“The evidence is incomplete.” I stand from my chair. Take a step toward him. “You just word-vomited your deepest secret within three seconds of walking through the door. That’s not a robot. That’s a person with zero emotional regulation. Totally different.”
He blinks. “Was that supposed to be comforting?”
“I’m working with what I’ve got here.”
A surprised laugh escapes him.
“You’re not... you don’t think I’m pathetic?” he asks.
“I think you’re an idiot,” I say, and watch his face fall before adding, “Three months, Logan. Three months of silence. One sentence could have changed everything, and you just... let me leave.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice breaks. “I should have told you. I was just so sure that if you knew the truth, you’d never look at me the same?—”
I lean in and kiss him on the cheek.
It’s soft. Deliberate. I let my lips linger against his skin—warm, slightly rough with stubble—and breathe him in. Soap and coffee and something underneath that’s justhim.
His breath catches. I feel it more than hear it.
When I pull back, he’s frozen. Completely, utterly frozen, like I’ve hit his pause button.
“What,” he says, and his voice comes out strangled. “What was… Why did you…”
“Full sentences, Logan.”
“I can’t. You broke me.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. He’s sitting there looking at me like I’ve just performed cold fusion in front of him, and it’s so absurd and soLoganthat I can’t do anything but laugh.
“That was a thank you,” I explain. “For finally telling me the truth.”
“Oh.” He’s touching his cheek where I kissed him, like he’s checking to make sure it really happened. “OK. That’s. OK.”
“You sure about that? You just said ‘OK’ twice.”
“I’m aware. I’ve lost all higher brain function. This is what’s left.”
I shake my head, but I’m still smiling. “For the record? You’re not defective. You’re not pathetic. You’re just late to the party. That’s allowed.”
“Is it?”
“It is.” I reach out and straighten his glasses, which have gone crooked. “Also, for what it’s worth—I spent three months in Sweden trying to become a completely different person, and it didn’t work. So maybe we’re both just disasters pretending to be functional adults.”
“That’s weirdly comforting.”
“I know. I’m a giver.”
He’s looking at me differently now. Like I’ve handed him something he didn’t know he was allowed to want. It sends warmth spreading through me in a way that has nothing to do with panic and everything to do with possibility.
“So what happens now?” he asks.
It’s a good question. We’re still colleagues. We still have a project to save. We still have eighty days of working closely ahead of us, and I’m not naïve enough to think one honest conversation erases months of hurt.
But something has shifted. The walls I’ve been maintaining—the blonde hair, the Swedish minimalism, the professional distance—feel less like protection now and more like a costume I’ve been wearing for the wrong reasons.
I reinvented myself because I thought the original version was the problem. That the outside wasn’t desirable enough and my brain couldn’t make up the difference.
But Logan didn’t reject me because of how I looked. He rejected himself because he was scared.
