Trade Me (Cyclone #1)(23)

“One of these days, though,” Blake tells his father, “she’s going to realize that I think the sun rises on her smile.”

I inhale slowly. It’s almost cruel of him to be such a good actor. If we were in any kind of relationship—if we’d so much as kissed before—I would have been completely snowed.

Mr. Reynolds simply nods, as if Blake makes announcements like this about girls all the time. “Fine,” he says. “I’ll start over. I can be polite. Hi, Tina. It’s nice to meet you. What are you studying?”

“Chemistry and computer science.”

He doesn’t look impressed by this, which is unusual. He snorts instead. “And what are you planning on doing with that mouthful of letters?”

This, apparently, is his version of polite. He managed about two seconds.

“I want to be a doctor.”

He blows out his breath. “Golly gee f*cking willikers. At least that’s one of the few things that you actually need a university education to do. It’s a shit-stupid thing, of course. Being a doctor is like being a fast food worker, except with less sleep and more money. But at least it’s a thing.” He looks at me dubiously. “You want to help people and save lives?”

“On my med school applications? Yes. That’s all I care about. In reality? I just want to make enough money that my parents don’t have to worry ever again.”

He considers this. “The computer science degree seems superfluous to that goal.”

“Yeah, well. If it were just chemistry, my application wouldn’t stand out. I’m not going to be able to go volunteer with Doctors Without Borders in Ghana for a semester like half the other med school applicants. I wanted to do something different.”

“Different means playing the f*cking flute or raising show llamas,” he says. “Computer science is just masochism. You’re lying. Nobody would get a CS degree without wanting to use it. What’s your deal?”

It’s kind of scary that he’s right. “Nothing that’s going to happen.” I don’t drop his gaze. “Maybe I just want a fallback plan in case med school doesn’t pan out.”

He considers me. “Nah. You told me to go to hell. I don’t think you’re the kind of person who worries about Plan B. You’re the kind of person who would make Plan A happen. What do you really want to do?”

I swallow. I can see how he came to be one of the most powerful men in the country. He’s an *—but he’s looking right through me, his gaze like a knife.

And so I tell him something I’ve never told anyone else before. “Maybe there’s part of me that plays with the idea of going into medical research.”

“What kind of medical research?”

I inhale. “Making tiny medical robots.”

“Pipe dream.” He waves a hand dismissively. “That will never happen.”

“It has to happen,” I reply. “Every year, more bacterial strains become resistant to more antibiotics, and we find fewer and fewer effective ones. Think what will happen when we can’t perform open heart surgery or biopsies without risking serious infection.”

He taps his fingers together. “So you’re going to make tiny medical robots to do heart surgeries without risking infection. Huh.”

I let out a breath. “No.” The timeline is all wrong. I need to be making money by the time Mabel starts college, even if it’s just the bare-bones salary of a medical resident. “I’m going to be a doctor. Someone else is going to make tiny medical robots.”

But he’s already looking off into the distance. “Actually, it’s kind of an interesting project. What kind of venture funding will you need to get off the ground?”

“None, since I’m not going to do it.” I take a deep breath. “That sounds horrifying. Running a company is the last thing I want to do. That just means worrying about new and larger amounts of money all the time. I’m not going to go through fifteen years of higher education just so I can worry about money more.”

Adam Reynolds leans in. “In this world, you’re either playing the game or you’re a pawn on the board.”

I shrug. “Okay. Then I’m a pawn. Pick me up and move me any time you want to wave your checkbook in my direction. But there’s one thing I can do that you can’t.”

“What is that?”

“I imagine that running a massive corporation is like getting on a merry-go-round. It may not be going fast when you first start, but the harder you push, the faster it spins. At some point, you can’t just get off the way you got on. Stay on long enough, and you get the impression the world goes in circles. I can get off, Mr. Reynolds. You can’t. I want to keep it that way.”

His face doesn’t change, not one iota. But for a second, his fingers tighten on his water glass. “Touché,” he says quietly. “Two-f*cking-shay.” He blows out his breath.

For a moment, none of us say anything. Then Mr. Reynolds shakes his head. “You want Fernanda,” he says. “Do you even know what Fernanda is?”

“I didn’t even know there was a project named Fernanda.”

“Hey,” Blake says at his father’s raised eyebrow. “You know I don’t talk about this shit. Not even with her.”