12. Calliope
Calliope
A knock comes at my open door and I look up too fast, and my shoulder answers with a hot twist of pain.
Dash Rivera stands in the hallway with a canvas lunch bag in one hand and his coat over his arm.
He doesn't step into my office right away. That has become one of the ways I know he’s paying attention.
He stops at thresholds and lets me decide whether the room changes.
“You still here?” he asks, then his gaze drops to the crackers, the water bottle, the pill bottle I forgot to put away, and the trail mix on the floor. His face doesn't change much, but something in his body settles into decision. “Come with me.”
I reach for the pill bottle and push it into the drawer before I answer. “I still have work.”
“You have emails that’ll keep ruining themselves without supervision until morning.
” He lifts the canvas bag a little, not enough to make it an offering, just enough to explain why he's there.
“Faculty lounge. Ten minutes. You can bring the laptop if pretending this is productivity makes it easier.”
“I don’t need dinner.”
He looks at the crushed wrapper in my hand, then at the floor beside my chair. “I didn’t ask what you needed.”
That should irritate me. A month ago, it might have.
Tonight, the steadiness of it hits a place in me that has been bracing since Mara said active investigation.
Dash isn’t smiling. He isn’t making a performance out of concern.
He simply stands in my doorway as if my bad choices with vending machines aren't a moral failing, only a problem with an obvious next step.
I close the laptop because leaving it open feels like inviting old messages to keep breathing in the room. “Ten minutes,” I say, and my voice is steadier than my hands.
Dash waits while I lock the office. He doesn't comment when I check the handle twice.
He only turns down the hall toward the faculty lounge, walking at a pace that lets me keep up without feeling escorted.
The building has emptied around us, and our footsteps sound too loud over the tile.
I tuck my shaking hands into the sleeves of my cardigan and tell myself the warmth in my chest is from the medication, from exhaustion, from anything except the fact that an Alpha saw me unraveling and brought food instead of questions.
The faculty lounge is nicer than the one at Briarwick, with a long table, mismatched chairs, a microwave that doesn’t smell like ancient soup, and a little sofa under the window where someone has abandoned a knitted throw.
Dash sets the canvas bag on the table and starts unpacking containers with the calm efficiency of someone who has done this too many times to make it ceremonial.
Rice. Roasted vegetables. Chicken in a sauce that smells like garlic and lemon.
A small container of sliced fruit. Real food, warm enough that steam curls under the fluorescent lights.
“You don’t have to bring me dinner every night,” I say, because I’ve been meaning to say it for four nights and every version sounded worse inside my head.
Dash doesn’t look up from setting out the forks. “I know.”
“I mean it.” I sit because standing near food while pretending I’m not hungry is becoming embarrassing. “I appreciate it, but you’re my department chair. Or interim department chair. Or whatever the official title is when someone inherits a disaster hire with two suitcases and a hotel key.”
His hand pauses on the lid of the rice container, but he doesn't chase the opening I accidentally gave him. “Interim chair works. Disaster hire does not.”
“I was making a joke,” I say, though it didn’t feel like one in my mouth.
“I know.” He opens the container, and the smell rises stronger, warm enough to make my stomach clench with interest and nerves at once. “I make enough for a few meals. Bringing you some keeps me from eating the same thing six times in a row.”
My hand stills around the plastic fork. I look at the containers again, at the neat portions and the way the vegetables are cut unevenly in a human kitchen, not pulled from catering trays. “You made this?”
Dash finally looks at me, one brow lifting slightly. “Yeah.”
I don’t know why that moves through me the way it does.
Maybe because I assumed faculty lounges and takeout menus and administrative kindness, not a pan in someone’s kitchen, not enough food made with the expectation of leftovers and then deliberately portioned into a container with my name never written on it.
The warmth is small, but it spreads before I can stop it, touching places I have kept cold on purpose.
I look down at the plate he sets in front of me. It is too soon for my heart to soften around another Alpha’s care. Sloane’s bite still aches in my shoulder when I sit down across from Dash.
“It smells good,” I say, because that is safer than thank you.
Dash sits across from me, leaving the corner of the table between us instead of taking the chair at my side. “It reheats fine. The vegetables get softer than I want, but that’s the price of not eating over the stove like a raccoon.”
I glance up at him, suspicious of the almost-humor, but he's already taking a bite of his own food, eyes lowered to his plate like he has no intention of watching whether I perform gratitude correctly.
That makes it easier to pick up my fork.
The first bite is too much and exactly enough.
My body reacts with a humiliating rush of relief, stomach tightening around real food after a day of coffee and crackers and medication.
Dash gives me three bites before he speaks again. “How’s the hotel?”
“Nice.” The answer comes automatically, polished smooth by two weeks of people asking whether the university accommodations are acceptable.
“It’s clean. Close enough. There’s a shuttle if I don’t want to drive, and the front desk people are very committed to calling me Doctor Monroe, which makes me feel like I’m impersonating someone with better luggage. ”
“Better luggage is overrated.”
“My suitcase wheel disagrees.” I take another bite, then reach for the water he has set near my plate.
“The hotel is fine. I think that’s the problem.
It’s too fine to complain about and too temporary to relax in.
There’s art on the walls that looks like it came with the building, and the kitchenette has two pans, both of which feel judgmental. ”
Dash listens like this is a real answer, not small talk dressed in acceptable clothing. “Have you looked at places yet?”
“A little. I opened five listings and closed all of them.” I push a grain of rice around my plate, annoyed by the confession even though it barely counts as one.
“Everything wants me to decide what kind of life I’m having here.
Six-month lease. Twelve-month lease. Furnished.
Unfurnished. Parking included. No pets. Laundry in building.
It all seems normal until I’m supposed to imagine myself inside it. ”
He nods once, not with pity. “That can take time.”
“I don’t know how much time I’m supposed to need.
” The words come out quieter than I mean them to, and I make myself take another bite so I don't apologize for saying them. “Everyone here has been kind. You’ve been kind. The students seem nice. One of them asked today whether office hours were for emergencies or ‘academic vibes,’ and I managed not to stare at her like she was speaking another language.”
Dash’s mouth almost curves. “That sounds like Nina. She’ll be in your office twice a week once she figures out you answer emails like a person.”
“I answer emails like someone afraid of being misunderstood.”
The almost-smile leaves his face. He doesn't ask the question waiting between us. He only reaches for the fruit container and slides it closer to the middle of the table. “That’s exhausting.”
The simplicity of it nearly cracks me more than Mara’s call did. I look down at my plate, blinking too fast, and stab a piece of roasted carrot with more force than necessary. “I’m good at exhausting.”
“I’ve noticed.”
I should dislike that he says it. Instead, something in me loosens by a single thread. “Is that your official chair assessment?”
“My official chair assessment is that you’re overprepared, underfed, and very good with students who think they’re hiding panic better than they are.
” He takes a sip of water and gives me room to sit with that before he adds, “My unofficial assessment is that you don’t have to earn dinner by being impressive all day. ”
My hand tightens around the fork. The words should be too much.
They almost are. But Dash’s voice stays even, his body still on his side of the table, the food between us instead of his concern.
He doesn’t reach across. He doesn’t soften his tone into something that would make me feel managed.
He lets the sentence sit there like a chair I can choose not to take.
“I had a friend call earlier,” I say, and the shift away from myself isn't subtle. Dash accepts it anyway, which makes me trust him a fraction more. “From my old campus. She said there are whispers and paperwork and lawyers. Everyone’s been told not to talk unless it’s to the police because there’s an active investigation. ”
His gaze sharpens, but he keeps his hands around his water bottle. “Has anyone official contacted you?”
“No.” I say it carefully, feeling the shape of the word before I let it go.
“Not here. Not through the new number. Not through campus, unless something went somewhere I haven’t seen.
Mara said no one’s talked to her either.
She tried to offer information and got handed policy until she stopped being a person and became a problem. ”
Dash looks toward the dark window, where the lounge reflects us back in dim shapes. “That’s a lot to carry while you’re trying to start classes.”
I almost laugh. It sits in my throat and turns into something else. “The classes might be the only part that makes sense.”
“What are you teaching tomorrow?”
“Intro ethics seminar in the morning. Literature and moral injury in the afternoon.” I stop, then huff out a tired breath because the universe has developed a cruel sense of curriculum. “I didn’t choose the schedule.”
“No,” he says, and the quiet agreement has weight. “I imagine you didn’t.”
For a while, we eat without speaking. It isn’t awkward.
That surprises me enough that I notice it several times.
Dash doesn’t fill every open space, and he doesn’t make silence into a test. The faculty lounge hums around us with the refrigerator in the corner and the building vents pushing warm air through old ducts.
My phone stays facedown beside my plate.
The old messages remain inside it, waiting with names that used to mean home.
For ten minutes, they don't get to be the loudest thing in the room.
I eat half the plate before my body remembers it is suspicious of comfort.
My stomach tightens, and the bite in my shoulder gives a dull pulse that has me setting the fork down.
Dash notices, because he notices too much, but he only reaches into the canvas bag and pulls out a second bottle of water.
“Medication time?” he asks, and the lack of drama in the question keeps me from flinching.
“Already took it.” I roll my shoulder carefully, hating the way his eyes track the motion and the way he looks away once he has the information. “It gets irritated when I’m tired.”
He nods. “Then we’ll wrap this up before the building gets colder.”
“You really don’t have to keep doing this,” I say again, softer this time. The words mean dinner. They mean noticing. They mean being the person at the doorway when my hands are shaking. They mean all the things I can't let them mean yet.
Dash closes one of the containers and leaves the fruit open between us. “I know.”
This time, I don’t argue. I take one slice of apple because he put it there and because my body has remembered hunger, and because saying no to every offered thing has not made me safer. It has only made me alone in cleaner rooms.
After dinner, Dash packs the leftovers into two containers and gives me one without ceremony. “For the hotel fridge,” he says as I accept it. “Not instead of grocery shopping. Alongside it.”
“I’m going tomorrow.”
“Sure,” he says, not disbelieving me exactly, but not insulting either of us by pretending the promise is new.
“I am.” I tuck the container against my chest, feeling the warmth seep through plastic into my cardigan. “I need coffee creamer. And something green that isn’t an herb garnish.”
“That’s a workable start.”
We turn off the lounge lights, and the hallway feels different when we step into it.
Empty, but not as hollow. My office door waits at the end with my borrowed name taped to it, and for once I don’t want to go back inside and keep proving I can work until I disappear.
Dash walks me there so I can grab my bag, then waits while I check that the computer is asleep, the pill bottle is zipped away, and my new phone is in the side pocket where I can feel it if I need to.
At the building exit, he stops before the automatic doors and looks out toward the staff lot. “Do you want me to walk you to your car?”
The question is simple. No pressure tucked under it.
No insult hidden inside the assumption that I might want company across a dark parking lot.
I think of the hotel room with its white pillows and clean kitchenette, the old messages loaded into a new phone, Mara’s voice saying nice isn’t the same as yours.
I think of Sloane’s bite aching under my sweater and Idris’ absence sitting somewhere behind it, sharp enough that any warmth from another Alpha feels like stepping over a line I can't see.
Then I look at Dash holding his coat over one arm, standing far enough away that my answer has room.
“Yes,” I say.
He nods and pushes the door open, letting the cold air move in first. We walk to my car under the campus lights without touching. The leftover container is warm against my chest, my hands are steadier than they were an hour ago, and for the length of the sidewalk, I let that be enough.