I try to focus on the simulation data. The numbers are good. Better than good—the adaptive model has held steady for over forty hours of continuous operation, and the stress metrics are well within acceptable parameters. If we can replicate these results under clinical conditions, we might actually make the FDA deadline.
I should be thrilled,celebrating. Instead, I’m staring at the door every thirty seconds like a golden retriever waiting for its owner to come home.
Stop it.You’re over him. Act like it. Be professional.
I pull up the biocompatibility reports and force myself to read. The words blur together. I keep thinking about Saturday night—the Thai food, the conversation, the way he talked about his family like he was describing acquaintances rather than parents. The revelation that had knocked me sideways.
Iama billionaire.
Richer than Bennett and Caleb combined, and he shows up every day in the same rotation of faded T-shirts like money is an abstract concept that happens to other people.
Nothing about him computes anymore.
The lab door opens and my heart does something embarrassing.
I look up, trying to arrange my face into neutral, and there he is. Same glasses. Same disheveled hair. Same Logan.
But something’s different. He’s standing straighter. Meeting my eyes instead of looking past me at the monitors. Like he’s made some kind of decision and is terrified of what comes next.
“Hey,” I say, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near breathless. “You’re late. Everything OK?”
“Yeah. I was just—” He thumbs over his shoulder, then stops. Takes a breath. Locks eyes with me.
“Logan?”
“I’m a virgin,” he says in a rush.
I stare at him.
He stares back, his face cycling through relief, then horror, then resigned despair—like a man watching his house burn down and realizing he left the stove on.
Static fills my ears. I’m gripping the edge of the desk. I make myself let go.
“I—what?”
His cheeks are flushed. “That was not how I wanted to say it,” he says, then runs both hands through his hair in a hopeless, rapid-fire gesture. “There was a speech. A whole explanation I’d planned. But when I opened my mouth…” He mimes something I’d guess is ‘word-vomit’.
“You’re a virgin,” I repeat.
He pushes his glasses up. “Yes.”
“You’re thirty-four.”
“I’m aware.”
“You havetwo PhDs.”
“Shockingly, neither of them covered this.”
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again. I feel like I’m trying to solve an equation where someone’s substituted all the numbers with gophers.
“I don’t understand,” I finally manage.
Logan takes a breath. Then another. He looks as though he’s bracing for impact.
“I’ve never kissed anyone,” he says, slower this time. “Never been with anyone. Never done any of it, with anyone, ever.”
He meets my eyes.
