I enter her building. I roam the halls, looking for the room number Marcel told me about.
There.
I spot her through the lab window, bent over a microscope, and my heart beats faster.
She looks up. Freezes. Then she’s running outside into the hall and launching herself into my arms.
Her colleagues stare through the windows.
I don’t give a fuck.
I hold her tight.
“You’re really here,” she breathes against my neck.
“Told you I would be,” I reply.
Her advisor appears in the doorway. Dr. Patricia Chang, judging from the dead-on description Sorrel gave me. A petite Asian woman, early fifties, steel-gray hair cut in a sharp bob. She’s wearing a lab coat over jeans.
Dr. Change eyes me with the wariness of someone who knows exactly who Gregory Falk is and what his company has done.
Sorrel pulls back but keeps one hand in mine. “Dr. Chang, this is my boyfriend. Gregory, this is my advisor.”
Boyfriend.
Something fierce and possessive surges through me at the word.
“Mr. Falk.” Dr. Chang’s handshake is firm. “Sorrel mentioned you’d be funding a research initiative.”
I nod. “That’s the plan. If she’ll review my proposal and make sure I’m not missing anything.”
Dr. Chang’s expression softens slightly. “She talks about you constantly. And she showed me your cleanup proposal. That’s significant change.”
“She taught me that damaged networks can heal,” I agree. “You just have to be willing to do the work.”
Dr. Chang studies me for a long moment. Then she nods. “And so they can. We’ll hold you to that.”
That evening,Sorrel’s roommates conveniently disappear. We spread the research initiative documents across her tiny dining room table. She reads carefully, marking corrections with a red pen.
I watch her work. The way she chews her bottom lip when concentrating. The way she tucks hair behind her ear. The way her whole face lights up when she finds something interesting.
“What?” she asks, catching me staring.
The words are right there. Have been since the chalet. Since the day with the cougar. Since that desperate reconciliation before the helicopter came.
I’ve thought them a thousand times.
But was always too afraid to say out loud.
Fuck being afraid.
“I love you,” I say. “I’min lovewith you. I think I have been since you refused to let me face danger alone. I didn’t say it at the chalet. Thought it was too fast, that it would push you away. But Sorrel, I love you.”
The shock on her face throws me, and for one terrifying moment I think I’ve fucked this up completely.
Then her eyes fill with tears and she’s crossing to me and framing my face with her hands. The same way I framed hers outside the helicopter.
“I love you, too,” she whispers. “God, Gregory, I’ve loved you since that night by the fire when you took care of me, even ifI didn’t know it then. I love you, Gregory Falk. More than my research. And that’s saying something.”
