“I just wanted to say—” He pushes his glasses up his nose, a nervous habit I know too well. “I didn’t know you’d be here. On the project, I mean. Bennett didn’t tell me. I only found out you were coming back by accident when?—”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does.” His voice cracks slightly, and I hate that I notice. Hate that some pathetic part of me still catalogues every shift in his tone like it’s data to be analyzed. “I know things are... complicated. Between us. And that it’s my fault. But I want you to know that I’ll be completely professional. I won’t make this weird. I just?—”
His voice breaks again on the last word, and I catalog it automatically—the slight roughness, the breath he takes to steady himself. I’ve always tracked his vocal patterns like data. I can’t seem to stop.
“Logan.” I make sure my face is blank. A wall he can’t climb over. My heart is doing something erratic behind my ribs, but my voice comes out steady. “There’s nothing complicated between us. We worked together. Now we’re working together again. That’s it.”
He flinches. Actually flinches, like I’ve hit him.
Good.
No. Not good. I don’t want to hurt him. I just want to survive this.
“Right.” He swallows hard. “Of course. I just thought?—”
“Whatever you thought, don’t.”
The words come out harsh, and I regret them immediately. Some treacherous part of me wants to take them back. Wants to ask what he was going to say.
But that’s the old Audrey. The one who believed that if she just understood something well enough, she could fix it. The one who thought being smart and patient and good would eventually be enough.
I tuck my paperwork tighter under my arm. “I’ll review the security architecture files this morning. We can meet in the lab at two to go over the test results. Does that work?”
He stares at me for a long moment. I can see something behind his eyes—words he wants to say, explanations he wants to give. His mouth opens, closes. Opens again.
“Two o’clock,” he says finally. “I’ll be there.”
For a split second, he sounds like the old Logan. The one who used to say, ‘I’ll be there’ about late-night debugging sessions and coffee runs and reviewing my grant proposals at 2 a.m. The one who always showed up.
I don’t let myself think about that.
“Good.”
I walk away without looking back.
Layla intercepts me when I’m about halfway to my desk, falling into step beside me like she just happened to be speed walking in the same direction.
“So,” she says, voice carefully light. “That was fun.”
“Don’t.”
“I’m just saying. You handled it well. Very professional. Very ‘I definitely don’t want to murder anyone.’”
“Layla.”
“I’m proud of you.” She bumps her shoulder against mine. “And I’m here. Whenever you’re ready to not befine.”
“I appreciate it.”
“We’ll have lunch, OK? I’ll call Serena.”
She leaves and I sit down at my desk. Open the security files. Start reading.
This is what I know how to do. Analyze data. Identify problems. Build solutions. This is the part of my life I can control.
I read the first file. Then the second. By the third, I’ve almost stopped hearing his voice crack on the word ‘complicated.’Almost stopped seeing the way he flinched when I told him there was nothing between us.
