"Academic intelligence and emotional intelligence are completely different things." I force myself to look at her. "I've been in labs since I was a teenager. I skipped most of high school, all the normal social development stuff. I don't know how to read when someone is..." I gesture helplessly. "When they're interested. Or flirting. Or sitting progressively closer to me at a nightclub because they like me."
Her expression softens slightly. "Logan?—"
"When you got up and said you give up, I literally didn't understand. Bennett had to explain it to me. In small words. Like I'm five." The words tumble out faster now. "I like you. I've liked you since before I met you because your work on NeuroTech was groundbreaking. I read your papers. All of them. The one on signal degradation in high-density arrays? Brilliant. I was a fan before I even walked into Carmichael Innovations."
I stop, realizing I'm just listing her professional accomplishments like it's a job interview.
"My point is," I try again, "I've been intimidated by you from day one. You're brilliant and funny and you make fun of my organization system but then you use it anyway and you're the only person who's ever made me want to be better at this stuff but I don't know how and tonight when you got close I panicked because I don't know what I'm doing and?—"
"Logan." She steps closer, and my brain short-circuits. Again. "Stop talking."
She rises up on her tiptoes, her eyes closing, and terror floods my system. This is it. My first kiss. I haven't researched this. Idon't know the mechanics, the angle, what to do with my hands, what if I'm terrible, what if…
I react on pure, unfiltered instinct. My hand flies up, a clumsy shield between my mouth and hers. It connects not with a soft press of lips, but with the bridge of her nose and her mouth. My palm flattens against her face. Her wire-rimmed glasses twist sideways, one lens digging into her cheek. Through the gaps between my fingers, I see her eyes snap open, wide with shock. The warmth of her surprised breath ghosts across my skin.
Oh. Oh, god. I am a catastrophic failure of a human being.
We both freeze.
For a long, agonizing second, the only thing I can process is the faint imprint of my fingerprints on her skin. Her expression shifts from surprise to a kind of blank, wounded horror. She stumbles back, yanking her face away from my hand as if I’ve burned her.
She shoves her glasses back into place, her cheeks flaming a shade of red I’ve only ever seen in high-temperature exothermic reactions. Humiliation radiates from her in waves. It's a palpable, devastating force.
"You need to leave," she says, voice tight. "Right now."
"Audrey, please, that's not what I?—"
"GET OUT!" The words explode from her, and there are tears in her eyes now. "Just... get out, Logan. Please."
I stand there for another horrible second, wanting to explain but having no words that could possibly fix this. How do I tell her it's not her, it's me and my complete lack of experience? How do I explain that I panicked because I've never even?—
Fuck.
I flee like the coward I am, taking the stairs three at a time, my palm still tingling from where her lips touched it.
AUDREY
The door slams behind him and I sink to the floor, tears coming fast and hot.
He blocked my kiss. With his HAND. Like I'm something disgusting, something to be kept at a distance. Like the very thought of kissing me was so repulsive he had to physically stop it from happening.
I replay the last hour in excruciating detail. "I give up," I'd said at the club, and he'd just stared at me with that confused expression. Everyone at the table knew what was happening except him. And then he'd chased after me, and I'd thought—God, I'd actually thought it meant he felt the same way.
He said he did. He said he liked me. He said he's liked me since before we met.
But then when I tried to kiss him, when I tried to act on these supposed feelings, he literally put up a barrier between us.
A sob escapes me. I'm twenty-seven years old and I just got rejected in the most humiliating way possible by the only guy I've had real feelings for since grad school.
What's wrong with me? Am I that repulsive? He can like me in theory but not in practice? He wants to admire me from a safe distance like I'm some kind of specimen in one of his experiments?
I pull out my phone, opening my messages. My fingers hover over the group chat with Layla and Serena. I start typing:
Me:
You're never going to believe what just happened. Logan literally put his hand over my mouth to stop me from kissing him.
But then I delete it. They're still at the club, celebrating Caleb's good news. They're happy. They're having fun. The last thing they need is me dumping my humiliation on them. It can wait.
