Chapter 11
Audrey
Logan is late.
I check my phone for the fourth time in ten minutes, then immediately hate myself for caring. We agreed he’d take the last overnight shift and come in after lunch. That was the plan.
But it’s almost two, and he’s still not here.
In the eleven months we worked together before Sweden, Logan was never late.
Not once. If anything, he was compulsively early—already deep in code whenever I walked in, barely looking up to acknowledge my existence.
It used to annoy me, the way he seemed to live in whatever lab he was assigned to, like he didn’t have anywhere else to be.
Now his absence feels conspicuous.
I try to focus on the simulation data. The numbers are good.
Better than good—the adaptive model has held steady for over forty hours of continuous operation, and the stress metrics are well within acceptable parameters.
If we can replicate these results under clinical conditions, we might actually make the FDA deadline.
I should be thrilled, celebrating. Instead, I’m staring at the door every thirty seconds like a golden retriever waiting for its owner to come home.
Stop it. You’re over him. Act like it. Be professional.
I pull up the biocompatibility reports and force myself to read. The words blur together. I keep thinking about Saturday night—the Thai food, the conversation, the way he talked about his family like he was describing acquaintances rather than parents. The revelation that had knocked me sideways.
I am a billionaire.
Richer than Bennett and Caleb combined, and he shows up every day in the same rotation of faded T-shirts like money is an abstract concept that happens to other people.
Nothing about him computes anymore.
The lab door opens and my heart does something embarrassing.
I look up, trying to arrange my face into neutral, and there he is. Same glasses. Same disheveled hair. Same Logan.
But something’s different. He’s standing straighter. Meeting my eyes instead of looking past me at the monitors. Like he’s made some kind of decision and is terrified of what comes next.
“Hey,” I say, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near breathless. “You’re late. Everything OK?”
“Yeah. I was just—” He thumbs over his shoulder, then stops. Takes a breath. Locks eyes with me.
“Logan?”
“I’m a virgin,” he says in a rush.
I stare at him.
He stares back, his face cycling through relief, then horror, then resigned despair—like a man watching his house burn down and realizing he left the stove on.
Static fills my ears. I’m gripping the edge of the desk. I make myself let go.
“I—what?”
His cheeks are flushed. “That was not how I wanted to say it,” he says, then runs both hands through his hair in a hopeless, rapid-fire gesture. “There was a speech. A whole explanation I’d planned. But when I opened my mouth…” He mimes something I’d guess is ‘word-vomit’.
“You’re a virgin,” I repeat.
He pushes his glasses up. “Yes.”
“You’re thirty-four.”
“I’m aware.”
“You have two PhDs.”
“Shockingly, neither of them covered this.”
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again. I feel like I’m trying to solve an equation where someone’s substituted all the numbers with gophers.
“I don’t understand,” I finally manage.
Logan takes a breath. Then another. He looks as though he’s bracing for impact.
“I’ve never kissed anyone,” he says, slower this time. “Never been with anyone. Never done any of it, with anyone, ever.”
He meets my eyes.
“Saturday night, when I said I skipped all the years when people figure stuff out? This is what I meant. This is what I couldn’t say.”
The pieces are starting to click into place, but my brain is resisting. This doesn’t match the story I’ve been telling myself—the story where I was the problem. Where I’d misread the data. Where my awkward, analytical self had finally been weighed and found wanting.
I’d built an entire narrative around my own inadequacy. Moved to another continent because of it. Reinvented myself from the ground up.
And the whole time, the answer was this. Something I never could have figured out because I didn’t have the data.
“So when I tried to kiss you...” I start.
“That would have been my first kiss.” His voice drops.
“And I wanted it. I wanted it so badly, Audrey. But I panicked. I didn’t know what to do.
I’d never done it before. And instead of telling you that, I just—” He mimes the hand block, wincing.
“My brain short-circuited and my arm moved, and I ruined everything.”
Oh my god.
Oh my god.
I sit back down. I don’t remember standing up, but apparently at some point I did, because now my legs don’t seem to want to hold me.
“I thought you found me repulsive.” The words come out cracked and small—smaller than I want them to, smaller than the cool Swedish Audrey would ever allow. “I thought you were disgusted by me. That I’d finally put myself out there and you couldn’t even look at me. I thought—”
My voice breaks. I hate that it breaks.
“I thought being smart wasn’t enough. That I wasn’t enough. That I’d never be enough for anyone.”
“No.” The word is sharp. Almost angry. “No. That’s not—Audrey, I have never wanted anything the way I want you. Jesus. I’ve been obsessing over you for months.”
I can’t breathe.
“You’re so smart and beautiful, and all I’ve done since that night is play that moment over and over. Wishing I could go back and just be normal for once. Instead of freezing. Instead of ruining everything.”
I can’t process anything beyond the phrase obsessing over for months.
Obsessing. Over me. For months.
Not tolerating me. Not finding me useful for collaboration and mildly entertaining as a person. Obsessing. The way I’ve been obsessing over him, apparently, despite my best efforts to pretend otherwise.
Wait.
He thinks I’m beautiful?
I don’t think a man has ever called me that before. Cute, yes. Quirky, sure. But beautiful?
Something cracks open in my chest.
Oh my god. We’re idiots. We’re both complete idiots.
He sinks into the chair across from me, elbows on knees, head hanging, hands lacing and unlacing.
“I know this doesn’t fix anything. But I wanted you to know I wasn’t lying when I said I never meant to hurt you.”
“I didn’t think you were lying at all.”
He looks up, so desperate and unguarded, I want to reach across and touch his face. I don’t. But I can’t stop myself from taking in every detail. How hard he’s breathing, the pink in his jaw and up his neck, the faint shine of panic behind the glasses.
“So you just put it down to me being a malfunctioning robot?” The self-loathing in his voice makes my heart squeeze, and I shake my head.
“You’re not a malfunctioning robot,” I say softly.
“The evidence suggests otherwise.”
“The evidence is incomplete.” I stand from my chair. Take a step toward him. “You just word-vomited your deepest secret within three seconds of walking through the door. That’s not a robot. That’s a person with zero emotional regulation. Totally different.”
He blinks. “Was that supposed to be comforting?”
“I’m working with what I’ve got here.”
A surprised laugh escapes him.
“You’re not... you don’t think I’m pathetic?” he asks.
“I think you’re an idiot,” I say, and watch his face fall before adding, “Three months, Logan. Three months of silence. One sentence could have changed everything, and you just... let me leave.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice breaks. “I should have told you. I was just so sure that if you knew the truth, you’d never look at me the same—”
I lean in and kiss him on the cheek.
It’s soft. Deliberate. I let my lips linger against his skin—warm, slightly rough with stubble—and breathe him in. Soap and coffee and something underneath that’s just him.
His breath catches. I feel it more than hear it.
When I pull back, he’s frozen. Completely, utterly frozen, like I’ve hit his pause button.
“What,” he says, and his voice comes out strangled. “What was… Why did you…”
“Full sentences, Logan.”
“I can’t. You broke me.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. He’s sitting there looking at me like I’ve just performed cold fusion in front of him, and it’s so absurd and so Logan that I can’t do anything but laugh.
“That was a thank you,” I explain. “For finally telling me the truth.”
“Oh.” He’s touching his cheek where I kissed him, like he’s checking to make sure it really happened. “OK. That’s. OK.”
“You sure about that? You just said ‘OK’ twice.”
“I’m aware. I’ve lost all higher brain function. This is what’s left.”
I shake my head, but I’m still smiling. “For the record? You’re not defective. You’re not pathetic. You’re just late to the party. That’s allowed.”
“Is it?”
“It is.” I reach out and straighten his glasses, which have gone crooked. “Also, for what it’s worth—I spent three months in Sweden trying to become a completely different person, and it didn’t work. So maybe we’re both just disasters pretending to be functional adults.”
“That’s weirdly comforting.”
“I know. I’m a giver.”
He’s looking at me differently now. Like I’ve handed him something he didn’t know he was allowed to want. It sends warmth spreading through me in a way that has nothing to do with panic and everything to do with possibility.
“So what happens now?” he asks.
It’s a good question. We’re still colleagues. We still have a project to save. We still have eighty days of working closely ahead of us, and I’m not na?ve enough to think one honest conversation erases months of hurt.
But something has shifted. The walls I’ve been maintaining—the blonde hair, the Swedish minimalism, the professional distance—feel less like protection now and more like a costume I’ve been wearing for the wrong reasons.
I reinvented myself because I thought the original version was the problem. That the outside wasn’t desirable enough and my brain couldn’t make up the difference.
But Logan didn’t reject me because of how I looked. He rejected himself because he was scared.
All that effort. And it was never about me at all.
I’m not sure if that’s liberating or infuriating. Maybe both.
What I do know is this: I’m tired of straightening my hair every morning. I miss my Mary Janes. And the old Audrey—the weird one, the intense one, the one who makes tech jokes when she’s nervous—was just fine all along.
“Now we get back to work,” I say. “The simulation data looks promising, but we need to run clinical protocols before we celebrate.”
“That’s it? We just... go back to normal?”
“Not normal.” I move toward my workstation, letting my shoulder brush against his as I pass. “Better. Because now I actually understand what I’m dealing with.”
“And what’s that?”
I look back at him over my shoulder. “A late bloomer with zero chill and a tendency to blurt out life-altering confessions before our afternoon caffeine hit.”
I let myself smile.
His ears go pink. “I have chill. I have significant chill.”
“Sure you do.”
For the first time in months, I feel like I actually understand something important. Not because I figured it out on my own, but because someone trusted me enough to give me the missing piece.
I grin and drop into my chair. “Now get over here and look at these stability metrics. I think we might be over the hard part.”