Chapter 3
three
. . .
Luke
I drove home slowly, my hands locked on the wheel and Nate’s words circling in my head like they were stuck on a loop.
Stop thinking. Just be yourself.
Easy for him to say. Nate walked through the world in that effortlessly grounded way that made people feel steadier just by standing near him. Meanwhile, if I didn’t rehearse a conversation beforehand, half my brain shut down. The other half went into diagnostics mode.
I pulled into my driveway and let my SUV idle for a moment before turning off the engine. The house was lit up with lanterns glowing on the porch. It looked warm and inviting, which was ironic considering I’d turned it into a fortress.
A safe one. A quiet one. Everything I needed.
Everything except someone to share it with.
That thought hit hard and wouldn’t leave. I’d optimized this house for solitude, and for the first time, that felt like a miscalculation.
I shook my head, annoyed at myself for being maudlin, and grabbed the bottle of Chianti from the back seat Rosa had insisted I bring home as I’d left the restaurant.
The moment the door closed behind me, silence descended. Heavy and weighted. Typically, I basked in the absence of noise. A relief after spending all day navigating people and their unpredictable rhythms and whims. Tonight, though, the quiet pressed in on me.
I detoured to the kitchen, grabbed a corkscrew and a glass, and headed straight for my office.
If I stopped moving, I’d talk myself out of it.
Because what I was about to do crossed about fifteen different ethical lines, and violated every principle I claimed to have about user data and consent.
Even understanding what a violation this was—how I’d probably hate myself for it later—my feet kept moving.
My fingers flicked on the lamp on the table just inside the door, casting warm light over a space.
I lowered into my chair and opened the backend to the app I’d built.
Staring at the cascading code was like looking into the bones of my life.
I’d written the first version during a caffeine-fueled sprint at Stanford because Marcus had bet me I couldn’t build an app that matched people better than his floundering one did.
Not only had it performed better—it had blown his idea out of the water and gotten me a check with more zeroes than my twenty-year-old brain could process.
The irony, of course, was that I—the creator of the most accurate compatibility matchmaking system in the country—had never successfully dated anyone.
I’d built an empire on helping people find love, and I couldn’t even get through a first date without catastrophic awkwardness. This app had made millions of people ridiculously happy. It had created families. It had been featured in wedding speeches and credited in birth announcements.
And I’d spent every year since its launch more isolated than the one before.
The success had been suffocating. Suddenly, everyone wanted something from me—interviews, appearances, partnerships, money. Women who’d never looked at me twice were suddenly interested, but not in me. In what I represented. The success story. The bank account. The access.
I’d moved to Mistletoe Bay to escape it all. To become anonymous.
And then I’d taken one look at Holly Bascombe, and I’d realized anonymity wasn’t what I wanted.
I desperately wanted to be known.
I uncorked the Chianti, my hands unsteady enough that the bottle neck clinked against the rim of the glass as I poured. I took a long sip, felt the wine burn warm down my throat, and exhaled slowly.
One more chance to back out. To close my laptop and go to bed like a rational human being.
Instead, I pulled up Holly’s social media, and every public-facing breadcrumb she’d ever left for prospective customers or bored relatives or anyone who wanted to see pretty flowers.
All technically public. All easy to justify as “research” if anyone ever asked—which no one ever would, because I’d rather die than tell another living soul.
I typed in the basic demographic data, starting with Holly’s birthday, which I’d gleaned from posts on her Facebook page. March 15—Pisces sun, Virgo moon, Cancer rising.
When I first started developing the app, astrology had seemed too “woo-woo” for a serious algorithm.
But the barista at the coffee shop where I worked was really into that stuff and had convinced me it was worth including.
“It gives you the full picture,” she’d argued passionately.
“Who they are inside, how they feel, how they act.”
I still didn’t put much stock in it personally, but I couldn’t deny the data supported her claim. The app’s accuracy had jumped eleven percent after I added astrological profiling.
Her interests were easy to fill out: floral design, architecture, romantic comedies, mystery novels, baking (poorly, according to her own captions), crocheting, and long walks on the beach. She’d posted that last one with a laughing emoji, self-aware about the cliché, but she’d meant it.
Her values were another easy input: community, creativity, loyalty, honesty, and mutual support.
Her goals, though? I had to think about that one. I sat back, thumb brushing absently over the mouse.
Holly didn’t want a knight in shining armor. She didn’t want a tech bro with a fat wallet. She wanted someone steady. Someone who showed up when they said they would. Someone who’d put her first.
She’d been abandoned repeatedly this year. Her fiancé. Her parents. Her best friend. Even her landlord had effectively pushed her out. And now, the cracks were starting to show, visible to anyone who cared enough to look.
I typed: Seeks partner who is reliable, emotionally present, and committed for the long term.
My finger hovered over the “enter” key.
This was a massive violation of privacy. I knew this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
And despite that—despite knowing I’d regret this in the morning, despite every ethical principle I claimed to hold—I pressed enter anyway.
The progress bar appeared, creeping forward slowly as it analyzed Holly’s data against my own profile.
“This is stupid,” I muttered. “This is—”
The results appeared on my screen, an astounding 98 percent compatibility.
I blinked and leaned forward—as if those six inches would change what I was seeing.
It didn’t.
Ninety-eight fucking percent.
That wasn’t a number the algorithm regularly spit out. No. It was one that was rarely—if ever—seen.
It must be broken. Or I’d entered the information incorrectly.
I checked the data inputs and then re-checked them before running the program a second time.
The number changed.
Holy shit.
Holly and I weren’t 98 percent compatible. We were a 99 percent match!
A slow, dizzy feeling rolled through me, a mix of awe and nausea.
The highest match the app had ever produced—ever—was 97 percent, and those two were married with twins and a third kid on the way.
Ninety-nine wasn’t just rare. It was literally unheard of.
My hands were shaking, and my heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat, behind my eyes, in the tips of my fingers.
Ninety-nine percent.
I’d built this algorithm. I knew exactly what that number meant. It meant compatible life goals. Similar communication styles. Complementary personality traits. It meant that statistically, if we got together, we were endgame.
Beyond that, it meant that I wasn’t crazy for feeling this way about her so quickly. It justified the way I’d taken one look at her and thought, “mine.”
But what if I’d made an error? What if I’d unconsciously skewed the inputs because I wanted a specific result? Confirmation bias was real, even among people who built systems designed to eliminate it.
I ran the calculation a third time with slightly different parameters—more conservative estimates of her values, less optimistic interpretations of her social media posts.
Our score dropped back down to 98 percent.
The algorithm didn’t lie. It couldn’t.
My pulse kicked hard, too loud in my ears. I pushed away from the desk and stood, crossing the room. My office suddenly felt too small, the air thick and suffocating.
I scrubbed both hands through my hair, grabbed my glass, and paced to the window. Snow had started to fall again—fat flakes illuminated by the lamp on the corner of my property that drifted lazily to the ground in soft, slow spirals.
What if the algorithm was wrong?
Or, what if it was right?
What if Holly’s not interested?
But what if she is?
My stomach churned, feeling unsettled and anxious.
I took another sip of wine, immediately regretted the acid, and set my glass down on the windowsill.
I had never run my own data. I’d never even been tempted to. I didn’t need a number to tell me I was statistically incompatible with, well, just about the entire dating pool. My brain already reminded me daily.
I dragged a hand down my face again. “Jesus Christ. What am I doing?”
The answer came back depressingly clear: falling for a woman who thinks you’re a socially anxious oddball with a pathological fear of eye contact.
And the worst part? That wasn’t inaccurate.
But I was also other things. Things that really fucking mattered, even if they weren’t immediately obvious.
I was dedicated—when I committed to a plan, I saw it through.
Case in point: I’d bought five books on floral design after meeting Holly, and spent hours learning to identify flowers by sight and smell, memorizing their names and meanings like I was studying for an exam.
Because if I was going to care about someone, I wanted to understand what they cared about.
I wanted to speak her language, even if I’d never be fluent.
I was kind, too, or at least I tried to be. And I was fiercely loyal—the kind of person who showed up when I said I would, who remembered the things people told me in passing, who’d drive through a snowstorm in the middle of the night if someone I cared about needed me.