Page 147 of Boiling Point
I shook my head. “Not at all.”
He glanced at the colonnade, running his thumb over the edge of his wedding band. “When your name didn’t show up on the fall roster, I figured you’d transferred. Don’t blame you. A lot of students vanish after a mess like this.”
“Are you here to scold me for bailing?” I asked, bracing for it.
“God, no.” He looked at me sideways. “I’m here to tell you I admire the hell out of you. I mean that. It takes guts to come forward like you did.”
I feigned nonchalance, pawing at my cuticles. “I just told the truth. Not that heroic, really.”
He shook his head, smile deepening. “Most people think the truth is like a fire alarm—loud, urgent, impossible to ignore. But more often, it’s a smoke detector. Quiet at first, easy to unplug if you don’t want to hear it. You could have kept quiet. Stayed out of the line of fire. Let the rumors do their damage. But you didn’t.” He caught my gaze and held it. “In twenty-plus years at this school, I can count on one hand the number of people who’d have the integrity to do what you did.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I said the only thing that came to mind. “It wasn’t for me.”
“I know.” He let the silence expand, long enough to feel intentional. “So, what’s next for you?”
“Honestly, it depends on what options Dr. Hawthorne has after…all this.” I paused, then corrected myself. “Cal.” I squinted against the sun. “We’re still figuring it out. But I’ve got a long list of engineering programs I’m considering.”
He nodded, listening the way a tree listens—patient, unmoving, collecting the words deep in its rings. “I remember your dad—good man,” he said, his voice gentle and even, as though we’d been sitting together like this my whole life.
I brushed a thumb across my knee. “From when he was a student here?”
He snorted. “Oh, heck no. I’m not that old.” He grinned, then let it settle into something softer. “Your dad was an active alum, though. When I first got started at Page, he was everywhere—alumni council, Greek advisory board, you name it. He was insanely dedicated. Always the first to show up, last to leave. Took a real pride in this place. In legacy.” He paused, looking up at the sky. “He used to bring you to campus when you were knee high. I remember you tearing around the quad like your shoes were on fire.”
I laughed, but it felt strange.
“And I was real sorry to hear he’d passed.”
The words hit somewhere below my sternum. My eyes burned, and I looked away, feigning interest in the warped grid of bricks on the colonnade floor.
He waited, and the silence gave his words a soft landing. “He’d be proud of you, Gabrielle.”
I swallowed. My throat had gone tight. “Thank you,” I rasped. It was all I could manage.
He turned to me, elbows braced on his knees. “You’ll land on your feet. I’ve seen more than enough to know that.” He glanced at the wall of names. “But just because you’re leaving Page doesn’t mean you’re not a part of it. You’re in the fabric here, whether you like it or not.” He smiled, the lines around his mouth deepening. “You can’t get rid of us that easily.”
The unexpected comfort of it made my throat burn. I managed a nod, not trusting myself to speak.
He fished a business card from his shirt pocket, the motion oddly ceremonial, and handed it to me. It was thick, textured, with the college crest stamped in crimson and gold at the top. He’d written his personal cell number at the bottom. “If you ever need anything—a recommendation, reference, someone to trash-talk the Ivy Leagues with—let me know.” He winked, then smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “I mean it. Don’t be a stranger, okay?”
“I won’t,” I said, blinking back a few stray tears. “And thank you.”
Chapter 53
Callum
The corridor was so silent I could hear my pulse beating in my ears. The parquet floor, an artifact of midcentury public architecture, radiated a sterility that crept through the soles of my shoes and into my bones. On the wall across from me, a framed photograph of this very building from a hundred years ago stared back.
No students wandered these halls in July, save for the odd lost soul searching for an open admin office to sign away their future debt. Even most of the faculty and staff had cleared out on the eve of a holiday weekend.
I glanced at my watch. 9:19. They’d been in there for twenty minutes. I tried to reconstruct the previous hour—every gesture, every inflection that might have registered as uncooperative or, worse, insincere. Not that it mattered. I spun the engraved cufflink on my left wrist.
The conference room door creaked open, just enough for the recording secretary to peek through. “You can come back in now, Dr. Hawthorne.”
I stood, straightened my jacket, and made a show of buttoning the cuff that I had undone. The space was mercilessly bright—fluorescents throwing no shadow, glass windowsframing the car park’s shimmering asphalt. The arrangement was deliberate, almost adversarial—a three-member panel on one side, the secretary at the end, her hands poised above the keyboard. And on my side, a single chair—empty, waiting.
Dr. Monroe sat at the center. Her eyes, soft but unsparing, gave away nothing. The other two—Dr. Huber from the maths department and the new Vice President of Student Affairs, an import from Emory—presented a closed front, their arms folded, pens poised, lips pressed into flat, bureaucratic lines.
I took my seat, carefully smoothing my tie and keeping my hands visible on the table. With the faintest nod from the chair, the secretary began typing.
