The walk to work had been uneventful, and I’d sipped my cinnamon dolce latte on my way to NeuroWell, waving to friendly colleagues as I passed.
Even Melanie had been nice to me as I’d made my way to the elevator that led to The Cave from the Memory Therapy Research floor. Though in her case, it felt disingenuous. I had a feeling she’d switched tactics, realizing that Jay and I were,ahem,*friends*. I knew she was just trying to butter me up to get closer to him, but still. It was nice not to have to deal with her hostility, so I would take what I could get.
Once settled in The Cave, I’d spent the morning working away on the manipulator, and I was really excited about the progress I’d made. If I kept working at this rate, it would be completed much sooner than we’d projected.
As if the universe timed it, the elevator dinged, and I glanced up to see Jay walk in.
Jeepers, he was so hot.
My body heated at the sight of him, and I leapt up from my chair, waving my soldering iron excitedly.
“Hey! Guess what! I think I got the output to oscillate like we discussed! I’m so glad you’re here. I think we should test it out. If we can get it to massage a memory, we can test a small manipulation!”
I paused my excited yammering when I took in the look on his face.
He didn’t look happy about the news; if anything, he looked devastated.
Giving me a shaky smile, he crossed the room and dropped a kiss on my head.
“You’re so smart, baby,” he hummed, but he sounded sad for some reason, and I pulled away, frowning up at him.
“What’s wrong? You don’t seem happy. What happened?”
Jay glanced down at the manipulator, his lips tight with concern.
“Milo…”
“What?”
He glanced at me, and all the warm feelings I’d had melted away as a zing of worry shot through me.
Something was wrong.
He opened his mouth to say something when the elevator dinged again, and we both turned to find Sebastian strolling into The Cave.
He looked just as stressed as Jay did, his five-hundred-dollar haircut a mess of waves as he nervously ran his hand through his golden locks.
The second Seb’s eyes landed on me, his expression turned from worried to furious.
He turned accusatory blue eyes on Jay and pursed his lips.
“Just a one-time thing, yeah?”
“He’s assisting me with research, Seb. You know he’s the best MTR we have. That’s all this is.”
I knew we needed to keep our relationship a secret, but it still hurt to hear him belittle it to Sebastian.
I pushed my hurt feelings away and smiled at Sebastian as best I could. Wanting to prove that I was here to help, I gave him a bright smile.
“I made a significant advancement this morning on the output for the manipulator. If you guys have time, I can show you?—”
“Not now, Milo. We have… There’s been a development that we need to discuss.”
Seb’s angry expression grew even more stormy.
“You can’t share this with him, Jay. This is above his pay grade.”
“He deserves to know if he’s working on the project.”
