Chapter 19
Dakota
Darkness was a soft blanket over Blackpine’s campus, sprawling out below me, streetlamps creating puddles of light along the sidewalks where students walked in sparse pairs. I watched them from where I was sitting alone on the sixth floor of Stanton, tucked in a dim corner of the study space.
Someone had come by and turned half the lights off about an hour ago, so everything was muted.
This space was technically open until midnight, so I had another hour until someone might come kick me out.
But I was alone now, and had been for a while.
Which made sense—it was late. Most people had better things to do at night than sit alone in Stanton, head aching from staring at a computer screen for too many hours.
The gears in my mind had been turning nonstop for a while while I worked on my lab report. Quinn was the only one out of our group that had shown up, but she left a while ago. It was exactly what I’d expected, so I couldn’t really be mad.
I tore my tired eyes from watching the tiny people walking around campus through the window and focused them back on my laptop, scrolling through the pages of the lab report I’d been working on for the polymers lab.
When Dr. Killshaw said the first lab report would be shorter, he meant probably thirty or forty pages—so not very short overall.
It just wasn’t as much as the eighty-page third lab report I’d be writing at the end of the semester.
My palms skimmed over the polygon-printed fabric the chair was upholstered with, my boots scuffing on the grooved carpet. Tacky modern designs. There was zero reason for everything in this building to have a hexagon theme.
But, whatever. I wasn’t the one who’d donated all the money to build it.
I winced every time I thought about the cut on the bottom of my left foot, though I could walk pretty much normally now.
Mila helped me change the bandage the first time, when I didn’t give her a whole lot of details into how I’d gotten it.
I told her I’d stepped on a piece of glass on the beach, which was obviously true, but I didn’t mention that I’d been running away from someone who’d just nearly drowned me.
I also didn’t mention that I’d thought about the memories of that moment more than once in my bed this week.
It was so real and raw and painful and sexual, a mess of things I could never hope to untangle. It reached some deep part of my psyche, deep enough to really scare me.
I wasn’t a stranger to the violent fantasies I thought up in the privacy of my bedroom, but experiencing them was different. Horribly, perfectly different.
I uncrossed my legs, then recrossed them the other way, fidgeting.
Mila had some thing at the hospital—some observation?
I wasn’t sure—that was going to go really late, so she was giving me a ride home after that.
I was grateful not to be relying on the bus, or else I would’ve had to leave a lot earlier.
Or maybe Mason would just show up again and take me hostage, force me to give him my address.
I’d been ignoring his texts the past few days.
Maybe that was part of the reason I was here at Stanton instead of at my trailer; he couldn’t find me here.
I need space was the last thing I’d said to him, because I couldn’t fucking think around him.
To his credit, he’d backed off for a couple days.
But I could tell he hated giving me space, could tell he was getting impatient.
I didn’t know how to feel about that.
I hadn’t known him more than a few weeks now, yet somehow he already had an overwhelming influence on my mind.
My thoughts wandered, jumping between the statistical analysis I’d been finishing and Mason…and Dr. Killshaw. I wished I could be unaffected, but that wasn’t me. I was affected by everything.
It all ran on a continuous loop in my brain.
The exact same thoughts, the exact same wording, just over and over and over. If I could’ve stopped it, I would’ve.
I thought I heard a sound from across the room so I paused my music—Unending, by Lume—and pulled out one of my earbuds, listening. Hopefully it wasn’t someone coming to kick me out early.
Footsteps approached then retreated, just out of my sight. Okay…
The top floor of the building was split in half, each side full of study tables and modern armchairs, connected by a hallway with the elevators and Chem E student mailboxes. Sometimes I got my exams returned to me in my mailbox, sometimes not. It was dependent on the professor.
After a minute of silence, I sank back in my chair, popping my earbud back in my ear, flexing my fingers as I prepared to get back to typing.
I was almost done writing about the last table I’d inserted into the statistical analysis section—a Tukey-Kramer test comparing the phase-shifted response values for all samples.
I’d done it for the E’ and E’’ values, too, along with analyses of variance for everything, but I felt like the p-values for the phase-shifted response were most important in showing differences between the samples.
Essentially, my conclusion was that comparing differences in individual storage and loss modulus values for each polymer was far less useful than comparing their overall ratios.
Not that it was an especially difficult confusion to come to.
More footsteps caught my attention and I glanced up at the wide entrance to the room—at the exact second that Dr. Killshaw stepped in.
His eyes instantly snapped to mine and he froze.
Yeah, I’m the only one up here.
The feeling of making eye contact with him was a shot of pure heat in my veins, a tug low in my stomach. Neither of us said anything, both clearly shocked.
Were you ignoring me on purpose? Did you think I wouldn’t notice?
Or did you want me to notice? To hate myself because I couldn’t stop thinking about you?
He shifted like he was going to turn and leave, but I opened my mouth before he got a chance.
“Dr. Killshaw,” I said. Loud and fucking clear.
I held my breath, waiting to see if he’d blatantly ignore me again. There was no way to make it subtle now. A slight tint of frustration lined his face.
“Masters.”
His tone was collected, steady.
It affected me, as everything about him affected me. I liked when he called me that. Masters. Like I was special.
“Do you have a second?” My heart was starting to beat harder as my confidence waned, my palms sweating. I didn’t have anything to ask him, didn’t need any help, but I wasn’t about to let him leave.
“Sure. What do you need?”
I turned my laptop in his direction, pointing at the screen. “I’m working on my polymers report. I have a few questions.”
He was staring at me with an intensity that almost felt inappropriate, and blood rushed to my cheeks. I hoped it was too dark for him to notice.
“Alright.” He started across the room towards me, then sat in an armchair near mine, resting his forearms on his spread thighs as he leaned forward. “What’s up?”
Up close, I could see how his hair was a little more mussed than usual, like he’d been running his hand through it. The top few buttons of his shirt were undone, showing a cotton undershirt, his sleeves pushed sloppily up his arms instead of neatly rolled. The hint of a shadow lined his jaw.
Everything about him was messier.
He’s here late, too.
I turned my laptop towards him on the low table.
“Statistical analysis?” he questioned, his blue-gray eyes scanning my screen while he thought.
“I just want to make sure I did the right tests on JMP.” I was bullshitting so hard, but I didn’t know what else to say.
His gaze flicked up for a second, landing on my face, then returned to my laptop. He ran a hand over his jaw.
“You don’t have to do any specific tests. Just use your best discretion, then explain why you did what you did. What the results mean in the context of the experiment. How they’re significant.”
“Okay.” I nodded, trying to sound grateful, or relieved. “Do you think I went in the right direction, though?”
“You tell me.”
I was paralyzed now that his stare was locked back onto mine. I fought the urge to squirm.
“Tell you what?”
“What you did.” He gestured to the half-finished report up on my laptop. “The tests you chose.”
“Analysis of Variance for storage modulus, loss modulus, and phase-shifted response. And then Tukey-Kramer for all three as well.” I had to force my voice to remain confident, had to focus on not letting my nerves show.
“Why?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, attempting to keep my breathing steady. He’d leaned closer at some point. Not close, but closer. I could smell him now. It wasn’t strong enough for me to place the scent, but I knew it smelled good.
The darkness of the room seemed to intensify, magnifying the privacy we were in. There wasn’t another soul on this entire floor.
Nobody to witness anything.
“ANOVA to see if there’s at least one significant difference between the values of each variable for the six polymers. There is.”
“At what level of significance?” he pressed. The way he was sitting was so distracting. Spread knees, forearms draped over his thighs, chest leaned forward, like he actually had interest in what I was saying. Or maybe he was trying to make me nervous.
It was working, either way.
“P-value of 0.05.”
“And then the Tukey-Kramer tests? Why did you do those?” His brows were pulled together, sharpening the look in his eyes.
“To determine which materials had statistically significant mean values for each variable, by comparing them in individual pairs,” I answered, not letting myself look away from him.
“What conclusion did you draw?”
“That comparing the phase-shifted response yields the most meaningful results, and that PET is the most different compared to the other samples. It tends to store energy more than the other polymers.”
There was a pause, then he nodded, once.