Page 170 of Wish You Were Mine
This was the worst possible time to have a nervous breakdown.
Conference Championships were on Sunday. The team was counting on me.
Still, I grabbed my water bottle and sat down on the edge of the floor mat, my muscles aching and my head pounding.
It wouldn’t be much of a break, though. Because in a few hours, I had Owen’s lab.
And the thought of walking into that room—watching him stand at the front, so close and yet so impossibly out of reach—made my stomach twist all over again.
54
OWEN
The next fewweeks were what could’ve easily passed for normal as the semester wound down.
I showed up to teach my lectures. Held office hours. Graded the usual stack of labs.
I even got the official notice from Dean Harris that the grant we’d applied for had been approved and I’d be promoted to research professor.
I should’ve felt proud. Excited, at least.
But I didn’t feel much of anything.
Just…numb. Like I was moving through my life in grayscale again.
Sure, I smiled when I was supposed to. Chatted with students and colleagues. Answered questions in the lab the same way I always had.
But underneath it, I was completely miserable.
And like clockwork, every Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Lucy was there in my classes—sitting in her usual spot.
On the surface, we probably seemed fine. Normal. Sincethroughout the semester, we’d become experts at hiding the feelings we had for each other from everyone else.
But even if no one else could see it, we knew each other better than that.
Every brief flicker of eye contact was a silent reminder of everything we weren’t allowed to feel anymore.
There was a cloud hanging over us now. A heaviness that hadn’t existed before.
And the sparkle in her eyes—that bright, hypnotic energy that used to light me up from the inside out—was gone.
How was she holding up?
Was she sleeping okay?
Eating enough?
Keeping her strength up for training?
I knew it wasn’t my place to worry about her anymore. But I couldn’t help it.
Because unlike chemistry—where you could balance an equation and watch everything cancel out—feelings didn’t dissolve that cleanly.
They lingered.
Burned.
Made you do reckless things.
