Page 119 of The Statistically Unlikely Reunion

“I need your wallet.”

He smiles at me sleepily, untucking one arm, long fingers curving against my cheek. It’s adorable the way he’s not the least bit put out. “Check the nightstand?”

It takes some doing, and thankfully, Lucas carries emergency cash, and also the concierge knows it’s Brody’s wedding coming up and that Brody and Lucas have been charging all sorts of things all week, while tipping well.

I get confirmation within half an hour because that’s the power of thick wallets.

Lucas has gone back to dozing, apparently completely uninterested in why I needed his wallet and commandeered his cash. Brody is completely out.

Because I’m a complete brat, I don’t just nudge them awake, I blast the main title theme to what else, The Cutting Edge, until they both startle awake.

Lucas rubs his eyes while Brody wipes drool from the corner of his mouth. “What the actual fuck, Red?”

“I have a surprise.”

42

CLEVER LUCAS

BEFORE

Lucas remains silent in the elevator, nodding politely when another team recognizes us and offers their congratulations. I keep my gaze on the floor, planning.

Lucas doesn’t speak again until after we’re in my room—Caltech (again) insisted on separating accommodations by gender—but like nationals, Lucas has spent all his nights here. It’s Lucas’s old gray sweatshirt on the edge of my bed, Lucas’s discarded pajama bottoms that have been kicked to the side of the bathroom floor.

“I thought I’d have until the end of the week to tell you.”

“Meaning the engagement is real?”

I manage to meet his hazel eyes, which are already swimming with pain and disbelief behind glasses that are seemingly magnifying his pain. “It is.”

Lucas’s voice breaks a little as he repeats, “You are engaged to Tatum Huang.”

“I am.”

He takes a step away from me and leans against the hallway doorframe, as if it’s suddenly too difficult to support his own weight. “Since when?”

“Everything was decided just a week ago.”

Lucas nods and takes off his glasses. He uses the bottom edge of his shirt to wipe them, his hands shaking with suppressed emotion. I bite the inside of my cheek because that’s the only way to stop my visceral need to reach for him, to comfort him, to take it all back.

Finally, he asks, “An arranged marriage?”

I nod, because I don’t want to—and also, thanks to the NDA I can’t—complicate things by telling Lucas the details. The engagement will last until the completion of the merger or five years, whichever comes last. Beatrice had explained that no enforceable contract could mandate marriage. She’d also negotiated in a few edge cases, ways for Tatum or I to opt out. But none of the paths were easy or guaranteed.

And I refuse to tell Lucas there’s a way out, because in the short term, there isn’t.

For the next five years, my father owns me.

Given how much we’ll change during those years? It might as well be a lifetime.

I think about how Lucas acted during those first months at Tech, and again when he was pushed by Harvard Hermès, and after weeks of racking my mind, I know exactly what to say. “This kind of agreement isn’t uncommon among wealthy Chinese families.”

Lucas’s lips twist. “Meaning not something a poor white boy would understand.”

The useless muscle that others call my heart feels tight, clenched in a way that makes breathing impossible, that should be completely incapacitating. Outwardly, I give the faintest of shrugs. If I exaggerate or oversell, Lucas will see through it. “I never planned on Tatum.”

“So what are—” He stops for a second, looks down, lets out a cold, biting laugh I’ve never heard him utter. When he looks up finally, his expression is almost composed. Someone who didn’t know him well might be fooled. “What was this? Practice?”