The university's front gates had never felt quite so large.
Winter stood on the steps of the administration building, her breath visible in the morning chill. Her palms were sweating despite the cold. Inside her bag, the letter summoning her to the disciplinary board felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
"Please report to Room 204A at 9:00 AM regarding your conduct during the faculty panel."
Conduct. Like she'd broken protocol. Like love was a procedural failure.
She wasn't naïve. She'd known there would be consequences. But she had imagined fire, not frost. She had imagined arguments, not silence. Now the silence was heavier.
The double doors opened with a mechanical click, and she stepped inside.
—
The waiting room outside Room 204A was beige and sterile, lined with uncomfortable plastic chairs. A clerk looked up from a computer behind thick glass and nodded at her. Winter sat down. Her hands wouldn't stay still.
Two minutes passed.
Then five.
Then the door to the hallway opened again.
She looked up—and froze.
It was Professor Rennick. Not her current lecturer, but one of Eleanor's oldest academic rivals. He glanced at her without surprise, adjusting his glasses with the careful disinterest of a man who'd built a life from staying uncontroversial.
"You're early," he said, walking past.
Winter clenched her fists. You watched her fall and didn't even blink.
A secretary called her name ten minutes later.
The room was bare. Three faculty members sat behind a table. Two she didn't recognize. The third—a younger woman with a tablet—smiled awkwardly.
"Miss Hayes," the chair began. "This isn't a formal disciplinary hearing—yet. This is an investigatory meeting to assess the nature of your statement and how it may have violated the university's Code of Conduct."
Winter nodded once. She didn't trust her voice.
"You are not accused of anything criminal," the second member clarified, "but given the public visibility of your declaration—and its implications—we have a duty to determine how this may have influenced your academic standing and the public image of the university."
Winter finally spoke. "May I ask—who decided to open this?"
The younger woman on the end hesitated, then said quietly, "It was initiated by the Office of Student Conduct. Multiple anonymous complaints."
Winter's stomach turned.
Anonymous.
Cowardly.
Of course.
"We want to give you an opportunity to clarify," said the chair. "Was your statement scripted or coordinated in advance with Dr. Markham?"
Winter inhaled. "No. It was spontaneous. My decision."
"Were you in a personal relationship with her at the time?"
Silence.
A heavy, pointed, hanging silence.
Winter's voice didn't tremble. "We had a close personal connection. But it was not romantic until after her resignation."
Another silence.
"She no longer works here," the third member said.
Winter met her gaze. "Because of people like you."
The chair leaned forward. "We're not here to punish you."
Winter's breath hitched. "Then what are you doing?"
Eleanor didn't pace.
She never paced—until today.
The apartment felt too small. Every sound from the street below made her flinch. It had been hours since Winter left for the meeting. Her phone remained silent.
She'd already cleaned the counters twice, alphabetized the spice rack, and started organizing the bookshelf by genre. Still, her mind returned to the same thought:
They're going to crush her the way they tried to crush me.
A knock came at the door.
She froze.
When she opened it, it wasn't Winter.
It was Inez Clarke.
A tenured professor from Women's Studies. One of the few who'd ever challenged the administration directly and survived it.
"I heard what happened," Inez said, stepping inside without waiting to be invited. "You look like hell."
"Thank you," Eleanor said dryly.
"You're lucky I don't throw this chair through your window." Inez gestured to the reading nook. "I told you years ago—this place eats women like us alive."
"I know."
"You don't know, Eleanor. Or you forgot." Inez sighed and leaned forward. "You think this ends with you resigning? They want to make Winter the example now. So no other girl ever steps up again."
Eleanor's chest tightened. "She's strong."
"She shouldn't have to be."
A pause.
"Why are you here?" Eleanor asked.
"Because I'm not going to let them burn her too."
When Winter came back later that night, her eyes were hollow.
"I told them the truth," she whispered, dropping her bag. "And they called it inappropriate."
Eleanor pulled her into her arms.
"You did what most people never do," she said. "You spoke with your whole heart."
Winter trembled. "They're going to suspend me, Eleanor. I can feel it coming."
Eleanor pressed her forehead to hers. "Then we fight. Together."
In the quiet, their breath synced again. The world outside the apartment raged on—but inside, the silence between them was different.
Not absence. Not punishment.
It was resilience.
The next morning, the sunlight streaming through Eleanor's bedroom window didn't feel like a comfort. It felt like a clock.
Winter lay still beside her, eyes open but distant. Her fingers were curled into the sheet, as if clinging to something that might be torn away at any second.
"Inez says we could go public," Eleanor said softly, brushing a lock of hair from Winter's cheek. "A statement. An article. Maybe even an interview."
Winter didn't react at first.
Then she exhaled. "Would it matter?"
"It might."
Winter turned on her side to face Eleanor, the faintest trace of defiance in her voice. "Or it might make it worse. They'll paint me as a foolish girl seduced by her professor."
"I'm not going to let them reduce you like that."
"But they already are."
Eleanor sat up, pulling the covers with her. "Then we make it our story. Not theirs."
By noon, Eleanor had drafted the first version of the statement.
It wasn't perfect. It was raw. Emotional. Unapologetic.
"This is not a confession. This is not a scandal. This is the truth: I fell in love with someone who saw me—not as a student, not as a symbol, but as a person. What we shared was mutual, respectful, and occurred outside the bounds of her employment. The institution failed to protect us. But we will no longer be silent."
Winter read it in silence.
She didn't cry. She didn't flinch.
She reached for Eleanor's hand.
"Let's publish it."
They didn't go to the school newspaper.
They went bigger.
Inez had a contact at a regional investigative magazine known for tackling academic injustice. The editor, a nonbinary journalist named Casey Liang, agreed to meet that evening.
"I'm not here to twist your story," Casey said as they sat across from the couple in a quiet café downtown. "I'm here to tell it as it happened. But you need to be prepared—once this runs, you won't get to go back to anonymity."
Winter straightened her back. "We're already being punished in the dark. We might as well be punished in the light."
Casey nodded, voice low but earnest. "Then we'll get this right."
By the end of the week, the article went live under the headline:
"Love on Trial: When Academia Polices Affection Instead of Abuse"
It exploded online.
Some readers called them brave. Others called them foolish. A few accused the university of hypocrisy, posting stories about male professors who were never punished for far worse. Petitions began circulating. Protests formed on campus.
The Ethics Committee, caught off guard by the attention, issued a sterile statement that satisfied no one.
Winter didn't care about the numbers, the outrage, or the trending tags.
She cared about what happened next.
Because just two days after the article ran, she received a letter.
Suspension.
Indefinite. Pending "further investigation."
No hearing. No appeal.
Just a line drawn through her future.
She didn't cry until Eleanor held her on the floor of the kitchen.
"It's not fair," Winter choked. "They took everything."
"No," Eleanor whispered, arms wrapped tight around her. "They tried. But they didn't get us."
Winter shook her head. "Maybe we were stupid to think we could survive this."
"You're not stupid."
"I'm tired."
Eleanor kissed her temple. "Then let me carry you for a while."
That night, as Eleanor sat awake with her laptop, reading the hundreds of emails pouring in—from strangers, from alumni, from closeted professors and students across the country—she realized something else.
They hadn't just told their story.
They'd started something bigger.
And maybe, just maybe, that meant they weren't alone anymore.