Chapter 35
Nylah POV
The sound of clear packing tape tearing across the cardboard flaps was a violent, screeching rip that echoed off the bare plaster walls.
It was five-eighteen on Monday morning.
Outside the drafty sash windows of my flat on Wharf Street, a freezing coastal fog had rolled in off Penobscot Bay, blanketing the cobblestones in a dense, grey shroud that swallowed the halo of the streetlamps.
The apartment was stripped to bare pine floorboards, smelling of brown cardboard, cold dust, and the bitter dregs of peppermint tea cooling on the sill.
Four cardboard boxes sat taped shut beside the entry door, each marked with a black grease pencil.
I knelt on the floor in front of the open closet, reaching deep into the dark space beneath the hanging rack to clear the final shelf.
My fingertips brushed heavy cotton fleece.
The breath trapped itself behind my teeth.
I pulled the fabric out into the pale grey light of dawn. It was Ryan’s faded charcoal St. Jude hockey crewneck—the one he had pulled over my head that morning in his loft, the one that had hung past my knees while he rubbed the frost from my bare feet.
The scent hit my senses with the force of an open-ice check: crushed cedarwood, winter ozone, and the dark, clean heat of his bare skin.
My stomach violently heaved.
A sudden, acidic wave of cold nausea surged up from my gut, hitting the back of my throat like liquid copper.
My vision blurred into swimming grey spots as the blood drained from my face in a single, sickening rush.
My knees gave out beneath me; I dropped hard onto the bare pine floor, my left hand clamping over my mouth while my right arm wrapped tightly across the lower swell of my abdomen.
A dry heave wracked my ribcage, my forehead knocking against the rough cardboard of the open box as I fought for air.
Breathe, I ordered myself, my fingernails digging into my jeans through the fabric. Do not let his ghost break you.
I forced my diaphragm to lock, swallowing the bitter bile until the spasms subsided.
I looked down at the grey fleece resting on the floorboards.
I didn't weep. I didn't hold the cotton to my face to inhale the memory of his bed.
With hands that were cold, stiff, and unyielding, I folded the sweatshirt into a flat, rigid square, shoved it to the very bottom of the donation crate beneath two textbooks, and pulled the cardboard flaps shut.
I dragged the tape gun across the center seam with a single, brutal jerk of my wrists, sealing the box forever.
The ghost was buried in the dark.
* * *
At six-two, the front door lock clicked with a quiet, metallic rattle.
Tess stepped into the entryway, wearing her heavy green Carhartt parka, carrying two steaming travel mugs and a brown paper bag from the bakery.
She stopped in the threshold. Her sharp, dark eyes scanned the four taped boxes, the stripped mattress resting against the wall, and the bloodless, hollowed-out lines of my face.
She didn't offer empty words of sympathy. Tess was a sports medicine fellow who spent her afternoons resetting dislocated shoulders and taping torn ligaments; she understood that when a bone was shattered, you didn't poke the fracture to see if it hurt. You set the splint and stopped the bleeding.
"Car’s running downstairs," Tess said, her voice quiet, steady, and devoid of the campus hysteria that had been circulating since Saturday night. "The heater’s on full."
She walked over, set the thermoses on the counter, and took both of my cold hands in hers.
Her gaze drifted downward, tracking the involuntary way my right palm rested flat, motionless, and protective over the lower curve of my stomach beneath my wool coat.
She had found the digital pregnancy test box in the bathroom trash can yesterday morning. She hadn't asked who the father was; she had simply closed the lid, taken her car keys off the hook, and told me she would have the trunk cleared by dawn.
"Dr. Albright signed the administrative leave petition at nine last night," Tess said, pressing a warm mug of ginger tea into my palms. "It’s logged as an independent off-site doctoral practicum under strict institutional confidentiality.
Vance and the athletic council will receive an automated resignation memo at noon today.
Your student files are sealed under federal privacy laws. "
My throat tightened on a dry swallow as the warm ginger soothed the raw lining of my throat. "And Ryan?"
Tess’s jaw hardened, a lethal, protective fire flashing in her dark eyes that made my ribs ache.
"Owen walked out of the arena right after the buzzer and hasn't been seen since," she said, every word clipped and hard as granite.
"The athletic department and the press are frantically hunting for him all over campus, but he gets nothing, Nylah. If he comes looking, if Vance tries to poke around, they hit a brick wall. I’ll tell the athletic director you transferred to a research lab in Europe before I give anyone a forwarding address. "
The last trembling nerve in my spine locked into iron.
The weeping girl who had collapsed in the arena runway forty-eight hours ago was dead.
In her place was something forged in fire.
Beneath my ribs, sheltered in the warmth of my own body, a tiny heartbeat was relying on my strength to survive.
I didn't have the luxury of grief. I didn't have the luxury of despair. My child would never know the poison of a father who believed it was a transaction, and it would never be a weapon in Arthur Vance’s political games.
"Let's go," I said.
We hauled the four cardboard boxes down the drafty stairwell to Tess’s Subaru, packing the trunk in absolute silence.
* * *
The car pulled away from the curb of Wharf Street, the tires crunching over the dirty salt slush.
I sat in the passenger seat, my heavy coat buttoned tightly to my throat, the heater blowing dry, warm air across my ankles. I turned my head, watching through the side window as the brick shipyard buildings blurred into streaks of red and brown.
As the car crossed the harbor bridge, the jagged silhouette of The Foundry rose above the skyline, its iron trusses dusted in white snow, shrinking into the distance until the coastal fog swallowed it whole.
I looked away from the glass.
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my phone.
The screen lit up, displaying sixteen missed calls from the engineering department, three administrative emails, and a single contact pinned to the top of my messages: Ryan.
The last message he had sent was from Friday afternoon: See you tonight.
My thumb hovered over the glass.
I didn't open the thread. I didn't read the words he had typed before his father handed him that forged dossier.
With steady fingers, I tapped the contact card, hit Block This Caller, and confirmed the prompt. I selected the message history and pressed Delete. The entire digital record of his voice, his promises, and his private praise vanished into white space.
I went into the device settings, revoked my university credentials, and powered the phone down.
I reached up, unhooked the silver stud from my right earlobe, and pressed the fine metal post into the pinhole on the side of the phone.
The SIM card tray popped open with a tiny, plastic click.
I lifted the small cellular chip from the tray, held it between my thumb and forefinger, and snapped the gold circuit board clean in half. I dropped the broken pieces into the bottom of the empty paper bag on the floorboard.
The final wire was cut.
I leaned my head against the cool glass of the passenger window as the Subaru accelerated onto the northbound highway, heading toward the secluded coastal cottage my grandmother had left our family in Nova Scotia.
My hands slid beneath the wool of my coat.
Both palms splayed wide across the flat, warm curve of my lower abdomen, pressing through the denim, feeling the quiet, unbroken sanctuary of my own body.
"Just you and me," I whispered into the frosted glass, the words a silent, unbreakable vow that hung in the cold air between us. "I've got you."
The car sped into the whiteout of the northern highway, leaving the ruined world of St. Jude University behind in the storm.