“Rye, are you listening to me?”
The impatient grate of Leo’s voice tenses my muscles. “I was intentionally trying not to,” I give a snide reply. At his irritated huff, a smile lifts the edge of my mouth.
Curious, Leo directs his gaze toward the top of the staircase. “Ah, I see,” he remarks, and I don’t like the satisfaction I hear in his smug tone.
“You haven’t been able to see shit for years, otherwise you’d never have signed off on that useless VR simulator.”
He mutters something unintelligible about keeping up with the times, then perks up. “She’s quite the eye candy,” he says, trying to sound as hip as the students.
“So that was your clever plan, to tempt me into therapy with eye candy.” I send him a doubtful look.
He bristles. “Worth a try after all these years?—”
My warning glare shuts him down, and I quickly glance away. “Where did you find her?” I ask, and immediately regret it.
“I didn’t find her,” he says. “Pam did, through the hiring program.”
“Hmm,” I intone distractedly, caught on the starry points scattered across her inner wrist.
“She was the only applicant.”
I grunt in response as my gaze traces the familiar pattern, instinctively connecting the constellation, its arrow pointing toward the dark force at the fiery heart of our galaxy.
“You heard me, right?” Leo demands, running a hand over his graying hair. “No one else even applied. You have to understand that doesn’t bode well. I can barely keep a staff counselor hired on after the rumors.” A hard divot forms between his brows. “Don’t scare her off, Rye.”
But I’m no longer listening. As though she can feel my gaze prowling over her, Collins glances my way, our eyes clashing.
And Christ, just like that moment in my lecture hall, an aching chord thrums through my chest, reverberating the sweetest melody. The constant roar inside my head fades, barely noticeable over the thundering pulse in my veins.
I never lose my thought process during a lecture, yet the instant my gaze met hers, I felt the shift, that unknown matter within me swell and recede like a turbulent wave, the ocean of my thoughts pulled into a vortex.
I’ve made every effort to avoid her since. Then she does shit like this morning, obliviously tromping through the cold rain—and how can I focus on anything fucking else with her walking around soaking wet?
Collins lowers her head, blinks once, twice—her smile lighting her face—before she returns her attention to Fallon.
And fuck, I nearly bound up those stairs as soon as the thought splinters my head, a mental image of smashing Fallon’s drivel-spewing face through the window.
I blink back the intrusive thought. Tap my fingers in a rhythmic beat against my helmet. Blink twice more before starting the count on my right hand?—
When she chances another look my way, I halt. She lifts the umbrella in a small wave, a faint smile curving the delicate seam of her mouth, and despite myself, my lips twitch.
While it wasn’t my intention to frighten her before, it’s unavoidable. Keeping my mouth shut is the best policy. Once those dark filaments strangle my mind, I barely have enough willpower to filter what leaves my mouth.
“I’m trying to help you,” Leo says, breaking into my thoughts. His hand almost lands on my shoulder before he realizes, dropping it with a frown.
“You’re trying to help yourself look better to your donors,” I counter, meeting his eyes with a cool stare.
“Yes, because that’s how it’s done. They want to know where their money went. Like the new HPC expansions—” he ticks off on his fingers “—the fluid chambers. The quantum sensors. All the research expenses you’re too paranoid to explain. I have to reassure them we’ll have something to show, preferably by the symposium, but I fear it won’t be enough?—”
“It has to be enough,” I mutter, my hungry gaze slipping over Collins. Little hits, stolen glances, feeding the craving—it has to be enough.
Because it can’t ever be more.
A sharp pain slices behind my sternum, and I press a hand to my chest. It’s like the first time I looked through a telescope and saw the light of a binary star explode into view, reshaping everything I thought I knew.
The aching awe of witnessing something so beautiful, so utterly ineffable, and yet knowing you can only ever admire it from afar.
A rumble of thunder sounds in the distance. The meager light fades farther into the shadows as the storm batters the stained-glass windows. I rub a gloved hand over my jaw, letting my gaze linger on Collins until she disappears up the staircase, taking the last of the light with her.
