He considered the question the way he considered everything—looking for the logic, the pattern, the framework that would make the answer make sense.
“Two weeks in person,” he said slowly. “But two years of knowing you. Two years of waiting for nine o’clock. Two years of conversations that made me feel like my brain wasn’t a liability.” He paused. “Somewhere around message one hundred, I started prioritizing our exchanges over everything else. I didn’t have a word for why. I just knew I needed them. Needed you.”
Morgan’s breath caught.
“I don’t know what love is supposed to feel like,” he said slowly. “I’ve read about it. Watched other people experience it. But I’ve never been able to map it onto anything in my own head. The chemicals, the psychology, the evolutionary biology—I understand all of that. But the actual feeling?” He shook his head. “I don’t have a baseline for comparison.”
Morgan was watching him, tears still threatening but held back. Waiting.
“What I do know,” he continued, “is that when I thought you’d left—when you went silent in our messages and were no longer interested in talking—my systems stopped functioning. I couldn’t focus on work that should have interested me. I kept checking a forum I knew would be empty. There was this…” He paused, searching for words. “This hollow sensation. Like something essential had been removed.”
“Lincoln—”
“I also know that when I’m with you, my brain goes quiet in ways it never has with anyone else. I know that protecting you feels more important than protecting myself.And I know that if I have to choose between keeping my life as it is or changing it all but having you in it—” He met her eyes. “The choice is already made. It was made before I even realized I was making it.”
She was crying now. Silent tears tracking down her cheeks.
“If that’s love, then I love you,” he said. “If it’s something else, I don’t care what it’s called. The result is the same.”
Morgan reached up and touched his face. Her fingers were trembling.
“It’s love,” she whispered. “That’s what it feels like.”
He didn’t know how to respond to that. So he just pulled her closer, wrapped his arms around her, and let her cry against his chest while he processed the weight of what they’d both just said.
“I don’t want you to have to give up everything,” she managed. “I don’t want to be the reason you leave your life and friends and family behind.”
“Then we keep trying to find another way for as long as we can.” He pulled her closer. “We have pieces that don’t fit yet. Data that hasn’t connected. But we’re not done.”
“We keep trying as long as we can,” she repeated. Her hands fisted in the back of his shirt, holding on like he was the only solid thing in a world that kept shifting.
They stood like that until her breathing steadied. Until the trembling stopped. Until she pulled back and met his eyes with resolve.
“Okay,” she said. “Back to work.”
They returned to their stations. Side by side, facing the screens that held the scattered fragments of a puzzle that might save them or destroy them. Lincoln pulled up the next batch of coordinates. Morgan wiped her face with theback of her hand and reached for her cold tea, grimacing at the taste but drinking it anyway.
He hoped it wouldn’t come to disappearing. Hoped they’d find the thread that unraveled everything before he had to choose between his past and her future.
Lincoln Bollinger always had a contingency plan.
But he’d never wanted so badly not to have to use one.
Chapter 23
One year ago:
Binary: I’ve been staring at the same dataset for six hours. The pattern should be there.
Mercury: Sometimes you’re too close. You need distance to see the shape.
Binary: Distance is inefficient. I need the answer NOW.
Mercury: Then stop looking for what you expect to find. Look for what doesn’t belong.
Binary: …That’s actually useful advice.
Mercury: Don’t sound so surprised.
