20. Office Hours #2
“And I think,” he said, “I finally get that being needed and being known are not the same thing.”
The words landed between them. No crowd to reward them. No camera to sharpen them into quote bait. Just desks, papers, snow, and her.
His pulse thudded hard once in his taped hand.
He went on anyway. “You asked me to stop performing usefulness. I’m trying. So this is me not bringing you a dramatic declaration or a win or an apology disguised as romance.” He glanced at the tin, then back at her. “This is me bringing dessert and one honest question.”
For the first time since he came in, something vulnerable moved openly across her features.
Noah held her gaze. “Can we begin for real?”
The copier down the hall stopped.
The building settled around them with an old-pipe knock.
Talia set what was left of her brownie down very carefully on a paper napkin, as if buying herself one extra beat to think. Which was fair. More than fair. If there was any person on earth he trusted not to answer because the moment was warm enough to sweep her into convenience, it was her.
She crossed her arms loosely, not as armor exactly. As structure.
“What does for real mean to you?” she asked.
There she was.
Noah almost smiled from sheer relief. “I was hoping you’d say something like that.”
“I know.”
He nodded, accepting the check. “For real means I don’t treat this like a reward for doing one hard thing correctly.
It means I don’t ask you to blur your work because I’m in your life.
It means if my family stuff kicks up or team stuff gets loud or the media decides I’m interesting again, I do not vanish into handling everyone else and call it nobility. ”
Her gaze sharpened on that last part.
He continued, “It means I tell the truth faster. Even when I’m embarrassed.
Even when I want to look steadier than I am.
” A pause. “It means I want to take you to dinner and know how you order when you’re tired.
I want to hear you rant about bad policy design without pretending to understand when I don’t.
I want you at things because you want to be there, not because a crisis put us in the same room.
” His mouth curved a little. “And I’d like, if possible, to kiss you again without a championship media disaster as foreplay. ”
That made her laugh despite herself.
The sound hit him low and warm.
But Talia was still Talia. She sobered and pushed off the table. “For real also means,” she said, “that I do not become your conscience service animal.”
He blinked. “My what?”
“You heard me.”
His laugh burst out before he could stop it. “Jesus.”
“I am not available for emotional outsourcing, Noah.” She stepped closer, close enough now that he could see a faint line where her pen had pressed into the side of her middle finger.
“I will tell you the truth when I think you need it. I will probably do that with unreasonable frequency. But I am not going to build a relationship where my function is to monitor your integrity in your own life.”
The seriousness under the dry delivery went straight into him.
He nodded immediately. “Okay.”
“Okay as in you agree, or okay as in you want me to stop talking long enough to kiss me?”
He met her eyes. “Both, but the first one matters more.”
A tiny shift in her shoulders. Approval maybe. Maybe just relief.
Talia reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind one ear. “For real means I keep my work mine. It means if I criticize your institution, your team, or you, I do not have to manage your ego while doing it.”
He looked almost offended. “You think I’d make you manage my ego?”
“I think you are a competitive man who likes to be good at things.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. “That’s devastatingly fair.”
“Yes.”
“And for the record, I don’t need you to manage my ego.” He tipped his head. “I may need occasional reminders that being corrected isn’t fatal.”
“You will receive no shortage of those.”
“Lucky me.”
She studied him another moment, and this time he didn’t try to fill the silence. Didn’t pitch himself. Didn’t rush to prove. He just stood there sore and hopeful in a sweater over a healing body, with his old brownie tin on a student desk and his whole public self nowhere in sight.
Only one person sees him.
The realization moved through him with the same shock it always did. Not because it was new now, but because it kept being true.
When Talia spoke, her voice was quieter than before. “For real means I choose this with my eyes open.”
He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.
“It also means,” she added, “that I am choosing a man who will, at minimum, ice his leg when we’re done here.”
He smiled. “You drive a hard bargain.”
“I have standards.”
“You really do.”
“I know.”
Snow brushed the window in soft white streaks. Somewhere outside, a plow beeped in slow reverse. The room had gone dim enough that the overhead lights reflected faintly in the glass, layering their pale classroom doubles over the storm.
Noah took one careful step closer. “So is that a yes?”
Talia tipped her head up to him, and there was nothing uncertain in her now. Not hesitation. Not institutional distance. Choice.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a yes.”
The word hit harder than any cheer he’d heard the night before.
He laughed once under his breath, helpless with it. “Okay.”
“Do not make that face.”
“What face?”
“That absurdly relieved one.”
“I can’t help my face.”
“You absolutely can. You have spent years using it strategically.”
He was still smiling. “That’s rude too.”
“And still accurate.”
Then she reached for him.
No tentative half-measure this time. Her hand slid into the front of his sweater, catching the fabric at his waist, and the pull was small but decisive. Noah’s body answered instantly—heat, hunger, the whole fierce bright rush of wanting her with nothing performative left in it.
He put one hand on the desk beside her instead of touching her first.
A question.
Talia’s eyes dropped to his mouth, then returned to his. “You’re learning,” she murmured.
“Trying.”
“Good.”
Then she kissed him.
Over the cluttered desk, between marked papers and a mug stained tan with dead coffee, she kissed him like a woman making an argument she intended to win.
Her mouth was warm from the brownie, from the room, from herself; he had one stunned second to register chocolate and winter air and Talia before instinct almost took over.
He kept it leashed just enough to stay careful, just enough that his hand found her jaw rather than the back of her neck, his thumb brushing the soft line below her ear.
She made a sound—small, pleased, dangerous.
The desk edge pressed into his thigh. His taped thumb ached where it rested lightly at her face.
His whole body was aware of the aftermath of the game: sore groin from a hard stop in the second, bruised hip, the drag in his leg.
None of it mattered. All of it made this feel even more real.
Not a fantasy body. His. Used, healing, present.
Talia’s other hand came up to his shoulder. She kissed him deeper, and the restraint he was so proud of frayed at the edges.
“Noah,” she said against his mouth.
Just his name. Warning and invitation both.
He pulled back a fraction, breathing hard. “Too much?”
Her eyes were dark and steady. “No. I wanted to see if you’d ask.”
Something inside him went achingly soft.
He leaned down and kissed her again, slower now, and she met him there with equal intent. Outside, snow kept falling over the empty quad. Inside, papers slid a dangerous inch under his braced hand, and Talia laughed into the kiss when he had to catch a stack before he crushed somebody’s final exam.
“Very romantic,” she said.
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain chaos.”
“That too.”
He nudged the pile back into place and looked at her.
Her lips were a little swollen. One of those escaped strands of hair had stuck against her cheek.
He wanted, with startling force, every ordinary day that might follow this.
Her in ugly campus light. Her irritated over logistics.
Her barefoot in his kitchen stealing brownie batter and criticizing his measuring habits.
Her in arena seats if she chose, in conference hotels, in his apartment, in all the rooms where nobody needed a version of him except the actual one.
“I meant what I said,” he told her quietly.
“About dinner or about not disappearing into usefulness?”
“Yes.”
She reached up and smoothed the front of his sweater where she’d wrinkled it. “Good.”
He covered her hand with his. “I don’t know exactly what this looks like yet.”
“Neither do I.”
The lack of certainty should have scared him. Instead it felt clean.
Talia continued, “But I know what it doesn’t look like.”
He smiled faintly. “You saying that should not be attractive.”
“And yet.”
“And yet,” he echoed.
She let him keep her hand for another second, then slipped free to lean one hip against the desk. “For example, it does not look like me becoming some secret you stash in the spaces around your public life until you feel emotionally organized enough to claim me.”
His expression sobered at once. “No.”
“It does not look like me being dragged onto local sports radio as proof of your growth.”
He actually recoiled. “Jesus, no.”
“It does not look like you deciding what protects me without asking.”
That one landed deepest, because it touched the old bruise under the new skin.
Noah nodded. “Okay.”
Her gaze held his until she was sure he meant it. “And it does look like you letting yourself be loved in ways that are not transactional.”
The room went very still.
He had taken hits harder than that and recovered faster.