How do you know I didn’t?
Dominic:
Because I know you, Professor. Now hurry up. First round’s on me.
He’s not wrong. He does know me.
Dominic was the one who found me, after all. Fourteen years ago, when I was twenty and running a grade-fixing operation I was certain no one could trace. Then Dominic Cruz knocked on my door, furious that some idiot I’d helped was about to steal his internship.
I’d never had anyone crack my system before. I was impressed. Told him so.
His anger shifted into calculation—that finance brain I’d eventually learn to recognize. By the end of the conversation, he’d proposed a deal: I stop screwing with grades, he invests what I’d already made, we split the returns, and he never breathes a word to anyone else.
I didn’t need a partner. Didn’t need the money. Didn’t need anyone.
But Dominic didn’t care what I needed. He decided I was worth his time, introduced me to Bennett and Caleb that same month, and never let me disappear back into my own head.
As close as we’ve become over the years, even he doesn’t understand my brain the way Audrey does. Can’t follow my tangents or see the elegance in clean code. But he’s the first person who looked at the freak and decided to keep him.
Audrey was the second.
But that’s past tense, now.
I can’t even blame her. I’d un-keep me too.
CHAPTER 6
Audrey
Iclick through another corrupted file and resist the urge to throw my laptop across the room.
The biocompatibility data is a mess. Tissue response metrics—the literal heartbeat of the project—scattered across four different databases like a corrupted zip file. Half of them using outdated formatting protocols that someone should have migrated months ago.
I make a note:Fix data architecture. Fire whoever let this happen.
Then I cross out the second part because I’m pretty sure the person who let this happen was me, right before I fled to Sweden.
My stomach growls. I ignore it, chug half a cup of cold coffee, and pull up another dataset.
Data behaves predictably. Unlike people. Unlike men. Unlike Logan Whitman sayingI’m sorryin that voice that made my chest get all tight and my stomach get all twisty.
I don’t understand. I’ve run the scenario a thousand times—literally, at 3 a.m., lying awake in Stockholm—and I still don’tunderstand how someone who called my algorithmelegantlike it was a love poem could block my kiss with his hand. Smoosh my face as if kissing me was the worst idea in the world.
The data blurs. I blink hard and refocus.
Biocompatibility. Tissue response. FDA deficiencies. Things I can fix.
“I have an idea.”
I jump. Layla is standing in the doorway, coat on, purse over her shoulder, looking at me like I’m a problem she needs to solve.
“If it’s what I think it is, I have work to do.”
“Work, schmerk. I wanna play hooky andyouweren’t even supposed to be here today.” She walks in without invitation and perches on the edge of my desk. “How was the lab meeting with Logan?”
“Fine.”
“Audrey.”
