Chapter 6
Audrey
Iclick through another corrupted file and resist the urge to throw my laptop across the room.
The biocompatibility data is a mess. Tissue response metrics—the literal heartbeat of the project—scattered across four different databases like a corrupted zip file. Half of them using outdated formatting protocols that someone should have migrated months ago.
I make a note: Fix data architecture. Fire whoever let this happen.
Then I cross out the second part because I’m pretty sure the person who let this happen was me, right before I fled to Sweden.
My stomach growls. I ignore it, chug half a cup of cold coffee, and pull up another dataset.
Data behaves predictably. Unlike people. Unlike men. Unlike Logan Whitman saying I’m sorry in that voice that made my chest get all tight and my stomach get all twisty.
I don’t understand. I’ve run the scenario a thousand times—literally, at 3 a.m., lying awake in Stockholm—and I still don’t understand how someone who called my algorithm elegant like it was a love poem could block my kiss with his hand.
Smoosh my face as if kissing me was the worst idea in the world.
The data blurs. I blink hard and refocus.
Biocompatibility. Tissue response. FDA deficiencies. Things I can fix.
“I have an idea.”
I jump. Layla is standing in the doorway, coat on, purse over her shoulder, looking at me like I’m a problem she needs to solve.
“If it’s what I think it is, I have work to do.”
“Work, schmerk. I wanna play hooky and you weren’t even supposed to be here today.” She walks in without invitation and perches on the edge of my desk. “How was the lab meeting with Logan?”
“Fine.”
“Audrey.”
“It was fine, Layla. We discussed the technical approach. He’s going to run some simulations.” I gesture at my screen. “And now I’m catching up on the biocompatibility data, which is a disaster. Who was managing the database migrations while I was gone?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not changing the subject. I’m telling you about my actual work, which is what I should be focused on instead of—” I stop myself.
Layla waits.
“Instead of what?” she asks softly.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.” I turn back to my screen. “I’m almost down to eighty-two days to fix three major FDA deficiencies. I don’t have time for distractions.”
Layla is quiet for a moment. Then she reaches over and closes my laptop.
“Hey—”
“We’re going out.”
“No, we’re not.”
“Yes, we are. I already texted Serena. She’s meeting us in twenty minutes.” Layla stands, smoothing her coat. “And before you argue, I want you to know that I’m prepared to physically carry you out of this building if necessary. Bennett’s been teaching me deadlifts.”
“Layla, I really can’t—”
“You can. We have a whole team working on this. The data will be here tomorrow. And the day after that. And for the next eighty-two days.” She holds out her hand.
“One drink. You can tell us you’re fine, we can pretend to believe you, and then you can come back here and stare at tissue response metrics all night if that’s really how you want to spend your evening. ”
“It’s not about what I want. It’s about what needs to get done.”
“Audrey.” Her voice softens. “You just got back. You walked into a meeting and found out you’re working with Logan for the next three months. You’re allowed to need a drink.”
I want to fight back, stay in my safe little bubble of work and data and problems I can actually solve. The bubble where I’m competent. Valuable. In control.
But Layla’s looking at me with care in her eyes because she’s one of my best friends. The kind that shows up uninvited and refuses to let you drown alone. The kind that sees through my flimsy excuses and doesn’t flinch.
Maybe that’s what I’m really afraid of. Not Logan’s explanation, but being seen. By anyone.
“One drink,” I say.
“That’s my girl.” She grabs my coat from the hook and tosses it to me.
“And I don’t want to go to Lockwood. Or anywhere we usually go.”
“Got it,” Layla says, pulling out her phone. “Nowhere anyone we know could possibly be drinking too.”
Layla scrolls through her phone for two minutes, a look of concentration on her face. She finally thrusts her screen toward me. “How do you feel about billiards and, and I quote, ‘the best cheese curds west of Milwaukee’?”
The bar’s logo is a cartoon rat with sunglasses and a shot glass. “I could eat cheese curds.”
“Perfect.” Layla tries to play it cool, but she’s grinning. “This place looks like such a dive. Nobody from work would go here. Nobody from anywhere probably goes there, except maybe construction workers and day drinkers, and the occasional lost soul. It’s a safe zone. No one will see us.”
She shoots off the change of location in a text to Serena and practically drags me out of the building.
The Chicago afternoon is cool, and I pull my coat tighter, letting Layla lead me.
She’s talking about the FDA situation from the business side—investor calls she’s been fielding, the board’s anxiety about the timeline, a competitor who’s apparently been sniffing around our biocompatibility research team trying to poach talent.
“I had to talk my dad off a ledge yesterday,” she says, steering me around a puddle. “He wanted to call the FDA directly and explain that they’re wrong about the signal interference concerns. Just... call them. Like it’s a customer service complaint.”
“That sounds like Robert.”
“Bennett had to physically take his phone away.” She shakes her head. “I love my father, but sometimes I think he forgets that regulatory bodies aren’t impressed by his ‘visionary genius’ reputation.”
I make the appropriate noises without really listening. My brain is still back in that lab. Still on Logan. His apology. The way he looked at me when I walked in—like I was a ghost. A miracle. Something that hurt to look at.
I don’t know what to do with any of it.
“Here we are.” Layla stops in front of a narrow door wedged between a laundromat and a store that sells vacuum repair parts. A neon sign flickers: O’MALLEY’S. Half the letters are burned out. So, really, it just blinks ‘MALL’.
“This is it?”
“Isn’t it perfect?”
It’s aggressively unglamorous—the kind of bar where you pay cash and don’t ask what’s in the well drinks.
I let out a breath. “OK. Yeah. This works.”
Serena calls out to us as we’re about to push through the door.
“Over here, dorks!” She’s half running, half walking up the sidewalk with her arms out like she expects to tackle us.
Which, to my surprise, she does. She hugs both me and Layla at once—all elbows and perfume and actual, visible relief.
“You both look like a murder just happened,” she says, steering us inside. “Was the FDA stuff that bad?”
Layla gives me a quick look, but I’m not sure if I’m supposed to answer or if we’re keeping secrets. “Worse,” I say anyway. “The entire team is a tire fire, but with more regulations.”
Serena grins. “My favorite kind of crisis.”
Inside, O’Malley’s is exactly as advertised.
There’s a linoleum floor, a jukebox with an ‘out of order’ sign and a crappy Bluetooth speaker sitting on top of it playing Bon Jovi.
There’s an entire wall of TVs showing a game that no one is watching.
I spot two men playing darts in paint-splattered jeans, an old guy at the bar arguing about the perfect beer-to-foam ratio, and I can hear someone playing billiards off to the side.
Serena guides us to the closest booth and insists on getting the first round. She returns with three glasses of over-poured whiskey and sets them on the sticky table. “Figured we'd skip the pretense and just go straight for the hard stuff.”
As she slides back into the booth, I take one and drink half of it before anyone can comment.
“So.” Serena leans forward. “Scale of one to ten, how bad was today?”
“It was fine.”
Layla and Serena exchange a look.
“It was,” I insist. “We had a meeting. Discussed our approach. He had some ideas about the signal interference issue that were actually...” I trail off.
“Actually what?” Layla prompts.
“Good. They were good ideas.” I stare into my whiskey. “He’s still brilliant. That hasn’t changed.”
“What about outside the work stuff?” Serena asks carefully. “Did you two... talk?”
“He tried to apologize.”
The silence that follows is heavy.
“Tried?” Layla repeats.
“In the lab. After the meeting.” I take another sip, letting the burn settle in my chest. “Said he was sorry. That he didn’t mean to hurt me. That he didn’t know how to—” I stop, because I don’t actually know how that sentence was supposed to end. “I don’t know. I didn’t let him finish.”
“Why not?”
Because I was afraid of what came next. Because if he finished that sentence—if he actually explained—I might understand.
And if I understood, I might forgive him.
And if I forgave him, I’d be right back where I started.
Wanting someone who doesn’t want me back.
Waiting for the next rejection. Building my whole sense of worth around whether a man decides I’m enough.
I push the thoughts back down and go with, “Because I don’t want his apology.” The lie comes out smooth. Practiced. “I don’t want him to explain. I don’t want to understand. I just want to do my job and get through the next eighty-two days without—”
Without hoping. Without letting myself believe there’s an explanation that makes this OK. Without finding out that I was right all along—that I’m just not the kind of woman men want to kiss.
I take another sip.
A loud whoop cuts through the bar. The kind of sound someone makes when they’ve just sunk an impossible shot.
“Pay up, Professor. That’s three in a row.”
I know that voice.
My whole body goes cold.
“Double or nothing,” another voice responds. Quieter. Familiar in a way that makes my stomach drop through the floor. “I’ve calculated the trajectory. The felt has a slight warp to the left that I didn’t account for, but now that I’ve adjusted—”
No.
No, no, no.
I know the cadence of it. The way he turns everything into a calculation. The specific frequency that still makes something in my chest twist, even when I’m furious with him.
“You’re not going to math your way out of losing, my guy. Just accept defeat gracefully.”
Serena’s eyes go wide. Layla is already twisting in the booth, craning to see around the partition that separates us from the billiard area.
“Is that—” Serena starts.
“It can’t be,” Layla whispers, fully in denial.
Dominic rounds the corner first, pool cue in one hand, empty glass in the other, heading for the bar. He’s mid-laugh, looking back over his shoulder at someone behind him.
“Face it, you’re buying the next round. Those were the terms and I—”
He sees us.
The laugh dies. His feet stop moving. For one frozen second, his face cycles through about six different expressions—surprise, confusion, a flash of something that might be amusement, and then a careful, calculated neutrality.
“Well,” he says slowly. “This is...”
Logan appears behind him.
He’s holding his own pool cue, sleeves pushed up to his elbows in that way that shows off corded forearms. He looks more relaxed than he did in the lab—or he did until he follows Dominic’s gaze and sees me.
The color drains from his face.
For a long, horrible moment, nobody moves. Nobody speaks. My hand tightens around my whiskey glass so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter. Bon Jovi keeps playing from the shitty Bluetooth speaker, completely oblivious to the fact that my entire chest has collapsed in on itself.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Serena breathes.
Layla looks like she’s about to commit murder. “What are the fucking chances? Of all the bars in the city.”
“Right?” Dominic places one hand on his hip. “Of all the bars in the city, you three have to come and crash my spot.”
“Your spot?” Serena gasps.
“Yes. Mine. I’ve been coming here for years.” He gestures vaguely at the billiard table. “They let me run a tab.”
Layla shakes her head like she doesn’t trust her ability to process what’s in front of her. “You have a regular dive bar and you never mentioned it?”
“Why would I?” Dominic shrugs. “I’m sure you have some favorite little hole in the wall spot I don’t know about. I like it here. Reminds me of home.”
“You’re from Greenwich, Connecticut,” Logan says flatly. “Your childhood home has a tennis court.”
“Fine.” Dominic waves a hand. “It reminds me of my broke college days.”
Logan clears his throat.
Dominic rolls his eyes. “The days before I met you, OK? When I was a struggling student surviving on ramen and dreams, before some twenty-year-old genius started paying me to invest his questionable earnings.” He shoots Logan a look. “Happy?”
“Accurate,” Logan mutters.
Questionable earnings?
I don’t have the bandwidth to process it right now. Not when Logan is standing ten feet away and my body is practically begging me to go over there and touch him—I’m a sucker for rolled-up sleeves.
“We should go,” I say, and I hate how much it sounds like running. Again. “Find somewhere else.”
This is what I do now, apparently. Flee from Logan Whitman. First Sweden, now a dive bar in Chicago. At this rate, I’ll run out of places to go.
“No. We were here first,” Serena says, but there’s no conviction behind it.
“Seriously?” Dominic says. “You damn well know we were. Got here about forty minutes ago.” He glances back at Logan, then at me, something calculating behind his eyes. “But we can leave. If that’s what you want.”
The offer hangs in the air.
Logan still hasn’t said a word to me. Not hi, not sorry we keep running into each other, not anything. He’s just standing there, frozen, his knuckles white around the pool cue.
And I hate—hate—that a few gulps of whiskey has turned my own eyes into traitors. I can’t stop staring at those damn forearms. The way his hands grip that pool cue. What would those hands feel like if they ever gripped me with that kind of intensity?
Stop it. He rejected you. He literally blocked your kiss with his palm. You do not get to want him.
But apparently my body didn’t get the memo.
I want him to say something. But I’m not even sure anymore if I want him to say something so I can stay angry or say something so I have an excuse to keep looking at him.
I honestly can’t tell which one I want more.
“Nobody has to leave,” Layla says finally, her voice strained with the effort of being reasonable. “We’re all adults. We can exist in the same bar for an hour without it being weird.”
“Can we?” Serena mutters into her whiskey.