Loathe to Love You (The STEMinist Novellas #1-3)(58)

“Erik—”

“I’m not exaggerating.” This would be so much easier if his tone were accusatory. But no. He has to sound reasonable and logical and earnest and sincere and I want to scream. “I tore apart every minute, every second of every interaction, and after slicing all of it into pieces, the only conclusion that I could reach was that whatever I did wrong must have happened after you asked me to take you to my place, which only really left what we did there.”

“That’s not—”

“And I’ve been scared, scared like never before, that I’d hurt you.” He lifts his hand. Curves it around my cheek. “That I’d left you in some—any kind of pain. That I couldn’t make amends. Which, let me tell you, is no fun when you know in your lizard brain that you’re about five minutes from falling in love with someone.” He closes his eyes. “Maybe past. Can’t really tell.”

They make the floor shift and shake, Erik’s words. They make it fall hard and fast from under my feet, they flood my brain with a blinding flash of light, and they . . . wait.

Wait.

“The power’s back,” I say with a gasp, realizing that the elevator is working again. Erik must have noticed, too, but he doesn’t look surprised, nor does he make a move to shift away from me. He keeps holding my eyes, like he’s waiting for an answer from me, for an acknowledgment of what he’s said, but I can’t, won’t give it to him. I turn away from the hand on my face and grab my bag, slipping out of the corner where I wedged myself.

“Sadie.” When the doors open on the first floor, I dart out of the car. Erik is right behind me. “Sadie, can you—”

“Erik!” someone calls from the other side of the lobby, the voice echoing across the marble. There is a small group of people chatting with two men in maintenance uniforms. “You okay?” I’m almost positive (from hate-researching ProBld after our falling-out) that he’s another one of the partners. A late-working bunch, clearly.

“Yeah,” Erik says without moving in their direction.

“Were you stuck in the elevator?”

“In the smaller one.” There is an impatient edge to Erik’s tone. It shifts to something much softer when he turns to me and says, “Sadie, let’s—”

“Was it just the two of you?” the man calls. “Actually, maintenance is trying to make sure that no one from ProBld is still stuck. Can you come here for a second?”

Erik’s “Sure, I’ll be right there” could cut diamonds.

I turn to leave, but his hand closes around my biceps, and I feel his grip travel through every single nerve ending I possess. “Stay here, okay? I just need five minutes to talk to you. Can I have five minutes? Please?” He holds my eyes until I nod.

But once he turns his back to me, I don’t hesitate for even a second. I rub the spot where he just touched me until I can’t feel him anymore, and then I slip out into the warm night air.





Twelve


Wait. Wait wait wait wait wait. Wait wait wait. Wait.” In the center of my Mac’s monitor, Mara holds up both index fingers to command Hannah’s and my attention. Despite the fact that she already had it. “Wait. What you’re saying is that all this time we’ve been doing weekly summoning circles to give this guy disfiguring genital warts and toenail funguses and those giant subcutaneous pimples people get surgically removed on YouTube . . . but he did not, in fact, deserve any of it?”

I groan. “No. I don’t know. Yes. Maybe?”

“Related question: How long were you in that elevator?” Hannah asks.

“I’m not sure. One hour? Less? Why?”

She shrugs. “Just wondering if this could be Stockholm syndrome.”

I groan again, letting myself fall back on my bed. Ozzy shuffles over to sniff me, just to make sure that I haven’t turned into a cucumber since the last time he checked. Then he scurries away, disappointed.

“Okay,” Mara says, “let’s backtrack. Is what he told you believable?”

“No. I don’t know. Yes. Maybe?”

“I swear to God, Sadie, if you—”

“Yes.” I straighten up. “Yes, it does make sense. I did detail my framework for sustainability proposals in my published article, and I detailed it even more in my thesis—”

“Which you maybe should have embargoed,” Hannah interjects, playing with her dark hair.

“—which I definitely should have embargoed, so it’s possible that someone who read my stuff could have used it to mimic my pitch. Of course, when it comes to actually doing the work, they won’t have the expertise Gianna or I have, but that’s a problem for later. I guess that what Erik said is . . . conceivable.”

“So, no genital funguses?” Mara asks. “I mean, it seems only fair, considering that you did publish that article and write that thesis to encourage people to adopt your approach.”

“Right. Yeah.” I close my eyes, wishing for the seventeenth time in the past two hours that I could vanish into nothingness. Maybe since the last time I checked, a portal to another dimension has appeared in my closet. Maybe I can travel to Noconsequencesofmyownactionsland. “I didn’t really figure it would be used by my direct competitors.”