Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I’ve never been one to run from a challenge—unless that challenge involves confrontation, vulnerability, or any group project requiring a shared Google Doc with people who think Comic Sans is a reasonable font choice.
It was Blythe who first introduced me to the radical idea of sharing the workload—not as a weakness, but as a form of self-preservation.
I argued, at length, that solo work was more streamlined, more cohesive, less compromised.
She countered every point with maddening grace, using examples pulled straight from my own schedule, my own late-night habits, my own tendency to work myself into the ground.
She used to say that academia doesn’t break you all at once—it does it in phases, the way chemical weathering reshapes stone.
Slowly, consistently, until something foundational is gone and you can’t remember when it happened.
And to survive that, she told me, you have to let people help.
You have to loosen your grip, just enough, before the erosion wins.
So yes, while I’ve grown more tolerant of peer-reviewed group work, my aversion to confrontation and vulnerability remains solidly intact—unless, of course, Holden is involved.
For reasons still unclear to me, my self-restraint seems to vanish around him.
Manic episode in his office included, I can’t seem to keep my thoughts to myself unless the universe decides to intervene and cut the power cord to my brain mid-sentence.
Which is why, the moment he walks into the lecture hall behind Dr. Kymbert, I know that he knows I’m nervous.
My traitorous body reacts to his arrival—calming just slightly at the sight of him, dressed in dark blue jeans hanging low on his hips and a slate-grey henley that clings to his torso like it was tailored for distraction.
It’s an unfair combination: the loose confidence in his walk, the quiet weight of his gaze, the way he makes a basic outfit feel like a statement.
It’s been nearly two months since he told me—gently, firmly, devastatingly—not to feel anything for him. And yet, my heart still launches straight into my throat upon his arrival, like it never got the memo.
I’d like to think that part of that is because Holden has this infuriating—and occasionally useful—talent for knowing exactly what I’m about to say or do.
He’s never caught off guard by my thoughts, no matter how impulsive.
In the lab, he always seems to appear beside my bench the moment I start biting my lip, just before I talk myself out of asking the question that’s bothering me.
And outside of class—on the rare days we all end up in the same place, like Theo’s surf competition—he knows the second I need air, or when my water bottle runs empty. How he’s this attuned to me, and whether it’s something he offers anyone else, I genuinely don’t know.