Jesus. “Minami, she is . . . very hurt, and very emotionally unavailable. I don’t think she’s ready for that kind of conversation.” But last night, a hopeful voice whispered in his head. He’d inched closer to discussing feelings with her than ever before, and she hadn’t kicked him out of her apartment. “If I’m not careful—if I don’t pace this just right, she’s going to run. I need to take it slowly.”
Minami looked at him with something that could have been pity. “You don’t look like you want to take it slowly.”
He rose, mostly to avoid screaming I fucking know I don’t at one of his closest friends, whose advice and care he valued. “Any more pearls of wisdom, Dr. Phil?”
“Just be careful. That’s all.”
He took off his glasses and headed down the sleek hallway, nodding at two junior analysts and an intern. When he strode into the lobby, Rue sat on one of the leather couches, hands in her lap, legs neatly folded at a ninety-degree angle. Her posture was impeccable, unfidgety and calm as ever within the chaos of the world around her. It reminded him of the first time he’d seen her, at that hotel bar. He had a couple of seconds to observe her before she noticed him, and used them to the very last drop, drinking her in like she was the end of a century-long drought.
Her eyes widened in surprise when she noticed him. He could sense it between them like a physical object, the awareness of this ever-deepening connection between them. But Rue instantly lowered her gaze, as if to sweep it—sweep him—away.
Have you told her how you feel?
Out of the blue, Eli felt anger. Abrupt, intense, bottomless anger, equally directed at Rue and himself. Her presence in his life and in his head was uninvited. The power she held over him, he had never meant to yield it. Which meant that she must have taken it without his permission. Robbed him of it. And after everything that had happened between them last night, she’d chosen to go not to him, but to Hark. That was the degree of trust that she afforded him.
“Follow me,” he ordered without hiding the edge in his tone. She rose slowly, but Eli didn’t check whether she was keeping up. He led her to his office, noted with relief that Minami was gone, and closed the door.
All he could feel was resentment.
He wanted her so much. So. Fucking. Much. Every time he saw her, fucked her, smelled her, he wanted a bit more. He wanted to make her twelve-course lunches, hold her down, build her a research lab. He wanted everything, including things that made no sense, things that should not go together.
And Rue could clearly see his fury. “Eli,” she said. Not scared, or distant. Just compassionate as her cool fingers wrapped around his cheek. Like she actually cared. She rose as tall as she could and pressed a featherlight kiss to the base of his jaw.
It was a brief, beautiful moment of hope, and it twisted Eli’s heart until he couldn’t bear it.
“No,” he said. He forced her to retreat, and when the backs of her thighs hit the conference table, he spun her around.
They were both immediately, inexplicably winded.
He barely waited for Rue’s palms to find the table. He spread her legs with his foot, tore at the opening of her pants, and pulled them just low enough for what he had in mind. He unbuckled his belt, loud in the quiet room, and slid his cock out of his slacks, pulling her underwear to the side. He teetered, pressed against the wet lips of her cunt, nearly breaching her hot entrance, ready to push inside and show her that she was his—
He was out of his fucking mind.
In the hallway, mere feet and a single unlocked door away from them, someone was discussing weekend plans. Eli’s thumb grazed Rue’s clit.
She shuddered. “Do it. Please.”
He shook with restraint, his vision blurry with want. Rue bucked back, and he had to grip her hip to avoid sinking inside her.
Fuck.
He wrapped his arms around her stomach, hugging her to himself as tightly as he could. He would have taken any excuse to let her go, but she was mellow in his arms, and when he buried a pained groan in her throat, she wrapped her hands around his forearm and held on to him as firmly as he held her.
Eli’s rage dissolved into soul-deep resignation. He had no right to resent her for being the best and worst thing to ever happen to him. And if his heart wasn’t going to survive her, then so be it.
He extricated himself from her slowly, not meeting her eyes as he readjusted her clothes, then his. When he was done, she leaned back against the table, a fine tremor in her hands, and met his gaze head-on.
In the hallway, people laughed and said their goodbyes.
“Eli.”
The things I want from you, Rue—you have no idea, and maybe never will.
“I’m sorry.”
He almost laughed. “For what?”
“For wanting to ask Hark instead of you. It’s just . . .” Her voice was low. “He was the safest option.”
His eyes narrowed, and she gave him one of her what don’t you get? stares.
So this was falling for someone. A ruthless expansion of the senses. The meticulous, unintentional cataloging of a person’s head tilt, the shape their hand made around a wineglass, the little tells in their gaze.
“If you think you can trust him more than you can trust me—”
“It’s because I don’t trust him.” Her lips trembled. “Whatever Hark tells me about Florence, I can choose not to believe. With you . . . once you tell me, I’m not going to be able to walk away from it.”
Eli was going to have to hurt her, and he hated that even more than anything Florence had done.
He nodded and crossed his arms again, fingers drumming against his biceps. “We were Florence’s grad students.”
Rue nodded. “It was in the deposition.”
“Minami was her postdoc. Hark and I didn’t originally come to UT to work with her, but she took us on when our mentor left unexpectedly. It was not a passing acquaintance. If she says she doesn’t remember us, it’s a deliberate lie.”
“And then Florence left you, too? And now you’re looking for revenge?”
God, he fucking wished. “Then she stole our work.”
Only a single, slow blink betrayed Rue’s surprise. “Not the fermentation tech. That was her idea.”
“The fermentation tech was Minami’s idea. Florence’s idea, the one she’d gotten millions of dollars to test, dead-ended in year one of the grant. Florence had to pivot. Hark and I needed a new lab, and no one else had the funds, the expertise, or frankly the will to take us on. Florence was barely older than us, had never had graduate mentees, but she was obviously a talented engineer. We had to choose between working with her and leaving the program. It was a no-brainer.”
“And then?”
“For two years, we worked that sometimes shitty, sometimes rewarding grad student life. You know what that’s like. A lot to be done, but the process we’d isolated was promising. Then we had a breakthrough.”
“Was Florence an active member of the research group?”
“Short answer, yes.” He thought about it. Tried to collect his opinions in shapes that were as fair as they could be. The things I do for you, Rue. “I might be biased, so you’ll have to compare and contrast with Florence’s recollection. Mine is that, intellectually, Minami was very much leading the project. Florence was a great sounding board, but was busy. We never stopped asking her for advice, but over time we transitioned to mostly reporting our progress. Her grants covered stipends and materials. She also rented off-campus lab space. Which did seem odd, but she said that renting pre-equipped labs was less expensive than buying new equipment, and the funding institute had recommended it. Fair enough, we thought. We were done with classes and didn’t need to be on campus. You know what grad school’s like after comps—no formal oversight. We ended up mostly isolated from the rest of the department. Our codependency origin story,” he added dryly. He had no clue whether Rue believed him—his fathomless, enigmatic girl.