He continued to stuff the banana in his mouth, talking with his mouth full, all while focusing on the security monitor. “The whole reason I came down here was to push the button because Dr. Cutchin said I could push the button.”
There was only one button Zack would be referring to, causing him to act like a kid excited to push an elevator call button. It was weird. She also knew Dr. Cutchin had held this one prize like an offering to their overlord, as though pushing a button gave Zack a real hand in the creation of their work. Zack spoke of little else, telling other employees that he got to be theone who pushed the button to activate the MASS laser, shrinking their first agreed-upon human test subject.
“I thought we were in a rush to shut everything down. There isn’t even anyone in there. There’s no point in pushing anything.” It wasn’t even a real button. Maybe if it was a giant old-school red dial with flashing lights readingShrinkon it, she’d see the appeal. Hell, if that was the case, she’d be excited about pushing a button too. But this was just a finger tap selection on the tablet, and it didn’t even make a tiny click or anything. It was very anticlimactic for such a great moment of scientific achievement.
“I’m going to do a social media poll,” Zack said, discarding the empty banana peel on her keyboard and pulling out his phone. “Should I push the button?” he asked as he typed. It was clear he was asking this question to his millions of followers, not even bothering to explain what the button entailed. Not that he or his followers cared. At least half of the population would vote for unknown disruption at the expense of stability just for the hell of it.
At this announcement, Sasha couldn’t stop herself from sighing in exasperation, but she at least had enough control to turn her back when doing so. She continued her conversation with Dr. Cutchin about the logistics of how quickly everything could be packed up and where they were heading next, when Dr. Taylor rushed in.
“The authorities are here and they want to speak to someone in charge. Who wants to talk to them?”
All eyes turned to Zack, who merely scrolled through his phone as if this was any other day and there was nothing to worry about. He then picked up their working tablet, clicked through a few things, and before she could say anything like,What in the hell are you doing?the tablet was returned to the table.
One look at the screen revealed what he had done.
“The poll was already going strongly in favor, so I pushed the button,” Zack said before standing and zipping his hoodie. “If I were you, I’d start packing everything up. I found a new place to set up shop in Belize. Dr. Cutchin, can you talk to the authorities? I need to get back in the air.” He slipped a pair of sunglasses on and strolled out.
She threw up her hands.Whatever. The good news was that pushing the button did nothing except make Zack feel good. Maybe it was out of his system and he’d have less of a fixation on it in the future. It wasn’t as if anyone was in the MASS laser hub, and, at this point, the miniature ape had to be long gone or dead, probably vacuumed by housekeeping or eaten by a bug.
They were lucky Zack’s actions were inconsequential—this time.
Chapter 7
Catalina
No one had ever kissed her like this before.
In fact, Trey himself had never kissed her like this.
Weird.
The kiss made her light-headed, as if she was floating or falling. Catalina wasn’t sure she was grounded to the floor anymore, losing track of her feet, as though gravity no longer applied in this world and she’d somehow been transported to another. Is this what it felt like to kiss someone on the moon? Rather than the arctic temperatures one would experience in space, her skin buzzed warm. The surrounding oxygen wrapped around her like hot steam. The goosebumps popping along her arms tingled as though she’d become a human sparkler. If she didn’t know any better, she could swear she heard a light zapping sound, but that was impossible, and she was positive her ears were deceiving her. The kiss was amazing and breathtaking and—
And made her incredibly irritated because this wasn’t how this was supposed to go. Catalinaswooned, and she wasn’t supposed to be swooning. She intended to say goodbye, to tell her future ex all of this wasn’t enough—that his kisses no longer meant anything to her.
Except her plan was foiled, crashing apart around her like it’d been hit by a meteor. All of this must have proved the opposite to Trey. Her damn heart made her task ten times harder than it needed to be when she preferred to feel nothing. The biggest problem was she didn’t know how to stop.
The only reason she continued kissing Trey, pressing and pulling on his warm full lips and sliding her tongue alongside his, was not because she loved him, Catalina told herself. Instead, it was an easy way to put off the inevitable—to stave off the moment she’d have to break the kiss and pull away from him. Then she expected his face to shift from a normal expression to one reflecting smugness. A big, cocky grin on his face would make her hate him for real. Why not enjoy the moment a little longer?
Their kissing might have lasted a few minutes or spanned an hour. It was hard to know, but she snapped out of it when Trey’s fingers snuck under her light cover-up dress, then to the bikini bottoms underneath, the same swimsuit she had purposely purchased in defiance. He began to gently tug on them while saying, “I knew you still wanted me,” against her lips with a small growl.
Whatever tingling and sparkling she had experienced previously had faded away by this time. The bones in her spine clicked together in a straight line,and she pushed his eager hands away. “Stop. Stop it, Trey.”
He did as she commanded, pulling away, and the immediate loss of him almost made her fling herself at him again. It took everything in her to resist and remain strong. Moving backwards was not allowed when trying to become self-reliant.
After emerging from the lusty mood the kiss had generated, there was no expected smugness in Trey’s face. Instead, his expression revealed nothing but dejection, as if he was coming to realize the truth of their situation: this might be the last kiss between them. “Cat—”
“That didn’t mean anything. I haven’t changed my mind.” The words were nearly lodged in her throat, choking her. She didn’t want to cry. Cat hated that tears came easily, especially in moments of extreme discouragement. She wished she were stronger.
He ran a hand through his hair, his body practically vibrating in frustrated energy. “Why even give me any hope if your mind was set from the beginning?”
“I haven’t given you anything. You just haven’t been listening.”
His hand dropped, smacking against his thigh. “I just thought…” Before he could finish, he looked side to side as if inspecting the room. “Wait. Where the hell are we?”
If they were on better terms, she would have made a crack about the kiss being so good, it altered his mind, erasing when they had entered the strangeresort conference room. Except any response she had died on her lips, her own confusion descending, because Trey was right to be puzzled.
The small conference room was no more. Their location had switched into an enormous auditorium, with a ceiling so tall it didn’t make any sense. What would a room such as this even be used for? There were no tables with computer equipment, dog kennel, or anything else she’d noticed before. In fact, the booth where she had experienced the hottest makeout in her life was missing. Something wasn’t right.
