Chapter 32
Audrey
The living room of my childhood home is currently a sensory overload of domestic chaos.
The television is blaring a White Sox game.
The air smells like pepperoni and lukewarm beer, and my brothers are yelling at the screen with a fervor usually reserved for religious miracles.
Dad is in his favorite La-Z-Boy nursing a beer.
And in the center of it all sits Logan.
He looks like a high-end server placed in the middle of a disorganized hardware store. He’s dressed in a crisp button-down—sleeves rolled up to the elbows—clutching a beer bottle like he isn’t entirely sure of its structural integrity.
Life is feeling a little less frantic these days.
After the chaos having the servers going down created, we got our FDA submission in with two hours to spare.
Since then, it’s been a waiting game. But two days ago, we got the call that our application had moved to the final review.
We’re quietly hopeful. But we’re also both so nervous that we agreed to beer, pizza and a game with my overbearing family.
“No, see,” Logan says, leaning toward Tony. “If you analyze the pitcher’s historical performance against left-handed batters in high-humidity conditions, the probability of a curveball here is actually sixty-eight percent. The angle seems... inefficient.”
Tony blinks at him, a slice of pizza halfway to his mouth. “Logan, buddy, we don’t use math. We use vibes. And the vibe right now is that this guy sucks.”
Logan tilts his head, genuinely considering this. “But the numbers factor into the vibe. That’s what makes it predictive.”
Tony chews, thinks it over, and points at Logan with his pizza. “OK, then, brainiac. What’s the call here?”
Logan pushes his glasses up and peers at the screen with a level of concentration usually reserved for our lab simulations. “It’s a wasted opportunity not to bunt, but the manager is risk averse to an irrational degree. Expect a grounder to short.”
Tony points at the screen, eyes big. “If he grounds out to short, I’ll eat a goddamn anchovy.”
The next pitch comes. Batter swings. Grounder, right to shortstop’s glove. Double-play, inning over.
The living room explodes.
“Holy shit, he’s a wizard,” Mike hollers, and Logan lets himself smile. Not the polite social version—something real and a little wild, like he’s just realized the world is less hostile than he thought.
This is the man who believed he was fundamentally broken. Look at him now.
I perch on the arm of the couch with my own slice, watching him fit into this mess of secondhand furniture and human noise.
Six months ago, I was in Stockholm convincing myself I was better off alone. Straightening my hair, trading my glasses for contacts, building a version of myself that couldn’t be hurt because she didn’t want anything real.
I never imagined this. Logan in my childhood living room, surrounded by mismatched furniture that smells faintly of motor oil, laughing at something Tony said. Completely at ease in the chaos of my actual life.
I’m not the Scandinavian ice queen anymore. I’m just Audrey. Frizzy hair, messy family, pizza stains and all.
And that’s exactly who he wanted.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. A sustained, rhythmic vibration that usually means an automated alert.
I pull it out, my breath catching as I see the sender. U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
I don’t realize I’ve stopped breathing until the text on the screen registers. Application Status: Approved.
“Logan,” I whisper.
He’s mid-sentence, trying to explain the physics of a home run to Chris, but he freezes. He knows that tone. He’s across the room in three strides, his eyes scanning my face with terrifying intensity.
“Audrey?”
I turn the screen toward him. “We’re live. NeuraTech is a go. Full FDA approval.”
For a second, the room goes silent. Then, Logan lets out a sound—a sharp, ragged exhale that sounds like a system reboot.
“We did it,” he breathes, his eyes locked on mine. “Audrey, we actually did it.”
My brothers don’t need the technical details.
They hear ‘approval’ and erupt. Mike and Chris let out a whoop, Tony starts pounding on the coffee table, and suddenly Logan and I are being pulled into a series of aggressive, rib-cracking Greene family hugs.
He looks startled, his arms hovering awkwardly for a moment before he finally hugs back, a dazed, brilliant smile breaking across his face.
Amidst the shouting, my dad walks over. He’s been quiet most of the night, watching Logan with that discerning ‘Dad’ eye that usually makes boyfriends break into a sweat.
He waits for my brothers to let go, then steps up and gives me a tight hug.
“Nice work, kid,” Dad says, voice gruff.
He’s wearing his oil-stained work shirt, his hair a mess of gray and thick as ever.
I can’t remember the last time he hugged me this hard.
I blink against his shoulder, swallow the lump in my throat.
He pulls back to look at me, and his eyes are glassy. “I’m proud of you,” he says, then turns to Logan and claps him on the back with enough force to nearly dislodge a lung. “And you, son. You’ve both worked hard for this. I’m proud of you too.”
I see the exact moment the words hit home. Logan’s throat works as he swallows hard, his eyes shimmering with a sudden, raw brightness.
My dad just gave him the one thing his father never could.
“Thank you, sir,” Logan manages, his voice thick. He looks over at me, and the sheer vulnerability in his expression makes my eyes sting.
My phone starts vibrating again—a frantic stream of texts from the group chat.
Caleb:
SUBMISSION TRACKER JUST TURNED GREEN. I’M BUYING THE FIRST FIVE ROUNDS.
Bennett:
Get to the Alibi. Now. We’re celebrating until the sun comes up.
Dominic:
Congratulations. Well deserved. Now move your asses, I’m already halfway through a scotch (and I’m not even at the club yet)
“They want us at the Alibi,” I say, wiping a stray tear from my cheek and laughing as I show Logan the constant stream of messages.
Logan reads over my shoulder, then kisses the top of my head. “We should go,” he says, voice already steadier. “They’ll riot if we don’t.”
Dad glances up from the game, brow raised. “You going out, honey?”
“We are,” I say. “To celebrate.”
“Be safe.” Which is Dad-speak for be wild, but within reason.
My brothers are already jostling for the leftover pizza, but Tony claps Logan on the back one more time. “Way to go, man. Fucking incredible.” He turns to me, lowering his voice. “He’s all right, Aud. Don’t screw it up.”
I stick my tongue out at him, and he grins that big, goofy Greene smile. “Love you, too, you troglodyte.”
We slip out into the spring night. Logan holds the screen door open, and it’s such a small gesture, but that’s always the way with him, deliberate, tuned to the frequency of my existence.
I breathe in the cool air. Somewhere a neighbor’s wind chimes are going to war with a distant siren, but for once my brain isn’t running simulations.
I’m just happy. Not the anxious, borrowed kind that always comes with an asterisk. The real version.
Logan stands on the sidewalk, pale as the moon and shaking his head, like he still can’t believe what happened tonight.
He glances sidelong at me, then blinks a few times, fighting for control over his face, and I see it the instant he decides to let go of it all.
He turns to me, hands in his pockets. “You do realize what we just did, right?”
I raise my eyebrows, grinning at him. “Impress your way into my family with baseball stats?”
He laughs, shaking his head with enough force that a strand of hair falls over his eyes. “No. I mean, yes, but… Audrey. We just changed the world.”
The words pluck a string in my chest. I want to deflect, to make a self-deprecating joke, but he’s deadly serious—and so am I.
Epilepsy. Parkinson’s. All the syndromes that end dinner conversations and leave empty chairs at tables. And somewhere, in some version of the universe I’ll never get to see, maybe my mother’s neurons could have held on a little longer. Maybe she could have met the man I chose.
“We changed the world,” he says again, softer.
The words fall into me like stones into water.
I don’t have answers for the enormity of what we’ve done—there are no words—so I kiss him.
It’s not a gentle, movie-ending kiss. It’s raw and hungry, his hands tightening at my waist like he’s making sure I’m real, that this moment is real.
He laughs into me, unguarded and dizzy, and I love him most in these moments—stripped of pretense, the old panic giving way to something wilder. I pull him closer until the world narrows to just this. His mouth, the warmth between us, and the shocked certainty that we did it.
We did it.
I’m still laughing when we get to the car, a noise that won’t leave my body.
We drive with the windows open, the night air cold enough to bite, but Logan’s hand finds my knee and stays there, thumb drawing invisible equations on my skin.
I know, by the tilt of his mouth, that his brain is running every probability tree about tonight, but I also know he’s intentionally glitched the simulation, letting it loop on the branch where we just… win.
“Pit stop?” I say as Logan pulls past the Dunkin’ at the corner of 18th and Western, almost at my apartment.
His brow creases, suspicious. “What for? We just ate.”
I grin. “We need to stop off at my apartment so I can change. I look like a high school mathlete’s chaperone, and if we’re going to the Alibi, Serena will literally set me on fire if I show up looking like this.”
Logan glances at me. “An oversized T-shirt and pizza stains? I think you’ve never looked hotter.”
“You lie. But regardless, they won’t even let me into the club in this outfit.”
He narrows an eye. “I mean, I could pay them to overlook it.”