Chapter 40 The door opened and Charlotte came through it like something had been chasing her. She hit Jensen’s chest with both arms, face buried in his shirt, and didn’t speak for a while. She Just held on. He let her, one hand on the back of her head, the other across her shoulders, standing in the doorway of her dorm room while she pressed her face into his chest and shook. When she finally pulled back her eyes were red and her mascara soiled her face and she looked at him with the expression he’d first seen on her face in the alley behind the hotel – the one where the mask was completely gone and what was underneath it was just a girl who’d been scared for a very long time. “Tell me what happened.” he said to her. She told him. The Godfather’s summons. Brian at the campus entrance. The brothel that looked ordinary from the street. The rooms she’d walked through to reach the man. The question he’d asked about Jensen, and the one he’d asked after – the marriage proposal wrapped

CHAPTER 42Three days.That was what remained of four years at Pendleton University, and the campus knew it in the way places knew when something was ending – not dramatically, not with any single visible signal, but in the accumulation of small things. The way people walked a little slower through the main courtyard, like they were measuring how many more times they’d cross it. The way conversations at breakfast ran long because nobody was particularly worried about being late to anything. The way the library, usually the most serious building on campus, had emptied out to a quarter of its usual population because the studying was done and what remained was just the waiting.Three days.Coleman was crossing the east corridor with a coffee he’d been looking forward to for the better part of an hour when Matthew stepped out of the alcove beside the water fountain and fell into step beside him.“Still wearing that same jacket,” Matthew said, by way of greeting. “Three days from graduati

Chapter 44Jensen found Coleman outside the science block. He’d skipped breakfast and was making up for it.Coleman looked up, registered who was coming, and stood up fast enough that the sandwich nearly didn't survive."Hey." He crossed the remaining distance and pulled Jensen into the kind of hug that didn't have any performance in it Jensen hugged him back. Briefly, firmly, the way he did most things."You look terrible," Coleman said, stepping back and looking at him with the candid assessment of someone who'd earned the right to say it."Graduation week," Jensen said, by way of explanation."Graduation week doesn't usually put that particular expression on someone's face." Coleman picked up his sandwich and looked at it, then put it down again, apparently deciding the conversation was more important. "I got your text. The one that said I know and watch her. Very informative. Very helpful. Really filled me in on what's going on.""You're not in danger," Jensen said."That's the p

Chapter 46Coleman found Jensen outside the administration block."Can I talk to you?” he asked.Jensen looked at him. "What’s up."Coleman exhaled and ran a hand across the back of his neck. "My mother called last night. The rent situation at home has gotten worse. My father's hours got cut three months ago and they didn't tell me because they didn't want me distracted before graduation, which is exactly the kind of thing parents do that is simultaneously very loving and incredibly unhelpful." He said it without self-pity, just the flat recitation of facts he'd been organizing into something manageable overnight. "I need income. Real income, not the part-time copy shop rate I've been surviving on. I need it soon and I need it to be enough to actually help them, not just enough to make me feel like I tried."He stopped. Looked at Jensen. "I know you offered me the Whitmore position. I know I said yes and then I said obviously yes and then I made a whole thing about saying it for the r

CHAPTER 49The address Korra had texted him was a coffee shop on the west side that was trying too hard to look like it wasn't trying at all -- exposed brick, mismatched chairs, a chalkboard menu with too many adjectives. Jensen walked in at ten past nine and found her already at the corner table with a black coffee she hadn't touched and a folder she had.He recognized her before she looked up.Korra Mase. He'd been twelve years old when the Delimont case collapsed, but Alfred had talked about it at dinner for three weeks afterward with the specific intensity he reserved for things that confirmed what he already believed about people. A promising attorney who'd had one of the cleanest records in the city's commercial litigation scene, handed a case that should have been unlosable, and lost it in the final week on a procedural error so elementary that the opposing counsel had apparently needed a moment to confirm it was actually happening.She'd been thirty-four then. She looked forty