Page 31 of What We Don't Say: Part Two

Mara already knows what happened in the motel. She saw the order, the dead cards, the money I wouldn’t touch, and the shape I was in when I still believed Sloane had asked the police to keep me away. What she doesn’t know is how much worse the silence has gotten since then, or about the messages that have appeared on my new phone wearing familiar names. I could tell her, but the old terror moves through me before I can start: if I pull her any closer, the damage might learn her name too.

“Don’t get in trouble for me,” I say.

“That’s a ridiculous thing to ask someone who already hid your mug from facilities.” Mara exhales, but there’s no humor in it, only tenderness trying to survive policy. “Send me your new number when you can. From a personal email if you don’t want it in the campus system. Or don’t, and I’ll keep calling this office like a menace. But please let someone know where you are when you’re not okay.”

I look at the vending-machine crackers, the pill bottle, the phone full of ghosts, and the hotel key card sitting beside my keyboard. “There are people here,” I say carefully. “They’re nice.”

Mara hears what I don’t say. “Nice isn’t the same as yours.”

My eyes burn. “I’m not sure I have those anymore.”

She goes silent, and I regret the sentence the moment it leaves me. It’s too honest for a campus line. Too needy. Too close to the part of me that still wakes in the hotel reaching for a body that isn’t there and then lies still until the room stops spinning.

“You have me,” Mara says at last. “Even if all I can do right now is keep your mug safe and make legal hate me.”

I press my lips together until the split in my control stops widening. “Send me your personal email again. I’ll send the new number tonight.”

“Okay.” She sounds relieved enough that I feel cruel for making her wait this long. “Eat something that isn’t from a vending machine, all right? I’m saying that with love and also because I can hear plastic crinkling, and I know your stress habits.”

I glance down. My hand has crushed the peanut butter cracker wrapper into a tight little ball without me noticing. The trail mix is still on the floor near my chair, little raisins and almonds scattered across the industrial carpet like evidence of a very sad crime scene.

“I’ll eat,” I say.

When we hang up, the office becomes so quiet that the silence feels physical. The receiver settles into its cradle with a small click. The computer screen has gone dark, reflecting my face back at me in the black glass. I look tired in a way concealer can’t negotiate with. My hands are shaking, the tremor small but visible now that I’m looking. I flatten both palms on the desk until the papers beneath them stop rustling.

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 trailmix 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 wheresomeone 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.”