Chapter 35
Nadia POV
The serrated teeth of the plastic tape gun screamed against the cardboard flaps, a sharp, violent screech that echoed off the bare plaster walls of my bedroom.
Five-thirty on Monday morning.
Through the uncurtained double-hung window, the streetlamps along the avenue cast pale, sickly rectangles of yellow light across the stripped pine floorboards.
A heavy, freezing mist hung over Houghton, so dense it swallowed the dark pines and the brick smokestacks of the university heating plant in a featureless gray void.
I smoothed the heavy brown packing tape down with the heel of my hand, pressing the adhesive into the seam until the cardboard groaned beneath my knuckles.
Four boxes.
That was what four years of college narrowed down to when the walls came down. Two boxes of biomechanics textbooks and research journals. One box of winter clothes. One box of kitchen mugs and the small desktop centrifuge Dr. Morris had loaned me for field assays.
A sudden, cold heave clenched the base of my throat.
My vision swam, dark spots dancing across the pale cardboard as a sour, metallic wash of morning nausea flooded the back of my mouth.
I dropped to my knees on the bare floor, resting both palms flat against the cold wood, hanging my head between my shoulders. I dragged in three slow, deliberate breaths through my nose, fighting the convulsion in my stomach until the bile receded down my esophagus.
Slowly, involuntarily, my right hand left the floorboards.
My fingers slid beneath the hem of my heavy wool sweater, my palm resting flat and still over the slight, hidden warmth of my lower abdomen.
The skin there was smooth, unchanged to the touch. But beneath my palm, the truth lived in my bloodstream—an unshakeable, delicate presence that anchored my ribs every time the world threatened to spin off its axis.
Stay down, I whispered silently to the nausea. I've got you. Just stay down.
The dizziness ebbed, leaving behind a leaden, bone-deep exhaustion that made my eyelids heavy.
I pushed myself upright, intending to grab my coat from the closet, when my boot caught on the corner of an unsealed plastic bin beneath the hanging rod.
Inside lay a single piece of fabric.
Killian’s gray athletic hoodie.
The heavy fleece from his sophomore season, with BARROW HOCKEY printed across the chest in cracked navy ink. The one he had pulled over my head by the woodstove when my feet were blue from the storm.
I reached down with trembling fingers, lifting the fabric into the pale light.
The scent rose instantly from the fleece, hitting my sinuses like an open-ice hit. Crushed cedar needles. Friction wax. Cold iron. And the deep, unyielding warmth of his skin that had once felt like an impenetrable fortress around my life.
My windpipe seized, the air refusing to enter my lungs.
A hot, stinging wave of tears blurred my sight, burning like acid behind my eyelids.
For three agonizing seconds, the memory of his ruined, bleeding face in the arena underpass tore through my sternum—the way his dark eyes had looked at me with dead, murderous contempt, the way he had kicked my words into the dirt and told me I was the biggest mistake of his life.
A ragged, choked sound caught in my throat.
My fingers knotted into the thick gray fleece, pulling it toward my chest for a single, broken heartbeat.
Then, my jaw locked.
The grief in my veins didn't dissolve; it froze, hardening into cold, unyielding iron.
He had made his choice. He had stood in that tunnel, wrapped in his jersey, and decided that his three-year rot was safer than the truth. He had looked at me and chosen to believe I was a parasite who put a price tag on his soul.
I was not going to drown in his ghost.
I folded the heavy gray hoodie with sharp, clinical precision, pressing the fleece down into the center of the box between two kinesiology binders. I pulled the brown tape across the flaps with a savage screech, sealing the cardboard shut, burying the last trace of Killian Castaneda in the dark.
* * *
The front door of the apartment opened with a soft click of the lock, followed by the muffled thud of rubber snow boots on the entryway rug.
Siobhan walked into the living room, a heavy set of car keys jingling in her gloved hand, carrying two cardboard travel cups of hot peppermint tea.
She wore her dark blue Barrow soccer parka, her dark hair tucked beneath a knit beanie, her green eyes sharp and watchful as they tracked the four taped boxes stacked by the door.
She set the tea cups on the kitchen counter and looked at me.
She didn't ask how I was doing. She didn't drop hollow platitudes about time healing wounds. She had played ninety minutes of varsity soccer with fractured fingers; she understood what bleeding looked like.
"The Subaru is running," Siobhan said, her voice low and steady in the quiet apartment. "The heat is on, and the snow chains are on the rear tires. We have a clear window through the pass until noon."
I picked up the smaller box of books, my arms trembling faintly under the weight as I hoisted it against my hip. "Did you talk to Morris?"
"At seven this morning," Siobhan replied, stepping forward and taking the heavy box straight out of my grip before I could protest. She hoisted it onto her shoulder with effortless athletic strength.
"Your remote capstone study is officially logged with the dean's office.
You are finishing your data analysis independently from an off-campus affiliate.
Dr. Morris approved the transfer of your research credit to the Duluth clinic foundation. "
My chest expanded on a thin, fragile breath of relief. "And Palmer?"
Siobhan’s mouth hardened into a thin, lethal slit. "Palmer doesn't know where the remote paperwork is filed. And if Martin Cole or anyone else from that athletic complex comes asking about your address, I'll introduce their teeth to my cleats."
She paused in the doorway, her gaze dropping with narrow, perceptive focus to my left hand.
Without realizing it, my fingers were curled flat over my lower stomach, resting through the wool of my coat in that same instinctual, protective posture.
Siobhan didn't say a word. She looked from my hand back up to my face, taking in the waxy pallor of my cheeks and the stubborn, fierce stillness in my eyes. A flicker of profound, quiet understanding passed between us—a silent pact that required zero syllables.
"The cabin is ready," Siobhan said softly. "My aunt left the firewood stacked on the porch, and the propane tank was filled on Friday. It's six miles outside Duluth, right on the tree line. No reporters. No scouts. No hockey players."
"Thank you," I whispered, the words thick with a gratitude that made my throat ache.
"Don't thank me," she said, turning toward the stairs. "Grab the satchel. Let's get you home."
* * *
The old Subaru hatchback rattled as its tires hit the washboard ice of US-41 South, climbing the winding granite ridge away from Houghton.
The campus skyline—the brick clocktower, the steep cedar roof of The Pit, the twin radio masts on the bluffs—faded into the gray, swirling mist in the passenger side mirror.
Within ten miles, the university had vanished, swallowed by the endless expanse of black spruce and white snow that lined the highway toward the Minnesota border.
The heater blew a steady stream of dry, warm air against my boots, humming over the drone of the radial tires.
I reached into my coat pocket, pulling out my phone.
The screen lit up with the stark, blue-white glare of the lock display.
Twelve unread emails from the athletic department compliance liaison. Two voicemails from Derrick Palmer’s administrative assistant.
From Killian, there was only the dead, frozen silence of the grave.
He hadn't called. He hadn't texted. He was probably sitting in the team video room right now, holding his regional championship trophy, watching highlights of his four-to-one victory over Northland State, convinced that he had purged a traitor from his perimeter.
A sharp, familiar pain pinched deep behind my breastbone, but my hand didn't shake.
I tapped the screen.
I selected his contact card—Killian. The number I had dialed during the blizzard, the number that had lit up my screen with low, gravelly orders to stay inside and wait for his truck.
I hit Block Contact.
Then I scrolled through our message history—the late-night logistical texts that had slowly dissolved into stolen addresses, grocery lists, and quiet reminders to eat—and hit Delete Thread.
I slid the plastic tray from the side of the phone with the tip of an earring, popped the tiny white SIM card out, and snapped the plastic chip clean in half between my thumb and forefinger.
I dropped the broken pieces into the bottom of my satchel.
The last digital line between me and Barrow University was severed.
I leaned my temple against the cold glass of the passenger window, looking out at the frozen hemlocks rushing past in a blur of dark green and white.
My hands came together in my lap. Both palms settled flat, firm, and unyielding over the slight, hidden warmth of my lower abdomen, cupping the tiny life sheltered beneath the thick knit of my sweater.
The silence inside the car was dense, absolute, and final.
I didn't have a fellowship stipend anymore. I didn't have an enforcer standing between me and the wind. I was heading into the freezing Minnesota woods with four cardboard boxes, an unfinished capstone, and a child whose father believed I was poison.
A long, slow breath filled my lungs, steadying the rhythm of my heart until my pulse slowed to a calm, stubborn beat.
"It's just you and me now," I whispered against the cold glass, the words a sacred, unbreakable vow that settled into the deepest bedrock of my soul. "And I will build you a whole world before I ever let anyone make you feel small."
The car crested the ridge, descending into the whiteout, and the past was erased in the snow.