Chapter 4

My strategy for the days between Thursday and Tuesday was simple: existing at the minimum viable level of contact.

No responses to Blackridge_A beyond single-word acknowledgments. No lingering after the calculus session he covered on Friday. No reading the forum thread, which had by now accumulated sixty-three pages and a dedicated fan account that I was absolutely not following.

It was a good strategy. Sensible. Self-preserving.

It lasted until Saturday, when my brother called and said he had food, which were the only two conditions required for me to drive forty minutes across the city.

Marcus fed me pasta and complained about his caseload and told me, with the offhand casualness of someone dropping a grenade into a conversation, that an old friend had recently moved to the area.

"You might actually know him," he said, handing me a dish to dry. "He's faculty at Westmoor."

I set the dish down carefully. "Faculty."

"Went to school with me. Smart guy. Bit intense, but he grows on you." Marcus glanced over. "I told him you transferred there. He said he'd look out for you."

The dish was very dry. It required no further attention. I gave it my complete focus anyway.

"What's his name?" I asked.

"Drake. Callum Drake." He turned back to the sink. "You know him?"

"Heard the name," I said.

Bear needed a walk. This was a fact I deployed twelve minutes later with the decisive energy of someone who had just identified an exit route and intended to use it before Marcus registered my expression and started asking questions.

The complex trail ran west through a strip of maintained parkland, catching the last of the evening light through the tree line. Bear surged ahead on his leash, nose down, entirely unconcerned with my situation.

I was doing the mental arithmetic of everything I should have anticipated and hadn't — of course Marcus knew him, of course they were friends, of course Drake had said he'd look out for me, which meant he'd known who I was before I ever walked into that lecture hall — when Bear's head came up.

Tail already moving. The specific body language of a dog who has recognized someone.

I turned around.

Callum Drake was on the path behind me, coffee cup in one hand, dressed down in a way that managed to look deliberate anyway — dark jacket, no tie, the silver frames catching the low light. He looked mildly, genuinely surprised for approximately one second before his expression settled back into its default composure.

"Marcus didn't mention you'd be visiting," he said.

"Marcus didn't mention you lived here," I said.

Bear had already crossed the distance between us and was pressing his enormous head against Drake's free hand with the absolute shamelessness of a dog who recognized no concept of professional boundaries. Drake looked down at him, then back up at me.

"He's yours," he said. Not a question.

"Bear. Yes."

He crouched without self-consciousness, let Bear sniff his knuckles properly before touching him, then scratched behind his ears with what appeared to be genuine attention. Bear made a sound of profound personal satisfaction.

Traitor, I thought.

Drake stood. The evening light was doing something structurally unfair to the angles of his face, and I was aware — with the specific clarity that comes from sleep deprivation and depleted defenses — that I had nothing left to hide behind.

"Marcus sent me a photo of this dog," Drake said. "About five weeks ago."

I went still.

"Brown and white patch over the left ear," he continued. "You said he was your emotional support animal and you were aware he was enormous."

Five weeks ago. I had sent that exact message, with that exact photo, to Blackridge_A.

The path was empty in both directions. The light was going golden. My brother was forty meters away making coffee.

"You knew," I said. "Before the lecture."

"I had a strong suspicion." A pause. "Your brother talks about you. Constantly, and in significant detail. By the time you walked into my seminar, I already knew your degree, your dog, and the fact that you have extremely strong opinions about northern territorial boundary disputes." The almost-smile. "You never mentioned the opinions in our messages."

"You never asked."

"I'm asking now."

The air between us had taken on that particular quality — everything said and unsaid occupying the same space, pressing against each other. My wolf, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since the trail, registered something low and warm that I actively chose not to examine.

"We grew up in the same neighborhood," Drake said. "Marcus and I. You were younger — you probably don't remember."

I searched for it and found something: a summer, a basketball hoop in a driveway, an older boy who'd once retrieved Bear's predecessor from the neighbor's yard without being asked.

"Vaguely," I said.

He looked at me for a moment. "Strictly speaking, that makes us something closer to childhood acquaintances than strangers."

"Strictly speaking," I said carefully, "you're still my professor."

"I'm aware." He looked down at Bear, who was leaning companionably against his leg. "I've been aware of that since Thursday."

The light dropped another degree. Somewhere up the path, a door opened and closed.

"Tuesday," he said finally. "My office. Bring whatever you have on the assignment."

"You already texted me that."

"I know." He looked at me directly. "I wanted to say it in person."

He said a quiet goodbye to Bear — who pressed into his hand one final time with shameless affection — and then turned and walked back up the path without looking back.

I stood on the trail until his footsteps faded.

Then I looked down at my phone.

Blackridge_A: Tuesday. 4pm. Don't bring Jade.

A pause.

Blackridge_A: Also — your brother just texted me. He wants to know why you left so fast.

Blackridge_A: I told him Bear needed air.

Blackridge_A: He said, and I quote: "she only does that when she's flustered."

Blackridge_A: Is that true, Nina?

I stared at the screen for a long moment.

Then I put my phone in my pocket and walked back toward the apartment, and did not answer, and thought about Tuesday and a closed office door and the fact that Callum Drake had known who I was from the very beginning.

And had shown up to that lecture hall anyway.