The Chemist

CHAPTER 15

“No, I’m not exaggerating. I am fairly certain this is the best meal I’ve ever eaten in my entire life. Granted, I’m generally a fast-food girl, so I’m not a very sophisticated judge, but I also mean what I say.”

“Well, that’s a lovely compliment. Thank you.”

“What is this again?” She poked her fork at the dessert on her plate, wishing she had a tiny bit more space in her stomach. She’d eaten herself nearly sick, but still she craved just one more bite.

“Bananas Foster butter cake.”

“I mean…” She went for it, ignoring her stomach and savoring a small forkful. “Where did you learn to do this?”

“I took a few culinary courses in college. I watch a lot of the Food Network on the weekends, and I practice when I can afford to.”

“Time amazingly well spent. I think you might have missed your calling, though.”

“I worked in a few restaurants back in the day. It wasn’t conducive to a social life. When I was dating my ex… well, she wasn’t a big fan of the schedule. My day job gave us more time together.”

“Not everyone would make the sacrifice.”

“It wasn’t one, really. Working with the kids always felt most important. I loved it. And it wasn’t like I couldn’t cook at home. So I got both for a while.”

“Then you stopped?”

He sighed. “Well, when Lainey left… I didn’t want to fight. I let her have whatever she wanted.”

Alex could easily picture how that had worked. She’d seen Daniel’s postdivorce bank account. “She cleaned you out.”

“Pretty much. Hence the ramen diet.”

“That is a crime.” She looked longingly at what was left of the butter cake.

“Life,” he said. “You’ve had your share of heartbreak.”

“Honestly, though it all went down with a little too much terror and tragedy, I was ready to quit anyway. It was never what I wanted to do with my life; it’s just what I was really good at.” She shrugged. “The job took a toll.”

“I can’t even begin to imagine. But I meant… romantically.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending. “Romantically?”

“Well, as you said, it ended in tragedy.”

“My life, sure. But…?”

“I just figured, from the way you talk about him, it must have been devastating to lose… Dr. Barnaby the way you did. You never said what his first name was?”

“It was Joseph. But I always called him Barnaby.”

She took a sip of her juice.

“And were you in love with him… from the very beginning?”

Her shocked gasp pulled a mouthful of juice into her lungs, and she spluttered and choked. Daniel jumped up and pounded her on the back while she tried to regain control of her breathing. After a minute, she waved him off.

“I’m okay,” she coughed out. “Sit.”

He stayed by her, one hand half extended. “Are you sure?”

“Just. Caught by surprise. With Barnaby?”

“I thought you said yesterday…”

She took a deep breath, then coughed one more time. “That I loved him.” She shuddered. “Sorry, I’m just having some seriously squicky incest reflexes right now. Barnaby was like my father. He was a good father – the only one I ever knew. It was really hard knowing how he died, and I miss him like hell. So, yes, definitely devastating. But not like that.”

Daniel returned slowly to his seat. He thought for a moment, and then he asked, “Who else did you have to cut ties with when you disappeared?”

She could imagine the long array of faces parading through his mind right now. “That part wasn’t so hard for me. It sounds pretty pathetic, but Barnaby was my only real friend. My work was my entire life, and I wasn’t allowed to talk about my work to anyone besides Barnaby. I lived a very isolated existence. There were others around… for example, the underlings who prepped subjects. They knew what was happening in a general sense but had none of the classified details about the information we were trying to retrieve. And, well, they were terrified of me. They knew what my job was. So we didn’t chat much. There were a few lab assistants who performed a variety of duties outside the action rooms, but they didn’t know what we were doing and I had to be careful not to say anything to tip them off. Occasionally, people from the different agencies visited individually to monitor a particular interrogation, but I had very little contact with them except to receive instructions about the angles I should cover. Mostly they watched from behind one-way glass, and Carston gave me the information. I used to think Carston was sort of my friend, but he did just try to kill me… So I can’t compare it to what you’re losing. Obviously, I didn’t have that much of a life to lose. Even before I was recruited… I guess I just don’t bond with other humans like a normal person. Like I said, pathetic.”

He smiled at her. “I haven’t noticed any deficiencies.”

“Um, thanks. Well, it’s getting late. Let me help clear this all up.”

“Sure.” He stood and stretched, then started stacking plates. She had to move quickly to grab a few things before he had efficiently made off with all of it. “But the night is still young,” he continued, “and I’m going to have to bring up the other half of our deal now.”

“Huh?”

He laughed. His hands were full so she pulled the dishwasher open. She filled in the bottom rack while he did the top and put the bigger pieces in the sink. The chore moved quickly with both of them working in easy tandem.

“You don’t remember? It’s only been a few days, really. I’ll admit, it does seem a lot longer. It could be weeks.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He closed the dishwasher and then leaned back against the counter, folding his arms. She waited.

“Think back. Before things got… strange. You promised that if I still liked you after we had dinner together…”

He looked at her with raised eyebrows, waiting for her to fill in the blank.

Oh. He was talking about their conversation on the train. She was shocked he could refer to it so lightly. That was the last moment his life had been normal. The last moment before everything had been stolen from him. And though she hadn’t been the architect of that theft, she’d been the hand they used.

“Um. Something about a foreign film theater at the university near you, right?”

“Yes – well, but I didn’t mean for you to be quite so specific. The university theater is not exactly convenient right now. However…” He opened the cupboard behind him, reached up, and pulled something off the highest shelf. He turned back to her with a huge grin and presented a DVD case. The faded cover had a picture of a beautiful woman in a red dress and a dark, wide-brimmed hat.

“Ta-da!” he said.

“Where on earth did you get that?”

His smile got a little smaller. “Second store I went to. Thrift store. I got very lucky. This is actually a great movie.” He assessed her face. “I can read your thoughts. You’re thinking, Is there any place this idiot didn’t go? We’ll be dead by sunrise.”

“Not in so many words. And we’d be disappearing into the night in Arnie’s stolen truck right now if I thought it was that bad.”

“Still, while I’m very, very sorry for my rash behavior, I’m also quite happy I was able to find this gem. You’ll love it.”

She shook her head – not disagreeing, just wondering how things had gotten so odd in her life. One wrong move and suddenly she was committed to reading subtitles with the most kind and… uncorrupted person she’d ever met.

He stepped toward her. “You can’t say no. You made a bargain and I intend to hold you to it.”

“I’ll do it, I’ll do it. You just have to explain why exactly it is that you still like me,” she said, finishing more glumly than she’d begun.

“I think I can do that.”

He took another step forward, backing her against the island. He put his hands on the edge of the counter behind her, one on either side, and as he leaned forward, she could smell the clean, citrusy scent of his hair. He was so close, she could see that he must have shaved recently – his jaw was smooth and there was the hint of razor burn just under his chin.

Daniel’s proximity confused her, but it didn’t frighten her the way it would have with just about any other person on the planet. He wasn’t dangerous to her, she knew that. She didn’t understand what he was doing, though, even when he slowly lowered his face toward hers, his eyes starting to close. It never occurred to her that he was about to kiss her until his half-open lips were just a breath away from hers.

That realization startled her. It startled her a lot. And when she was startled, she had ingrained reactions that manifested without her conscious approval.

She ducked under his arm, spinning free. She dashed several feet away, then spun back to face the source of the alarm, sliding into a half crouch. Her hands were automatically at her waist, looking for the belt she wasn’t wearing.

As she took in Daniel’s horrified expression, Alex realized that her reaction would have fit better if he’d pulled a knife and held it to her throat. She straightened up and dropped her hands, her face burning.

“Uh, sorry. Sorry! You, um, caught me off guard.”

Daniel’s horror shifted into disbelief. “Wow. I didn’t think I was moving that fast, but maybe I should reevaluate.”

“I just… I’m sorry, what was that?”

A shade of impatience crossed his expression. “Well, I was about to kiss you.”

“That’s what it looked like, but… why? I mean, kiss me? I don’t… I don’t understand.”

He shook his head and turned to lean back against the island. “Huh. I really thought we were on the same page, but now I kind of feel like I’m speaking English as a second language. What did you think was going on here? With the dinner date? And the sad little candle?” He gestured to the table.

He walked toward her then, and she forced herself not to back away. Confusion aside, she knew her wild overreaction had been rude. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. Even if he was a crazy person.

“Surely…” He sighed. “Surely you’ve been aware of how often I just… touch you.” He was close enough at that point to reach out one hand and brush his knuckles along her arm in demonstration. “On the planet I come from, that kind of thing signifies romantic interest.” He leaned toward her again, his eyes narrowed. “Please tell me, what does it mean on yours?”

She took a deep breath. “Daniel, what you’re processing now is a kind of sensory deprivation reaction,” she explained. “It’s something I’ve seen before, in the lab…”

His eyes widened; he backed out of her space. His expression was totally flummoxed.

“This is a valid response to what you’ve experienced, and it’s actually a very mild response, under the circumstances,” she continued. “You’re doing remarkably well. Many people would have had a complete nervous breakdown by this point. This emotional reaction might seem similar to something you’ve experienced before, but I can assure you that what you’re feeling right now is not romantic interest.”

He regained his composure as she explained, but he didn’t seem enlightened or reassured by her diagnosis. His eyebrows lowered and his lips tucked in at the corners like he was annoyed.

“And you’re sure you know my feelings better than I do because…”

“As I said, I’ve seen something like this before in the lab.”

“‘Something like this’?” he quoted back at her. “I imagine you saw many things in your lab, but I’m also sure that I’m still the best qualified to know when I’m experiencing romantic interest.” He sounded angry, but he was smiling and he was moving closer while he spoke. “So if your only argument is anecdotal…”

“That’s not my only argument,” she began slowly, unwillingly. These weren’t the easiest words to say. “I may have been… absorbed by my work, but I wasn’t totally oblivious. I know what men see when they look at me, the ones who know what I am… like you do. And I understand that reaction. I don’t disagree with it. Your brother’s animosity – that is a normal, rational response. I’ve seen it many times before – fear, loathing, an eagerness to assert physical dominance. I am the bogeyman in a very dark and scary world. I frighten people who aren’t afraid of anything else, not even death. I can take everything they pride themselves on away from them; I can make them betray everything they hold sacred. I am the monster they see in their nightmares.” It was a version of herself she’d come to accept, but not without some pain.

She wasn’t unaware that outsiders, people who didn’t know her, saw her as a woman rather than a demon. When she needed to, she could make use of her ability to appear delicate and feminine, as she had with the walrus-y hotel manager. It was no different from her ability to look like a boy. Both were deceptions. But even those outsiders who saw her as a female didn’t look at her with… desire. She wasn’t that girl, and that was okay. She’d been born with her own gifts, and you didn’t get everything.

He waited patiently while she spoke, his expression neutral. She didn’t think he was reacting to her words strongly enough.

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” she asked. “I am intrinsically incompatible with being an object of romantic interest.”

“I understand you. I just don’t agree.”

“I don’t understand how you of all people can disagree.”

“First, but not entirely to the point, I’m not afraid of you.”

She exhaled impatiently. “Why not?”

“Because, now that you know who I am, I am in no danger from you, and I never will be unless I change into the kind of person who should be.”

Her lips screwed into a half-pursed frown. He was right… but that wasn’t really the issue.

“Second, still tangential, I think you’ve been spending all your time with the wrong kind of man. A hazard of your particular work, I’d imagine.”

“Maybe. But what is the main point you’re dancing around?”

He got into her personal space again. “How I feel. How you feel.”

She held her ground. “And how can you be sure what you’re feeling? You’re in the middle of the most traumatic experience of your life. You’ve just lost your whole world. All that’s left is a brother you don’t completely trust, your kidnapper-slash-torturer, and Arnie. So it was probably fifty-fifty on whether you’d attach yourself to me or to Arnie. This is pretty basic Stockholm syndrome stuff, Daniel. I’m the only human female in your life – there aren’t any other options. Think about it rationally; think about how inappropriate the timing is. You can’t trust feelings born in the midst of severe physical and mental anguish.”

“I might consider that, except for one thing.”

“And what’s that?”

“I wanted you before you were the only human female in my life.”

This threw her, and he took advantage, placing both his hands lightly on her shoulders. The warmth from his palms made her realize that she’d been cold without recognizing it. She shivered.

“Remember when I told you that I’d never asked a woman out on a train before? That was kind of an understatement. On average, it takes me about three weeks of fairly regular interaction – along with an embarrassing amount of encouragement from the girl – before I work up the nerve to ask someone to go for a casual coffee. But from the second I saw your face, I was willing to leap miles outside my comfort zone to make sure I saw it again.”

She shook her head. “Daniel, I roofied you. You were high on a chemical compound with manifestations similar to Ecstasy.”

“Not then, I wasn’t. I remember. I felt the difference before and after you ‘shocked’ me. That was when things got confusing. And before the drug, I was already in neck-deep. I was trying to figure out how I was going to get off at your stop without looking like a stalker.”

She had no answer. His physical proximity was becoming disorienting. He still held her loosely, bending in slightly so that his face was closer to hers.

It wasn’t until this moment that she began to really consider his words. She’d written off everything he’d said and done since the kidnapping as aftershocks from the trauma. She’d analyzed him like a subject, always separating herself from the equation. Because none of it was about her. And all of it was within normal parameters for what he’d been through.

She tried to remember the last time a man had looked at her this way, and she came up empty.

For the past three years, every person she’d met, male or female, had been a potential source of danger. For the six years before that, as she’d just excruciatingly explained, she’d been anathema to every man she’d interacted with. Which took her all the way back to college and medical school and the few brief relationships that had never included much romance. She was a scientist first, even then, and the men she’d formed attachments to had been the same. Their relationships were born from massive amounts of time logged in together and very specific interests that 99.99 percent of the populace couldn’t begin to grasp. Each time, they’d settled for each other by default. No wonder it had never amounted to much.

And none of them had ever worn this expression. Wonder and fascination mixed with something electric as he gazed at her face… her battered, swollen face. For the first time, she felt mortified about her mangled appearance for an entirely vain reason. Her hands had been hanging limply at her sides. Now she raised one and covered as much as she could, hiding like a child.

“I’ve put some thought into this,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “I know what I’m saying.”

She just shook her head.

“Of course, all of that is moot if you don’t feel a similar way. I’ve been a little overconfident tonight.” He paused. “Given that we haven’t been speaking the same language at all, have we? I’ve been misreading you.”

He paused again like he was waiting for an answer, but she had no idea what to say.

“What do you see when you look at me?” he asked.

She lowered her hand an inch and glanced up at him, at the same perplexingly honest face she’d been trying to understand from the beginning. What kind of a question was that? There were too many answers.

“I don’t know how to respond to that.”

His eyes narrowed for a moment, considering. She wished he would take a step back so that she could think more clearly. Then he seemed to brace himself, squaring his shoulders for some kind of blow.

“Might as well get everything out in the open. Answer this instead: What’s the very worst thing you see when you look at me?”

The honest answer popped out before she could think it through. “A liability.”

She saw how harshly the word landed. Now he gave her the space she’d just wished for, and she regretted it. Why was the room so cold?

He nodded to himself as he backed away.

“That’s fair, that’s completely fair. I’m an idiot, clearly. I can’t forget I’ve put you in danger. Also, the fact that -”

“No!” She took a hesitant step toward him, anxious to be clear. “That’s not what I meant.”

“You don’t have to be kind. I know I’m useless in all this.” He gestured vaguely toward the door, toward the world outside that was trying to kill them both.

“You’re not. Being a normal person is not a bad thing. You’ll learn all the rest. I was talking about… leverage.” She couldn’t help herself – his expression was just so openly devastated. She took another step toward him and grabbed one of his big, warm hands with both of her little icy ones. It made her feel better when the word leverage replaced the pain in his eyes with confusion. She hurried to explain. “You remember what Kevin and I were saying about leverage? About how you’re the leverage the Agency needed to get him to expose himself?”

“Yes, that makes me feel so much better than useless.”

“Let me finish.” She took a deep breath. “They’ve never had anything on me. Barnaby was my only family. I didn’t have some sister with a couple of kids and a house in the suburbs that the department could threaten to blow up. There was no one I cared about. Lonely, yes, but I was also free. It was only myself I had to keep alive.”

She watched him think through the words, trying to sort out her meaning. She fumbled for a concrete example.

“See, if… if they had you,” she explained slowly, “if they grabbed you somehow… I would have to come after you.” It was so true it frightened her. She didn’t understand why it was true, but that didn’t change the fact.

His eyes widened and seemed to freeze that way.

“And they’d win, you know,” she said apologetically. “They’d kill us both. But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have to try. See?” She shrugged. “Liability.”

He opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. He paced to the sink, then back to stand right in front of her.

“Why would you come after me? Guilt?”

“Some,” she admitted.

“But it wasn’t you who involved me, not really. They didn’t choose me because of you.”

“I know – that’s why I said some. Maybe thirty-three percent.”

He smiled a tiny bit, like she’d said something funny. “And the other sixty-seven percent?”

“Another thirty-three percent… justice? That’s not the right word. But someone like you… you deserve more than this. You’re a better person than any of them. It’s not right that someone like you should have to be a part of this world. It’s an evil waste.”

She hadn’t meant to be quite so vehement. She could tell she’d only confused him again. He didn’t realize how unusual he was. He didn’t belong down here in the filth of the trenches. Something about him was just… pure.

“And the last thirty-four?” he asked after a moment of thought.

“I don’t know.” She groaned.

She didn’t know why or how he had become a central figure in her life. She didn’t know why she automatically assumed he would be there in the future when that made no sense at all. She didn’t know why, when his brother had asked her to keep an eye on him, her answer had been so earnest and so… compulsory.

Daniel was waiting for more. She spread her hands helplessly. She didn’t know what else to say.

He smiled a little. “Well, liability doesn’t seem such an awful word as it did before.”

“It does to me.”

“You know if they came for you, I would do what I could to stand in their way. So you’re a liability for me, too.”

“I wouldn’t want you to do that.”

“Because we’d both end up dead.”

“Yes, we would! If they come for me, you run.”

He laughed. “Agree to disagree.”

“Daniel -”

“Let me tell you what else I see when I look at you.”

Her shoulders hunched automatically. “Tell me the worst thing you see.”

He sighed, then reached out to gently lay his fingertips along her cheekbone. “These bruises. They break my heart. But, in a really twisted and wrong way, I’m sort of grateful for them. How shameful is that?”

“Grateful?”

“Well, if my idiot bully of a brother hadn’t beaten you up, you would have disappeared, and I would have had no way to ever find you again. Because of your injuries, you needed our help. You stayed with me.”

His expression when he said the last four words was very unsettling. Or maybe it was his fingers lingering on her skin.

“Now can I tell you what else I see?”

She stared at him warily.

“I see a woman who is more… real than any other woman I’ve ever met. You make every other person I’ve known seem insubstantial, somehow incomplete. Like shadows and illusions. I loved my wife, or rather – as you so insightfully pointed out while I was high – I loved my idea of who she was. I truly did. But she was never as there to me as you are. I’ve never been drawn to someone the way I am to you, and I have been from the very first moment I met you. It’s like the difference between… between reading about gravity and then falling for the first time.”

They stared at each other for what felt like hours but could have been minutes or even seconds. His hand, at first just touching her cheekbone with the very tips of his fingers, slowly relaxed down until his palm was cradling her jaw. His thumb brushed across her lower lip with a pressure so light, she wasn’t totally sure she hadn’t imagined it.

“This is entirely irrational on every level,” she whispered.

“Don’t kill me, please?”

She might have nodded.

He put his other hand on her face – so softly that despite her bruises there was no hint of pain. It was just live current, like the way a plasma globe must feel from the inside.

She started to remind herself, as his lips pressed gently against hers, that she was not thirteen years old and this was not her first kiss, so really… then his hands moved into her hair and held her mouth more firmly against his, his lips opened, and she couldn’t even finish the thought. She couldn’t think how the words were supposed to string together.

She gasped – just a tiny puff of breath – and he pulled his face an inch back, still holding her head secure in his long hands.

“Did I hurt you?”

She couldn’t remember how to say Just keep kissing me, so instead she stretched up on her tiptoes to throw her arms around his neck and pull him closer. He was not unwilling to comply.

He must have felt the drag in her arms, or his back was protesting the considerable difference in their heights; he grabbed her waist and swung her up onto the island counter, never breaking the contact between their lips. Reflexively, her legs wrapped around his hips at the same time that his arms pulled tight around her torso, so their bodies were warmly fused together. Her fingers twisted themselves into his hair, and she was finally able to admit to herself that she had always been attracted to these unruly curls, that she’d secretly enjoyed running her fingers through them while he was unconscious in a way that was totally unprofessional.

There was something honest and so Daniel about the kiss, as if his personality – along with his scent and taste – was a part of the electricity humming back and forth between them. She started to understand what he’d been saying before, about how she was real to him. He was something new to her, an entirely new experience. It was like her first kiss, because no kiss had ever been so vivid, so much stronger than her own analytical mind. She didn’t have to think.

It felt amazing not to think.

Everything was just kissing Daniel, like there had never been another purpose for breathing in and out.

He kissed her throat, her temple, the top of her head. He cradled her face against his neck and sighed.

“It feels like I’ve been waiting a century to do that. It’s like time has lost all continuity. Every second with you outweighs days of life before I met you.”

“This shouldn’t be so easy.” Once he’d stopped kissing her, she could think again. She wished she didn’t have to.

He tilted her chin up. “What do you mean?”

“Shouldn’t there be some… awkwardness? Noses bumping, all that. I mean, it’s been a while for me, but that’s how I remember it.”

He kissed her nose. “Normally, yes. But this hasn’t been a normal thing in any facet.”

“I don’t understand how this could happen. The odds are astronomically against it. You were just the random bait they put in a trap for me. And then, coincidentally, you just happen to be exactly…” She didn’t know how to finish.

“Exactly what I want,” he said, and he leaned in to kiss her again. He pulled back too soon. “I’ll admit,” he continued, “it’s not a bet I would have taken.”

“Your chances at winning the lottery would be better.”

“Do you believe in fate?”

“Of course not.”

He laughed at her scornful tone. “I guess karma is out, too, then?”

“Neither of those things is real.”

“Can you prove that?”

“Well, not conclusively, no. But no one can prove they are real, either.”

“Then you’ll just have to accept that this is the world’s most unlikely coincidence. I, however, think there is some balance in the universe. We’ve both been treated unfairly. Maybe this is our balance.”

“It’s irrational -”

He cut her off, his lips making her forget instantly what she had been about to say. He kissed along the skin of her cheekbone till he got to her ear.

“Rationality is overrated,” he whispered.

Then his mouth was moving with hers again, and she couldn’t help but agree. This was better than logic.

“You’re not off the hook for Indochine,” he murmured.

“Huh?”

“The movie. I endangered our lives to acquire it, the least you can do is -”

This time, she didn’t let him finish.

“Tomorrow,” he said when they came up for air.

“Tomorrow,” she agreed.