“Of course not.”
“And you’ve never, not once, used your position to benefit me unfairly, or stepped in to shape my work, have you?”
“Coralie,” he says, firm. “I would never do that.”
“Exactly,” I say. “So why should the perception of others matter more than the truth? Why let them write the story when we already know how it ends?”
His mouth opens, closes. I can tell he wants to protect me. That it’s killing him not to.
“I want the work to speak so loudly,” I say, “that no amount of gossip can drown it out. I want my results, my publications, my data sets, to be the only thing anyone can talk about when they say my name.”
He’s quiet.
“And I get that it won’t be easy,” I continue. “Women in STEM don’t get easy. But I’m not here for that. I’m here to be extraordinary.”
He’s still watching me like he’s not sure whether to hold me tighter or let me run.
“But,” I say again, lifting my chin. “If you want me to walk away, I will. Just say it. Tell me you don’t want this. That you don’t want me. And I’ll let it go.”
He doesn’t hesitate this time.
“I can’t say that, Trouble.”
“Because you want me.”
His eyes burn into mine. “Because Icraveyou. You’re in my head every minute of every day. You’re it, for me.”
I can’t help the grin that tugs at my lips. “Then trust me to handle the rest. Trust that I can survive the whispers. The looks. The subtle undermining. I’ve already lived through worse.”
He searches my face, like he’s looking for cracks I don’t have. “Men can be cruel,” he says, voice low. “They’ll try to take what you’ve earned and twist it into something ugly.”
“I know.” I smile wider. “But I’m stubborn. And I owe it to Damon to become the greatest cephalopod researchist the world’s ever seen.”
That does it. Something softens in his face. The resistance melts into something warmer—pride, maybe. Or awe. Maybe both.
He leans in and kisses me, slow and tender. The kind of kiss that says he finally, finally agrees with me.
“Are you sure?” he murmurs against my lips.
I nod. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”
“Then I’m with you,” he says. “Every damn step of the way.”
And when he smiles—God, when he smiles—it’s like the sun found a way to live in his face. It lights him up from the inside out. He looks boyish and bright and so heartbreakingly beautiful I can’t do anything but pull him back to me again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Romance isn’t the opposite of intellect. If anything, it’s a hypothesis too—an ongoing experiment in desire and vulnerability that dares to ask why wanting more has always been treated like weakness. The problem, at least to me, isn’t that romance novels are unrealistic. It’s that reality demands we pretend we don’t feel as much as we do. In books, love is allowed to be loud, unruly, all-consuming. But out here? Out here, we’re expected to be careful with our emotions. To ration them, suppress them, wrap them in professionalism.
They say love makes you irrational—but being a woman in science means you're already viewed through a lens of doubt. So what’s one more risk? What’s one more variable thrown into the equation if it’s mine to test?
I think about all of this as I make my way to Dr. Kymbert’s office, two days after learning of Damon’s passing and Holden’s quiet confession. There’s a stack of books under my arm and a steadiness in my spine that didn’t exist before. Maybe it’s grief. Maybe it’s courage. Ormaybe it’s the quiet, growing certainty that I don’t need to choose between being brilliant and being a woman.
I knock on her door and wait for the clickity-clack of her keyboard to stop and her voice to call me in. I open the door just as she lifts her eyes over the ridge of her glasses, scanning me with the kind of precision that makes it easy to forget she’s also human.
“Coralie,” she says, taking off her glasses and leaning back. “Have you had a chance to read over the documents I sent about the reef project?”
I smile and sit down across from her. “I have. Thank you.”
