Almost.
Eighty-three days.
CHAPTER 5
Logan
The clock on my laptop reads 1:58.
In approximately two minutes, Audrey Greene is going to walk through that door. I’ve been staring at the same page of notes for the last half hour, absorbing nothing. The words blur together—encryption protocols, signal degradation, frequency modulation—all meaningless noise compared to the single thought running on loop in my brain:
She looked at me this morning like I was a stranger.
Like three months had erased everything we were.
Like I was nothing.
I deserved it. I know I deserved it. But knowing doesn’t make it hurt less.
The lab is quiet. Cold. The server hum is the only sound, a white noise that usually calms me. Today it just fills the silence where my thoughts keep spiraling.
She’s blonde now?
I noticed it the second I walked into that conference room. The hair I used to imagine touching—dark and soft, curls that always escaped whatever clip she’d used to pin it back—is gone.Replaced by something sharper. Colder. A color that doesn’t look like her. A shape that doesn’t read as familiar, even though it is.
And on top of that, she wasn’t wearing her glasses. Contacts, maybe. Or laser? That’s another thing that changed while I wasn’t watching. The old Audrey would have told me. Would have given a TED Talk on the biomechanics of her new corneas or the merits of contact lenses versus corrective surgery.
The new Audrey doesn’t over-explain. The new Audrey walks in at exactly 2:00:26 carrying a gray folder, her posture so precise it’s like she’s been reverse-engineered for maximum intimidation.
But her body is still the same. Still soft where the Stockholm dress clings to her hips. Still curved in ways that make my hands ache with the memory of almost touching her—all those times in the old lab when she’d lean across me to point at something on my screen and I’d have to grip the edge of my desk to keep from reaching for her.
I have one irrational, vivid memory of tracing the curve of her back with my eyes during a late night at the old Carmichael lab. The recall is so sharp it knocks my train of thought clean off the tracks.
She sits at the workstation next to me, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off her skin. No smile, not even a tight-lipped one. She flips open the folder and starts talking before I can even manage a greeting.
I’m not listening. Not really. I’m too busy trying not to stare at the way she’s crossed her legs, the soft curve of her thigh under the fabric. In the eleven months I spent knowing her, working beside her, I never stopped noticing. Never stopped wanting. I just got better at hiding it.
“You agreed to walk me through the test results.” She positions her chair so she can see my screen—not too close, not too far. Calculated distance. “Let’s get started.”
“Right. Yes. Of course.” I turn to my laptop, grateful for something to focus on that isn’t her face. “I’ve organized everything by protocol layer. If we start with the encryption framework, the rest will make more sense.”
“Fine.”
I pull up the first document. Start explaining. The words come automatically—I’ve given this presentation to myself a hundred times, rehearsing for this exact moment. Signal encryption. Data packet integrity. Authentication handshakes.
She takes notes. Asks questions. Good questions—sharp, incisive, the kind that prove she’s already three steps ahead of my explanations.
But she waits for me to finish before she speaks. Polite pauses. Professional turn-taking.
It’s wrong. It’s all wrong.
Before Sweden, we used to talk over each other constantly. Ideas ricocheting back and forth so fast that anyone listening would think we were arguing. We’d leap from encryption theory to coffee preferences to obscure historical facts to signal processing without taking a breath, and somehow we always kept pace. Bennett once said watching us work together was like watching a tennis match on fast-forward.
Dominic would insist he’s my best friend. And sure, technically, he’s earned the title—he shows up, he texts, he drags me to social events I’d rather avoid. But Audrey was always... different. She was the person I actually wanted to talk to. The one whose brain worked the way mine did, only better. The one who never made me feel like a freak for knowing too much or caring about the wrong things.
She was my favorite person.
And the only person whose body made mine feel like it finally had a purpose—even if I never figured out how to act on it.
