“Yeah.”
21
CARTER
My apartment hasn’t felt this good in… honestly, maybe ever.
Maybe it’s the sunlight spilling across the bed in that soft, winter-gold way.
Maybe it’s the fact I slept through the night for once without bolting awake.
But mostly, it’s because Rhi is sprawled on her stomach beside me, laptop balanced on a pillow, her hair a messy dark halo across my sheets.
We’re supposed to be going through the field notes together.
We are technically “processing data.”
But the truth?
I’m processing absolutely nothing.
Because the curve of her very delicious ass is right in front of me, outlined perfectly by her leggings, and I am only human.
My hand is resting on the warm skin of her lower back where her shirt’s ridden up. I’m not doing anything. Not really. Just touching. Existing.
“Stop distracting me,” she murmurs, even though she’s smiling.
“I’m literally just lying here.”
“Your hand isn’t.”
“My hand is being extremely respectful.”
She snorts, but before she can fire back, she freezes.
Like—completely freezes.
Her finger lifts off the trackpad. She leans closer, squints at the graph, and whispers, “No way.”
That’s when I know something scientific has happened. Her voice goes soft and reverent, like she’s talking to God or magma.
She pushes up onto her elbows—raising her hips slightly, which does not help my situation—and zooms into a section of today’s readings.
“Oh my god,” she whispers. “Carter. Carter.Look.”
I scoot closer, though I’m focused on her face more than the data. Her eyes are huge, bright,alive.
“Do you see this gradient?” She points at the slope on the chart, almost vibrating. “The pH shift between Site Two and Three? I thought it was noise, but it’s not. It’s a clean acid-sulfate boundary.”
I blink. “I’m gonna need English.”
“It means the fluids are changing composition between those sites. Like—like the system is inhaling gases deeper down and then exhaling them as they mix with groundwater.”
I definitely didn’t follow all of that, but her excitement is honestly hotter than the leggings.
“This is so good for the paper,” she says, voice climbing. “This kind of alteration front hasn’t been documented in this region in decades. Bam is going to freak out.”
She’s already typing—fast. Her whole body is buzzing, energy radiating off her in waves. I could watch her do this for hours.
