The Diverging Lives of Bethany Raven

Chapter One

Everyone has a nemesis. No matter how hard you try to convince yourself you don’t, there’s always that one person.

That one person who you cannot help but compare yourself against, and where that comparison invariably leads to you coming up short and then hating the other person for it. It’s just human nature.

But – and it’s a huge but – I doubt most people have a nemesis like mine.

I don’t just fall short against him, I flail on the floor like a fool while he looks down on me from a great height.

He is a giant in my world, a name that sits comfortably on everyone’s lips, even while mine falls into oblivion.

Despite – and I mean that with absolute venom – despite me being more qualified, more experienced, and quite frankly just a better person than he is.

But he has dimples when he smiles and his hair falls distractingly over his eyes.

And his body? Well, that’s the result of many hours hiking across Dartmoor in his pursuit of – and I quote him directly here so you can get a true understanding of how much of a douche he actually is – ‘the kind of mental space that enables the magic to really happen’.

I have watched him deliver that line at no less than three conferences over the past two years.

Always said with a wink and a wicked grin that has all the women – not that there are very many of us in this branch of theoretical physics – swooning in their seats.

Later, over glasses of too-warm wine, those women discuss at length how charming he is, blushing as they apologize for objectifying him in a way they’d scream bloody murder about if the shoe was on the other foot.

Tyler fucking Adams has the world eating out of the palm of his hand.

Tyler fucking Adams is the bane of my existence.

‘So, do you think we can get him on board?’ my boss, Dean, asks.

‘Sorry?’ I wasn’t listening, too engrossed in imagining all the ways I might bring Tyler down.

‘Tyler Adams? The project? Have you listened to a word I’ve just said?’ He adopts the same tone my father used when we were kids and did something he didn’t approve of. Never angry, but often disappointed.

I offer up an apologetic smile.

He huffs – another thing that reminds me of Dad – and then explains the project once more, slowly and making sure he doesn’t use any big words. Patronizing old goat.

The more I hear, the more horrified I am.

‘So, you want us, as in me and Tyler, to work together?’ The project is a range of non-fiction books aimed at explaining complex scientific principles to teenagers using popular culture as the jumping-off point.

A whole series of ‘What Marvel Got Wrong About the Multiverse’ and that kind of thing.

‘You can be the science and he can be the …’ He trails off as he flaps his hand, searching for the right word. ‘Panache,’ he eventually comes up with.

‘Panache?’ I raise an eyebrow.

‘You know. The …’ This time he makes more of a jazz hands motion.

‘You mean “sex appeal” don’t you?’

‘I … well, I didn’t want to …’

‘I’m not offended,’ I say quickly. Although I am. Deeply. ‘But I’m not doing it.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s Tyler Adams.’ I’m not going to elaborate and neither am I going to back down.

Tyler’s here tonight. Of course he is. It’s only the most prestigious awards ceremony for my entire industry and being held at Imperial College, the university where I completed my PhD.

My company, Imagine – a think tank of scientists backed by charitable donations from guilty venture capitalists who try to predict the future – has a whole table.

Tyler used to work for a rival organization that calls itself Big Future – so much ego in that company name – but now freelances.

He makes a fortune doing TV and speaking events and then works pro bono at the university, heading up their STEM outreach programme in order to ‘give something back’.

He is everywhere I go. And yet we do not speak to each other. Each of us turning away at the merest glimpse of the other, guaranteeing we never make eye contact. That is the way it’s always been and the way I like it, thank you very much. Tyler fucking Adams can keep well away from me.

‘You know he keeps looking at you,’ my research assistant, Alesha, says as she grabs a glass of champagne – well, probably cheap cava, let’s be honest – from a passing waiter.

‘He does not,’ I reply, snagging one for myself.

I don’t even bother to check she actually means Tyler.

This is a conversation we have in one guise or another at every event.

Of which there are a surprising number; most people are kind of shocked at the amount of random socializing involved in research life.

But bored people with big brains do rather like a drink. And even more so when it’s free.

‘Do you seriously not think he’s cute? I mean, not even just a teeny tiny bit?’ she asks, emboldened by cheap alcohol and the stifling heat of the crowded bar area.

‘He is objectively attractive,’ I reply.

Because he is. From an entirely factual perspective, one not marred by emotion or sentiment, he’s a good-looking man.

Strong jaw, green eyes the colour of a spring forest, floppy ashy-blond hair like a grown-up member of a Norwegian boy band, broad shoulders and a slim waist and the kind of arse you could balance a pint on.

I mean, yes. I get it. I get why he’s the darling and the one who does the roadshows and the government adverts to encourage more teenagers to study STEM subjects at school and the one who even occasionally goes on TV to talk about new discoveries in the physics world.

Once he even talked about one of my discoveries, but I’m not the one they wheel in.

Well, unless it’s for some rotary dinner of boring old farts who think any woman under forty is a ‘bit of fluff’ and I’m considered light entertainment dressed up as a lecture in something their wives will find encouragingly dull.

‘Personally I think he’s a bit too pretty,’ Alesha says, flicking her long braids over her shoulder. Alesha has a long history of bad-boy ex-boyfriends who treat her like shit but look good in motorbike leathers. Unsurprisingly, these ex-boyfriends do not work in our industry.

‘You know Dean wants us to collab on a project?’

‘Ooh … really?’ She sounds oddly enthusiastic.

‘On this book series. Dean said I can be the science and he can be the sex appeal.’ I elongate the syllables in the moniker, stretching it out and pulling a face.

Alesha snorts out her wine. ‘No way! He actually said that?’

I nod and then we both giggle like children.

‘Are you going to do it?’ she asks.

‘No. Of course not.’

‘But maybe they’d do pretty special editions,’ she says and for a moment I’m tempted. I mean, I do rather love a special-edition book, especially if it has a fancy sprayed edge.

Later that evening, Cesca – baby sister, all round pain in the ass, and my best friend in the whole world – calls me and I duck outside to take her call.

‘Yo!’ she says as I answer.

Now, I should probably tell you that Cesca is deputy head of science for a rather prestigious all-boys school in west London, owner of a master’s in physics, and an absolute contradiction of every possible stereotype.

A lot of people assume she deliberately breaks all the rules, but it’s more that she just doesn’t believe there should be rules in the first place.

‘Is the whole event total bullshit?’ she asks. ‘Has anyone puked yet?’

Cesca’s work colleagues are the ‘strait-laced, go home to their wives and never have more than a single glass of wine’ type of boring bastards.

Mine are the ‘cannot help themselves with a free bar’ kind of nerds.

They look the same on the outside, but put warm Pinot in their proximity and you can separate them with ease.

‘No. But guess who’s here?’

‘Tyler fucking Adams,’ she deadpans.

‘Yep. And Dean wants us to work on a project together.’

‘Noooo. But he’s such a twat.’

‘I know. Such a twat.’

Someone clears their throat behind me. I turn, heart in my mouth. Because of course Tyler Adams is standing right there, arms crossed, leaning against the door frame, staring at me with one eyebrow half raised.

‘Gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow,’ I whisper into the phone and then hang up on Cesca. I cringe as I try to stammer an excuse ‘I … um …’ The eyebrow rises to full mast.

‘I wonder if there’s a universe out there where you came back with a witty retort,’ he says.

I take a few steps backwards to try to put a bit more distance between us.

‘I wonder if there’s a universe out there where you aren’t a—’ But my amazing comeback is caught short as my foot slips from beneath me.

Everything slows down, each nanosecond lasting an aeon as I fall to the floor, unable to do anything to alter my fate.

And then I’m lying sprawled at his feet, my glass of wine sloshed down the front of my top, turning it humiliatingly see-through, my black lace bra fully on display.

He reaches out a hand to help me up, but the fall has knocked the wind from me and I struggle to string a coherent sentence together. ‘I’m … fine … nothing …’

‘Just take my hand, Raven,’ he demands. It makes me bristle. Who does he think he is to dictate to me? ‘I’m trying to help here.’

In the end I let him pull me up. Begrudgingly, mind.

‘See, I told you you needed me,’ he whispers and then turns on his heels and leaves me on the balcony, wine dripping onto the shiny marble, face brilliant red, and something stirring in places that are not meant to stir.

Not for Tyler Adams anyway.