The Love Hypothesis (Love Hypothesis #1)(32)

“Someone’s battery died, and it’s blocking the exit line.” Greg, one of Olive’s lab mates, was rolling his eyes and bouncing impatiently on his feet. He pointed at a red truck stuck sideways in the most inconvenient turn.

Olive recognized it as Cherie’s, the department secretary.

“I defend my dissertation proposal tomorrow—I need to drive home to prepare. This is ridiculous. And why the fuck is Cherie just standing there, chatting leisurely with Carlsen? Do they want us to bring them tea and cucumber sandwiches?”

Olive looked around, searching for Adam’s tall frame.

“Oh yeah, there’s Carlsen,” Anh said. Olive looked where she was pointing, just in time to see Cherie get back behind the wheel and Adam jogging around the truck.

“What is he—” was all Olive managed to say, before he came to a stop, put his hands on the back of the truck in neutral, and started . . .

Pushing.

His shoulders and biceps strained his Henley. The firm muscles of his upper back visibly shifted and tensed under the black fabric as he bent forward and rolled several tons of truck across . . . quite a bit of a distance and into the closest empty parking space.

Oh.

There was some applause and whistling from bystanders when the truck was out of the way, and a couple of faculty members from neuroscience clapped Adam on the shoulder as the line of cars started driving out of the lot.

“Fucking finally,” Olive heard Greg say from behind her, and she stood there, blinking, a little shocked. Had she hallucinated it? Had Adam really just pushed a giant truck all by himself? Was he an alien from planet Krypton who moonlighted as a superhero?

“Ol, go give him a kiss.”

Olive whirled around, abruptly reminded of Anh’s existence. “What?” No. No. “I’m good. I just said goodbye to him a minute ago and—”

“Ol, why don’t you want to go kiss your boyfriend?”

Ugh. “I . . . It’s not that I don’t want to. I just—”

“Dude, he just moved a truck. By himself. On uphill ground. He deserves a damn kiss.” Anh shoved Olive and made a shooing motion.

Olive clenched her teeth and headed in Adam’s direction, wishing she’d gone ahead and drawn twenty dicks all over Anh’s face. Maybe she did suspect that Olive was faking her relationship with Adam. Or maybe she just got a kick out of pressuring her into PDA’ing, that ingrate. Either way, if this was what one got for masterminding an intricate fake-dating scheme that was supposed to benefit a friend’s love life, then maybe—

Olive halted abruptly.

Adam’s head was bent forward, black hair covering his forehead as he wiped the sweat from his eyes with the hem of his shirt. It left a broad strip of flesh visible on his torso, and—it was nothing indecent, really, nothing unusual, just some fit guy’s midriff, but for some reason Olive couldn’t help staring at Adam Carlsen’s uncovered skin like it was a slab of Italian marble, and—

“Olive?” he said, and she immediately averted her eyes. Crap, he’d totally caught her staring. First she’d forced him to kiss her, and now she was ogling him like some perv in the biology parking lot and—

“Did you need anything?”

“No, I . . .” She felt her cheeks go crimson.

His skin, too, was flushed from the effort of pushing, and his eyes were bright and clear, and he seemed . . . well, at least he didn’t seem unhappy to see her.

“Anh sent me to give you a kiss.”

He froze halfway through wiping his hands on his shirt. And then he said “Ah” in his usual neutral, unreadable tone.

“Because you moved the truck. I—I know how ridiculous that sounds. I know. But I didn’t want her to get suspicious, and there are faculty members here, too, so maybe they’ll tell the department chair and it will be two birds with one stone and I can leave if you—”

“It’s okay, Olive. Breathe.”

Right. Yes. Good suggestion. Olive did breathe, and the act made her realize that she hadn’t done that in a while, which in turn made her smile up at Adam—who did his mouth-twitch thing back at her. She was really starting to get used to him. To his expressions, his size, his distinctive way of being in the same space as her.

“Anh’s staring at us,” he said, looking over Olive’s head.

Olive sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I just bet she is,” she mumbled.

Adam wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

Olive squirmed. “So . . . Should we hug or something?”

“Oh.” Adam looked at his hands and down at himself. “I don’t think you want to do that. I’m pretty gross.”

Before she could stop herself Olive studied him from head to toe, taking in his large body, his broad shoulders, the way his hair was curling around his ears. He didn’t look gross. Not even to Olive, who was usually not a fan of dudes built like they spent a double-digit percentage of their time at the gym. He looked . . .

Not gross.

Still, maybe it was better if they didn’t hug. Olive might end up doing something egregiously stupid. She should just say goodbye and leave—yes, that was the thing to do.

Except that something absolutely insane came out of her mouth.

“Should we just kiss, then?” she heard herself blurt out. And then she instantly wished a stray meteorite would hit the exact spot where she was standing, because—had she just asked Adam Carlsen for a kiss? Was that what she’d done? Was she a lunatic all of a sudden?