Chapter 23
twenty-three
CASS
The last few days have been a confusing mix of exhaustion and something that feels dangerously close to happiness.
My grades are still a disaster zone—I failed my latest Music Theory paper so spectacularly that Dr. Atwood’s red pen looked like it had committed a murder—and Joel is still riding my ass and wanting a conversation about the band’s “trajectory,” whatever the hell that means.
But every time I start to spiral, every time the noise in my head gets so loud I can’t hear anything else, I think about Ben.
The solid weight of him, whether we’re fucking or hugging or just sitting next to each other and watching some terrible Netflix show.
And the minute I do, the noise just… stops.
And I don’t think it’s a one-way street.
He sleeps with his arm heavy and possessive over my waist, like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he lets go. He sends me messages about nothing, and it feels like everything. He listens to me venting and asks me to play guitar for him, staring at me like I’m the rapture come early.
This thing between us, this private world where we’re just us, is the first place I’ve ever felt like I could breathe without counting the cost.
Which is why I find myself walking inside the engineering building, usually a no-go zone for people like me, where I find Ben. He’s hunched over his workbench in the far corner, head in his hands, radiating the kind of bone-deep frustration that makes the air feel heavier.
And I know why.
His robot—Project Theseus—sits in front of him, a tangle of wires and circuit boards, mocking him with its silent, mechanical indifference.
There’s a crumpled granola bar wrapper on the desk, a half-empty water bottle, and a million post-it notes with his scribbles and a million more he’s torn up or screwed up into balls.
He’s stuck.
I walk up behind him, quiet, and slide a cardboard cup of coffee onto the bench right under his nose. “Figured you could use a lifeline,” I say.
He startles, his head jerking up, and then he sees me and his entire body melts. The defeated slump of his shoulders evaporates. His eyes—bloodshot, ringed with the kind of exhaustion that comes from staring at the same problem for too many hours—go soft with relief.
“You are literally saving my life right now,” he groans, grabbing the coffee with both hands. He takes a long sip, then sets it down and pulls me onto his lap without thinking, his arms wrapping around my waist, burying his face in my neck for a second.
I press a kiss to the top of his head, even as I feel the warmth of his breath against my skin and the slight rasp of his stubble. At the same time, I wonder when did I become the person he reaches for when he’s drowning?
“Rough day?” I murmur, threading my fingers into his hair, massaging his scalp and earning a groan.
“It’s still dead,” he says against my collarbone, his voice muffled and defeated. “I swore to Anya it was a hardware issue and it’s still not working after all this time. She’s going to kill me. Or worse, she’s going to look at me like I’m an idiot who wasted three weeks of her life.”
I know that look. I’ve gotten it from Joel a hundred times. That mix of disappointment and disbelief, like he can’t decide if I’m incompetent or just not trying hard enough. Either way, it’s clear I’m the problem, and the worst feeling in the world is when I start to believe it.
I pull back just enough to look at him. His jaw is tight with the kind of stubborn, self-directed anger I see in the mirror after a bad gig. “Show me,” I say.
He blinks. “What?”
“Show me what it’s doing.” I shrug. “Maybe a fresh set of eyes will help you see another angle.”
He looks skeptical—like he can’t imagine what a punk-rock guitarist could possibly contribute to a robotics problem—but he shifts me slightly so I’m still on his lap but facing the workbench. Theseus sits there, a small, wheeled robot with a sensor array that looks like a tiny bug head.
“It’s actually kind of cute in a deeply nerdy way,” I say, trying to break his mood a little in a way that doesn’t involve flashing my tits. I reach out and tap the sensor casing with one black-painted fingernail, curious. “So this little guy is supposed to navigate a maze?”
“If he can stay on course for more than ten seconds without losing his mind,” Ben says, his hand resting on my hip, his thumb tracing absent circles. “Watch.”
He reaches past me to tap a key on his laptop.
The diagnostic program runs, and the robot whirs to life.
Its wheels spin in place, the servo motors humming, and then the sensor array starts to sweep left and right, tracking an invisible target.
For a few seconds, it looks perfect, like a tiny mechanical miracle.
Then it drifts.
Even I can recognize what’s happening as the readings on the screen spike and drop erratically, and the robot jerks to a stop, its wheels spinning uselessly. Ben lets out a frustrated noise and slumps back against me, defeat radiating from every line of his body.
“See?” he says. “It’s useless.”
“Do it again,” I say.
He frowns at me, but complies, and it starts up again.
I close my eyes and just listen to what the machine is saying. The hum of the motors is a low D, steady and clean. The electronics have a faint buzz underneath, like a poorly grounded pedal. And then—there—a high-pitched whine spikes right before the sensor drifts.
It’s quick, almost buried in the noise floor, but it’s there, a B-flat, maybe slightly sharp, cutting through the mix like feedback building in a bad monitor. I know that sound like I know my face in the mirror. It’s the sound of dirty power bleeding into a clean signal.
“There,” I say, snapping my eyes open. “Did you hear that?”
He shakes his head, bewildered. “Hear what?”
“Right before the sensor drifts, that little servo motor for the left wheel makes this high-pitched whine. It’s quiet, but it’s there every single time.” I reach over and tap a black-painted nail against the motor casing. “Run it again, and listen rather than trying to diagnose.”
He does, and this time I watch his face as the sound registers, and I know for a fact that he’s never heard it before. His eyes widen slightly, and I can practically see the connections firing in his brain. He hears it now. He’s listening to his robot the way I listen to my amp.
“Is it possible,” I say slowly, my voice gaining confidence, “that the motor’s electronic noise is interfering with the sensor’s signal path? On stage, if my wah pedal puts out dirty power, it makes my overdrive sound like absolute shit. I’m no engineer, but…”
His eyes widen further, and a look of pure, unadulterated respect lights them up. It’s a look I’ve craved my whole life—not admiration for my body or my “edge,” but for my brain and my talent and my craft and me, the girl underneath the image.
He sees me.
Not the performance.
Not the persona.
Me.
“You’re brilliant,” he breathes, and then he’s kissing me, hard and fast, his hand cupping the back of my neck. When he pulls back, his face is flushed, his eyes bright, all traces of the earlier exhaustion burned away. “Can you sketch that? The signal path analogy?”
I grab a scrap of paper and a pencil, even though my hands are shaking slightly, not from nerves, but from something that feels dangerously close to pride. I’ve spent my entire college career convinced I was a fraud, but now this uber smart guy is respecting that I might actually know something.
If I can do this—if I can solve a problem that’s been eating him alive for weeks—then maybe I’m not the disaster Dr. Atwood thinks I am. Maybe Joel’s wrong. Maybe I’m not just instinct and noise. Maybe there’s actual skill buried under all the fear.
I draw the way a guitar signal flows from the pickups through the pedals and into the amp.
“It’s all about isolation,” I explain, tapping the pencil against the paper.
“If your power supply is dirty, it propagates through the whole chain. But if you clean it up at the source, everything downstream benefits.”
As I draw, he watches, his voice careful but excited. “Your amp. The hum. I’ve been thinking about it. Following your logic… if we built a clean, isolated power supply for it, we could kill the hum without touching the tone. I think it’s the same problem.”
I freeze, the pencil going still in my hand.
I stare at him, stunned.
Because he might be right.
And, better, he isn’t offering to replace my gear.
He isn’t calling it trash like Joel does every time the hum ruins a recording or punctuates the ending of a gig with a giant “fuck you.” He isn’t telling me to just buy a new amp like the prep-school guy at the bar suggested, when there’s no way in hell I could afford one.
He’s offering to help.
“Yeah?” I manage, my voice softer than I intend. “You think you can do that? Fix it?”
He nods, a confident smile replacing his usual anxious twitch. “I know I can. I’d need to take some measurements, figure out the power draw, but yeah.”
Suddenly, both of our professional problems are forgotten as he pulls me closer, until I’m straddling his thigh, his hand resting possessively on the small of my back.
The workbench digs into my hip, but I don’t care, because I’m feeling a high at having helped him and at the prospect of him helping me.
I lean in, grinding slow and deliberate against him, feeling the hard ridge of him instantly respond through his jeans. His breath catches, his grip tightening on my waist as I move against him, friction building heat between us. The lab is empty, but the door isn’t locked.
“Someone could walk in…” he says.
“That’s punk rock, baby,” I say with a wicked grin.
But it’s clear he’s both uncomfortable and aroused. “Cass…”
I lean close to his ear, not wanting to make him feel small or belittled or that he’s letting me down. “Consider that a preview,” I whisper, nipping his earlobe and then pulling back, leaving him flushed and aching. “Fix the robot, Kellerman. Then you can have me.”
He laughs, but turns back to the robot with renewed, terrifying focus. “You’re cruel and unusual punishment, just so you know.”
“I’ve been told.” I slide off his lap, feeling the loss of his warmth immediately, but I perch on the edge of the workbench instead, watching him work.
“I’ve got a road game this weekend,” he murmurs, not looking away from the schematic, but his hand finds my knee under the bench, unable to break contact.
“Big rivalry game against Boston College. Might get rough. Probably not much fun to watch.” He pauses, glancing up at me. “But I’d like you to be there.”
The request is simple. The stakes are not.
He’s asking me to show up.
To be seen with him, for real, publicly, outside the safety of our private bubble.
It’ll be the first time we’ve been in public as a real couple.
I thread my fingers into his hair, tugging gently until he looks at me fully. “I’ve got nothing better to do than watch you skate circles around some guys.”
His face lights up with a genuine, dazzling grin. “I’d love that,” he says. “Thanks, Cass…”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” I lean in and kiss him, slow and sweet, and when I pull back, he’s looking at me like I just handed him the world.