Chapter 92: Arthur Visits

POV: Georgia

My dad flies out just to sit with me, and something loosens in my chest that has nothing to do with pain and everything to do with love that asks for nothing back.

He doesn’t tell me he’s coming. I walk out of my last class on a gray Thursday, the sky pressing low and heavy over the science building, and he’s standing at the bottom of the steps with his hands shoved in his coat pockets. He looks a little lost, the way he always does in places that aren’t his kitchen, shifting his weight like the stone architecture might swallow him whole. My head is still full of the therapist’s word, *permanent*, and the boy in the hallway who moved like nothing had ever broken him. For a second I think I’m imagining my father into existence out of sheer want.

"Hey, kiddo," he says, voice warm and rough with travel.

I forget about my cane. I forget about my knee entirely. I take the last three steps way too fast, my bad leg screaming a protest I ignore, and he catches me before I can stumble. I hold on to his coat like I’m nine years old again, fisting the fabric in both hands.

"You’re squeezing," he says into my hair, amused.

"I know," I say, muffled against his shoulder.

"It’s okay," he says, low and steady. "Squeeze."

I do, for a long time. He smells like airplane coffee and the same soap he’s used my entire life, and something in my chest that has been clenched since the fall loosens, just a fraction.

"What are you doing here?" I finally ask, pulling back and wiping my face with my sleeve.

"Visiting my daughter." He shrugs, easy and unbothered, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. "I wanted to see you. That’s all."

That’s all. There’s no agenda behind it. There’s no schedule, no plan, no list of things we need to talk about. I keep waiting for the second half of the sentence, the *but*, the thing he needs me to fix or improve. It doesn’t come. I almost don’t know what to do with the silence where it should be.

We find a bench on the quad, the one by the path that runs along the edge of the lawn. Frost still clings to the shadowed grass even though the sun has come out, weak and watery, throwing pale light across the stone buildings. He sits down beside me and looks around, unhurried, taking in the towers, the distant tree line, the students crossing the lawn in twos and threes with their collars turned up against the cold.

"It’s beautiful here," he says, tone thoughtful, almost cautious. "Kind of strange. But beautiful."

"Strange how?" I ask, guarded.

"I don’t know." He tilts his head, studying the nearest building like it might answer him. Then he looks at the students crossing the grass in twos and threes.

I watch them too. Their legs just work. Nobody out there is thinking about it. I keep hearing the word *permanent*, and I push it down.

He doesn’t fill the silence. That’s the thing about my dad. Other people rush to fix a quiet moment like it’s a wound that needs pressure, but he lets it sit, patient as a lake in winter. We watch a couple of students walk past, laughing about something I can’t hear. A gust of wind rattles the bare branches overhead, scattering the last of the frost from the grass.

"How’s the knee?" he asks eventually, tone gentle, careful. Not *how’s the rehab* or *how’s the training*. Just the knee, like it’s a person I’m friends with and he wants an update on our relationship.

"It hurts," I say. "Most days."

"I figured." He nods, jaw tight for half a second before it eases. "How are you?"

I open my mouth to give the usual answer. *Fine. Busy. Getting through it.* It’s what I say to everyone, and I’ve said it so many times it comes out on its own like a rehearsed line from a play I’m sick of performing.

But he isn’t asking the way the others do. He’s not asking so he can move on to the next thing, checking a box before he changes the subject. He’s asking like he’ll sit here all night if that’s how long it takes, like the cold doesn’t matter, like his flight doesn’t matter.

"I don’t know," I say, and my voice cracks right down the middle of it.

"Okay," he says, gentle as a hand smoothing down hair. "That’s an honest answer. I’ll take that one."

I laugh, watery and small, surprised it comes out at all. He puts his arm around my shoulders, solid and warm, and I lean into him, and for a minute nothing is required of me at all. No performance. No mask.

And that’s when it starts pushing up, all of it, the way water rises when a dam cracks under pressure it was never built to hold. I could tell him about the fall. I could tell him I don’t think it was an accident, that the blade was tampered with, that somebody here wanted me on that ice. I could tell him about a boy with skin like a stove who heals in two seconds flat, and a wolf in a clearing that flicked its ears when I said a name that wasn’t supposed to mean anything to it. ℯ

It’s all right there, lined up behind my teeth, pressing outward. I can feel the first words forming, heavy and urgent.

*Dad, I need to tell you something.*

But I look at his face. He’s watching the trees, calm and tired and glad to be here, the lines around his eyes softer than I’ve seen them in years, and I think about how it would sound out loud. I think about the way he’d have to stop being my dad for a second and start being someone who has to decide whether his daughter has lost her mind. Or worse, he’d believe me, and then he’d be scared, and he’d be scared far away from me, and there would be nothing he could do about any of it except lie awake in a house two thousand miles from here.

And I don’t know what’s real yet. That’s the truth of it. I have a notebook full of pieces and a head full of things I can’t explain, but I don’t have proof. I don’t have anything I could put in front of someone and say, *see, look, I’m not imagining this.* I’m not ready to say it. Not yet.

I swallow it back down. It burns the whole way.

"I’m just tired," I say. "It’s been a long semester."

He looks at me for a moment, searching, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking behind his eyes. Then he nods, slow and deliberate. "I bet it has," he says, tone quiet, like he’s choosing not to push a door that’s shut.

We spend the rest of the afternoon like that. He walks with me at my slow pace, matching his stride to mine without a word about it, and he doesn’t hurry me once. We get hot chocolate from the dining hall and drink it on the bench until it goes cold and sludgy at the bottom of the cups. He tells me about the neighbor’s dog digging up the flower bed again, and the leak in the garage that’s turned into a small lake, and a terrible movie he watched on the plane that had him laughing out loud in his seat. He doesn’t ask about my training. He doesn’t ask about my times or my rankings or what the scouts said when they stopped calling. He asks if I’m sleeping, and if I’m eating, and if I have anyone to talk to here.

"I have friends," I say. "Mandi. She’s my roommate. She’s kind of a lot, but she’s good."

"Good." He smiles, easy and real. "You always did need someone loud."

I laugh, and it’s a real one this time, and it surprises me enough that I almost choke on the last of my hot chocolate.

By the time the light starts to fade, gold sliding into gray along the tree line, I’ve almost forgotten what it feels like to be watched, to be measured, to be a project with a deadline. I’m just a girl on a bench with her dad, and I let it sit in my chest like something borrowed.

He has a flight to catch, so I walk him to the campus gates, my cane tapping on the stone. His car is waiting just outside, at the curb on the town side. I stop at the gate posts. He steps through, and I stay where I am, on the Rosethorne side.

He turns to face me and puts both hands on my shoulders, grip firm and warm even through my coat.

"I’m proud of you," he says, voice thick. "You know that, right?"

"I know," I say, and I mean it, even with everything else crowding behind my ribs.

"Good." He looks at me for a long moment, and there’s something in his eyes I can’t quite read, something careful and searching. Then he glances back at the campus, at the stone towers and the black line of the forest behind them, and back at me, his expression shifting into something graver.

"Whatever’s going on here, Georgia," he says, tone low and quiet, "I trust you to handle it. I just need you to trust yourself too."

I stare at him, my pulse stumbling.

He gives me a small smile, kisses the top of my head, and gets into the car without another word. I stand at the gate and watch the taillights shrink down the road until the trees swallow them whole. The stone gates stand open behind him.

I don’t know what he meant. I don’t know how much he sees, or what he’s guessed, or what he’s decided not to ask. I only know he said it the way you say something you’ve been holding onto the whole day.