I can’t bear it. I lower my gaze to my feet. Thankfully, the feeling dissolves as I stare at the pretty daisies on my faux-leather sandals.
My fingers need to quit shaking or I’ll chop them off. If my tear ducts dare to let even a single drop slip through, I’ll tie them shut forever. I’m almost ready to look up again without making a fool of myself, when a large hand closes firmly around my elbow. Shouldn’t have worn a sleeveless top today. “What are you—？”
Levi lifts one finger to his lips to signal me to be quiet and leads me away from the office.
“Where—” I start, but he interrupts me with a low whisper.
“Hush.” His grip is gentle but tight around my flesh. I’m dismayed to find that it seems to help with my nausea.
Without having a clue of what to do, I close my eyes and follow his lead.
* * *
? ? ?
I’M A SLOW processor. Always have been.
When my nonna died, everyone around me had been sobbing for several minutes by the time I finally parsed what the white-haired doctor was saying. When Reike decided to take a gap decade to go travel the world, I didn’t realize how lonely I’d be until she was on a plane to Indonesia. When Tim moved out of our apartment, the implications only hit me several days later, the moment I found two of his mismatched socks still in the dryer.
Probably why the enormity of what I heard outside Boris’s office doesn’t fully dawn on me until I’m on one of the benches in the little picnic area behind the Discovery Building, elbows on my knees and forehead in my hands.
It’s such a lovely spot. The shades of two cedar elms and a live oak cross right where I’m sitting. I need to eat lunch out here from now on, I think. Then my Lean Cuisine won’t stink up the office. My stomach twists. There might not be an on from this now.
“Are you okay?”
I glance up, and up, and up. Levi is standing in front me, still icily furious but more in control. Like he counted to ten to calm down a bit, but would gladly go back to one and flip a desk or three. There’s a hint of concern in his eyes, and for some reason I’m thinking again of him pinning me to the wall, of the smell of his skin, the feeling of his hard muscles under my fingers.
There’s something very wrong with my brain.
“I double-checked,” he murmurs. “I received seven emails from you, and all my replies were sent. I’m not sure why they didn’t deliver. I’m assuming the same happened to the one Guy sent to invite you to today’s meeting, and I take responsibility for it. You should have a NASA email address by now.”
The weather outside is perfectly nice, but I’m cold and sweaty at the same time. What a complex organism, my body.
“Why?” I ask. I’m not even sure what I’m referring to.
He exhales slowly. “How much did you hear?”
“I don’t know. A lot.”
He nods. “NASA wants exclusive control of whatever patent comes out of BLINK. But it currently doesn’t have the budget to pull off the project, and there was some arm-twisting to include NIH. But NIH is insisting on co-owning the patent, and NASA decided that letting BLINK die a natural death is better than picking a fight with NIH.”
“And this is it? The natural death?”
He doesn’t answer, simply continuing to study me with worry and something else, something I can’t quite put my finger on. It’s unsettling, and I nearly laugh when I realize why: this is the first time Levi has sustained eye contact with me for more than a second. The first time his eyes don’t flit away to some point above my head right after meeting mine.
I turn away. I’m not in the mood for ice green. “What if I told NIH?”
A brief hesitation. “You could.”
“But?”
“No buts. It’d be fully within your rights. I’ll support you, if you need me to.”
“。 . . But?”
I look at him. There are small scratches on his hand; hairs dust his forearm; his shirt stretches across his shoulder. He’s so imposing from this angle, even more than usual. What did they feed him growing up, fertilizer? “If you told NIH, the only outcome I can imagine is NIH pulling out and the relationship between NIH and the human research branch of NASA souring. BLINK would be shelved until—”
“—until next year. And it would still be a NASA-only project.” Either way, I’m screwed. Catch-22. Never liked that novel.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t do it,” he says carefully, “but if the endgame is to make BLINK happen as a collaborative project, it might not be the best move.”