Chapter 9 #2
“I could never have navigated Harvard without him.”
She laughs. “You say that like they make you solve social calculus on every problem set.”
“Sometimes they do,” I say. “Every code assignment has a collaborative component. I used to find the partnership more stressful than the actual project.”
She’s smiling now, genuinely. “I get that. It’s how I was in lab rotations. If I had to talk to people, the work felt secondary. Like the real test was whether I could pass for a normal human.”
“You’re very convincing,” I say.
She tilts her head to the side. “I do OK.”
The conversation drifts off, a natural fade. I use the lull to check the sim status, but I can feel her next question winding up before it lands.
“So you, Dominic, Bennett, and Caleb have all been a group since college?”
I don’t look up from the screen. “Pretty much. Dominic and I met first. Then he just started dragging me around everywhere with him. He took me to some party where I met Caleb and Bennett. And after that we all just kept hanging out.”
“And you stayed close after graduation,” she adds. “You’re all entwined professionally and socially.”
I bounce a shoulder. “Does that make us co-dependent?”
She shakes her head. “Not at all. Layla and I were the same. Serena went off and did her own thing. But I can promise you that if Carmichael Innovations could have given her the kind of career she wanted, she’d have followed us here too.
Although…” She pauses, glancing at the monitors for a moment before continuing.
“I do sometimes wonder why you didn’t strike out on your own. ”
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” she tilts her head, studying me, “Bennett built Mercer Capital. Caleb is a name partner in his law firm. Dominic has Cruz Financial. They all built their own empires. But you stayed working for them. Why?”
It’s a fair question. One I’ve asked myself on more than one occasion.
“Because working for Mercer gave me the only thing I needed,” I say slowly.
“A place where the way my brain works wasn’t a liability.
Where I could be useful without having to perform normalcy.
” I stare at the simulation data scrolling across the screen.
“Most workplaces, not being good with people is a deal breaker. But Bennett just... worked with it. He found ways to let me contribute without forcing me into shapes I don’t fit.
And all of them trust me enough to just let me be me. ”
She doesn’t reply right away, but the silence between us is less brittle than it was yesterday.
I don’t know how to explain that even when I was making terrible decisions, every system I ever built was about creating a world I could exist in.
I never needed to be a boss. I just wanted to matter.
And Mercer let me do that without making me feel like a burden.
Even after she ran to Sweden, even after everything else that’s happened, the only thing I really miss is.
.. this. Collaborating with someone whose brain is as weird and sharp and restless as mine.
“I get it,” she says at last, voice very soft.
“Everyone thinks the goal is to run the whole show, but sometimes you just want to build things and not have to be in charge of all the stuff that doesn’t matter to you.
” She gives me a small smile, and I feel like I’ve won something precious.
“Besides, who needs to be a billionaire like those other guys when you’re rich in friendship. ”
“What are you talking about?” I snort before I can stop myself. “I am a billionaire.”
Audrey blinks at me.
I replay what I just said and wince. “That came out wrong.”
“Did it? Because it sounded like you just casually dropped that you’re a billionaire.” She turns to face me fully. “I thought you were Bennett’s tech guy.”
“I am.” I push curry around the container, buying time. This is what I get for feeling comfortable enough around her to let my guard down. “I don’t really think about the money. It’s just... there.”
“Just there.” She stares at me as if I’ve grown a second head. “OK. I’m going to need you to explain.”
“My family is old money. Trust fund that wasn’t small. When Dominic started investing my earnings from the questionable business, he didn’t just invest that—he invested everything I had access to.”
“That’s… you must have really trusted him.”
“I figured it was only money. Worst case, I’d make more.”
She gapes at me. “That’s the most Logan thing I’ve ever heard. Only you could treat a fortune like a jar of peanut butter in the communal fridge. Oh, I’ll get another one if it runs out.”
“I’ve never not had money,” I say. The words feel fragile and ridiculous, but they’re true.
“So I work because I want to. Not because I have to. By the time we all graduated, the returns alone were enough that I could put up the seed money for Mercer Capital and offer the last of what Dominic needed for Cruz Financial. Caleb already had a path laid out for him. So he didn’t need me to—”
I stop because she’s staring at me, her expression shifting from confusion to calculation to something that might be disbelief.
“Logan.” She says my name slowly, like she’s doing math in her head. “Are you telling me you’re richer than Bennett?”
“On paper? Probably. Richer than Bennett and Caleb combined, if we’re being technical. Not Dominic, though. His wealth is—”
She just stares at me.
“But that’s never been the point,” I add. “The money is just a fact. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Then what does?”
The question lands heavy. I look at my hands, swallow hard.
“Family,” I say quietly. “These guys. They’re the only family I’ve ever really had.”
She’s quiet, processing. I can practically see the gears turning.
“Your parents,” she says finally. “They weren’t good to you?”
I’m not sure how to answer that. So I busy myself gathering up the last of my food, dropping it in the trash, wiping down the surface with a napkin, buying time.
“They were fine. Just... busy.” I shrug, aiming for casual. “Dad’s a surgeon. Mom runs a lot of charity boards. They weren’t around much when I was growing up, but they made sure I had everything I needed. Best schools, best opportunities.”
“That sounds lonely.”
“It was what it was.” I toss the napkin into the trash, avoiding her eyes. “We’re not super close, but it’s not some tragic backstory. They’re proud of me. They just show it differently than some families do.”
It’s not a lie, exactly. More like a carefully curated version of the truth. The version I’ve learned to tell so people don’t look at me with pity or, worse, start asking follow-up questions I don’t want to answer.
Audrey’s quiet for a moment, studying me in that way she has—like she’s running my words through some internal algorithm, checking for inconsistencies.
“Is that why your friends feel like family?” she asks. “Because your actual family was more... hands-off?”
She’s too smart. Always has been.
“Maybe.” I meet her eyes. “They were the first peer group who made me feel like I belonged. And maybe that’s just because we were closer in age than my MIT cohort—I was only fifteen when I started there—but either way, with them, I didn’t feel like an alien for the first time.
I was just me. No translation necessary. ”
She nods slowly, and I can see her filing this away, drawing conclusions. But she doesn’t push the family thing further, and I’m grateful for that.
“So…MIT at fifteen. Do you think that’s why you never learned how to...” She stops herself, shaking her head. “Sorry. That’s not my business.”
But she was going to ask. I can see the shape of the question behind her eyes—is that why you never learned how to be with someone? Is that why you blocked my kiss with your hand?
“I skipped all the years when people figure that stuff out,” I say quietly. “I was in labs while everyone else was at dances and parties and learning how to… be. By the time I realized I’d missed something important, it was too late to go back and learn it.”
The words hang. I’ve just told her more than I’ve told anyone—circled so close to the truth that she could probably see it if she looked hard enough. Part of me wants her to ask. To force the confession out of me so I don’t have to figure out how to volunteer it.
Part of me is terrified she will.
The silence stretches. I’ve said too much. I always say too much or not enough—never the right amount, never at the right time. Story of my life.
Shit.
“I like this,” she says suddenly.
I look up. “What?”
“I like this version of you.” She gestures at me—at the mess I’ve just laid bare. “Less guarded. More real.”
She pauses, and I watch her choose her words carefully.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always liked the brilliant mind. The guy who solves problems no one else can see. But this—” She meets my eyes, holding them. “The person underneath all that brain. I like seeing him.”
I don’t know what to say.
My whole life, I’ve operated on the assumption that the real me is the problem. That the brilliant mind is the only acceptable part—the rest is just liability.
And here she is, saying she wants to see more of that.
Well, fuck.
It doesn’t compute. It’s like finding out the error in your code was actually a feature all along.
“I don’t—” I start, then stop.
Every word feels like a risk. A piece of myself I’m handing over without knowing if she’ll handle it carefully. Or if she’ll realize, once she sees enough, that the real me isn’t worth the trouble.
“We should check the simulation.”
The words come out urgent, and I recognize the move for what it is, a retreat. She just told me she likes seeing the real me, and instead of sitting with that—instead of letting myself believe it—I’m diving back into the only world where I know I won’t fail.
I tell myself I’m giving her an exit.
It’s easier than admitting I’m the one who needs it.
She pivots her monitor with a flick of her wrist. “The metrics are still holding. Signal arbitration’s clean, no backlog on any tier.
If it does collapse, it’ll be a boundary condition issue, not the algorithm.
We’re... past the first stress inflection, at least.” She’s already punchy with the jargon, her safe place, same as mine.
“Want to run a controlled chaos test?” I ask. “We can program in unpredictable spikes—simulate a seizure event or a direct hardware attack.”
Her eyes light up, and I wonder if we’re both relieved to be back in the steel-and-code world. “Let’s throw everything at it. If it fails in catastrophic style, it’ll be way more fun to watch it break in real-time.”