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‘Something’s come up.’
Rachel Lewis looked up from the microscope she’d been bending over to smile a greeting at her closest colleague. Mateo Karras’ dazzlingly good looks had stopped stealing her breath years ago, thank goodness, but the academic part of her brain still couldn’t help but admire the perfect symmetry of his features every time she saw him—the close-cropped blue-black hair, the aquamarine eyes the exact colour of the Aegean when she’d gone on holiday there a few years ago, the straight nose and square jaw, and of course the lithe and tall powerful figure encased now in battered cords and a creased button-down shirt, his usual work attire.
‘Come up?’ She wrinkled her nose, noting his rather terse tone, so unlike his usual cheerful briskness as he came into the lab, eager to get started. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I...’ He shook his head, let out a weary breath. ‘I’m going to be away for...a while. I’ll have to take a leave of absence.’
‘A leave of absence?’ Rachel stared at him in shock. She and Mateo had been pioneering research on chemical emissions and climate change for the better part of a decade, since they’d both received their PhDs here at Cambridge. They were close, so close, to discovering and publishing the crucial evidence that would reduce toxic chemicals’ effect on the climate. How could he be walking away from it all? It was too incredible to take in. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I know. I can’t explain it all now. I’m afraid I have a family emergency that has to be dealt with. I... I don’t know when I’ll be back.’
‘But...’ Shock was giving way to dismay, and something even deeper that Rachel didn’t want to consider too closely. She didn’t feel anything for Mateo, not like that. It was just that she couldn’t imagine working without him. They’d been colleagues and partners in research for so long, they practically knew each other’s thoughts without needing to speak. When discussing their research, they’d completed each other’s sentences on many occasions, with wry smiles and a rueful laugh.
They had a symmetry, a synchronicity, that had been formed over years of dedicated research, endless hours in the lab, as well as many drinks in pub gardens by the river Cam where they discussed everything from radioactive isotopes to organic compounds, and raced each other as to who could recite the periodic table the fastest. Unfortunately, Mateo always won. He couldn’t be leaving.
‘What’s going on, Mateo? What’s come up?’ After nearly ten years together Rachel thought she surely deserved to know, even as she acknowledged that she and Mateo had shared next to nothing about their personal lives.
She didn’t really have one, and Mateo had always been very private about his. She’d seen a few women on his arm over the years, but they hadn’t stayed there very long—a date or two, nothing more. He’d never spoken about them, and she’d never dared ask.
She’d also never dared consider herself a candidate for that vaunted position—they were poles apart in terms of their appeal, and she was pragmatic enough to understand that, no matter how well they got along. Mateo would never, ever think of her that way. And, Rachel had reminded herself more than once with only a small pang of loss, it wasn’t likely that any man would. She certainly hadn’t found one yet, and she’d accepted her single state a long time ago, not that she’d ever admitted as much to Mateo.
Over countless conversations, they’d stuck to chemistry, to research, maybe a bit of university gossip, but nothing more. Nothing personal. Certainly nothing intimate. And that had been fine, because their work banter was fun, their research was important, and being with Mateo made her happy.
Yet now Rachel knew she needed to know why he was leaving. Surely he couldn’t walk away from it all without giving her a real reason.
‘It’s difficult to explain,’ he said, rubbing a hand wearily over his face. Gone was his easy charm, his wry banter, the glint in his aquamarine eyes that Rachel loved. He looked remote, stony, almost like someone she didn’t even know. ‘All I can say is, it’s a family emergency...’
Rachel realised she didn’t know anything about his family. In nearly ten years, he’d never mentioned them once. ‘I hope everyone is okay,’ she said, feeling as if she were fumbling in the dark. She didn’t even know if there was an everyone.
‘Yes, yes, it will be fine. But...’ He paused, and a look of such naked desolation passed over his face that Rachel had the insane urge to go over and give him a hug. Insane, because in nearly ten years she had never touched him, save for a brush of the shoulder as they leaned over a microscope together, or the occasional high five when they had a breakthrough in their research. But they’d never hugged. Not even close. It hadn’t bothered or even occurred to her, until now.
‘Let me know if there’s something I can do to help,’ she said. ‘Anything at all. Are you leaving Cambridge...? Do you need your house looked after?’ Although she’d never been to his house, she knew it was a sprawling cottage in the nearby village of Grantchester, a far cry from the terraced garden flat by the railway station that she’d scraped and saved to afford and make a cosy, comfortable home.
‘I’m leaving the country.’ Mateo spoke flatly. ‘And I don’t know when I’ll be back.’
Rachel gaped at him. ‘This sounds really serious, then.’
‘It is.’
It also sounded so final. ‘But you will come back?’ Rachel asked. She couldn’t imagine him not returning ever. ‘When it’s all sorted?’ Whatever it was. ‘I can’t do this without you, Mateo.’ She gestured to the microscope she’d been looking through, encompassing all the research they’d embarked on together, and a look of sadness and regret flashed across Mateo’s face like a lightning strike of emotion, before his features ironed out and he offered her a nod.
‘I know. I feel the same. I’m sorry.’
‘Are you sure there isn’t something I can do? Help in some way?’ She didn’t know what to do, how to help, and she hated that. She wanted to be useful, had spent her entire life trying to be necessary to people, if not actually loved. But Mateo was already shaking his head.
‘No, no. You...you’ve been amazing, Rachel. A great colleague. The best I could ask for.’
She grimaced, struggling to make a joke of it even as horror stole over her at the thought of him leaving in such a final way. ‘Don’t, you make it sound as if you’re dying.’
‘It feels a little bit that way.’
‘Mateo—’
‘No, no, I’m being melodramatic.’ He forced a smile to that mobile mouth that had once fascinated Rachel far more than it should have. Thankfully she’d got over that years ago. She’d made herself, because she’d known there was no point. ‘Sorry, it’s all just been a shock. I’ll try to explain when I can. In the meantime...take care of yourself.’
He stepped forward then, and did something Rachel had never, ever expected him to do, although she’d dreamed it more times than she cared to admit. He leant forward and brushed her cheek with his lips. Rachel drew in a shocked breath as the sheer physicality of him assaulted her senses—the clean, citrusy smell of his aftershave, the softness of his lips, the sharp brush of his stubbled cheek against hers. One hand reached out, flailing towards him, looking for purchase, but thankfully her mind hadn’t short-circuited quite that much, and she let it fall to her side before she actually touched him.
With a sad, wry smile, Mateo met her gaze and then stepped back. He nodded once more while Rachel stared dumbly, her mind spinning, her cheek buzzing, and then he turned around and left the lab. A second later Rachel heard the door to the block of laboratories close, and she knew he was gone.
