Chapter 6
Charlotte
I settled into my usual Sunday morning routine, which consisted of staring at my laptop screen and pretending I wasn’t thinking about work. The apartment was quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of neighbors arguing about whose turn it was to take out the trash.
Regular people were probably having brunch somewhere, laughing over mimosas and discussing their weekend plans. Meanwhile, I sat cross-legged on my couch in yesterday’s Stanford sweatshirt, trying to focus on a research paper about theoretical applications of superconducting qubits.
I hated weekends. Despised them with an intensity that Darcy said wasn’t healthy.
Other people looked forward to Saturdays and Sundays—time to relax, see friends, pursue hobbies.
For me, weekends were just obstacles between me and my work.
Two days when the building sat mostly empty, when I couldn’t access my equipment without triggering HR complaints, when Alex wouldn’t approve the overtime because he said I needed “work-life balance.”
What he didn’t understand was that my work was my life.
Had been since I was twelve and discovered I could make computers do things that amazed my teachers.
The research floor was where I felt competent, where the world made sense, where I didn’t have to decode facial expressions or interpret social cues or pretend to understand references to movies I’d never seen.
For fourteen years, a lab, in one way or another, had been my sanctuary—the one place where my brain worked the way it was supposed to, where I could lose myself in problems for hours without surfacing.
Until this week.
Until Ty Hughes.
I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against the couch cushions.
Five days of my sanctuary being compromised.
Five days of trying to concentrate while he sat at that makeshift desk Alex had cobbled together, his presence like static electricity, making my skin prickle and my concentration shatter.
I’d spent my entire life perfecting my ability to focus, to shut out distractions and dive deep into problems until I solved them.
In the lab, I could work for twelve hours straight without noticing time passing—no need for water, food, anything.
I could tune out conversations, ringing phones, even fire alarms, when I was deep in code.
But apparently, all it took was one security contractor with broad shoulders and brown eyes to destroy my legendary focus. To turn my brain into useless mush. To make me actually aware of another human being in my workspace for the first time in my career.
The worst part was how kind he was about my awkwardness.
When I’d missed his joke yesterday—something about being stuck between a rock and a hard place, except he’d said “between a doc and a hard drive”—he’d just smiled and changed the subject.
No eye rolling. No exasperated sigh. No “never mind, you wouldn’t get it” like I’d heard so many times before.
And then Friday… I pressed my palms against my eyes, but the memory wouldn’t fade.
The coffee explosion across my desk, my hands shaking as I’d tried to contain the damage, and my voice—sharp and accusing—blaming him for something that was entirely my fault.
I spilled things constantly. Knocked over equipment, dropped tablets, walked into doorframes because I was thinking about algorithms instead of watching where I was going.
But when his hand touched my shoulder, when that simple contact had short-circuited every neuron in my body and sent my elbow crashing into that mug, I’d lashed out at him.
“Someone like you wouldn’t understand.” That’s what I’d said. Each word designed to wound, to push him away, to reestablish the distance I desperately needed to function.
He’d taken it without complaint. Called me Dr. Gifford in that carefully neutral tone and gave me space. Professional. Respectful. Exactly what I’d demanded.
So why had it made my chest ache?
I stood abruptly, needing to move, needing to do something with the restless energy coursing through me. That was it; I was going into work. I didn’t care if it cost me another trip to the HR office next week.
My team would tease me mercilessly if they knew. “Charlotte needs a personal life,” they’d say. “Don’t make the rest of us look bad by working on a Sunday.”
As if having a personal life was something you could just decide to have, like choosing a coffee order or picking a new screensaver.
The truth was, I’d come a long way since Stanford.
Back then, the terror of social interaction had been paralyzing.
I’d eaten meals in bathroom stalls to avoid the cafeteria.
I’d taken stairs to the tenth floor rather than share an elevator with strangers.
Presentation days would leave me physically sick, voice shaking so badly I could barely get through my slides.
Now, I could present to the board without visible tremors. I could attend mandatory team meetings without having a panic attack. I could even engage in small talk by the coffee machine—briefly, awkwardly, but successfully.
But that didn’t mean I’d magically developed the interpersonal skills everyone else seemed to be born with.
At twenty-six, I’d never been on a real date.
The closest I’d come was that disaster on my twentieth birthday—losing my virginity to a colleague in an encounter I’d approached like a lab experiment, all clinical observation and zero emotional connection.
He’d never spoken to me again afterward, and I’d filed the experience under failed trials and moved on.
Friends were equally challenging. Before Darcy had decided to adopt me three years ago—and that’s really what it was, an adoption—I’d had exactly zero people I could talk to about anything beyond work.
She’d simply appeared at my desk one day, announced we were having lunch together, and hadn’t taken no for an answer.
Somehow, miraculously, she’d stuck around despite my inability to remember birthdays, my tendency to forget social plans when absorbed in a problem, and my complete failure to understand most of her cultural references.
I glanced at the clock, 10:43 a.m. The facility would be nearly empty.
Just the skeleton weekend crew. I could slip in, work for eight or nine hours without interruption, make actual progress on the countermeasure.
No Ty Hughes with his distracting presence and his easy smile and his shoulders that looked like they could—
My phone buzzed, Darcy’s name lighting up the screen.
“You’re not working, are you?” Her voice was warm with familiar exasperation.
“I’m at home,” I said, which wasn’t a lie. I’d just leave out the part about my next plan.
“Right. At home. Definitely not obsessing about the countermeasure that’s been driving you crazy all week.”
I glanced at my laptop screen, where the research paper remained unread on page two. “Maybe a little.”
“Charlotte.” The way Darcy said my name stretched it into two syllables of gentle scolding. “We’ve talked about this. Weekends exist for a reason.”
I adjusted the grip on my mug, already bracing for her lecture. “Weekends exist because of historical labor movements and religious traditions. Neither of which particularly applies to computational emergencies.”
She let out a huge sigh, exaggerated for effect. “See, this is why you’re single.”
Heat crept up the back of my neck. “I’m single because interpersonal relationships require social skills I’ve never successfully developed.”
“You have social skills. You just choose not to use them.” More rustling on her end—her crossword, no doubt.
Darcy always multitasked through our conversations, as if her brain could handle three puzzles at once, while mine spun out on just one.
“Speaking of which, how’s it going with our hot protection detail? ”
My grip tightened on the mug. “Ty Hughes is a temporary addition to facility safeguards. That’s all.”
“Uh-huh. Is that why you’ve been actively avoiding him all week?”
I shifted on the couch, tucking my knees under my chin as if the defensive posture might hide me even over the phone. “I haven’t been avoiding him. I’ve been focusing on my work.”
“Charlotte, I saw you literally take the long way around the research floor to avoid walking past his desk.”
My pulse stuttered. She noticed? I cleared my throat. “The long way provides a better view of the secondary monitoring stations.”
Darcy’s laugh rang bright and knowing, slicing through my flimsy logic. “You realize you’re attracted to him, right?”
The words dropped like a stone in my stomach.
I scrambled to reframe them in safer terms. “Physical attraction is simply a neurochemical response triggered by evolutionary markers of genetic fitness.” I took a quick sip of coffee, forcing myself into clinical categories.
Safer ground. “His facial symmetry suggests good genetic health. The broad shoulders and muscular build indicate physical capability that would have been advantageous for survival in prehistoric times. The strong jawline is associated with higher testosterone levels, which correlates with—”
“Oh my God, Charlotte.” Darcy groaned. “Regular people just say he’s hot.”
“I’m not regular people.” My voice sounded sharper than I intended. Defensive.
“No kidding.” Her tone softened, slipping under my armor. “But seriously, he seems nice. On Thursday, when you knocked over that entire stack of backup drives because he said good morning? He helped clean up without making a big deal about it.”
My cheeks heated at the memory. My entire week reduced to slapstick errors around one man. “On Friday, he caused me to spill coffee all over my workstation.”
“He tapped your shoulder, Charlotte. To get your attention. Typical human contact. Not an assault.”