COORDINATOR.
“Ms. Callahan.” She gestures at the chair. “I’ve read your intake form. I want to be direct with you. I know who you are and I know about the coverage around your team. It won’t affect how this office handles your complaint.”
“Okay.”
“It will affect what filing costs you.” She folds her hands. “There will be an investigation. Ms. Adams will be notified and given the chance to respond. Witnesses may be interviewed. Depending how far it goes, details about your personal life and your team may become part of a record.”
“I understand.”
“Including your designation status, if it’s relevant.”
I keep my voice level. “She targeted me because of my designation. It’s the whole shape of the harassment.”
“Then it will come up.” Okafor’s expression is careful rather than warm. “I’m telling you so the decision you make is an informed one.”
“I already made it.”
She studies me a moment, then opens a laptop. “Walk me through it. Start wherever it starts.”
So I do. The first time Kinsley put herself in my way outside the boathouse. The texts. Her friends trailing me across campus, always at exactly the distance where I could feel them. The restaurant footage she passed to Quinton Whitmore. The way all of it accelerated once we started winning.
Okafor types steadily and only interrupts to pin down a date or a name. She doesn’t react to any of it, which I’m grateful for. I don’t need somebody to feel sorry for me. I need somebody to take notes and do the job.
“You’ve mentioned Quinton Whitmore,” she says when I stop. “Where does he sit in this?”
“Kinsley is what got me through your door. He’s part of the same pattern.
” Tyler and I went back and forth about it half of last night while Eli slept with his arm across my stomach, and this is where we landed.
All of it in one place, and let the office sort out the procedure. “They were coordinating.”
“How?”
“Kinsley filmed me at a team dinner. That footage ended up with Quinton. He used what he learned from it when he made unwanted physical advances.”
“Are you saying Mr. Whitmore assaulted you?”
“He grabbed my arm and tried to kiss me after I told him I was leaving. I pushed him off and got out. It’s in the timeline with the date on it.”
Okafor stops typing. “Then Mr. Whitmore isn’t incidental to this, and I won’t treat him as though he is. His conduct may have to be addressed on a separate track, procedurally. It goes into your report today either way.”
“Okay.”
She starts typing again, adding something to what she’s already written. When she finishes, she folds her hands on the table.
“Then let me be honest with you. This office takes every complaint seriously. A high-profile athletic program, active press coverage, and these two names in particular are going to make the process harder than it should be.”
“Harder how?”
“Ms. Adams has longstanding family ties to this university. Mr. Whitmore’s father sits on the athletic advisory board. Neither of those changes what this office is obligated to do, and both of them tell me the process will be contested.”
My stomach goes over. I knew about Quinton’s father. Whatever longstanding family ties is doing in that sentence is new.
“So it gets slow because of who they are.”
“Slower and harder than you want,” she says. “Not impossible. If the documentation supports what you’ve reported here, there are clear grounds to open an investigation.”
“It’s documented.” I take Tyler’s folder out and put it on the desk. “Screenshots with metadata. A timeline. And a written statement from a woman at another school who went through the same pattern with Quinton Whitmore four years ago.”
Okafor opens it. She gets through three pages before she stops turning them.
“Who assembled this?”
“My teammate. Tyler Wu. He’s a dual major in physics and economics, and he builds a case the way he’d build a proof.”
“I can see that.” She sets the folder to one side. “I’ll read it in full today. If it holds up the way I expect it to, a formal investigation into Ms. Adams opens by close of business and she’s notified inside forty-eight hours.”
“And Quinton?”
“One step at a time, which I gather is already your strategy.” She rests a hand on the folder. “His conduct is part of the report. What happens procedurally from here depends on what the initial review supports.”
I nod.
Okafor stands and puts out her hand. “Ms. Callahan. This took something. I don’t say that as a courtesy.”
I shake it and walk back out to the waiting area.
Bo and Gray are where I left them. Bo’s been looking at the ceiling. Gray’s been looking at the floor. They both come up the second I appear, reading my face for the result.
“She’s opening an investigation. Kinsley gets notified inside forty-eight hours.”
Bo folds me into him before I can say anything else, and I let him. I put my face into his chest and breathe him in, cut grass and warm hay and the ordinary smell of a clean shirt.
“You did good, darlin’,” he says into my hair.
Gray comes up behind me, close without touching. I can feel the heat of him at my back and every bit of tension he’s still carrying.
“And Quinton?”
“In the report as of today. She said his part may end up on its own track.”
“How long?”
“However long it takes.” I step back from Bo and look at both of them. “She warned me it’ll be slow. The Adams family has ties to the university. Quinton’s father is on the athletic advisory board. The process is going to be contested.”
“Then we don’t let them drag.” Gray’s whole body goes tight. “Tyler tracks the timeline. If they stall, we escalate.”
“Gray.” I put my hand on his arm, and the contact goes through both of us, the bond that isn’t there yet reaching for something it can’t reach. “I need you to let me run this. You can stand behind me. You can carry my bag. But it’s my complaint and my name.”
Gray looks down at my hand. His first instinct is still all over him: take over, build the plan, force the problem into giving up. Then he looks at my face and works out that he can’t captain his way through this one.
“Okay,” he says, quietly enough that from Gray it’s nearly alarming. “Okay.”
We come out of Whitaker Hall into a gray afternoon. Yesterday’s rain has stopped but the sky hasn’t committed to anything. My phone goes as we reach the truck.
Tyler: Are you done? How did it go?
Me: Investigation opened. Kinsley notified in 48 hrs. Okafor is solid but warned us about university connections.
Tyler: Expected. I have contingencies. Come home.
I get in and put my head against the window. The glass is cool on my temple. I have just filed something that will take my privacy apart, that puts my designation into an official record, that makes me a target for every person who believes Omegas should be quiet and grateful about it.
I’d do it again tomorrow.
Bo starts the engine. Gray’s hand lands on my shoulder from the back seat, brief and warm, and then it’s gone.
Nobody says a word the whole way home.