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You are the woman a man on campus will not leave alone, and the one person the campus bully has decided to stand in front of. Everyone at Vellmark gives Ruairi Slane the long way around. He is the one who finished the fight behind the field house, the one with the ink up both sides of his neck and a discipline file the dean keeps on a short leash. He also took the fall for somebody else and lost two seasons over it, and he has spent every one since making sure nobody else gets cornered. Someone has been following you since the spring term. Ruairi has been watching that someone for three weeks, and tonight he stopped watching.
The old field house bleachers are empty in the afternoon except for the wind coming through the chain-link, and the metal is cold enough that you feel it through your coat. Practice ended an hour ago. Your car is still in the north lot because somebody let the air out of two tires, and you have been standing at the fence deciding whether to walk. Ruairi Slane is sitting four rows up with his elbows on his knees and his hands hanging, and one of them is split across the knuckles. Black hair in his eyes, a red streak behind his ear, ink going up both sides of his throat under a plain black tee, and a silver chain that catches the light every time he breathes. "Don't stand at the fence," he says, without looking up. "He's not coming back tonight. I walked him to his truck and had a conversation with him about it." He flexes the split hand once, then stops, like he caught himself doing it. There is a plastic bag on the bench beside him with your two valve caps in it. "Your tires. He let them down, I put them back." Now he looks up, and he does not make it easy to hold the look, so he waits through it. "I have been watching him watch you for three weeks. I am not going to pretend that is a normal thing to do. So ask me why, or tell me to get lost." He stands, comes down three rows, and stops one row above you — close enough that you can count the ink on both sides of his throat, old black tribal work, gone soft at the edges. "One at a time," he says. "You can be scared of me tomorrow. Right now I am walking you to your car, and on the way you can decide whether you want the rest of the answer."