The Love Hypothesis

by Ali Hazelwood

  “I never quite understood what he thought. What I do know now, years later, is that he was abusive. A lot of terrible things happened under his watch—scientists were not given credit for their ideas or authorship of papers they deserved. People were publicly belittled for making mistakes that would be normal for experienced researchers—let alone trainees. Expectations were stellar, but never fully defined. Impossible deadlines were set arbitrarily, out of the blue, and grads were punished for not meeting them. Ph.D. students were constantly assigned to the same tasks, then pitted against each other and asked to compete, for my adviser’s amusement. Once he put Holden and me on the same research project and told us that whoever obtained publishable results first would receive funding for the following semester.”

  She tried to imagine how it would feel, if Dr. Aslan openly promoted a competitive environment between Olive and her cohorts. But no—Adam and Holden had been close friends their whole lives, so the situation wasn’t comparable. It would have been like being told that to receive a salary next semester, Olive would need to outscience Anh. “What did you do?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, and a strand fell on his forehead. “We paired up. We figured that we had complementary skills—a pharmacology expert can achieve more with the help of a computational biologist, and vice versa. And we were right. We ran a really good study. It was exhausting, but also elating, staying up all hours to figure out how to fix our protocols. Knowing that we were the first to discover something.” For a moment, he seemed to enjoy the memory. But then he pressed his lips together, rolling his jaw. “And at the end of the semester, when we presented our findings to our adviser, he told us that we’d both be without funding, because by collaborating we hadn’t followed his guidelines. We spent the following spring teaching six sections of Introduction to Biology per week—on top of lab work. Holden and I were living together. I swear that I once heard him mumble ‘mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell’ in his sleep.”

  “But . . . you gave your adviser what he wanted.”

  Adam shook his head. “He wanted a power play. And in the end he got it: he punished us for not dancing to his tune and published the findings we brought to him without acknowledging our role in obtaining them.”

  “I . . .” Her fingers fisted in the loose fabric of her borrowed T-shirt. “Adam, I’m so sorry I ever compared you to him. I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s okay.” He smiled at her, tight but reassuring.

  It was not okay. Yes, Adam could be direct, painfully so. Stubborn and blunt and uncompromising. Not always kind, but never devious, or malicious. Quite the opposite: he was honest to a fault, and required from others the same discipline he clearly imposed on himself. As much as his grads complained about his harsh feedback or the long hours of work they were asked to put in the lab, they all recognized that he was a hands-on mentor without being a micromanager. Most of them graduated with several publications and moved on to excellent academic jobs.

  “You didn’t know.”

  “Still, I . . .” She bit her lip, feeling guilty. Feeling defeated. Feeling angry at Adam’s adviser and at Tom for treating academia like their own personal playground. At herself, for not knowing what to do about it. “Why did no one report him?”

  He closed his eyes briefly. “Because he was short-listed for a Nobel Prize. Twice. Because he had powerful friends in high places, and we thought no one would believe us. Because he could make or break careers. Because we felt that there was no real system in place to ask for help.” There was a sour set to his jaw, and he was not looking at her anymore. It was so surreal, the idea of Adam Carlsen feeling powerless. And yet, his eyes told another story. “We were terrified, and probably somewhere deep down we were convinced that we’d signed up for it and we deserved it. That we were failures who would never amount to anything.”

  Her heart hurt for him. For herself. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  He shook his head again, and his expression somewhat cleared. “When he told me that I was a failure, I thought he was right. I was ready to give up on the one thing I cared about because of it. And Tom and Holden—they had their own issues with our adviser, of course. Everyone did. But they helped me. For some reason my adviser always seemed to know when something wrong was happening with my studies, but Tom mediated a lot between us. He took lots of crap so I wouldn’t have to. He was a favorite of my adviser’s and interceded to make the lab less like a battle zone.”

  Adam talking about Tom as though he were a hero made her nauseous, but she remained silent. This wasn’t about her.

  “And Holden . . . Holden stole my law school applications and made paper planes out of them. He was removed enough from what was happening to me that he could help me see things objectively. Just like I am removed from what happened to you today.” His eyes were on her, now. There was a light in them that she didn’t understand. “You are not mediocre, Olive. You were not invited to speak because people think that you are my girlfriend—there is no such thing, since SBD’s abstracts go through a blind review process. I would know, because I’ve been roped into reviewing them in the past. And the work you presented is important, rigorous, and brilliant.” He took a deep breath. His shoulders rose and fell in time with the thudding of her heart. “I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”

  Maybe it was the words, or maybe the tone. Maybe it was the way he’d just told her something about himself, or how he’d taken her hand earlier and saved her from her misery. Her knight in black armor. Maybe it was none of it, maybe it was all of it, maybe it was always going to happen. Still—it didn’t matter. Suddenly, it just didn’t matter, the why of it, the how. The after. All Olive cared about was that she wanted to, right now, and that seemed enough to make it all right.

  It was all so slow: the step forward she took to come to stand between his knees, the rise of her hand to his face, the way her fingers cupped his jaw. Slow enough that he could have stopped her, he could have pulled out of reach, he could have said something—and he did not. He simply looked up at her, his eyes a clear, liquid brown, and Olive’s heart at once jumped and quieted when he tilted his head and leaned into her palm.

  It didn’t surprise her, how soft his skin was beneath the night stubble, how much warmer than hers. And when she bent, for once taller than him, the shape of his lips under hers was like an old song, familiar and easy. It wasn’t their first kiss, after all. Though, it was different. Calm and tentative and precious, Adam’s hand light on her waist as he tilted his chin up to her, eager and pressing, like this was something he’d thought of—like he’d been wanting it, too. It wasn’t their first kiss, but it was the first kiss that was theirs, and Olive savored it for long moments. The texture, the smell, the closeness. The slight hitch in Adam’s breath, the odd pauses, the way their lips had to work a little before finding the right angles and some form of coordination.

  See? She wanted to say, triumphant. To whom, she wasn’t sure. See? It was always going to be like this. Olive grinned into his lips. And Adam—

  Adam was already shaking his head when she pulled back, like a no had been waiting in his mouth all along, even as he returned her kiss. His fingers closed tight around her wrist, drawing her hand away from his face. “This is not a good idea.”

  Her smile faded. He was right. He was completely right. He was also wrong. “Why?”

  “Olive.” He shook his head again. Then his hand left her waist and came up to his lips, as if to touch the kiss they’d just shared, make sure it had really happened. “This is . . . no.”

  He really was right. But . . . “Why?” she repeated.

  Adam’s fingers pressed into his eyes. His left hand was still holding her wrist, and she wondered distractedly if he was even aware of it. If he knew that his thumb was swiping back and forth across her pulse. “This is not what we’re here for.”

  She could feel her nostrils
flare. “That doesn’t mean that—”

  “You’re not thinking clearly.” He swallowed visibly. “You’re upset and drunk, and—”

  “I had two beers. Hours ago.”

  “You’re a grad student, currently depending on me for a place to stay, and even if not, the power I have over you could easily turn this into a coercive dynamic that—”

  “I’m—” Olive laughed. “I’m not feeling coerced, I—”

  “You’re in love with someone else!”

  She almost recoiled. The way he spit out the words was that heated. It should have put her off, driven her away, once and for all drilled into her head how ridiculous this was, how disastrous an idea. It didn’t, though. By now the moody, ill-tempered ass Adam meshed so well with her Adam, the one who bought her cookies and checked her slides and let her cry into his neck. There might have been a time when she couldn’t quite reconcile the two, but they were all so clear now, the many faces of him. She wouldn’t want to leave behind any of them. Not one.

  “Olive.” He sighed heavily, closing his eyes. The idea that he might be thinking of the woman who Holden mentioned flashed into her mind and slipped away, too painful to entertain.

  She should just tell him. She should be honest with him, admit that she didn’t care about Jeremy, that there was no one else. Never had been. But she was terrified, paralyzed with fear, and after the day she’d had, her heart felt so easy to break. So fragile. Adam could shatter it in a thousand pieces, and still be none the wiser.

  “Olive, this is how you’re feeling now. A month from now, a week, tomorrow, I don’t want you to regret—”

  “What about what I want?” She leaned forward, letting her words soak the silence for drawn-out seconds. “What about the fact that I want this? Though maybe you don’t care.” She squared her shoulders, blinking quickly against the prickling sensation in her eyes. “Because you don’t want it, right? Maybe I’m just not attractive to you and you don’t want this—”

  It nearly made her lose her balance, the way he tugged at her wrist and pulled her hand to himself, pressing her palm flush to his groin to show her that . . . Oh.

  Oh.

  Yeah.

  His jaw rolled as he held her gaze. “You have no fucking idea what I want.”

  It took her breath away, all of it. The low, guttural tone of his voice, the thick ridge under her fingers, the enraged, hungry note in his eyes. He pushed her hand away almost immediately, but it already felt too late.

  It wasn’t that Olive hadn’t . . . the kisses they’d exchanged, they were always physical, but now it was as if something had been switched on. For a long time she’d thought Adam handsome and attractive. She’d touched him, sat on his lap, considered the vague possibility of being intimate with him. She’d thought about him, about sex, about him and sex, but it had always been abstract. Hazy and undefined. Like line art in black and white: just the base for a drawing that was suddenly coloring on the inside.

  It was clear now, in the damp ache pooling between her thighs, in his eyes that were all pupil, how it would be between them. Heady and sweaty and slick. Challenging. They would do things for each other, demand things of each other. They would be incredibly close. And Olive—now that she could see it, she really, really wanted it.

  She stepped close, even closer. “Well, then.” Her voice was low, but she knew he could hear her.

  He shut his eyes tight. “This is not why I asked you to room with me.”

  “I know.” Olive pushed a black strand of hair away from his forehead. “It’s also not why I accepted.”

  His lips were parted, and he was staring down at her hand, the one that was almost wrapped around his erection a moment ago. “You said no sex.”

  She had said that. She remembered thinking about her rules, listing them in his office, and she remembered being certain that she would never, ever be interested in seeing Adam Carlsen for longer than ten minutes a week. “I also said it was going to be an on-campus thing. And we just went out for dinner. So.” He might know what was best, but what he wanted was different. She could almost see the debris of his control, feel it slowly erode.

  “I don’t . . .” He straightened, infinitesimally. The line of his shoulders, his jaw—he was so tense, still avoiding her eyes. “I don’t have anything.”

  It was a little embarrassing, the amount of time it took for her to parse the meaning of it. “Oh. It doesn’t matter. I’m on birth control. And clean.” She bit into her lip. “But we could also do . . . other things.”

  Adam swallowed, twice, and then nodded. He wasn’t breathing normally. And Olive doubted he could say no at this point. That he would even want to. He did put up a good effort, though. “What if you hate me for this, after? What if we go back and you change your mind—”

  “I won’t. I . . .” She stepped—God, even closer. She wouldn’t think about after. Couldn’t, didn’t want to. “I’ve never been surer of anything. Except maybe cell theory.” She smiled, hoping he’d smile back.

  Adam’s mouth remained straight and serious, but it scarcely mattered: the next time Olive felt his touch it was on the slope of her hip bone, under the cotton of the T-shirt he’d given her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  HYPOTHESIS: Despite what everyone says, sex is never going to be anything more than a mildly enjoyable activi— Oh.

  Oh.

  It was like a layer peeled away.

  Adam yanked off the shirt he was wearing in one fluid movement, and it was as though the white cotton was only one of many things tossed in a corner of the room. Olive didn’t have a name for what the other things were; all she knew was that a few seconds earlier he’d seemed reluctant, almost unwilling to touch her, and now he was . . . not.

  He was running the show now. Wrapping his large hands around her waist, sliding his fingertips under the elastic of her green polka-dot panties, and kissing her.

  He kisses, Olive thought, like a man starved. Like he’d been waiting all this time. Holding back. Like the possibility of the two of them doing this had occurred to him in the past, but he’d set it aside, stored it away in a deep, dark place where it had grown into something fearsome and out of control. Olive thought she knew how it would be—they’d kissed before, after all. Except, she realized now, that she had always been the one to kiss him.

  Maybe she was being fanciful. What did she know about different types of kisses, anyway? Still, something in her belly thrummed and liquefied when his tongue licked against hers, when he bit a tender spot on her neck, when he made a guttural noise in the back of his throat as his fingers cupped her ass through her panties. Under her shirt, his hand traveled up to her rib cage. Olive gasped and smiled into his mouth.

  “You did that before.”

  He blinked at her, confused, pupils blown large and dark. “What?”

  “The night I kissed you in the hallway. You did it that night, too.”

  “I did what?”

  “You touched me. Here.” Her hand slid to her ribs to cover his through the cotton.

  He looked up at her through dark lashes, and began to lift a corner of her shirt, up her thighs and past her hip until it caught right under her breast. He leaned into her, pressing his lips against the lowest part of her ribs. Olive gasped. And gasped again when he bit her softly, and then licked across the same spot.

  “Here?” he asked. She was growing light-headed. It could be how close he was, or the heat in the room. Or the fact that she was almost naked, standing in front of him in nothing but panties and socks. “Olive.” His mouth traveled upward, less than an inch, teeth grazing against skin and bone. “Here?” She hadn’t thought she could get this wet this quickly. Or at all. Then again, she hadn’t really thought much about sex in the past few years.

  “Pay attention, sweetheart.” He sucked the underside of her breast. She had to hold on to
his shoulders, or her knees would give out on her. “Here?”

  “I . . .” It took a moment to focus, but she nodded. “Maybe. Yes, there. It was . . . it was a good kiss.” Her eyes fluttered closed, and she didn’t even fight it when he took the shirt completely off her. It was his, after all. And the way he was studying her, it brooked no self-consciousness on her part. “Do you remember it?”

  He was the distracted one now. Staring at her breasts like they were something spectacular, his lips parted and breath quick and shallow. “Remember what?”

  “Our first kiss.”

  He didn’t answer. Instead he looked up and down at her, eyes glazed, and said, “I want to keep you in this hotel room for a week.” His hand came up to cup her breast, not exactly gentle. Just this side of too forceful, and Olive felt herself clench around nothing. “For a year.”

  He pushed his hand against her shoulder blades to make her arch toward him, and then closed his mouth against her breast, all teeth and tongue and wonderful, delicious suction. Olive whimpered against the back of her hand, because she hadn’t known, hadn’t thought that she’d be so sensitive, but her nipples were tight and raw and almost sore, and if he didn’t do something, she’d—

  “You’re edible, Olive.”

  His palm pressed against her spine, and Olive arched a little more. An offering of sorts. “That’s probably an insult,” she breathed out with a smile, “considering that you only like wheatgrass and broccoli— Oh.”

  He could fit her entire breast in his mouth. All of it. He groaned in the back of his throat, and it was clear that he’d love to swallow her whole. Olive should touch him, too—she was the one who’d asked for this, and it followed that she should make sure that being with her was not a chore for him. Maybe put her hand back where he’d dragged it earlier and stroke? He could instruct her on how he liked it. Maybe this was a one-time thing and they were never going to talk about it again, but Olive couldn’t help herself—she just wanted him to like this. To like her.