“A bit cluttered, and most people are off today—we’re shuffling around equipment and reorganizing the space. We’ve got lots of ongoing projects, but BLINK’s everyone’s favorite child. The other astronauts pop by every
once in a while just to ask how much longer it will be until their fancy swag is ready.”
I grin. “For real?”
“Yep.”
Making fancy swag for astronauts is my literal job description. I can add it to my LinkedIn profile. Not that anyone uses LinkedIn.
“The neuroscience labs—your labs—will be on the right. This way there are—” His phone rings. “Sorry—mind if I take it?”
“Not at all.” I smile at his beaver phone case (“Nature’s Engineer”) and look away.
I wonder whether Guy would think I’m lame if I snapped a few pictures of the building for my friends. I decide that I can live with that, but when I take out my phone, I hear a noise from down the hallway. It’s soft and chirpy, and sounds a lot like a . . .
“Meow.”
I glance back at Guy. He’s busy explaining how to put on Moana to someone very young, so I decide to investigate. Most of the rooms are deserted, labs full of large, abstruse equipment that looks like it belongs to .
. . well. NASA. I hear male voices somewhere in the building, but no sign of the—
“Meow.”
I turn around. A few feet away, staring at me with a curious expression, is a beautiful young calico.
“And who might you be?” I slowly hold out my hand. The kitten comes closer, delicately sniffs my fingers, and gives me a welcoming headbutt.
I laugh. “You’re such a sweet girl.” I squat down to scratch her under her chin. She nips my finger, a playful love bite. “Aren’t you the most purr fect little baby? I feel so fur-tunate to have met you.”
She gives me a disdainful look and turns away. I think she understands puns.
“Come on, I was just kitten.” Another outraged glare. Then she jumps on a nearby cart, piled ceiling-high with boxes and heavy, precarious-looking equipment. “Where are you going?”
I squint, trying to figure out where she disappeared, and that’s when I realize it. The piece of equipment? The precarious-looking one? It actually is precarious. And the cat poked it just enough to dislodge it. And it’s falling on my head.
Right.
About.
Now.
I have less than three seconds to move away. Which is too bad, because my entire body is suddenly made of stone, unresponsive to my brain’s commands. I stand there, terrified, paralyzed, and close my eyes as a jumbled chaos of thoughts twists through my head. Is the cat okay? Am I going to die?
Oh God, I am going to die. Squashed by a tungsten anvil like Wile E. Coyote.
I am a twenty-first century Pierre Curie, about to get my skull crushed by ahorse-drawn cart. Except that I have no chair in the physics department ofthe University of Paris to leave to my lovely spouse, Marie. Except that I havebarely done a tenth of all the science I meant to do. Except that I wanted somany things and I never oh my God any second now—
Something slams into my body, shoving me aside and into the wall.
Everything is pain.
For a couple of seconds. Then the pain is over, and everything is noise: metal clanking as it plunges to the floor, horrified screaming, a shrill “meow”
somewhere in the distance, and, closer to my ear . . . someone is panting. Less than an inch from me.
I open my eyes, gasping for breath, and . . .
Green.
All I can see is green. Not dark, like the grass outside; not dull, like the pistachios I had on the plane. This green is light, piercing, intense. Familiar, but hard to place, not unlike—
Eyes. I’m looking up into the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. Eyes that I’ve seen before. Eyes surrounded by wavy black hair and a face that’s angles and sharp edges and full lips, a face that’s offensively, imperfectly handsome. A face attached to a large, solid body—a body that is pinning me to the wall, a body made of a broad chest and two thighs that could moonlight as redwoods.
Easily. One is slotted between my legs and it’s holding me up. Unyielding.
This man even smells like a forest—and that mouth. That mouth is still breathing heavily on top of me, probably from the effort of whisking me off from under seven hundred pounds of mechanical engineering tools, and— I know that mouth.
Levi.
Levi.
I haven’t seen Levi Ward in six years. Six blessed, blissful years. And now here he is, pushing me into a wall in the middle of NASA’s Space Center, and he looks . . . he looks . . .
“Levi!” someone yells. The clanking goes silent. What was meant to fall has settled on the floor. “Are you okay?”
Levi doesn’t move, nor does he look away. His mouth works, and so does his throat. His lips part to say something, but no sound comes out. Instead a hand, at once rushed and gentle, reaches up to cup my face. It’s so large, I feel perfectly cradled. Engulfed in green, cozy warmth. I whimper when it leaves my skin, a plaintive, involuntary sound from deep in my throat, but I stop when I realize that it’s only shifting to the back of my skull. To the hollow of my collarbone. To my brow, pushing back my hair.
It’s a cautious touch. Pressing but delicate. Lingering but urgent. As though he is studying me. Trying to make sure that I’m all in one piece.
