Chapter 31
Dakota
Later that week, I was waiting in my seat after Unit Ops lecture, preparing to spend the afternoon doing a run in the lab with Dr. Killshaw.
He’d told me it would take about four to six hours, but I wasn’t obligated to stay the whole time.
Since I didn’t have work, and my one other afternoon class had been switched to online, I didn’t have any reason to say no.
My hand wasn’t really sore now, but I hadn’t responded to Mason’s texts once. He hadn’t showed up at my trailer yet, either. Even when he called me, I let it ring all the way through to voicemail.
Anticipation was making my stomach twist while I sat in the back row, waiting for the rest of the students to leave the classroom.
I rubbed the side of my thumb back and forth over the lace on my journal, looking out the window at the trees.
I’d been getting a lot of use out of my journal lately—mostly scribbled and tear-stained entries that made zero sense. I couldn’t stop thinking about Mason.
Why would he do that?
The sound of the door swinging shut snapped me out of my head.
It was just me and Dr. Killshaw in here now.
Without pausing for his instruction, I got out of my chair automatically, shoving things in my bag, brushing my hair out of my face when it swung forward over my shoulders. In my peripheral, I could see him watching me.
My eyes snapped up to the front of the room. What version of you will I get today?
The version where you say you want to take care of me, or the version where you’re the one hurting me?
He stood casually in front of his desk, head slightly tilted as he observed me. His posture was relaxed, hands in his pockets. It was almost pointless to try and analyze his body language, however, because it didn’t betray anything about his emotional state. He was perpetually unreadable.
I walked down to the front of the room, coming to a stop a few steps away from him.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He narrowed his eyes, maybe disliking my lack of enthusiasm.
It was hard to keep portraying all my external emotions correctly, because the inside of me was a disaster.
Riptides wrapped around my veins, turbulent waves crashing against the inside of my skull, a vortex of cold water taking the place of my vital organs.
Instinctively, I touched the hand Mason hurt, running my thumb over my palm.
But I didn’t want to keep thinking about Mason.
I shoved it all to the back of my mind.
“Yes,” I corrected. “I’m ready.”
“If something’s going on, you don’t need to work today.”
“I’m fine,” I said, a touch too forcefully.
Something volatile sparked in his gaze. I couldn’t tell if it was anger or interest; the line between those two emotions was thin and unstable, a hairline fracture.
“Did you hurt your hand?” he questioned, glancing down at me still rubbing my knuckles, clearly suspicious.
“I’ve just been handwriting a lot,” I lied too easily. “I’m ready to go downstairs.”
He looked at me for another moment, maybe deciding whether or not to push me further. Eventually, he nodded and we walked together into the hallway, him a half-step ahead of me.
We avoided the elevator again, taking the concrete steps down into the lower level, then went through the wide hallways until we reached the door to his lab.
He pushed open the door and flicked on the lights.
It was a lot quieter without the distillation column running. No hissing or creaking or rattling.
Dr. Killshaw motioned for me to put my stuff down while he powered on the computer, then went over the the column, carefully turning knobs, switching things on, calibrating sensors. I sat on a stool, my feet resting on the bottom metal rung.
“Exam’s coming up,” he commented, still focused on his tasks. “Are you prepared?”
“I believe so.”
“You believe so?”
“Well, yeah. I haven’t done the review, if that’s what you’re asking.” I ran my fingertips over the fibers of my jeans idly, picking off a fuzz that’d come from my sweater.
“It’s very similar to the exam.” He went back over to the computer, clicking through a couple programs as they booted up, every movement completed with a practiced ease that made it it look like he’d been doing this his entire life. He was always so sure of everything. Not like me at all.
Maybe instead of somebody who could match my messiness, I needed someone who could control it. Contain it, even if that came in the form of a mentor. Maybe that was safer.
“Is it unfair for you to tell me that now? Instead of telling the whole class? You’re giving me an advantage.”
“No. Everyone has access to the same review.” His blue eyes found mine from across the room, my pulse quickening. “And I told people in office hours.” Which I’ve never once been to.
“Oh.” I adjusted how I was sitting, the soles of my boots squeaking on the metal rung. “Do a lot of people go to those?”
“Enough people go. I wouldn’t say a lot.”
“Okay.” I sat up straighter, flattening my palms on my thighs, trying to ignore the fluttering in my belly. Being alone with him made me nervous—among other things. “Is Nick stopping in this afternoon?”
“No. Just us.”
Just us. Nobody else watching.
“Can I help with anything?”
“Yes,” he said, and motioned for me to stand next to him at the column. “You can watch the temperature here.” He pointed to the gauge. “And adjust the heat to get us in range. Just under eighty degrees Celsius. Take your time.”
I nodded my understanding, a bit more nervous now that I was actually standing at the distillation column and adding some heat—especially when Dr. Killshaw left to go back to the computer, leaving me alone.
Chewing on my lower lip, I turned the knob slightly, my eyes flicking over to the thermometer’s screen every few seconds.
The temperature was rising very slowly, which settled my nerves somewhat.
A few minutes passed, Dr. Killshaw still doing things on the computer while I stood at the column, watching the number creep upwards at a snail’s pace. I gave it a little more heat, my mind wandering.
As much as I tried not to, I couldn’t stop thinking about Mason. He was the infection in my brain I couldn’t carve out.
I wished I knew what had caused him to act the way he did in his car, why he’d cared so much about who my professors were. My eyes slid over to Dr. Killshaw’s back, my brain trying to fit the pieces together. Was there a chance Mason did actually know him? Maybe.
He’d always seemed a bit more interested in my college experience than I thought was casual. Perhaps they were related; estranged family members. It would explain the intangible similarities between them, the particular vein of unease I tended to feel in their presences.
I looked down at my shoes, more minutes steadily ticking by, my thoughts lingering on all the things and people I knew I shouldn’t think about.
Sometimes, it felt like I was nothing more than an exposed heart, pumping and bleeding and running and hiding and getting pulled under the surface whenever I tried to swim.
I had no idea what I needed. I’d started to think it was Mason, someone who didn’t shy away from the darkest parts of my head, but maybe I was wrong about that.
“Dakota,” Dr. Killshaw snapped. My head whipped around, heart lurching fearfully in my chest. “Pay attention to what you’re doing.”
I spun back to the column, eyes shooting wide open when I saw the temperature on the thermometer. My brain shut down, panic making me freeze. Vapor was suddenly surging rapidly up the column, the packing rattling in the trays and the glass fogging, a smell of ethanol leaking into the room.
“Slow the heat. Now.” His voice was hard, a note of danger in it that I’d not heard before.
Panicking, I spun the dial lower. In an instant, my wrist was snatched and hand dragged away roughly.
“No. Not like that.”
Dr. Killshaw reached in quickly, slowing down the temperature change, correcting my second mistake.
His free hand was still looped tight around my tender wrist, my pulse flying under his fingers.
There was a sense of restrained strength in his grip, an invisible promise that he could hold me much more firmly than this.
“You have to lower it slowly or the glass will shatter. Okay?”
“Okay,” I whispered. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the flask collecting the distillate, now filled with impurities. Tears put pressure behind my eyes, my lower lip quivering. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He guided my hand back to the dial, placing his fingers over mine so I was the one touching the grooved plastic knob again. The cloudy distillate was still spitting out into the flask. “You’re alright. You just need to hold it steadier than that. Watch the temperature now.”
“But the distillate—”
“Is already ruined. That doesn’t matter now. And this is research, not industry.”
Together, we watched the fog begin to thin in the column, the frantic bubbling slowing down as the temperature evened out.
The metal was still emitting faint sounds of creaking and groaning, ratcheting my pulse higher again.
Liquid threatened to climb into the condenser, but Dr. Killshaw just kept his hand over mine, slowly bringing us back to stability.
Heat radiated from his strong body behind mine, so close to me. Through my nerves, I still felt a pull towards him. A reminder of all the things I’d been willing to give him in his office.
A reminder of all the private fantasies involving that strong, warm body I’d allowed to play out in my mind.
It took a few minutes for the column to even out, and neither of us said anything while we waited. Once we were steady again, Dr. Killshaw moved me away from the column, then stood across from me, leaning back on a workbench.
“So, what just happened there?” he prodded.