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The length of her body flattens against mine, my heart hammering against her chest. The door beep-beeps again, and there’s the sound of the tumbler rolling fully. The door opens, a narrow sliver of light slicing across my feet as Arjun flicks the switch on.

Grumbling about the door, he starts to sift papers. He must be on a call—he talks as he riffles around. “Yeah, your lock stuck, sorry. It’s taking me a little bit of time.” A pause. “Yeah, okay, I’ll get maintenance out here. You said it was in the bottom drawer?” There’s a shuffling of notebooks, the roll of the desk chair.

Marcella’s eyes on me in the dark catch the ambient room glow. Strange, too, because it’s almost like someone cracked a glow stick in here.

Arjun grunts and he must be either getting down on the floor or lifting something—but then he curses. “Wait, you mean in the closet?”

I almost scream. Trapped like the fucking rats we are, he’s going to find us. My eyes squeeze closed.

The heavy sound of footfalls grows closer on the beige carpet. I make a nearly imperceptible sound and Marcella cups a hand around my chin, then presses her fingertips across my lips. Her nails bite in and my god this would be so fucking hot if we weren’t about to be fired—

“You sure it’s in the— Oh. I’ll move the desk. Hold on.” Arjun grunts and the heavy wooden desk scrapes along the floor. There’s the sound of a latch and my eyes spring open.

I whimper into Marcella’s hand and she suddenly realizes how she’s holding me here, in the dark. We’re close enough to be on top of each other, pressed hard against the closet walls. She eases her hand away, trailing her fingertips across my cheek. My skin lights up with an electric buzz, and I need to stifle a gasp. My knees are all water; if she touched me the right way now, I might crumple.

I don’t want to feel like this. Not for her. We’re meant to be racing each other for a single damned funding spot, and I just—I can’t be feeling this. I can’t be the one on their knees begging for affection and being turned away. This is 2026; it’s not like anyone will point fingers at me except for the ghosts of my own shame. No one will turn me from their home—my parents did that well enough anyway when I stopped going to Mass and started yearning for the women in my grad program. But wanting Marcella, this dangerous, crackling, fierce creature?

I can’t.

I take a shuddering breath and look up at her, but her attention is fully focused on the other side of the door. Head cocked, long hair dark as ink in the shadows, lips pursed.

“Got it,” Arjun finally says, and it feels like an intrusion. A lock catches, and the desk squeals back into position over the cheap carpeting. “Be right there.”

Footsteps, a door slamming.

I sag against Marcella, in this instant not caring what she thinks—and hoping she accepts this as simple relief instead of a complicated set of ragged emotions.

We wait a moment, then another, and then Marcella opens the door. I spill out, narrowly avoiding dropping to the floor, my breath coming hard as though I’ve run a race. Marcella, though, is single-minded; she crawls beneath the desk and starts feeling around on the carpet.

“We need to get out of here,” I whisper-shout. “What if he comes back?”

She peels up a square of flooring, cocking her head. “Well, well. Interesting,” she murmurs, her eyes narrowing.

“Marcella!” I gasp. “Please!” My gaze darts toward the door even as her fingertips try the hatch’s brass latch.

“Locked,” she muses, then sits back on her heels. “We just need to get the key,” she says, almost dreamily. “I know how, too—I know who has it.”

“Marcella!” This time it is a harsh bleat and her eyes flick to mine.

“What?”

“We have to go,” I say, my voice an unexpected clot of tears. “Please, I don’t want to get caught.”

She crosses to me in two paces, and for a split second I think she’ll press to me like she did in the closet, all cool skin and soft hair and bright eyes. But then she grabs me, and she is iron, not silk.

“I’m tired of your sniveling,” she growls, her eyes flashing. “Grow a backbone. This is your friend. Her death. Our chance to figure out what’s going on. Look at you,” she snaps, her gaze a slap, “begging to leave. You’d think Arjun and Dean Shea had you bound at their feet but no, they have only shackled you to the medieval idea that you’ll get in trouble.” She thrusts me away, her face a twist of disgust. “You sicken me like this. Who taught you to be this way?”

“I just don’t want—”

“Answer my question,” she says, her voice salt in a very old wound.

Answer my question, my father’s voice echoes through time. Are you a pervert?

“I just don’t—” I cry, my words bouncing off the walls of the office. I smack a hand to my mouth, gasping for air.

“Is your tenure worth more than the truth?” Marcella snarls, somehow towering above me in the darkness. “Would you really forsake Laurel simply because a man terrified you? Do you really value this job”—she spits the word like a curse—“more than her?”

“That’s not fair,” I reply, my voice a weakening whisper. “This job is all I have.”