Chapter 35
Tallulah POV
The brown reinforced packing tape shrieked against the metal teeth of the dispenser, a sharp, tearing rasp that bounced off the bare plaster walls of my bedroom.
The flat was cold. The oil heater had kicked off at midnight, leaving a thin glaze of frost blooming across the bottom edge of the sash window.
Three cardboard boxes sat on the bare hardwood floor, their seams sealed tight with crosshatched tape. Inside were twenty-two biomechanics textbooks, my digital goniometers, four years of research notes, and the tarnished gold comb my mother had worn on her wedding day.
My bed was stripped down to the stained ticking of the mattress.
I reached into the dark bottom corner of the closet, dragging out an old canvas duffel bag to pack my winter boots.
My knuckles brushed against thick, heavy fleece.
My breath locked behind my breastbone.
Tucked behind my extra flannel sheets was his dark gray Garrison Hockey crewneck—the one he had pulled over my head in his timber bedroom, the one that fell nearly to my knees, the cuffs still turned back three times to fit my wrists.
I pulled it into the gray morning light.
The sensory strike hit my diaphragm with the concussive force of an open check.
The fabric smelled of him. It wasn't faint; it was an overwhelming wave of crushed cedar shavings, sharp friction tape, clean mountain frost, and the warm, musk-sweet heat of his bare collarbone.
A violent, icy spasm seized my stomach, the nausea rising up my throat so fast I had to drop to my knees on the floorboards, dry-heaving into my forearm. A slick, cold sweat broke out across my temples; my ribs ached with a hollow, crushing constriction that made my vision swim with dark static.
I clutched the fleece against my chest, my forehead sinking into the cotton, my teeth biting into my lower lip until I tasted blood.
Don't, my mind whispered, the command flat, hard, and unyielding. You don't get to bleed for him.
I pulled the sweater away from my face.
My fingers were trembling, but I forced them to move with surgical precision. I folded the gray fleece into a tight, flat square, placed it at the bottom of the fourth cardboard box, smoothed the cardboard flaps shut, and dragged a strip of heavy tape across the seam with a single, brutal jerk.
I stood up, wiping the cold sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand.
The ghost was packed. The room was empty.
* * *
The bedroom door clicked open at 5:15 AM.
Sonya Finch stood in the frame, wearing her dark blue team parka, a woolen beanie pulled down over her blonde braids. In her hands were two travel mugs of steaming peppermint tea and the brass key to her Subaru station wagon.
She looked at the four taped boxes on the floor, then at my face.
She didn't ask how I was feeling. She had sat on the edge of the tub on Saturday night, holding a cold flannel against the back of my neck while I emptied my stomach of bile, watching the dark bruises forming on my wrists where Coast’s fingers had clamped down.
Sonya set the tea mugs on the windowsill, stepping into the room.
"The registrar processed the withdrawal at seven o'clock yesterday evening," Sonya said, her voice quiet, steady as a plumb line. "Your status is officially switched to remote practicum. You defend your thesis via video conference on April twenty-fourth."
"And the fellowship?" I asked, my voice flat, stripped of all inflection.
"Corinne Vane placed the tuition remission on administrative freeze pending the completion of the Title IX review," Sonya replied, her blue eyes narrowing with cold, clinical disgust. "Derek Mercer spent all day yesterday parading around the athletic pavilion like a hero.
Thorne tried to tell Hayes the forensic timestamps on the local console were suspicious, but Hayes doesn't care.
They won the semifinal. Coast is playing Cornell for the conference championship on Saturday. The university isn't rocking the boat."
A dry, bitter ache pulled at the back of my throat, but my jaw remained locked.
"I don't care about the conference championship," I whispered.
Sonya looked down at my hands.
My coat was unbuttoned, my right palm resting flat, motionless, and heavy over the denim covering my lower abdomen.
Sonya’s gaze lingered on the placement of my fingers.
She was a data analyst; she had tracked my heart rate, my sleep telemetry, and my sudden aversion to caffeine for three weeks.
She saw the pale translucence of my cheekbones, the faint violet shadows beneath my lashes, and the protective, unyielding stillness in my posture.
She didn't demand an answer. She didn't say the word out loud.
She simply stepped forward, lifted the heaviest cardboard box off the floor with an easy, athletic pull, and braced it against her hip.
"My car is parked in the alley behind the pharmacy," Sonya said, her voice dropping into a register that sounded like iron closing around a perimeter.
"I am driving you sixty-four miles south to your mother's house in Saratoga.
If Coast Stuart calls my phone, I will block his number.
If Kip Callahan shows up at my analytics desk, I will call campus security.
Nobody from that arena will ever get your address. "
She looked straight into my eyes, her jaw set with an immovable, fierce loyalty that made my throat tighten with sudden, overwhelming relief.
"You aren't disposable, Lu," Sonya whispered. "And you aren't carrying this alone."
A single, ragged breath slipped past my lips, but I didn't cry.
The weeping student who had begged in an arena underpass had burned away on Saturday night.
I reached down, picking up the two smaller boxes, resting the cardboard edges against my ribs.
Beneath my layers, deep within the muscle of my pelvis, the dragging warmth hummed with a quiet, undeniable beat.
I had a life to protect now. A life that had nothing to do with Boston contracts, or athletic director grievances, or an enforcer who chose his own trauma over my truth.
"Let's go," I said.
* * *
The Adirondack dawn was gray, freezing, and choked with a low-hanging mountain mist that blurred the pines along Route 73 South.
The station wagon's tires hummed against the salt-caked asphalt, the heater blowing a dry, lukewarm draft against my shins.
I looked into the side-view mirror.
The jagged roofline of the Olympic village, the brick chimneys of the Garrison campus, and the hulking, steel-riveted outline of The Iron Foundry shrank into the distance, dissolving slowly into the whiteout fog until the entire skyline vanished from sight.
I pulled my cracked smartphone from the pocket of my canvas coat.
The screen lit up with sixteen notifications: eleven missed calls from Kip Callahan, four frantic texts from Director Thorne asking for my remote contact information, and two automated calendar alerts from the biomechanics department.
From Coast Stuart, there was nothing.
Not a call. Not a text. Not a single word.
He had closed the door, thrown the deadbolt, and buried me beneath the ice.
My thumbs moved across the glass with mechanical speed.
I navigated to the network settings, selected the campus cellular profile, and hit DELETE.
Then I reached into the pocket of my coat, pulled out a metal safety pin, and popped the SIM tray from the side of the aluminum chassis.
I took the tiny gold-and-white plastic card between my index finger and thumb.
With a single, deliberate squeeze of my knuckles, I snapped the card in half.
The plastic cracked with a muted, dry pop. I dropped the two pieces into the empty cardboard coffee cup resting in the console between our seats, letting the digital cord sever into dust.
The phone went dead.
I leaned my temple against the cold glass of the passenger window, feeling the vibration of the highway hum through my cheekbone into my skull.
I unzipped the bottom three inches of my heavy olive coat.
I slid both hands beneath the wool of my sweater, flattening my bare palms over the soft, rounded swell of my lower abdomen.
The nausea was still there, sitting low in my throat like a cold anchor, but beneath my palms, the warmth was absolute. Steady. Living.
Coast had wanted to balance his brother’s ledger. He had wanted to punish himself until there was nothing left to bleed.
He would never touch this child.
Arthur Cross would never stand over this baby with a hockey stick.
I closed my eyes against the rushing white pines, letting the heavy, rhythmic thud of my heart fill the silence of the car, and whispered a soft, unbreakable vow into the cold glass:
"It's just you and me now. I will protect you."