7. Missing Footage #3
Talia was quiet for half a second. Then, very carefully, “And are you about to do the same thing?”
The question slid in under his ribs.
He met her eyes. “No.”
She held his gaze long enough that he wondered if she could see the lie forming even before he felt it fully take shape.
Because he already knew what he was going to do.
Not report. Not yet. First find out exactly what happened. First talk to Cole. First talk to Foster. First see if there was any way to get ahead of it before official language and board policy and local reporters made it impossible for anybody to tell the truth without being turned into an example.
His code rose in him as naturally as breath. Take care of your people first.
Only now Talia had put a knife right against the weakest point in it. Protecting people from consequences is not the same as respecting them.
She seemed to read enough off his face to go very still. “Noah.”
He said nothing.
Her voice dropped. “Do not mistake proximity for permission. If you know something material and you decide to run your own private damage control because you think you can manage the human fallout better than everyone else, you will make this worse.”
The force of that—of her refusing him the comfort of being noble—made his pulse jump.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know exactly that.” She stepped closer, not intimate, not gentle. Direct. “You are not neutral here.”
“Neither are you.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not. I care very much what happens to students when institutions decide expedience is compassion. That is exactly why I’m telling you not to start moving pieces around in the dark.”
He looked down at her mouth for one treacherous second and hated himself for the timing of it. Hated that chemistry could coexist with dread and still demand oxygen.
“You think I’m trying to be a hero,” he said.
“I think you are most dangerous when you believe you’re being useful.”
The line hit so cleanly he almost stepped back.
Snow collected on his shoulders. His thumb throbbed in time with his heartbeat. Somewhere behind them a campus shuttle sighed to a stop, then pulled away again.
“I can’t hand a scared freshman to a board at eight a.m. without knowing what happened,” he said.
Talia’s face changed then—not softer, exactly. Sadder, maybe, in a way she would probably hate hearing named.
“You are hearing yourself as protector,” she said quietly. “I am hearing someone prepare to decide, alone, what truth another person can survive.”
He swallowed.
Because that was it. That was the shape of the trap, lit up plain as day.
And still.
Still he saw Cole’s face in the third row tonight, pale and trying not to fall apart. Still he heard Foster saying, Be careful what question you ask. Still he could already imagine media vans at the rink if the ruling hit hard enough.
“Then what do you want me to do?” he asked, and some real strain slipped into his voice before he could stop it. “Stand there while they get shredded?”
“I want you,” she said, each word precise, “to tell the truth before you can curate it.”
The silence after that was brutal.
For one raw second he let her see it—the exhaustion, the anger, the fear under all the steady.
The part of him that was so tired of being the one expected to absorb impact and somehow still smile through donor events and locker room panic and family concern and his own body quietly failing at the edges.
Her gaze flicked to his left hand again.
“You need ice,” she said.
He nearly laughed at the absurdity. “That’s your takeaway?”
“No.” Her eyes came back to his. “It’s one of them.”
A long beat stretched between them, filled with snowfall and everything he wasn’t saying.
Then Talia stepped back first. Agency intact. Line redrawn.
“I’m going home,” she said. “And you are going to make whatever choice you make. But if you start interfering with this because you cannot bear to be left out of the rescue, do not call that integrity.”
He took that and stood there with it.
She shifted the tote higher on her shoulder. “Good night, Noah.”
Not Mr. Mercer. Not public distance. Worse, somehow. Personal.
“Talia.”
She stopped.
“If I find out a kid got pushed into something by someone he trusted—”
“Then the truth matters even more,” she said, without turning back. “Not less.”
She walked away across the quad, dark coat cutting through white snowfall, and he watched until the night swallowed her.
His phone was already in his hand again before he reached the truck.
He stared at Foster’s name.
Then at Cole’s.
Then at the black windshield collecting snow in thin, relentless layers.
No media. No board. No compliance office at midnight. Just him, the cold, and the exact kind of choice he’d sworn onstage not to make.
He hit Cole’s number first.
It rang once.
Twice.
Then clicked alive under a burst of shaky breathing and dorm-room noise in the background.
“Noah?”
Noah closed his eyes.
“Don’t say anything yet,” he said, voice low. “I need you to tell me what happened the night of study hall before St. Brendan. And I need you to tell me now.”
On the other end of the line, Cole stopped breathing.