Damage control

Chapter Six:

Ethan sat alone in the study room for a long time after Zara left, staring at the door she'd disappeared through, replaying the last five minutes on a loop that refused to make any more sense the tenth time through than it had the first.

I think I'm falling in love with you.

He'd never said those words to anyone before. Not to Bree, not in two years of a relationship everyone had expected him to feel that way about and he never had. He'd said them for the first time to a girl who'd built her entire identity around not letting anyone close enough to say them to her, and she'd responded by running out the door like the building was on fire.

He should have felt embarrassed. Instead, mostly, he just felt scared — not for himself, but for her, because whatever had put that look in her eyes tonight wasn't rejection. He'd seen rejection before. This was something else. This was fear.

His phone buzzed. Chris.

Chris: Council meeting starts in ten minutes. You coming or should I tell Bree you died.

Ethan stared at the message for a long moment before typing back.

Ethan: Cover for me. Something came up.

Chris: Something or someone. This have anything to do with a certain campus disaster?

Ethan: Don't call her that.

Chris: Noted. Seriously though — you good?

Ethan looked at the empty chair across from him, the one Zara had been sitting in ten minutes ago before she'd bolted like something had chased her out.

Ethan: No. Not really.

Zara didn't answer any texts for three days.

Not from Ethan, who sent exactly two — the first an hour after she'd left the library, careful and gentle, just checking she'd gotten home safe. The second, sent late that same night, longer, more honest: Whatever's going on, I'm not going anywhere. I know you told me to back off. I'm not going to push, but I'm not disappearing either. Whenever you're ready.

She read both messages a dozen times each and answered neither.

She didn't answer Chris, who texted once on Ethan's behalf, clearly unauthorized, a clumsy, well-meaning attempt to smooth things over: Whatever he did, he feels terrible. He hasn't been right in three days. Just thought you should know.

She didn't answer Bree, who she hadn't expected to hear from at all, and whose message unsettled her more than any of the others: Heard you and Ethan had some kind of falling out. Shame. You two seemed good for each other, whatever people are saying about you.

Zara read that one at least twenty times, turning it over from every angle, trying to decide if it was genuine or something sharper wearing a friendly mask. She couldn't tell. That was the worst part of everything happening right now — she couldn't tell anymore who was safe and who wasn't, who meant well and who was watching her, cataloguing her weaknesses, waiting for the right moment to use them.

"You have to talk to somebody," Maya said on the third night, finding Zara exactly where she'd found her every night that week — curled up on the couch, laptop open to a half-finished section of the housing project she couldn't focus on, phone within arm's reach but always face-down.

"I talk to you."

"I mean somebody who can actually do something. Campus security. The dean of students. Somebody."

"And say what, Maya? I've been getting anonymous texts from an untraceable number? They'll tell me to block it and move on, and then whoever it is will just get a new number and start again, except now they'll know I tried to fight back, and that never ends well for the person who tries."

"So what's your plan? Just let them win? Let them scare you into giving up the first good thing that's happened to you in two years?"

Zara flinched, and Maya, seeing it land, softened immediately, sitting down beside her and taking her hand.

"I'm sorry. That was harsh."

"No," Zara said quietly. "It was true. That's why it hurt."

"Do you actually think it's someone close to you? Someone you know?"

Zara had spent three sleepless nights turning that exact question over, building and discarding theories, and she still didn't have an answer that felt solid enough to trust.

"I don't know," she admitted. "It has to be someone who knows about two years ago — that's a short list. And it has to be someone close enough to know what happened in that study room within minutes of it happening. That's an even shorter list, and I don't like any of the names on it."

"Like who?"

Zara hesitated. "Bree, maybe. She showed up right in the middle of one of our sessions, and she's the one person with an obvious reason to want me away from Ethan."

"You think Bree's been threatening you? With photos from two years ago? How would she even have access to something like that?"

"I don't know. Maybe she doesn't. Maybe it's someone else entirely, someone I haven't even thought of yet." Zara pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, exhausted in a way that went far deeper than three sleepless nights. "That's what's killing me. I keep making a list of suspects and none of them feel right, and every wrong guess is just more time for whoever it actually is to keep watching me."

Ethan showed up outside her building on the fourth day.

He didn't text first. He just stood on the sidewalk outside her dorm, hands in his pockets, looking up at the building like he was working up the nerve to actually knock, when Zara happened to glance out her window and saw him standing there in the cold evening light, looking exactly as lost as she felt.

She almost didn't go down. She stood at her window for a full five minutes, arguing with herself, every rational part of her screaming that going down there was exactly the wrong move, exactly what the messages had warned her against.

She went down anyway.

"You shouldn't be here," she said, stepping outside, arms wrapped tight around herself against the cold.

"I know." Ethan didn't move closer, kept a careful, deliberate distance between them, like he'd promised himself he wouldn't crowd her, whatever it cost him. "I'm not here to push you into anything. I just needed to see that you're okay. You haven't answered anything in three days, and I've been imagining a lot of bad scenarios."

"I'm fine."

"You keep saying that. I still don't believe it."

"You don't have to believe it. You just have to accept it and go home."

Ethan studied her for a long moment, and something in his face shifted — not hurt exactly, more like a decision being made.

"Okay," he said quietly. "I'll go. But I need you to know something first, and then I'll leave, and I won't push again until you come to me."

Zara didn't answer, which he seemed to take as permission.

"Whatever it is you're scared of — whatever's in your past that you think would change how I see you — I don't think it will. I've had four weeks to watch who you actually are, underneath everything people say about you, and none of it lines up with someone who deserves to be scared the way you look right now." His voice was steady, sure, in a way that made her chest ache. "I don't know what happened to you. But I know it wasn't your fault, whatever it was, because the person I've gotten to know these last few weeks isn't someone who does things that deserve this kind of fear following her around. I believe that. Whenever you're ready to let me prove it, I'll be here."

Zara's eyes stung, hot and sudden, and she had to look away from him, down at the cold pavement, just to keep herself from doing something reckless like crying in front of him or, worse, telling him everything right there on the sidewalk.

"You don't know what you're offering," she said, voice thick.

"Maybe not. I still meant it."

He turned to go, and Zara watched him walk away, every instinct in her body screaming at her to call out, to stop him, to undo the last four days of silence in one reckless sentence. She didn't. She stood on the cold sidewalk and watched him disappear around the corner, and only once he was fully out of sight did she let herself sink down onto the front steps, wrapping her arms around her knees, and finally let a few of the tears fall that she'd been holding back for days.

Two days later, Professor Dawson's check-in deadline arrived, and Zara had no choice but to show up to the study room, project incomplete, tension between her and Ethan thick enough to be visible from across campus.

They worked in careful, polite silence for the first twenty minutes, both of them pretending the last week hadn't happened, both of them failing badly at the pretense.

"We're behind," Ethan said eventually, staring at their half-finished slide deck. "Dawson's going to notice."

"I know."

"I don't want to push, but we need a plan. For the project, I mean. Just the project."

"I know what you meant." Zara pulled up her notes, grateful for something concrete to focus on that wasn't the ache still sitting in her chest from two nights ago. "I can finish the data section tonight. If you handle the policy recommendations, we might actually be caught up by Friday."

"That works." A pause. "Zara—"

"Don't." She kept her eyes on her screen. "Please. Not right now. I can't."

"I wasn't going to bring up us," Ethan said quietly. "I was going to say I'm sorry. For whatever's happening to you. I don't know what it is, but I hate that you're going through it alone."

Something in Zara's chest cracked, just slightly, at the gentleness in his voice, at how carefully he was giving her exactly what she'd asked for while still finding a way to say something kind.

"Thank you," she said, and meant it more than the two simple words could carry.

They worked for another hour in a quiet that had softened, just slightly, back toward something almost comfortable. Zara found herself, despite everything, grateful for his presence across the table — steady, patient, not pushing, just there, which was somehow exactly what she needed even though she couldn't bring herself to say so.

She was halfway through typing a paragraph about dorm maintenance response times when her phone buzzed, and every muscle in her body went instantly, involuntarily tense.

Ethan noticed. Of course he noticed. He noticed everything about her lately, whether she wanted him to or not.

"You do that every time your phone goes off," he said quietly. "You go completely still, like you're bracing for something. That's not normal, Zara. Whatever it is, it's serious enough that I think you need help, whether you want to admit it or not."

Zara didn't answer. She was already looking at the screen, and what she saw there made her blood run cold in a way that had nothing to do with the study room's air conditioning.

It wasn't a text this time.

It was an email, sent to her personal address from an account she didn't recognize, subject line blank, a single attachment sitting below three short lines of text.

You had your chance to be smart about this. Since you didn't listen, consider this a preview of what the whole campus is about to see. You have until Friday to end things with Ethan Blake completely — publicly, so everyone sees it — or I send this to every student email on campus, plus the Dean of Students, plus the scholarship committee reviewing your file this spring.

Below it, the attachment icon sat innocuous and small, a single image file, and Zara's hand was shaking so badly it took her three tries to make herself tap it open.

Ethan's voice seemed to come from very far away. "Zara. Zara, what is it, you've gone completely white—"

She didn't answer him. She couldn't. She was staring at the photo on her screen — worse than the last one, so much worse, something she'd genuinely believed had been destroyed forever, something that if it reached the scholarship committee would end everything she'd spent two years rebuilding, in a single click, by Friday.

"Zara." Ethan was standing now, coming around the table toward her, his voice sharp with real alarm. "Whatever it is, let me help. Please. Just let me see."

Zara looked up at him, and for the first time in two years, standing there with three days left before her entire life detonated in front of the whole campus, she felt the wall she'd spent so long building finally start, truly, to come apart.

"Ethan," she said, and her voice came out smaller and more frightened than she'd ever let it sound in front of anyone. "I need to tell you something. And I need you to understand — once I do, there's no taking it back. You'll know everything, and so will everyone else, in three days, whether I tell you or not."

Ethan sank into the chair beside her, close enough now that their knees almost touched, his whole focus narrowed entirely onto her.

"Tell me," he said quietly. "Whatever it is. I'm not going anywhere."

Zara took a breath that shook all the way down, and for the first time since the night everything fell apart two years ago, she opened her mouth to finally tell someone the whole truth.

Her phone buzzed one more time before she could get a single word out.

A second email. Same sender. Subject line this time not blank at all.

Actually — don't bother telling him yourself. I already did.

Zara's stomach dropped through the floor as she looked up, past Ethan's confused, worried face, toward the study room's glass wall — and saw Bree Whitfield standing just outside it in the library hallway, phone in hand, watching them both with an expression that was impossible to read, and impossible, suddenly, to ignore.