5. The Good Brother #2
He gave her a flat look. “You are enjoying this too much.”
“I’m enjoying seeing whether being twenty-four has made you any less allergic to direct language.”
“It has not.”
“Shocking.”
He smiled despite the twist in his chest.
Sloane smiled back, and for a second she looked younger, more like the girl who used to steal brownie batter with a spoon and then lie terribly about it.
“You don’t have to tell me everything,” she said.
“But if there’s something real going on, stop giving me the version of you that sounds good over speakerphone. ”
He swallowed.
The thing about Sloane was that she asked softly when it mattered. No grand demand. No melodrama. Just enough truth left on the table that he had to decide whether to meet it.
“There might be more fallout coming,” he said at last.
Her face changed, focus sharpening. “About the review?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know what kind?”
He thought of Talia standing at the front of the seminar room, fingers curled around his paper. Be careful. That principle applies to favorites too.
“No,” he lied.
Sloane held his gaze.
Then, because she was his sister and therefore ruthless, she said, “Is this about the team, or is this about some woman who has clearly wrecked your nervous system?”
He choked on coffee.
Sloane sat back looking deeply pleased. “Oh my God.”
“There is no ‘oh my God.’”
“There is absolutely an ‘oh my God.’” Her eyes widened with merciless delight. “Noah Mercer. Is this why you look like a man trying to fold himself into a carry-on?”
He wiped coffee off his mouth with the back of his hand. “I hate talking to you.”
“You love talking to me.”
“I literally don’t.”
“You literally do.” She grinned. “Who is she?”
He should not have let his expression do anything. Judging by the way Sloane’s grin sharpened, it had done too much.
“No one,” he said.
“So not no one.”
“She works at the university.”
Sloane went theatrically still. “Complicated.”
“Nothing is happening.”
“Those are often the most complicated ones.”
He laughed once, humorless. “You spend too much time on FaceTime with Ethan.”
“I spend exactly enough.” She tilted her head. “Does she know you do the thing where you try to save everyone and call it leadership?”
He stared at her.
Sloane’s smile faded. “Ah,” she said quietly. “She does.”
The union suddenly felt too warm. Noah flexed his taped thumb under the table, feeling the skin pull. “Can we not do this here?”
“Sure.” Sloane stood and lifted her chin toward the doors. “Walk me to my car and I’ll bully you outdoors like a lady.”
He paid before she could, because some habits were wired too deep to negotiate, and they stepped out into the late-afternoon cold.
Snow hissed under tires in the street. The campus bell tower rose gray against a lowering sky, and the air had that Minnesota edge that cut straight through denim and went for bone.
Noah carried her bag over one shoulder while they crossed the slushy lot toward the visitor spaces.
Their breath smoked between them.
“So,” Sloane said, boots crunching, “you like her.”
He laughed under his breath. “You really don’t let things go.”
“No. It’s one of my worst traits.” She tucked her hands into her coat pockets. “Do you like her?”
He looked ahead. “She’s not impressed by me.”
“That was not the question.”
“She’s smart.”
Sloane made a soft triumphant noise.
“She’s annoying,” he added.
“Better.”
“She thinks I manage people instead of respecting them.”
“And do you?”
Snow gathered on his shoulders. He shifted her bag higher and didn’t answer.
Sloane bumped his arm with her sleeve. “Noah.”
“I don’t know,” he said, more quietly than he meant to. “I think I’m trying to keep things from getting worse.”
“That’s not the same answer.”
“I know.”
She walked with him another few steps in silence. Then, very gently, “You don’t have to be the good brother all the time.”
He glanced at her.
“The good son, the good captain, the reliable one, whatever version is currently eating your life.” Her eyes were bright and unsparing in the snowlight. “People loving you because you show up is not the same thing as them only loving you if you do.”
He stopped walking.
Cars moved slowly through the lot, tires whispering over packed snow. Somewhere behind them a student shouted and then laughed. Noah stood there with a cold bag strap cutting into his palm and felt the words settle in places he hadn’t realized were already bruised.
Sloane touched his forearm through his jacket. “I know why you do it,” she said. “I really do. But if you keep handing people a version of you built for weather, don’t act surprised when no one realizes you’re freezing.”
He looked away first.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“I know. I’m gorgeous and wise.”
He barked a laugh despite the tightness in his throat.
She squeezed his arm once and then reclaimed her bag. “I have to go if I want to beat traffic.”
He nodded.
Sloane opened her car door, then paused and looked back at him over the roof. “For the record, if this woman is the one telling you the truth, I’m already on her side.”
He gave her a scandalized look. “Traitor.”
“I contain multitudes.”
He stared.
Sloane grinned. “What? You’re not the only one with access to callback humor.”
She got in, started the engine, and rolled down the window before pulling away. “Text me when you stop pretending you’re fine,” she called.
“Drive safe.”
“Love you too, Noah.”
Then she was gone, taillights red through the falling snow.
He stood in the lot longer than he needed to, cold working its way into his ears and collar, and felt strangely as if the ground under him had shifted half an inch. Not enough to throw him. Enough to make balance conscious.
By the time evening came, the campus had gone blue with winter dusk.
Noah still had his key card and a standing habit of using the athlete dining room when practice schedules wrecked ordinary mealtimes, so he cut through the athletic center with his gear bag on one shoulder and the day still under his skin.
The corridor outside the rink smelled like sharpened skates, disinfectant, and wet rubber.
Through the arena doors, he could hear pucks hitting the boards during a youth clinic—high voices, whistle shrieks, the bright chaos of kids who thought ice was pure joy and not labor yet.
He should have gone home.
Instead he detoured to the equipment room, grabbed the dented brownie tin he’d left in his stall after morning skate, and carried it with him to dinner like a joke that had stopped being funny.
The athlete dining room was half full. Swimmers with broad shoulders and damp hair from evening lift.
Two volleyball players at the salad bar.
A cluster of hockey guys at the far end already eating like tomorrow’s practice depended on volume.
It probably did. The TV mounted in the corner ran sports highlights on mute, captions flashing beneath some NFL coach’s frozen angry face.
Noah got chicken, rice, roasted vegetables, and a coffee he did not want.
He was halfway to an empty table when he saw Talia near the back window, a legal pad open beside her tray, glasses on tonight instead of contacts.
She was in a charcoal sweater and dark slacks, hair down over one shoulder as she read something on her laptop between bites like she begrudged food the interruption.
He stopped.
Then she looked up.
For one beat neither of them moved. He saw the instant of recognition, the fraction after it where she almost returned to her screen on principle, and then the decision to stay where she was.
Agency. Always.
Noah altered course before he could think too hard about it.
“Doctor Shah,” he said, stopping by her table. “Didn’t know ethics came with meal plan access.”
Talia looked at his tray, then at the brownie tin in his other hand. “Mr. Mercer. Didn’t know emotional avoidance came in baked goods.”
His mouth almost curved. “Savage way to greet a hungry man.”
“You seem resilient.”
“I work hard at it.”
“I’ve noticed.”
There was a chair across from her. Noah waited a beat. “Taken?”
She glanced at the room, at the other mostly occupied tables, and then back at him. “No.”
He sat.
Up close, he could see the fatigue around her eyes again, the kind that came from too many screens and too little patience.
Her legal pad was filled in neat compressed handwriting.
There were tabs sticking out of a manila folder beside her laptop, color-coded because of course they were.
The smell of her coffee was colder than fresh, bitter and thin.
Noah set the brownie tin beside his tray.
Talia’s gaze landed on it. “That object has become weirdly symbolic.”
“It’s just a tin.”
“It’s never just a tin with you.”
He laughed softly. “You say things like that on purpose.”
“Yes.”
A beat.
Then she pushed her glasses up her nose and said, “Your sister is lovely.”
Noah looked at her. “You saw us.”
“I was meeting with one of the assistant deans in the union.” Her expression gave nothing away. “You have the same mouth when you’re trying not to laugh.”
That should not have done anything to him. It did anyway.
“She was here for a few hours,” he said.
“I gathered.”
“You gather a lot.”
“I am, as you’ve pointed out, wildly judgmental.”
He smiled despite himself and picked up his fork. “She says the same thing.”
“I already like her.”
“Rude.”
Talia took another bite of her dinner, then nodded toward the window behind him. “You were carrying her bag. Holding the door with your foot. Letting her take your coffee after she decided she hated her tea.”
He turned slightly. Outside the glass, snow streaked under the parking lot lights. “You observed all that from across the union?”
She met his eyes. “Observation.”
He shook his head and looked down at his food. “So what’s the ruling? Too controlling? Excessive acts of service with intent to conceal internal weather?”
A pause.
When she answered, her voice had changed, just enough to take the edge off. “No.”
He looked up.