Page 64 of Boiling Point
Her fingers paused over the keyboard, and she glanced at me. “Magnetism? What happened to circuits?”
I grinned. “I thought you didn’t want to mingle church and state.”
She gave a small, disbelieving shake of her head. “I don’t. I’m just surprised.”
I feigned offense. “You don’t trust me to have a plan?”
Her eyebrows arched in a way that made my chest do vaguely idiotic things. “Do you?”
“If you’re more patient than curious,” I said, savoring the way her focus sharpened, “you’ll find out in lecture tomorrow.”
She gave me a look. “And if I’m not?”
“Then I’m afraid it’ll be a very long day for you.”
Chapter 24
Gabrielle
The light in the room had changed.
It slanted in through the windows at a new angle—longer, softer, threaded with the copper tones of late afternoon. The golden kind of quiet that only comes when a day is trying to linger.
I didn’t mean to check the time. But my eyes flicked toward the clock anyway.
Almost five.
The thought lodged in my chest like a splinter.
My calculus notes were tucked neatly away, my laptop closed. I’d managed to make it halfway through the physics problem set earlier this afternoon—my usual strategy to stay ahead. If I could wrestle with the structure before class, the concepts clicked faster when I heard them out loud. Aunt Suzy had helped me figure that out last semester, back when I was barely keeping my head above water in Dr. Watkins’s class.
I hadn’t asked Cal for help. And I wouldn’t. That wasn’t how I learned. I needed to prove—to him and to myself—that I could hold my own in the room, no matter who I was outside of it.
Still, once he sat beside me with that quiet, amused smile and the soft press of his shoulder against mine, the rest ofthe problem set never stood a chance. It wasn’t confusion that stalled me. It was him—the pull of his nearness, the way his voice dipped when he explained things, the glint in his eye when I finally caught on.
It was nearly impossible to focus when all I could think about was how little time we had left before he’d have to take me home.
I heard him before I saw him—the quiet pad of his steps on the hardwood—and then the soft clink of a mug settling on the table in front of me.
Tea.
I looked up. He didn’t speak, just eased down beside me again, his expression soft around the edges in a way that made something inside me ache.
“Thanks.” I curled my hands around the mug. It was warm, earthy, and grounding. Of course it would be exactly what I didn’t know I needed.
We sat like that for a long time, neither of us speaking, the office wrapped in fading sunlight and quiet resignation. My throat was tight, like if I spoke, it would all collapse into the one thing we weren’t saying: the weekend was over.
I let my head fall back against the sofa and closed my eyes, feeling him settle closer beside me. “You know what I hate?” I asked softly, eyes still shut.
His shoulder brushed mine. “What?”
“Time.”
He went quiet, like he was weighing how much meaning the word could hold. “It’s not very kind,” he agreed eventually.
I opened my eyes and turned to look at him. His face was close—so close I could see the faint stubble on his jaw, feel the steadiness of his breath.
“You’re a world-renowned theoretical physicist,” I said, watching the sunlight gild the edge of his cheekbone. “Can’t you do something about it?”
