38. Calliope
Calliope
The sister campus is prettier than I expected, and I hate that I notice.
It sits almost an hour and a half from home, tucked into a small college town with old brick buildings, rain-dark paths, and trees planted close enough to the sidewalks that their branches lean over everything like they’re listening.
The humanities building has tall windows and worn wooden stair rails polished by decades of nervous hands.
There’s a courtyard behind it with iron benches, a stone fountain, and a crooked little coffee kiosk that smells like burnt espresso and cinnamon syrup.
I should be taking notes. I should be asking questions about course loads, committee expectations, office space, student demographics, how much flexibility they’d give me for literature and ethics programming.
I did all of that in the interview, and I did it well enough that one of the panelists smiled before she remembered she wasn’t supposed to give anything away.
Now I’m being shown the campus by a junior faculty member with silver rings on three fingers, and my body keeps pulling in the wrong direction.
There’s heat in my chest.
It isn’t mine. I know that in the way a person knows the difference between grief and fever.
This is a tug under my sternum, a warm, anxious pressure that keeps turning my attention toward the parking lot, toward the highway, toward the house where Theo should still have days before his heat opens fully.
My shoulder aches beneath my blouse where Sloane’s bite rests, not sharp, not painful enough to stop me, just present in a way it hasn’t been all morning.
I check my phone while the woman showing me around points out the faculty lounge.
Nothing.
No missed call from Sloane. No text from Idris.
No message from Theo with careful punctuation and too much space between sentences because he’s trying to sound normal while nervous.
My last text to Sloane sits there, sent fifteen minutes ago and unanswered: Interview is finished.
They’re showing me around for a few minutes.
How’s Theo? Call me when you can. Beneath it is the shorter message I sent Theo right after: Hi, Star.
Lunch was my favorite part of today. I’m checking campus, then I’m coming home.
Neither one has changed.
“Dr. Monroe?” the faculty member asks gently, and I look up so fast my smile arrives late.
“Sorry.” I tuck the phone against my palm instead of putting it away. “Pack timing. One of ours is close to his heat, so I’m trying not to hover and failing at it.”
Her face softens with the polite sympathy of someone who doesn’t know enough to ask more. “We’re almost done. I can walk you back to the admin wing, or you can take a few minutes in the courtyard if you need to make a call.”
“I think I should head out soon,” I say, looking toward the parking lot again because the tug in my chest is no longer only warm. It’s insistent. “I’m farther from home than I realized, and if he needs me, I don’t want to lose more time.”
She nods, understanding enough, and starts to answer, but the side door of the humanities building opens before she can.
One of the men from the interview panel steps out with a folder under one arm and a tie loosened at his throat.
He has warm brown skin, dark hair threaded with a little gray at the temples, and the kind of steady Alpha presence that doesn’t push into the space before him.
I remember his name because it startled me the first time he said it.
Dash Rivera.
He pauses when he sees us, then smiles in a way that makes him look like he’s trying not to be too pleased. “Dr. Monroe. I’m glad I caught you before you left.”
My chest tightens around the last name, but I’ve already survived one hour of sitting across from him without letting it show. Rivera isn’t rare. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It can be a name, not a knife.
“I was just about to head back,” I say, and the sentence comes out brighter than I feel because professional joy is easier to wear than fear. “Thank you again for your questions in the interview. They were helpful.”
“They were selfish.” His smile deepens a little. “I wanted to hear how you think in a room, not only on paper. I’m not supposed to say anything until HR sends the formal letter, but the position is yours if you want it.”
For a second, everything goes quiet in the best way.
The courtyard, the unanswered phone, the strange heat in my chest, the ache in my shoulder — all of it pulls back far enough for happiness to reach me.
My breath catches, and then I’m beaming at him like I have no defenses at all.
The job is mine. Not maybe. Not we’ll be in touch.
Mine. Something bright and real presses up under my ribs, and the first thing I want is Sloane’s voice in my ear, Idris’s hand on my back, Theo’s smile when I tell him the campus has soup and a courtyard where he could hide from everyone with a book.
“Really?” I ask, because apparently education and dignity have both abandoned me.
“Really.” Dash’s expression warms. “You were excellent. The committee is aligned, and HR should move quickly. There is one thing I’ll say personally, not as a condition or pressure.
I think you’d be exceptional here, but the farther sister-campus position may give you more room to build the program you described. ”
My smile doesn’t disappear. It changes, opening into something almost painful because I can imagine the conversation now.
I can imagine calling Sloane and hearing him say he meant it when he told me he’d go anywhere.
I can imagine Idris asking about housing, distance, funding, heat accommodations, all of it while already building a plan in his head.
I can imagine Theo in a different sunroom, stealing sweaters out of a new laundry basket and pretending he didn’t.
“I have a pack,” I say, and I’m still smiling when I say it because it still feels like a promise instead of a boundary. “I can’t make a move like that without them. But I’d love to talk it through if the offer gives me time.”
“Of course,” Dash says. “A week, at least. More if HR can manage it.”
My phone feels heavy in my hand. I glance down again, expecting the screen to light because joy should call joy toward it. It stays dark. The tug in my chest heats once, sharp enough that I press my free hand over my sternum.
Dash notices. “Are you all right?”
“I think I need to call home.” I unlock the screen, already tapping Sloane’s name, but before the call can connect, two campus safety officers step into the courtyard from the path beside the admin wing.
One is in a navy uniform with a radio at her shoulder.
The other holds a tablet against her chest and scans the courtyard until her eyes land on me.
“Dr. Monroe?” the officer with the tablet asks, polite enough that the question doesn’t scare me until the faculty member beside me goes still.
“Yes.”
“Could you come with us, please?” She glances at Dash, then back at me. “There’s an administrative matter that needs your attention.”
Dash’s pleasant expression thins. He doesn’t move closer, but his attention sharpens on me in a way I feel along my skin. “Is there a problem?”
“We just need Dr. Monroe to come to the admin wing,” the officer says. “It shouldn’t take long.”
I tell myself it’s about hiring paperwork.
I tell myself it’s something to do with the offer, background checks, pack disclosures, HR forms. My phone sits in my palm with Sloane’s name still open and uncalled, and the heat in my chest tells me to go home while my feet follow the officer across the courtyard.
Dash is still watching when I look back.
The admin wing is colder than the humanities building.
The halls are newer, with glass partitions and carpet that swallows footsteps.
The officer leads me to a conference room near the back, and the moment I see Garrett standing beside a real police officer, every harmless explanation leaves my body.
He is still in his suit, but the tie is looser than it was this morning.
A bruise darkens along one side of his jaw, ugly and blooming beneath the skin, and the corner of his mouth is split where it must have bled and been wiped clean.
For one second, all the fear in me changes shape around the injury.
“What happened to your face?” I ask.
Garrett’s expression tightens, then smooths into something tired and contained. “Sloane happened.”
The words don’t fit together. I stare at him with my phone clenched in my hand, waiting for the sentence to become less impossible if I give it another second. “Sloane?”
“He’s upset,” Garrett says, glancing toward the officer before he looks back at me. “Everyone is upset. Theo’s heat started harder than expected, and the incident at campus made an already unstable situation worse.”
The heat in my chest becomes a drop through empty air. “Theo’s heat started?”
“He’s being cared for,” Garrett says quickly. “He’s safe.”
“Then why are you here?” My voice rises before I can stop it. “Why aren’t you with him? Why didn’t Sloane call me? Why didn’t Idris call me?”
Garrett looks at the officer again, and that is when I understand the officer isn’t there for Garrett.
He’s there for me. He’s older, broad through the shoulders, with a close-cropped beard and a notepad open on the table in front of him.
Beside the notepad is a thick envelope with my name printed on it in a font I recognize from legal letters I’ve never wanted addressed to me.