I close the messages and open my email instead, desperate for any distraction from the burning shame in my chest. Spam, lab equipment newsletters, a reminder about next week's department meeting…And then I see it. An email from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Dear Dr. Greene,
We are pleased to offer you the position of Senior Research Fellow in our Molecular Genetics Laboratory. As discussed in your interview, this is a three-month appointment with possibility of extension...
Sweden. Three months. The position I applied for when everything was up in the air with the Carmichael/Mercer takeover. I never heard back, and Bennett ended up partnering with James Tech, so I didn’t think anything of it. But now…
I read the email twice more, then look around my apartment. It’s no longer my sanctuary. It’s a crime scene. The exact spot on the rug where he stood, the lamp casting the same humiliating light, the lingering scent of his stupid, expensive cologne. My life here feels contaminated. Three months. A new city. A new lab where no one knows about the catastrophic system failure of my love life. It's not running away. It's a strategic retreat. It's theonly logical move. My fingers fly across the keyboard, typing a reply before I can second-guess myself.I accept.
CHAPTER 1
Audrey
O’Hare hits me like a wall of recycled air, noise, and the uncomfortable weight ofhome.
I hate that it feels like home.
But I also love that I am home.
Does that even make sense?
I drag my carry-on suitcase through arrivals, weaving past reunions I don’t want to watch. A little girl runs into her father’s arms. An older couple holds a sign for someone named Michael. And then, of course, there’s that couple who’ve been desperately missing each other. The ones where the girl runs and he catches her in his arms and spins her like a prom queen, right there by the currency exchange. For a second, I’m sick with envy—for the audacity of being wanted like that. I try to blink the feeling away, but it hangs on behind my eyes, an afterimage I can’t quite stare down.
I keep moving. That’s the rule. I dissect the clots of travelers the way an algorithm would. I anticipate their vectors, predict their slowdowns, adjust accordingly. My best self is hyperaware but a little robotic, weaving past the inefficiencies of humanity.I pass a teenager FaceTiming, sobbing mid-terminal. A group of startup bros in matching hoodies and Allbirds, shouting about microservices. A woman with a neck pillow askew, reading a dog-eared copy ofSapiens.
After three months away, coming home feels…strange. Like I belong here. But also, like I don’t.
And I’m definitely not still heartbroken over someone who rejected me by planting his palm on my face. Like I was an invasive species contaminating his petri dish. Definitely not. I am a woman of science and reason, and my entire heart is now a rationally subdivided co-op. Logan Whitman does not get a seat on the board.
I spot the sign from a hundred feet away. Fluorescent pink. Letters three inches high. AUDREY GREENE: NEUROBABE. There’s nothing subtle about it. The only people who would do this are Layla and Serena, who are, of course, both standing below the sign waving like extremely well-dressed air traffic controllers. Layla’s hair is its usual tumble of chocolate-brown waves, her pantsuit hugging her curves in a way that probably has TSA eyeing her for concealed weapons. Serena’s wearing her signature red lipstick and a fuck-off trench coat, looking like she just stalked off the set of a noir film. It’s all very them. And me? I’m not tall like Serena or voluptuous like Layla. I’m short and essentially shaped like a potato. But I’ve always consoled myself with being the brain of the group. The one who figures things out. That was supposed to be enough.
“Oh my god.” I laugh. But the sound comes out rusty. “You did not.”
“Goddamn right we did,” Serena crows, stomping over in her runway-model boots and catching me up in a hug so tight it clicks my vertebrae. She pulls back and blinks. “Whoa, what—Audrey? Is that—?” She reaches for my head like she might tug off a wig. “You went BLONDE? I almost didn’t recognize you!”
Layla tilts her head, doing that slow, feline blink of appraisal. “I love it,” she declares, sounding almost surprised. “But you didn’t even preview it over text. Did the Nordics radicalize you, or is this a post-breakup thing?”
“Post-breakup?” I scoff. “That’s severely overselling something that never made it past the starting gates.”
“You know what I mean.” Layla’s voice softens as she squeezes my arm.
Meanwhile, Serena is still staring, jaw half-dropped. “You look like an evil CEO,” she says, which is the highest praise coming from her.
I smooth a stray lock behind my ear. “I don’t know.” I shrug, but the gesture feels stiff. “I just wanted to try something that wasn’t me, you know? I got contacts too.” I touch the side of my glasses to adjust them. “I didn’t wear them on the plane, obviously. But I feel like a whole new me.”
Layla and Serena exchange a look. The kind of look that sayswe’re going to circle back to this later when she’s had wine.
“Well, I think you look fierce,” Layla says diplomatically. “Very Scandinavian ice queen.”
“That was the goal.”
It wasn’t. The goal was to become someone else entirely. Someone who doesn’t lie awake at 3 a.m. replaying the same humiliating moment on a loop. Someone who doesn’t flinch when she catches a tall guy with messy hair in her peripheral vision.
Someone who never stood in her apartment, heart in her hands, while a man blocked her kiss. My intellectual equal. The one person I thought would finally see me clearly. He confirmed the fear I’d never let myself name: that being smart was never going to be enough.
ThatIwas never going to be enough.
But they don’t need to know that. Nobody needs to know that.
