Wicked Woman

Chapter 1

College

Marcus Reed sat at the long oak table near the tall windows, laptop open, eyes focused on the complicated schematic he had been refining for three hours. His dark hair was slightly messy from running his hands through it too many times. A half-empty coffee cup sat beside him, long gone cold.

Across from him, Lena Voss leaned forward, chin resting on her hand, watching him instead of the shared document on her own screen. She had been doing that a lot lately.

“You’re still stuck on the power distribution model,” she said quietly.

Marcus looked up and gave her a tired smile. “Yeah. The numbers keep shifting when I adjust the load. I can’t get the efficiency above eighty-two percent.”

Lena reached across the table and turned his laptop slightly so she could see better. Their fingers brushed for half a second. She pulled her hand back slowly, pretending it was nothing.

“Let me try something,” she said.

She typed a few lines of code, then adjusted a formula. The graph on the screen jumped. Efficiency rose to eighty-nine percent.

Marcus stared at the new numbers. “How did you do that?”

“You were overcomplicating the secondary circuit,” she replied. “Sometimes the simplest path is the strongest one.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked at her with genuine admiration. “You’re better at this than half the professors, Lena.”

The way he said her name made something tight form in her chest. She smiled and looked down at the table, hiding the feeling.

“We’re a good team,” she said.

“The best,” Marcus answered without hesitation. “I don’t know how I would have finished this project without you. You’re the only person who doesn’t make me feel like I’m losing my mind.”

Lena kept her eyes on the laptop screen. Inside, her heart was beating harder than it should have. She had known for months that what she felt for him was no longer friendship. It had started as respect, then admiration, then something deeper she could not name without scaring herself.

Marcus never noticed.

He treated her the same way he treated everyone he trusted — open, kind, and completely unaware of the effect he had.

When he laughed at one of her quiet jokes, the sound filled the empty library.

When he leaned closer to show her something on the screen, she could smell the faint scent of his cologne mixed with coffee.

She wanted to tell him. She had rehearsed the words in her mind a hundred times.

I think about you when you’re not around. I notice the way you bite your lip when you’re concentrating. I want more than this.

But every time the moment felt right, she stopped herself. Marcus talked about the future the way most twenty-two-year-olds did — careers, travel, maybe marriage someday with someone who made sense. He never looked at her the way she looked at him.

That night, after they finally closed the laptops and packed their bags, Marcus walked her to the parking lot even though his own car was on the opposite side of campus.

“You don’t have to walk me,” she said.

“I know,” he replied. “But it’s late, and you’re my partner. I look out for my partner.”

The word “partner” should have felt good. Instead it felt like a door closing.

They stopped beside her car. The streetlights cast long shadows across the asphalt. Marcus shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and looked up at the night sky.

“You ever think about what happens after graduation?” he asked.

Lena’s pulse quickened. “All the time.”

“I think I’m going to take that offer in Chicago,” he said. “They want me to start in the fall. What about you?”

She had been accepted to a graduate program on the East Coast. She had not told him yet.

“I’m still deciding,” she lied.

Marcus nodded. “Whatever you choose, I know you’ll be great at it. You’re the most focused person I’ve ever met.”

He said it with such sincerity that her throat tightened.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He reached out and gave her a quick, friendly hug. It lasted three seconds. When he pulled away, she wanted to hold on longer, but she forced herself to smile and unlock her car door.

“Get home safe,” he said.

“You too.”

She watched him walk away until he disappeared around the corner of the building. Only then did she sit in the driver’s seat and close the door. The silence inside the car felt heavier than the library had.

Lena rested her forehead against the steering wheel for a long moment. She could still feel the place on her shoulder where his arm had been.

She made a quiet decision that night.

If Marcus could not see her now, she would wait. She would be patient. She would stay close enough to matter and far enough that he would never feel pressured. One day the timing would be right. One day he would look at her and finally understand.

She did not know that decision would follow her for more than a decade.

She did not know how much of herself she would lose while waiting.

She only knew that the man walking away from her car was the only person she wanted to spend her life with, and she was willing to wait as long as it took for him to realize it.

The next morning, when they met again in the lab, Lena was the same calm, reliable partner she had always been. She laughed at his jokes. She fixed his calculations. She never mentioned the way her heart still raced when he stood too close.

Marcus never noticed the difference.

And that was exactly how she wanted it.