All that effort. And it was never about me at all.
I’m not sure if that’s liberating or infuriating. Maybe both.
What I do know is this: I’m tired of straightening my hair every morning. I miss my Mary Janes. And the old Audrey—the weird one, the intense one, the one who makes tech jokes when she’s nervous—was just fine all along.
“Now we get back to work,” I say. “The simulation data looks promising, but we need to run clinical protocols before we celebrate.”
“That’s it? We just... go back to normal?”
“Not normal.” I move toward my workstation, letting my shoulder brush against his as I pass. “Better. Because now I actually understand what I’m dealing with.”
“And what’s that?”
I look back at him over my shoulder. “A late bloomer with zero chill and a tendency to blurt out life-altering confessions before our afternoon caffeine hit.”
I let myself smile.
His ears go pink. “I have chill. I have significant chill.”
“Sure you do.”
For the first time in months, I feel like I actually understand something important. Not because I figured it out on my own, but because someone trusted me enough to give me the missing piece.
I grin and drop into my chair. “Now get over here and look at these stability metrics. I think we might be over the hard part.”
CHAPTER 12
Logan
She kissed me.
Not on the mouth.
So I guess that doesn’t really count as a first kiss.
But still.
I can’t stop thinking about her lips on my cheek.
For three days.
Three whole fucking days.
I’ve been dreaming about it. Distracted by the memory of it. And now that the simulation has given us over a hundred hours of steady data, we’re back to working side by side.All. Day. Long.
And every time I look at her, my brain runs an endless loop ofshe kissed me she kissed me she kissed me.
It was just a cheek kiss. A thank you. A gesture of... what? Forgiveness? Acceptance? The beginning of something more?
I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
She hasn’t kissed me again. I haven’t kissed her at all.
I’ve thought about it approximately nine hundred and ninety-nine times. I’ve drafted and deleted differentconversation openers. I’ve Googled ‘how to know if someone wants you to kiss them’ and immediately closed the browser in shame.
We’ve fallen back into our old rhythm—her at her workstation, me at mine, ideas bouncing between us like we never stopped. Except now there’s something else underneath. A current I don’t know how to name.
“You OK over there?” Audrey asks, glancing up from her screen.
