Not in Love

ELI

When Anton’s head peeped in the doorway to announce, “Someone’s here to see Hark,” Eli nodded without bothering to lift his eyes from the financial statement he was studying—until Minami, who sat right next to him on the stupid exercise ball she insisted on using in lieu of a chair, asked, “Is it a visibly pregnant woman holding a homemade DNA test kit?”

“I…” Anton shifted on his feet. “This feels like a problematic question.”

“I am a problematic person. Is it?”

“Um, no?”

“Okay. Just asking, because you’re making a really weird face.”

“What face?”

“Like you’re expecting trouble.”

“Yes. Well, no. But this woman came in, asked to talk with Hark, and when I pointed out that she didn’t have an appointment, she told me her name and said, ‘He’ll want to see me.’ Which seemed weird and kinda…movie-like?”

“Very movie-like,” Minami agreed with an intrigued bounce on the ball.

Eli felt a prickle of unease at the base of his neck. “What’s the woman’s name, Anton?”

“It’s…” He squinted at the Post-it in his hand. “Rue Siebert. Her ID checked out.”

Eli and Minami exchanged a long, teeming look.

“Tell her that Hark will be right out,” Eli instructed.

“But Hark’s on his way back from Seattle—”

“I am aware.” He held Anton’s eyes. “Tell her anyway.”

Minami waited for them to be alone before asking, “Why is she looking for Hark and not you?”

There was a single logical answer. “She wants to ask him about Florence.”

“What?”

“He indirectly mentioned Florence at dinner the other night. Rue wants to know more, and she thinks he’ll tell her.”

“But why wouldn’t she ask you?”

Why, indeed.

He’d been expecting her to dig into the matter, ever since she’d found the file in his car. Last night he’d been tempted to bring up the deposition and tell Rue the whole sordid story, but there had been no room for that between them. Still, he thought they’d made some progress when it came to trusting each other.

And the fact that she’d rather get answers from Hark…Eli did not like that.

“Maybe you should wait till Hark’s back,” Minami said. “So the burden of breaking her pretty little Florence-loving heart won’t fall on you.”

“If her heart has to be broken, I’d rather it be me. That way I can help her pick up the pieces.”

“Then go ahead and tell her. If it’s not one of us, it’ll be Florence—and as we can all attest, she’s a remarkable liar. She could turn Rue against you, and then you’d lose her.”

“Lose her?” He snorted. “Do you think I have her now?”

She scanned his face. “I think you want her.”

“Yeah. I also want world peace and for my dog to live forever.”

“Come on, Eli. I’ve seen you with Mac. I’ve seen you with lots of truly amazing girls.”

“Women.”

“Oh my fucking—we’ve been joined at the hip for the past ten years, Eli.”

He shook his head and turned off his monitor, not bothering to hide his amusement. “Are you breaking up with me?”

“I’ve never seen you like this, Eli.”

He stopped mid-action. Resumed. “Like what?”

“When she’s around, and even when she isn’t, you’re distracted and you moon and you—have you told her how you feel?”

Jesus. “Minami, she is…very hurt, and very emotionally unavailable. I don’t think she’s ready for that kind of conversation.” But last night, a hopeful voice whispered in his head. He’d inched closer to discussing feelings with her than ever before, and she hadn’t kicked him out of her apartment. “If I’m not careful—if I don’t pace this just right, she’s going to run. I need to take it slowly.”

Minami looked at him with something that could have been pity. “You don’t look like you want to take it slowly.”

He rose, mostly to avoid screaming I fucking know I don’t at one of his closest friends, whose advice and care he valued. “Any more pearls of wisdom, Dr. Phil?”

“Just be careful. That’s all.”

He took off his glasses and headed down the sleek hallway, nodding at two junior analysts and an intern. When he strode into the lobby, Rue sat on one of the leather couches, hands in her lap, legs neatly folded at a ninety-degree angle. Her posture was impeccable, unfidgety and calm as ever within the chaos of the world around her. It reminded him of the first time he’d seen her, at that hotel bar. He had a couple of seconds to observe her before she noticed him, and used them to the very last drop, drinking her in like she was the end of a century-long drought.

Her eyes widened in surprise when she noticed him. He could sense it between them like a physical object, the awareness of this ever-deepening connection between them. But Rue instantly lowered her gaze, as if to sweep it—sweep him—away.

Have you told her how you feel?

Out of the blue, Eli felt anger. Abrupt, intense, bottomless anger, equally directed at Rue and himself. Her presence in his life and in his head was uninvited. The power she held over him, he had never meant to yield it. Which meant that she must have taken it without his permission. Robbed him of it. And after everything that had happened between them last night, she’d chosen to go not to him, but to Hark. That was the degree of trust that she afforded him.

“Follow me,” he ordered without hiding the edge in his tone. She rose slowly, but Eli didn’t check whether she was keeping up. He led her to his office, noted with relief that Minami was gone, and closed the door.

All he could feel was resentment.

He wanted her so much. So. Fucking. Much. Every time he saw her, fucked her, smelled her, he wanted a bit more. He wanted to make her twelve-course lunches, hold her down, build her a research lab. He wanted everything, including things that made no sense, things that should not go together.

And Rue could clearly see his fury. “Eli,” she said. Not scared, or distant. Just compassionate as her cool fingers wrapped around his cheek. Like she actually cared. She rose as tall as she could and pressed a featherlight kiss to the base of his jaw.

It was a brief, beautiful moment of hope, and it twisted Eli’s heart until he couldn’t bear it.

“No,” he said. He forced her to retreat, and when the backs of her thighs hit the conference table, he spun her around.

They were both immediately, inexplicably winded.

He barely waited for Rue’s palms to find the table. He spread her legs with his foot, tore at the opening of her pants, and pulled them just low enough for what he had in mind. He unbuckled his belt, loud in the quiet room, and slid his cock out of his slacks, pulling her underwear to the side. He teetered, pressed against the wet lips of her cunt, nearly breaching her hot entrance, ready to push inside and show her that she was his—

He was out of his fucking mind.

In the hallway, mere feet and a single unlocked door away from them, someone was discussing weekend plans. Eli’s thumb grazed Rue’s clit.Content (C) Nôv/elDra/ma.Org.

She shuddered. “Do it. Please.”

He shook with restraint, his vision blurry with want. Rue bucked back, and he had to grip her hip to avoid sinking inside her.

Fuck.

He wrapped his arms around her stomach, hugging her to himself as tightly as he could. He would have taken any excuse to let her go, but she was mellow in his arms, and when he buried a pained groan in her throat, she wrapped her hands around his forearm and held on to him as firmly as he held her.

Eli’s rage dissolved into soul-deep resignation. He had no right to resent her for being the best and worst thing to ever happen to him. And if his heart wasn’t going to survive her, then so be it.

He extricated himself from her slowly, not meeting her eyes as he readjusted her clothes, then his. When he was done, she leaned back against the table, a fine tremor in her hands, and met his gaze head-on.

In the hallway, people laughed and said their goodbyes.

“Eli.”

The things I want from you, Rue—you have no idea, and maybe never will.

“I’m sorry.”

He almost laughed. “For what?”

“For wanting to ask Hark instead of you. It’s just…” Her voice was low. “He was the safest option.”

His eyes narrowed, and she gave him one of her what don’t you get? stares.

So this was falling for someone. A ruthless expansion of the senses. The meticulous, unintentional cataloging of a person’s head tilt, the shape their hand made around a wineglass, the little tells in their gaze.

“If you think you can trust him more than you can trust me—”

“It’s because I don’t trust him.” Her lips trembled. “Whatever Hark tells me about Florence, I can choose not to believe. With you…once you tell me, I’m not going to be able to walk away from it.”

Eli was going to have to hurt her, and he hated that even more than anything Florence had done.

He nodded and crossed his arms again, fingers drumming against his biceps. “We were Florence’s grad students.”

Rue nodded. “It was in the deposition.”

“Minami was her postdoc. Hark and I didn’t originally come to UT to work with her, but she took us on when our mentor left unexpectedly. It was not a passing acquaintance. If she says she doesn’t remember us, it’s a deliberate lie.”

“And then Florence left you, too? And now you’re looking for revenge?”

God, he fucking wished. “Then she stole our work.”

Only a single, slow blink betrayed Rue’s surprise. “Not the fermentation tech. That was her idea.”

“The fermentation tech was Minami’s idea. Florence’s idea, the one she’d gotten millions of dollars to test, dead-ended in year one of the grant. Florence had to pivot. Hark and I needed a new lab, and no one else had the funds, the expertise, or frankly the will to take us on. Florence was barely older than us, had never had graduate mentees, but she was obviously a talented engineer. We had to choose between working with her and leaving the program. It was a no-brainer.”

“And then?”

“For two years, we worked that sometimes shitty, sometimes rewarding grad student life. You know what that’s like. A lot to be done, but the process we’d isolated was promising. Then we had a breakthrough.”

“Was Florence an active member of the research group?”

“Short answer, yes.” He thought about it. Tried to collect his opinions in shapes that were as fair as they could be. The things I do for you, Rue. “I might be biased, so you’ll have to compare and contrast with Florence’s recollection. Mine is that, intellectually, Minami was very much leading the project. Florence was a great sounding board, but was busy. We never stopped asking her for advice, but over time we transitioned to mostly reporting our progress. Her grants covered stipends and materials. She also rented off-campus lab space. Which did seem odd, but she said that renting pre-equipped labs was less expensive than buying new equipment, and the funding institute had recommended it. Fair enough, we thought. We were done with classes and didn’t need to be on campus. You know what grad school’s like after comps—no formal oversight. We ended up mostly isolated from the rest of the department. Our codependency origin story,” he added dryly. He had no clue whether Rue believed him—his fathomless, enigmatic girl.

“And when the tech was ready?”

“We had a breakthrough two years in, before the summer. By this point we were off-site students, virtually no contact with anyone at UT. We got a month off for the summer. Hark and I backpacked in Europe. Minami had just met Sul. We came back, and it all went to shit.

“At first we just couldn’t get in touch with Florence. She wouldn’t reply to emails, answer phone calls. We were worried about her, so we went to our department head. That’s when we discovered that Florence had quit, and there was an ongoing dispute between her and the university regarding the rightful owner of the tech. Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 and that shit. Meanwhile, the three of us are glancing at each other, wondering what the fuck is going on.”

“What did Florence say when you next saw her?” Rue asked.

“You were there.”

“What do you mean?”

“The next time I saw Florence was at Kline, last month. Florence refused to meet us, or to otherwise acknowledge our existence, for the past decade. There was no closure for us, which made it even harder to move on. Once, Minami waited by her apartment, hoping to confront her. She went on her own, figuring Hark and I might come across as intimidating.”

“And?”

“Florence called the police on her.”

There was a slight flinch that a less devoted observer of Rue might have missed. Once upon a time, Eli might have found some degree of happiness in telling her the truth, because it would have meant taking something away from Florence. All he could think about now was what he was taking away from Rue herself.

“For whatever it’s worth, and after ruminating over the matter for years, I don’t believe Florence planned to cut us out from the start,” he said. “Hark disagrees.”

“Why do you believe that?”

He shrugged. “Contextual clues. Wishful thinking? She was openly unhappy at UT. The biofuel tech could be brought to market and get her out, but Florence needed to own the patent. And the only way she could keep it was by proving that she hadn’t developed the tech with federal funds. Unfortunately, our stipends were on record, paid with federal grant money.”

“Ah.”

“She had to minimize our involvement. We were an…endurable sacrifice.”

“Why didn’t you report her?”

“We did. But even just a decade ago, things were different—and we hadn’t been seen around in years. There was little proof of our involvement. For all UT knew, we’d been playing pinball for twenty-four months. It was our word against hers, and a grad student’s word was worth very little. Then the case became highly publicized.” Rue couldn’t have missed the cable news pieces, the op-eds, the way public attention had been suddenly riveted by the very uninteresting topic of patent law. “Charming young female researcher tries to change the world with environmentally friendly fuels, does the work on her own time and dime, and UT wants to take ownership away from her. David taking on Goliath. A PR nightmare for UT, and they wanted it swept under the rug. It including the three of us, and the fuss we were kicking up, because them fucking over one person sounded bad, but them fucking over four? Even worse. Hark and I were asked to leave the program. Minami’s contract wasn’t renewed. We had no money. We saw two lawyers, and they both told us that we didn’t have a case. And then my father died, and that shit seemed like the least of our problems.”

Rue briefly closed her eyes. “Is this”—she made a vague, all-encompassing gesture toward Harkness’s headquarters—“revenge for what Florence did?”

Had Harkness begun as a means to hurt Florence as much as she’d hurt them? Undoubtedly. But it had morphed into something else altogether. Eli liked his current job. Private equity was a shitshow that left destruction in its wake, and he felt proud of the priorities they’d set for themselves. They cared about their portfolio. They focused on the long-term health of companies. They made some difference.

“This is the only way we had to take back what was ours. Hark’s father is made of money, but he refused to support Hark in any endeavor that wasn’t finance related, and this…We had the starting capital. It was the only way we could get the tech back. I’m not going to lie, Rue. Things are not looking great for us, and Florence is withholding key documents and making our lives impossible every step of the way, but I still hope we can get the tech back. It’s been years, and we haven’t spent every breathing second resenting Florence. But we kept an eye on Kline. And when the loan went up for sale…” He shook his head at his own idiocy. So many words just to say, “Yeah. I guess this is revenge.”

“And what is it that you want…” She seemed temporarily lost for words. “What’s your happy ending?”

What a loaded question. “Kline is not doing well. The tech should have been brought to international markets years ago. The company expanded too quickly, is unfocused and—we have reason to suspect—insolvent. Florence has surrounded herself with yes-men instead of competent advisers. In the ideal scenario, Florence’s loan defaults. We take control of Kline, appoint a board with actual expertise. No employment shrinkage, no reduction of wages. Better science.”

“And you own the patent?”

“And we own the patent.”

Rue glanced away with a frown. For the first time since the conversation had begun, he knew for certain how she felt.

Sad.

“Thanks for being honest, Eli. I really appreciate it, but…I have to go now.” She walked past him, but then stopped and retreated for a short moment, just enough to rise on her toes and press a kiss to his lips.

Eli let her go, but when her hand was on the doorknob he said, “Rue.”

“Yes?”

He stared into her wide, unclouded eyes. Said, “Nothing,” instead of the truth: anything. Everything.

He thought he caught a split second of hesitation, but it must have been a trick of the light. Still, he stood in front of the closed door for longer than he cared to admit, hoping that she would come back.