Chapter 10
Logan
So far, the adaptive model has held up through every stress test we’ve thrown at it. Forty-eight hours of continuous operation and counting.
But that’s not what’s keeping me awake.
Saturday night, somewhere between the Thai food and the controlled chaos tests, Audrey had looked at me and said she liked seeing the person underneath. The real me. The mess beneath the brilliant mind.
And then she’d said: Is that why you never learned how to...
She didn’t finish. But she’s starting to figure it out.
And I don’t know what to do with that.
Or how to respond if she does.
I need to talk to someone. Not Dominic—he’d laugh, then send me a BuzzFeed listicle titled ‘10 Ways to Be Less of a Disaster.’ Not Bennett or Caleb. They’d listen, but something about confessing this to them feels like confirming everything they already suspect.
Which leaves David.
He’s the only one of us who’s an actual adult—holding down a job so he can raise his kid alone, never flinching at other people’s chaos. He doesn’t judge. Or if he does, he keeps it to himself.
If I’m going to say this out loud to anyone, it’s him.
I drag myself out of bed, shower, dress, and then head to Luminous before I can talk myself out of it.
Luminous occupies three floors of a gleaming tower in the Loop.
I’ve never been here physically—although, digitally, I’ve been all over this place while helping Serena and Caleb with a case not so long ago.
It’s nice. As chic as you’d expect a cosmetic company to appear. I immediately feel out of place.
The receptionist looks up and smiles. I’m about to turn around and flee when David appears, all effortless competence.
“Logan.” He erases his surprise after the first syllable. “Didn’t expect to see you in the wild.”
“Needed to talk. You got a minute?”
“Of course.” He nods to the receptionist, who melts into gratitude at no longer having to wrangle me, and leads me down a corridor of glass and matte-black doors.
David’s office is exactly what I would have guessed: zero in the way of personal effects. One framed picture of his daughter. A desk, meticulously neat, except for a stack of thick folders rubber-banded together. Even the art on the walls is beige in intent.
He waves me to the visitor’s chair and closes the door behind us. “This was a surprise. What brings you all this way during work hours?”
I hesitate. Maybe I should have called first…
“You said your door was always open.” The words come out in a rush.
A small smile curves his lips. “You’re right. I did say that.” He gestures to the chair. “Sit. You want coffee? Water?”
“I’m fine.”
He settles across from me, studying my face with careful attention. “You look like hell.”
“Thanks.”
“Late night?”
“Lab. The simulation finally stabilized. We’ve been running tests all weekend.”
“We, meaning you and Audrey.”
I nod, not trusting my voice.
David is quiet for a moment. He’s always been the most measured of the group—slower to speak, more deliberate in his observations. Where Dominic fills silence with noise and Bennett fills it with strategy, David just... waits. Like he knows the important things will surface if you give them room.
“I don’t know how this works,” I say eventually.
“What exactly?”
“Any of it. Talking. Explaining. Being a person who has conversations about feelings instead of algorithms.” I stare at my hands before looking back up at him. “At O’Malley’s you said you know what it’s like to carry things you can’t explain to anyone else.”
“I remember.”
“What did you mean by that?”
He’s quiet for a moment, considering. "I meant that I spent three of the four years I was married pretending things were fine when they weren’t.
That I told everyone—including myself—that Michaela’s mother and I just had ‘different priorities’ when the truth was she’d checked out long before she actually left.
That I carried the weight of that failure alone because admitting it meant admitting I’d made a mistake. And I don’t make mistakes."
“Except you do.”
“Except I do.” He shrugs. “We all do. The question is whether you let them define you or whether you learn from them and move on.”
I absorb that. It’s not the same as my situation—not even close—but there’s something in the shape of it that resonates. The carrying. The pretending. The fear of being seen as less than what you’ve projected.
“I’ve never kissed anyone before,” I blurt.
The words come out flat. Clinical. Like I’m reporting test results instead of confessing the thing that’s been eating me alive for years.
My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat. My palms are slick. I’m gripping the arms of the chair like it might eject me from the room.
David blinks. “Sorry?”
“I’ve never kissed anyone. Never been with anyone. Never—” I force myself to breathe. My hands are shaking now. I shove them under my thighs. “I’m thirty-four years old and I have zero experience. With anyone. Ever.”
The words sit between us like a grenade with the pin pulled.
David’s face doesn’t change. I wait for it—the disbelief, the pity, the moment where he re-categorizes me from ‘eccentric genius’ to ‘complete disaster.’
But his expression doesn’t shift. He just looks at me with the same steady attention he’s had since I walked in.
“OK,” he says slowly. “Does Audrey know this? Is she pressuring you?”
“What? No! No. She has no idea. No one knows. You’re the first person I’ve told.”
He leans back in his chair, folding his hands in his lap. “So why are you telling me?”
“Because I think I’m fucking it up. With her.
With this whole—” I gesture vaguely, encapsulating the project, my life, the entire city of Chicago.
“She tried to—months ago, before she left. She tried to kiss me and I just—” I mime a stop motion, hand up awkwardly, as if I’m directing traffic.
“I blocked it. With my hand. Like a reflex. Like she was attacking me instead of—”
“Instead of kissing you.”
“Yes.”
“And considering how things are between you right now, I’m guessing she didn’t take that well.”
“She screamed at me to get out. Then she moved to Sweden.” I open my eyes. “So no. She didn’t take it well.”
David exhales slowly. “I see how this has become a problem.”
“It’s the giant elephant in the room.”
“Have you tried to explain why you reacted that way?”
“I have. But every time I get close to the truth, I—” I shake my head. “How do you explain to someone that you’ve never done the thing that everyone else figured out at sixteen? How do you say, ‘I’m not rejecting you, I’m just broken in a way that’s going to make everything awkward and terrible’?”
“You’re not broken.”
“I’m a thirty-four-year-old outlier on every chart that matters.”
“You’re inexperienced,” David corrects. “That’s not the same thing.”
“It feels the same.”
He leans forward. “Let me ask you something. When she tried to kiss you—did you want her to?”
“Yes,” I say immediately. “More than I’ve ever wanted anything.”
“Then you’re not broken. You’re scared.” He holds up a hand before I can argue. “Which is normal, by the way. Fear of intimacy, fear of vulnerability, fear of being seen and found wanting—those are universal human experiences. You’re not special for having them.”
“I’m special for having them at thirty-four with zero practical experience to fall back on.”
“Fair point.” He almost smiles. “But here’s the thing—experience isn’t a fixed variable. You can get it. At any age. The only requirement is being willing to try.”
“What if I try and I’m terrible at it?”
“You will be.” He says it matter-of-factly.
“Everyone is the first time. That’s how learning works.
” He shrugs. “Michaela didn’t come out of the womb knowing how to ride a bike.
She fell down approximately ten thousand times before she figured it out.
But she kept trying, and now she doesn’t even need training wheels. ”
“You’re comparing my romantic life to an eight-year-old learning to ride a bike?”
“I’m comparing learning curves. The principle is the same.” He fixes me with a look. “You want Audrey?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell her the truth. All of it. And let her decide what to do with that information.”
“What if she—”
His phone rings, cutting me off.
David frowns at the screen. “It’s Michaela’s school. Hold on.” He answers. “This is David Kingsley.”
His expression shifts as he listens. The calm professionalism gives way to something sharper—concern, then anger, then a controlled fury I’ve only seen a handful of times.
“She did what?” His voice is ice. “No, absolutely not. Michaela is not to leave the building with anyone except me or the approved list. I don’t care what she said or what documentation she claimed to have.” A pause. “I’m on my way. Keep her in the office until I get there.”
He hangs up and is already grabbing his jacket.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Michaela’s mother showed up at the school.” His jaw is tight. “Tried to take her. Said she had custody paperwork.”
“Does she?”
“She hasn’t seen Michaela in six and a half years. She has nothing.” He’s moving toward the door. “I have to go.”
“I’ll come with you.”
He pauses, looking back at me. “You don’t have to—”
“I know.” I’m already standing. “But you shouldn’t walk into that alone.”
It’s not something I would have said a year ago. Maybe not even a month ago. But David just sat through my confession without flinching. The least I can do is return the favor.
“Besides,” I add, “I could use the distraction from my own disaster.”
Something flickers in David’s expression. Gratitude, maybe. Or just the recognition that sometimes you need someone in your corner, even if they can’t fix anything.
“OK,” he says. “Let’s go.”
The school is a stately brick building in Lincoln Park, the kind of place that screams old money and high expectations. David drives like a man possessed, weaving through traffic with a precision that suggests he’s done this before.