Three days passed before the email arrived.
Theo found it waiting for him at 6:02 a.m., when the campus was still draped in a thin gray veil, the world not yet awake enough to intrude on his thoughts. He was sitting in the common room of his dorm, a mug of instant coffee cooling on the windowsill, legs folded under him on the worn couch, the hum of the refrigerator the only sound.
The subject line struck him like a tap on the shoulder in a dark room:
UNIVERSITY CONDUCT REVIEW DECISION – PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
His breath stayed steady, though his pulse did not. He clicked.
The email was too brief.
No formal disciplinary action.Protest-related warnings remain on record.The nature of your relationship with Officer Delaney does not violate current policy.However, it is advised that all personal associations with external authority figures be conducted with discretion to avoid perceived conflicts of interest.
Theo read it twice. Then a third time, as if the wording might rearrange itself into something less hollow. The words did not blink or shift. They sat there: neutral, clinical, cutting.
It hadn't cost them much to decide this.
He exhaled and rubbed his thumb over his jaw, unshaven, as he stared out the common room window. The sunrise was muted, clouds heavy and low. A few bicycles lined the rack below, slick with dew. The world was moving on while something inside him calcified.
Perceived.
That was the word that stayed lodged in his throat. That cowardly modifier. As if the university had no responsibility, only the optics of responsibility. As if the whispers hadn't mattered, but the fact that people whispered did.
They hadn't punished him. But they had marked him. Stamped a code into his file. Left a thin layer of dust only the careful would notice, but everyone would know was there.
By 7 a.m., students began to stir. The mechanical rhythm of shower pipes knocking through the walls, muted voices behind thin dorm doors. Theo closed his laptop and let it sit beside him, unopened.
For a while, he just sat in the growing hum.
He texted Mara at 8:13:
Cleared.
Nothing else. She would understand the weight behind the word.
They met later that afternoon at the overpass just outside campus—the place no one ever seemed to walk, as if the university had collectively decided it belonged to nobody. Theo leaned against the rusted metal guardrail, watching cars streak beneath him like schools of fish under glass.
Mara arrived without fanfare, her boots crunching against the gravel shoulder. She didn't speak right away, only joined him at the railing, her leather jacket zipped against the chill.
"They used the word 'discretion,'" Theo said. His voice was flat, like he was reporting the weather.
Mara nodded. "They always do."
"It's their way of saying: don't make us look again."
Her eyes remained forward, following the blur of cars below. "It's a warning dressed as advice. They want you to behave as though you're under probation without giving you the dignity of actually calling it that."
Theo let out a breath through his nose, half amusement, half bitterness. "No apology. No acknowledgment that half the rumors were total bullshit. Just: we won't kick you out, but we'll keep our eyes open."
"They don't need truth. They need plausible deniability."
He looked sideways at her. "I'm sorry you got pulled into it."
"You didn't pull me," she said, her tone calm but sharp. "They did. I knew what walking beside you would mean."
They stood there for a while, both staring at the river of headlights. The wind was stronger up here, snapping at Mara's hair and tugging at Theo's sleeves.
Finally, she spoke again. "I got a message from my supervisor this morning."
Theo tensed. "And?"
"Standard language. A reminder that community officers interacting with students should maintain 'measured and professional boundaries.' That, and that as a female officer, I should be 'particularly mindful of optics.'"
Theo clenched his jaw. "So they won't discipline you—just monitor you."
"I've lived under surveillance longer than you've been old enough to vote." Her voice was steady, but something flickered behind it. Not quite anger. Not quite resignation either.
He turned to fully face her. "Do you want to stop?"
"What? Us?"
He nodded once.
She held his gaze. "No," she said simply. "But I'll understand if you need to."
"I don't," Theo said. Then again, more firmly, as if daring the wind to argue: "I won't."
And with that, something heavy settled between them—not oppressive, but solid. Like an understanding cemented, not in words, but in the refusal to abandon them.
As the sun dipped behind thick clouds, Mara pulled her keys from her jacket pocket and held them out.
"Let's drive."
"Where?"
"Anywhere the story hasn't reached yet."
He smiled for the first time that day, small but genuine.
They made their way down the embankment to the lot where Mara's car waited—a dull gray sedan that looked exactly like the kind of vehicle nobody would bother remembering. They climbed inside, shutting out the cold.
As the engine hummed to life, Theo let the quiet stretch between them. Outside, the world was beginning to pulse again: students spilling from buildings, bicycles darting down sidewalks, the city breathing its usual rhythm.
Mara merged onto the freeway. The university shrank behind them.
For a while, neither of them spoke. The weight of recent weeks still pressed on both their chests, but it loosened slightly with each mile. The further they went, the more the university became a distant outline, a place with walls that had tried to box them in but couldn't reach beyond the highway.
Finally, Theo broke the silence. "Did you ever think this would get... this complicated?"
Mara gave a short laugh, not unkind. "Everything gets complicated when someone decides to care about who you care about."
"It's not like we were hiding."
"You don't have to hide. All you have to do is make people uncomfortable."
Theo watched the trees blur past. "Funny how easily that happens."
Mara glanced sideways at him. "That's because they don't actually care about what's true. They care about what's manageable."
He nodded slowly. "Manageable. That's exactly it."
The road stretched ahead, endless and quiet.
"Where are we even going?" he asked after a while.
She smiled faintly. "Nowhere permanent. Just far enough to remind ourselves we exist outside of their narrative."
Theo rested his head against the cool window. "I wish we could stay outside of it."
"You can't live off-grid from power structures," Mara said softly. "But you can build space between their version of you and your own."
The car sped forward, carrying them into that space—for however long it would last.
.
.
.
.
.
End of Chapter 8