Chapter 1

*Samantha*

I opened the piece of mail in my hand and discovered it was a wedding invitation. To my own wedding.

Wait. Let me back up for a second.

It was just after midnight and I’d walked home from the lab, ducking under awnings and construction scaffolding and thinking that New York City must manufacture wind for the sole purpose of making my life difficult. Kaitlyn, my former roommate from undergrad and the only person who would pick up my call at this hour, kept me company as I dodged puddles. Collectively we were dissecting whether or not the TV show Friends had ever actually been funny.

“It’s not that I think Chandler wasn’t funny,” Kaitlyn said, and I could hear the telltale babbling of her baby in the background as I unlocked the three dead bolts of my front door, “but he definitely pioneered the whole ‘man-child who can’t communicate with women’ genre. And I resent him for that.”

“Are you suggesting,” I said, twisting my wrist, “that sitcoms bear some responsibility for Martin’s emotional constipation?” Martin Sandeke was her husband and basically a bully to everyone but her as far as I was concerned.

She snorted. “Martin’s emotional constipation was definitely present in utero. Don’t slander Chandler Bing like that.”

“You named your baby after a sitcom character, and you expect me to not make the connection.”

Kaitlyn paused, possibly switching boobs, possibly weighing the threat of my mockery. “We named him Joey because it was the only name we both didn’t hate. And Joey is short for Joseph, which is a perfectly reasonable name. If you don’t like the name, that’s on you, Sam. You never suggested anything better.”

I had, in fact, suggested at least a dozen better names, including but not limited to: Bartholomew, Snape, and Dr. Indiana Jones. Kaitlyn had summarily rejected them all. I suspected that when the baby reached object permanence, he’d resent her for it.

“You could have named him after me. Samantha’s a perfect name for any child if you say it with confidence.”

The baby made a squelching sound like he’d inhaled a portion of his mother’s areola. “Okay, ‘Sam,’ I have to finish feeding your godson. Text me if you get home alive.”

“I’m already home, and”—I lowered my voice to a whisper—“you have to admit that the pivot scene was funny.”

“That was one scene! One scene in a million seasons.”

“Good night, mamma,” I whispered.

“Good night, gorgeous friend,” she whispered.

The call ended and I was left with the warmth of Kaitlyn’s concern to guide me into the dark hallway. My calves were still burning from the four flights of stairs as I used my cell phone’s flashlight and tiptoed to my shared bedroom.

Both bedrooms were silent, but I recalled something about my roommate Diya being on a long hospital shift. Kendra, who shared the other bedroom with Nakita, was probably sleeping at her boyfriend’s studio apartment, which was even smaller than ours but had the benefit of being a five-minute walk from her job at the Lower East Side’s only vegan barbeque restaurant.

My stomach rumbled, so I padded into the kitchen, poured myself a glass of water, and stared into the fridge with the vague, quixotic hope that some new form of nutrition would have materialized in the past twelve hours. It hadn’t. But a bag of expired shredded cheese glared back at me from the top shelf, accusatory and possibly sentient.

Abandoning hope of finding sustenance in the fridge, I quickly scarfed down a protein bar and washed it down with a glass of water. After flossing and brushing and doing the bare minimum of my skincare routine, I finally made it to my room. I’d left the overhead light off, but the lamp atop my nightstand was on. A stack of mail sat on the center of my bed, presumably Kendra’s passive-aggressive way of reminding me that I hadn’t touched my basket of mail by the front door for the last two weeks.

That’s when I spotted the envelope.

It was large, not quite cream colored, with elaborate calligraphy. There was gold foil. There was an actual wax seal. The front read, “Miss Samantha Jarlston” and had my address. I frowned, guessing it was an invitation to a wedding but wracking my brain trying to figure out who might be getting hitched. Slitting it open with the nearest sharp object, which happened to be my lab ID badge, inside I found the world’s most excessive wedding invitation. The kind you had to hold with both hands, as substantive as an Amex Platinum card.

The honor of your presence

is requested

for the marriage of

Andreas Kristiansen

to

Samantha Jarlston

Saturday, June 19th, 7:00 PM

The Oslo Opera House

Oslo, Norway

Dinner & Dancing to Follow

I stared at it for a long, dumb second, then glanced around as if someone were filming my reaction. This was so random and weird.

I had not agreed to marry Andreas Kristiansen. I hadn’t even spoken to him in over a decade. Actually, fifteen years and one month to be precise. The last time we saw each other, I’d been thirteen and numb. He’d been eleven, wearing an ill-fitting black suit, and crying into a bowl of fruit salad at my father’s funeral.

This had to be a prank. Or maybe he was marrying someone with exactly my name? But then, why send me an invite? Or, more likely, this was a mind-game maneuver by the Kristiansen family to force me into a position where I would have to publicly acknowledge them or some such nonsense. I still received requests for interviews about the events surrounding my father’s disgraceful downfall and death, even now, and even though I’d never given a single one.

The Kristiansens were shady as a forest, but they had more money than the devil. I wasn’t stupid. As much as I wanted to see them all burn in hell, I wasn’t going to cross them without equivalent financial backing, or rock-solid evidence, or both. Realistically, the closest I would ever get to revenge against that family would be to ignore their existence, let them think I might someday give an interview that would tank their company’s stock, and live as well as possible.

Basically, I didn’t want anything to do with them unless it meant reading their obituaries.

I tossed the invitation into the trash and, for the second time that night, reached for my phone. There was a text from Diya (“I’ll be home in the morning”) and a missed call from a New York City area code I didn’t recognize. I ignored both and started to compose a ranting text message to Kaitlyn, only to stare at the screen for two minutes, and then delete it. There were limits to our friendship. She had a baby who she’d purposefully named Joey. Clearly, she was dealing with a lot right now. I didn’t want to bother her with this nonsense.

Crawling under the covers fully clothed, I tried to sleep but my brain performed an elaborate postmortem on every interaction I’d ever had with Andreas Kristiansen.

Andreas was two years younger than me, and he was the kind of child prodigy that other prodigies resented on principle. He was fluent in three languages by eight—but, to be fair, his mother was Italian, his father Norwegian, and he spent summers in the USA—and the kid played chess like he’d been born with every possible opening, middle game, and ending hardcoded in his DNA.

His father, Oskar, had been my dad’s business partner and, eventually, one of the people who’d bankrupted and then destroyed my family (according to my mother). I don’t want to dwell on that part—if you spend fourteen years in therapy, you learn to summarize childhood trauma in one sentence or less—but suffice it to say, I had zero interest in sharing my last name with anyone in the Kristiansen bloodline. The invitation was absolute nonsense. Like, Mad Hatter nonsense.

Still, Andreas had always been . . . different. And not in a bad way. Not at all.

I’d spent my childhood summers at his family’s Hamptons house, where the two older Kristiansen boys ignored me in favor of their wild-oats sowing. However, Andreas followed me around with the intensity of a golden retriever, always asking questions, always eager to play. He was sweet and curious, once getting so invested in building a blanket fort that he convinced their housekeeper to sew custom curtains for the windows. When he was nine, he found a dead baby bird in their garden and wept for a full hour, insisting on holding a proper funeral with eulogies and everything.

I was the officiant, naturally. Because I’m eloquent and look fabulous in robes.

He was lean and pale and had this thick, chaotic mop of dark hair that made him look like an extra from a Tim Burton movie. And, if you weren’t used to it, his gaze was intense and intimidating. There was something about the color of his olive-green irises and the shape of his large eyes, something about how his lids naturally drooped when he was in a state of concentration, listening, or rest that made him appear both bored and belligerent, like he was just about to give you a judgmental, unimpressed slow blink.

Almost ten years ago, while doomscrolling, I’d stumbled across a news article about him. According to a reputable British newspaper, he’d become a six-foot-two chess demigod and the second youngest grand master in Europe’s history. Also, he was a vegan at sixteen. Which, to be clear, is not an insult at all, but I was generally suspicious of anyone who forgoes cheese by choice. That’s an inhuman amount of self-control.

There’d also been a relatively famous meme about him and his intimidating stare. It was a photo of a teenage Andreas looking at an opponent across a chessboard, and in bold white text outlined in black it read, “My mouth may not say it, but my face definitely will.”

That was the last I’d heard of Andreas Kristiansen until, suddenly, out of absolutely nowhere, and after not hearing from him for years, he reached out to me last month.

I didn’t hear from him personally. He reached out through his assistant. But of course.

I’d been ignoring the emails from his personal assistant since the first one arrived thirty days ago. They always contained the same message, just with slightly different wording.

Mr. Kristiansen requests a half hour of your time to discuss a private matter.

Mr. Kristiansen requests that I reach out to arrange a brief meeting.

Mr. Kristiansen is in town and would like to meet you for a half hour to discuss something urgent and sensitive in nature.

At first, I suspected that he wanted to make amends for our parents’ war, but the more I thought about it, the less I cared. He might’ve been something like a best friend to me when we were younger, but he’d grown up as a Kristiansen. Since I had no power or means to annihilate them, my life was just fine without reopening that chapter. Better to pretend they—all of them—didn’t exist.

Then, two weeks ago, I was leaving the building where my lab was housed, and a stranger approached me with a slim manila envelope and a practiced smile. He introduced himself as “the personal assistant to Mr. Kristiansen” and asked if I could open my calendar to schedule a mutually agreeable meeting time. I told him the only arrangement I was interested in was a restraining order, and then I walked directly to the nearest pizza shop and stress-ate two slices of mushroom, cheese, and extra pepperoni.

But now, side-eying the invitation in my trash can, I realized that the situation had mutated. What began as passive pursuit was now full-tilt campaign. The Kristiansens had upped the ante. There was a calligraphed RSVP card with gold leaf embossed detail. There were flight vouchers. There was a slip of paper printed with a New York City phone number, and underneath it, two sentences:

Samantha, please give me half an hour of your time. If you don’t want to talk or see me again after that, then I’ll leave you alone. —Andreas

I wanted to crumple the card, burn it, toss it out the window into the East River.

My phone vibrated with a new text, pulling me out of my violent musings.

Kaitlyn: Did you think of any other funny episodes or scenes?

I typed back: “Not yet. But if I’m kidnapped, it’s the Norwegians. Will explain later.”

I placed the phone on the nightstand, turned off the light, and rolled onto my back, letting the city’s ambient glow seep through the window and bathe my face in blue. Outside, a siren wailed, insistent and urgent.

I lay there for a long time, thinking about the last time I held a wedding invitation in my hands. Grandpa’s second marriage. The memory made my stomach hurt.

I wondered if there was any universe in which I could RSVP no to my own arranged marriage. Probably not since I hadn’t even been proposed to.

Eventually, I got up, fished the card from the trash, and ran my thumb over the embossed letters. I didn’t recognize the font, but I liked how it looped, the swirls, the softness. Then, I studied the note from Andreas, presumably in his own handwriting. His cursive was sharp and tidy. It was nice, but it was aggressive, like a handshake from a man who thinks handshakes are tests of strength.

And as I stared at the points and lines of the black ink script on the thick ecru card, I couldn’t help but think, What the hell kind of person does something like this?

Chapter 2

*Samantha*

The sound that woke me was the ancient creak of our apartment’s front door, followed by the telltale thud of a person surrendering their entire body weight onto the entryway rug. I groaned into my pillow and checked my phone: 5:33 AM. I’d fallen asleep a little after 2:00, which meant I was running a solid deficit on cognitive function and would need to supplement with at least two pharmaceutical-grade quad-shot Americanos.

There was a scrabble of keys, a sigh, and then the shuffle-shuffle of sneakers. Diya. Even before she creaked open our bedroom door, I could smell the ghost of antiseptic that always trailed her home from the ER.

“Samantha?” she whispered, voice raw from twelve hours of telling drunk NYU kids that their insides would stay inside if they’d simply stop doing shots for five goddamn minutes.

I rolled over, exposing my face to the icy air, and grunted. “In the flesh. What’s up?”

Diya poked her head in. Even in the dark, I could see the reverse raccoon marks from her safety goggles. “Sorry I woke you,” she said, genuine remorse in her tone. “I think I’m just so tired, I’m confused. I keep telling myself not to talk, and here I am, still talking.”

“S’okay.” I turned and buried my face into my pillow, letting it muffle my next words. “I should get up. I should get up. I should get up.”

Motivated by the power of self-talk, I sat up in bed and cracked my eyes open.

Already removing her scrubs as she crossed the room, Diya tossed them into the laundry basket with one hand. She’d mastered the art of undressing without ever being technically naked; a hoodie materialized over her tank top before the scrubs even hit the basket. “You should go back to sleep. It’s not even six.”

“I’d have to fall asleep for that to work,” I said, and then yawned. I knew myself and my terrible relationship with insomnia enough to know more sleep was now impossible. “I’ll just get up and go to the lab early.”

Diya grunted and plopped onto my desk chair. “Why am I sitting here?”

“You need a shower and you don’t want to get in bed until you’re clean,” I filled in.

Diya let out a tragic sigh and blearily blinked around the room. “But the bathroom is so far away.”

Her eyes drifted, but then she did a double take, frowning at something on my nightstand. I followed her line of sight and cringed. Our early-morning, sleep-deprived repartee would now be derailed by the bright, accusatory rectangle of the wedding invitation on my nightstand. I could see in the dance of her dark eyebrows on her forehead the train of her thoughts.

“What’s that?” she asked, tilting her head. “Are you getting married?”

“It’s junk mail.” I snatched it from the nightstand and folded it in half. “You’re hallucinating. Take a shower. Go to sleep. Dream of your mom’s rogan josh.”

“No, no. I know myself. I don’t start hallucinating until I’ve been up for seventy-two hours. That was your name on there. Who is the guy? Is it the Stanford guy? I hate that guy. Or the one who did CrossFit? Please tell me it’s the CrossFit guy, I miss his shirtless sleepovers. Oh! The lawyer guy, the one you went to law school with who keeps making us dinner. Or the rower? Eric? Is that his name?”

“None of those,” I said, shoving the folded invite into my backpack on the floor next to my bed, where it could no longer radiate weirdness throughout my personal space. “Just an old family fri—” I stopped myself from saying friend. He might’ve been my friend when we were little, but we were strangers now. And, obviously, no one else in his family had ever been a friend to me. “Someone I used to know playing a joke.”

Diya made a skeptical face but let it go. Apparently, she was too tired to chase the scent of gossip.

“I’m heading out early,” I said, flipping back my covers. “Have a project due and the sequencer is actually free before eight.”

She nodded, her head tilting back as she succumbed to a massive yawn.

Standing, I hunted around my room and threw on the least-wrinkled pair of jeans I could find, a Genetics Bowl Champion tee, and a cardigan that might’ve been trendy seven years ago but now existed solely to telegraph “harmless grad student” to the outside world. I finger-combed my hair into a haphazard bun and grabbed my bag. Leaving Diya to her dozing, I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and called it good.

After I put on my coat and slung the backpack over one shoulder, I caught my reflection in the mirror by the front door. When I was on the tennis team in undergrad, I’d been told a few times that I resembled a young Anna Kournikova, the infamous Russian tennis pro. This was back when I worked out daily, was outside in the sun often, and still dyed my hair blond. I definitely preferred the light brown of my hair color now. My thoughts must’ve still been preoccupied by that stupid fake wedding invitation because, in my quick assessment of my reflection, my brain told me I looked like someone who could plausibly be a mail-order bride, but only if the groom had specified “bargain bin, will not arrive as advertised.”

The thought made me snicker.

Yes, yes. Make it all a joke. Everything is a joke. Life is so much nicer that way.

***

By 6:00 AM, the city was running on three-quarters power. I could actually enjoy a sidewalk without having to weave through a marathon of tourists and startup founders on electric scooters. The air was crisp, and even though I could see my breath, I left my hands exposed. The summer had been so hot, I was still enjoying the cooler temperatures of fall.

Central Grounds, my favorite coffee shop, operated on the theory that coffee should taste like coffee and be better than good. The line was mercifully nonexistent, and this small win buoyed my mood.

My barista—Kevin to his friends and regulars—smiled sympathetically when he saw me. “Rough night?”

“You have no idea,” I said, rubbing at my temples. “Quad-shot Americano, please.”

“On the house if you can recite the Krebs cycle backward.”

I blinked. “You know I can.”

“I know you can, but I want to see if you can do it before coffee.”

“Fine,” I said. “Malate, fumarate, succinate, succinyl-CoA, alpha-ketoglutarate, isocitrate, citrate, oxaloacetate.” I stopped for a second. “Wait. I started with malate. That’s not—”

“Impressive enough,” he said, waving it off. “Nobody ever gets that far.”

I grinned, because it felt good to be a monster at something.

He slid the coffee across the counter with a nod of respect. “Make good decisions.”

“I shan’t.” I tipped him, grabbed the drink, and inhaled it.

Ah. Coffee.

I loved coffee so much. I’d always liked coffee, but now I loved coffee. It was likely the closest I would ever come to a committed relationship.

Armed with my favorite thing on earth, I beelined for my department building. The NYC campus was close to the university’s research hospital, a collection of structures cobbled together by whatever real estate happened to be available during the dot-com crash. The genetics building, my home for the next indefinite period of time, was a neoclassical monstrosity complete with white columns made of cement and fairly decent scrollwork, considering the building was less than one hundred years old.

Gulping the last of my coffee, I would’ve been perfectly content to marinate in my own productivity until noon. But as I turned onto the sidewalk, an unusual sight pinged my situational awareness. A new stranger—a genuinely remarkable-looking fella—leaned against one of the entrance columns with an aura of extreme confidence. He wore an obscenely nice tan overcoat. The kind you see in European cologne ads, probably cashmere. It was unbuttoned and therefore open, revealing his all-black attire beneath. Black turtleneck, black pants, and black shoes shined to a mirror finish. Unlike mine, his hands were ensconced in leather gloves.

Currently, he checked his phone, then pocketed it and stared straight ahead. If this were an undergrad psych experiment where one rated an individual’s attractiveness on a Likert scale, I’d have categorized him as “dangerous levels of hot.” So, a 5.

The part of myself that was still somewhat aware of my outward appearance wished I’d brushed my hair this morning. Hell, I wished I’d done literally anything other than roll out of bed and slap on the first clean-ish T-shirt I found. But . . . whatever. Who cared if Mr. European Perfume Ad saw me looking like this. We’d probably never encounter each other again.

Squaring my shoulders, I adjusted my bag and told myself not to get distracted. I had things to do, data to analyze, coffee to drink. I was making for the door, eyes fixed on my phone screen as I pulled up my email, when he stepped directly into my path.

I glanced up. He looked at me. I took a step back. He kept looking at me.

So, the stepping in my path wasn’t an accident. It was calculated. He’d measured the trajectory and plotted an intercept.

My heart, which had coasted along inertly for the better part of a year, spiked a little.

“Pardon me,” he said.

Nice voice. Very nice. Low and smooth, with a faint European inflection that I couldn’t pin down but absolutely believed got him laid on a regular basis.

I blinked at him, then did the New Yorker thing where you make yourself so unimpressed that it comes back around to seeming interested.

“Yes?”

“You’re Samantha, yes?” He cocked his head, his green eyes sweeping over my face. The man’s tone broadcasted interest, but his gaze seemed somehow both bored and intense.

I took another step back, scrutinizing him, and considered pretending I wasn’t Samantha, but the way he’d pronounced my name, dragging the a out ever so slightly, made me want to engage rather than lie outright. “Depends. Who’s asking?”

He smiled, and it was a micro-expressive thing, barely more than a twitch at the corners of his mouth. “Andreas Kristiansen. You got my note, yes?”

It took my tired brain a full second to realize that this wasn’t just some random European thirst trap. This was *that* Andreas, the youngest Kristiansen, the boy—no, the man—who’d sent me a wedding invite and put himself as the groom. And when it did, my heart tripped all over itself and I stood paralyzed for several long seconds, chasing my breath.

I had no idea if he noticed or was bothered by my sleep-deprived gaping. Andreas simply stood there and returned my stare, giving me time to collect myself, as though he’d foreseen this reaction to his sudden appearance after fifteen years.

By the time I’d collected myself enough to respond, I was breathing hard and my heart had taken off at a gallop. I cycled through every available response and landed on the most mature by far. “I’m busy.”

He didn’t seem offended. Good for him.

“You remember me,” he said, sounding certain and pleased, though his expression didn’t change.

I didn’t respond. I owed him nothing. Also, I didn’t know what to say or why my body had suddenly divorced itself from my mind.

After studying me for another long moment, he gathered a deep breath and glanced over my shoulder. “It’s urgent that we meet.”

I spoke without thinking. “So, you show up at my job?”

His attention cut back to mine and he gave me another of his micro smiles. “Despite the risk, I suspected waiting for you here would be more efficient than waiting for you to answer an email. Or a letter. Or a courier.”

I laughed, once, because it was either that or throw my empty coffee cup at him. “I was hoping the next step would be a singing telegram. Or a skywriter.” Again, I’d spoken on instinct, the sarcasm emerging without thought. His sudden presence had sent me into a panic and I didn’t understand why.

Andreas’s face flickered with what might have been amusement, hard to tell. “If there’d been time, I would’ve done that next.”

I glared at him while also suddenly very aware of his proximity. He didn’t smell like cologne, but there was a faint, unfamiliar trace of something herbal and clean. Like rosemary and ozone, like the air after a thunderstorm, if that’s even possible.

Clinging to sarcasm like a shield, I made no attempt to hide the largeness or loudness of my sigh and took yet another step away, outside of the radius of his seductive olfactory assault. “What do you want?”

His gaze darted past me, scanning, then fixed on my face. “May I buy you a coffee? Or is that redundant?”

The fact that his voice was so incredibly alluring irritated me. I looked at my cup of coffee, which I’d just finished, then back at Andreas, intending to turn him down.

Thus, no one was more surprised than me when what came out was, “Fine.”

“Thank you,” he said, sounding sincerely grateful, gaze moving over my face like he was hungry for the sight of it. My eyes narrowed.

What are you doing, Samantha? This feels dangerous. Don’t do it!

Clearing my throat, I added testily, “If you promise to leave me alone after, then fine. I shall go get a cup of coffee and listen to whatever you have to say.”

If my glare bothered him, he didn’t make any outward sign of it, instead saying, “There is a café just there. I believe they opened at six.” He lifted his hand toward the corner across the street. “We can talk for a bit, and—”

“No.” I turned and began marching toward the café he’d indicated, not waiting to see if he’d follow. “You said in your note a half hour would suffice. I’ll give you a half hour. And that’s it.”

Chapter 3

*Samantha*

We sat across from each other, a table’s width and fifteen years of silence between us. I picked at the sleeve of my cardigan, which had sprouted a new hole at the elbow I hadn’t noticed until now, and wished I’d insisted on meeting somewhere less . . . sterile.

Cafés were supposed to be neutral ground, but this one had only fake plants. Who can trust a café where every plant is fake? What else is fake? The beans? The tea leaves? The milk? Is the barista made of cake?

I’m just saying.

Andreas looked even more beautiful with prolonged exposure, in the uncanny way that only comes from a ruthless culling of childhood awkwardness. His features had all grown into themselves. The nose was still prominent, but now it belonged on a man instead of a scrawny middle school student. The jawline could cut diamonds, and the chocolate-brown hair, which had once lived in perpetual revolt, was mostly tamed and combed with a kind of clinical precision that made my scalp itch with sympathy. The only thing unchanged was his eyes. Large, round, olive green, and weirdly soulful for a twenty-six-year-old nepo baby.

When I initially spotted him earlier, I’d thought that his eyes were rather large, yet he must’ve been tired or bored or something similar because his eyelids were lowered, at half-mast. But now I recalled this quality to his gaze—the appearance of drooping eyelids, as though he were unimpressed with everything—was just part of his eyes’ natural shape.

Presently, Andreas stared at me, silent and perfectly still, save for the gentle motion of one foot, which tapped against the marble tile in some intricate tempo I couldn’t decipher.

I was immediately viscerally annoyed.

“So,” I said, after exactly enough time had passed for the silence to become an entity with its own mortgage, “are you going to say something, or is this some kind of strategic interrogation?”

Andreas blinked, startled out of whatever he’d been thinking. “I haven’t seen you in fifteen years. I’m curious.”

“Curious?” I repeated, incredulous. “Did your family hope I’d be in a ditch somewhere? Preferably not breathing, I suppose.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, but he didn’t dignify that with a response, instead continuing to stare at me with a level of focus that left me unsettled. I wondered when and why his family had decided to use him to make contact. I wondered, not for the first time, why I’d agreed to this.

But I also wondered if he still wept for baby birds; I wondered if he still built pillow forts; and I wondered whose bed he slept in when he had nightmares.

Summers when we were young, he used to climb in my bed whenever he had a bad dream. This was almost every night. We’d stay together until early morning, then he’d leave silently so as not to be found out.

But that was a long time ago.

My attention wandered, eventually moving to the espresso machine behind the counter as I longed for the nutty, robust taste of the coffee I’d finished earlier. The server—an androgynous twentysomething with sleeve tattoos and a septum ring—caught my eye and smirked. Andreas had ordered us two cappuccinos when we’d entered. I raised my eyebrows at the server and didn’t smile, in the universal expression for “please save me from this torture,” and they nodded, presumably recognizing my desperation.

After too many seconds to count, during which Andreas continued to stare and I felt increasingly like something under a microscope, I snapped, “What is it?” If I didn’t take control, Andreas was going to benzodiazepine me into a coma. “You asked for half an hour. That’s two percent of my day if I round for scientific digits and don’t count leap seconds. I need a return on my investment.”

As though deciding something, he leaned forward, elbows on the table, hands folded with priestly solemnity. “I did not want to meet you in person like this, not in public. But you left me with no other choice.”

“Why? What? Are you still mad at me for hiding that puzzle piece when we were little?” I looked him down, then up. “Are you going to throw a pie in my face? Is it humble? Will I be expected to eat it?”

“I want to marry you.”

I choked so hard that I fleetingly worried I would aspirate on my own tongue. “Excuse me?” I finally croaked out.

He didn’t blink. “The offer is sincere.”

“I—” For the second time in less than twelve hours, I looked around to see if there was a hidden camera, but no one jumped out of the faux foliage. “Andreas, I haven’t seen you since we were both preteens. You can’t just—What is wrong with you?”

He seemed unbothered by the fact that he’d just detonated the world’s most awkward and inappropriate proposal. “You asked what I wanted. I told you. I want to marry you.”

Before I could formulate a reply, the server arrived with two cappuccinos, each topped with a foamy heart. I was ninety percent sure this was not a standard design, and ten percent sure the barista was flirting with Andreas.

Yes. Please. Take him off my hands.

But I only said, “Thank you.”

After a brief exchange during which the server confirmed we were all set, they left. Andreas, meanwhile, didn’t even nod or otherwise acknowledge the café employee. He simply kept looking at me.

I waited until the server was out of earshot before continuing. “Did your family put you up to this? Is this damage control for the sake of shareholders before something new about my father comes out?”

Andreas shook his head. “I don’t associate with my family. I haven’t since I turned eighteen.”

“Then you’re here on your own.” I side-eyed him, deciding that if he said so, I would believe him. Maybe that made me stupid, but I didn’t think so.

Andreas’s childhood hadn’t been easy, and I got a sense that it had continued to be difficult after I’d disappeared from his life.

Confirming my statement, he nodded. “This is something I want. They do not know I am here, and if they did, they definitely would not approve.”

I stared at his beautiful face for several seconds, trying to wrap my mind around what he might be thinking with this random, out-of-the-blue proposal after fifteen years of no contact.

Eventually, I huffed. “Seriously, is this some kind of performance art? Do you need a green card? Is there a reality show I’m not aware of for world’s most uncomfortable reunions? Why are you doing this to me?”

The faintest hint of a smile barely curved his lips. “You have not changed,” he said, the words sounding tender.

My adrenaline spiked and I sipped the cappuccino just to have something to do. It was good. Not great, but a credible effort.

“Okay, so—why—” I floundered, unsure why I hadn’t picked up my bag and coat and left already. Old time’s sake, maybe? “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I don’t immediately tell you to get lost. Why would you want to marry me?”

Eyes narrowing, he tugged at the fingertips of his gloves—first the right, then the left—proceeding to pull the black leather from his hands, revealing long, thick fingers and finely formed knuckles, everything strong, veiny, smooth, and perfectly proportioned.

I squirmed, viscerally annoyed once more. Andreas had one of the finest sets of man-hands I’d ever seen in my life. Infuriating.

Rather than roll my eyes, I frowned. I definitely needed to get out more, go to a bar, find a nice set of hands for a night. At the very least, I needed some time off work and my dissertation when I wasn’t exhausted, time to take care of my dearth in sexy-times business myself. Things must’ve been desperate if I was noticing my sworn enemy’s hands.

He is not your enemy. He never has been.

That said, this—sitting across from him now—was hard. Just seeing him was difficult. Talking to him brought back too many memories.

My mother, when I was little, before she’d died, had said that Andreas preferred me over his own family and she’d always felt a little guilty at the end of every summer when we’d have to part—him for Norway, then almost immediately for school in Switzerland, and me for school in Connecticut. He’d cry like he’d never see me again and I’d feel melancholy for weeks.

At my father’s funeral, Andreas had refused to let me go, requiring four grown men to untangle his arms from my body and forcibly carry him away. I would never forget his tearstained face and how his hands reached for me. At thirteen, I’d been in no state to console him, since my dad had—you know—just died right after declaring bankruptcy. I had no home, and my mother had been a shell, and every day was a struggle.

Over the years, every time I thought about reaching out to Andreas, some new hellish event stopped me: my mother’s death, my grandparents’ divorce, my grandmother’s death.

When I looked Andreas up ten years ago, just before starting college, he was the best chess player in the world and seemed to be doing just fine. And so, I’d let go of my childhood friend once and for all. It had brought me closure. I’d never regretted it.

But looking at him now and his bonkers offer, maybe he hadn’t let go of me . . . ?

That’s nuts. It’s been fifteen years.

Ignorant as to the direction of my thoughts, Andreas reached into the inner pocket of his coat and produced a document. He slid it across the table with the same gravity one uses to reveal a murder weapon in a game of Clue.

I glanced at it, then at him. “What is this?”

“Just read it.”

Careful to avoid touching his perfect fingers, I picked up the page. It was a photocopy, not an original, and the English was so precisely translated that it felt unnatural. The letterhead said Genetix, Inc., and the footer was dated approximately one month ago. The rest was legalese, but the gist was unmistakable.

Upon my death, my shares in Genetix, Inc. shall be transferred not to my biological children, but to my first grandchild, regardless of gender or national origin. The shares shall not be held in trust by any Kristiansen, Aaberg, or Loretto relation until such time as the grandchild reaches the age of majority.

I read it twice, noting that Aaberg was the maiden name of Oskar Kristiansen’s first wife and Loretto was the surname of his second wife. Finished, I set the paper down.

“Whose will is this?” I asked, but I already knew.

“My father’s,” Andreas said.

I tried to swallow around the tightness in my throat. “Oskar is still alive?”

He nodded.

“That’s a shame. Do your brothers know about this part of his will?”

“No.”

Blinking against a sudden rush of tears, I huffed again, then snorted, hoping to dispel the stupid, tiresome liquid emotion. “What does any of this have to do with me or you wanting to marry me?”

I needed to get out of here. Feelings were clawing at my lungs, heart, and throat, which was not a sensation I enjoyed. Ever.

He met my gaze, unflinching. “Those shares should go to you. Or your mother.”

I felt my throat tighten further. “My mother died when I was fourteen, Andreas. Bit late for inheritance games.”

He tilted his head, and for a second, I thought he might say something normal, like “I’m sorry” or “That must have been hard.”

Instead, he went for the jugular. “I believe my father—and, in part, my brothers—they are the reason your father died. I believe either my father or Tobias defrauded the company and framed your father for it. Henrik helped them cover it up. That stress led to your father’s sudden death.”

The words hung in the air like a chemical spill, but they also helped me, centered me. When the old familiar numbness threatened, I embraced it. Breathing deeply, I looked down at my hands, then at the table, then at the page of the will, then back at Andreas, who was the picture of unruffled patience.

I swallowed without difficulty. “You think I don’t know that?” I sounded so detached, so calm. What a relief.

He frowned at my response, another micro expression. “Samantha, I need to make it right for you.”

“And marrying me is your solution?” Admittedly, I was only half listening to his words now, and I was definitely not in a state of mind to scrutinize them.

He nodded, like he was agreeing to a flavor of yogurt, not a life-altering commitment. “My father is very sick. He will not have a chance to change this again. If we marry, the shares pass to our child. You will control them. Don’t you see? It’s built into the language. My father wants his future daughter-in-law to control the shares before the child comes of age, to ensure either me or my brothers only marry someone trustworthy, ideally someone we’re in love with.” Andreas paused here, dipping his head and watching me as though to gauge my reaction to his words.

When I continued meeting his searching stare blankly, he sighed and added, “No need for me to sign anything over since I am a Kristiansen. The shares, and the company, will be yours to control from the start.”

We gazed at each other silently for so long that the little foam hearts floating above our coffees began to blur. I tried to imagine any scenario in which this was a normal, sane offer, and came up empty.

“You want to have a baby with me,” I said, slow and deliberate, “so you can keep Genetix out of the hands of your brothers.”

“Not for me.” Andreas’s tone sounded gentle, so at odds with his cold beauty. “For you. For your family. Your father built that company. The patents, the technology, those were his.”

I pushed the photocopy back across the table and lied, “I don’t care about Genetix. Or your father’s dirty money. Or any of this.”

The intensity of his already-intimidating stare multiplied. “If you walk away, the shares will eventually go to one of my half brothers. Henrik, or Tobias. They will not hesitate to get married and have a child in order to control the company, or try to. You remember what they were like. They have not changed.”

I did remember. Henrik liked to punch Andreas and call it wrestling. Tobias once superglued my hair to a piano bench. I had not kept in touch. Thus, I didn’t know what havoc they’d wreaked since growing to maturity. To label them both bullies would be a charitable understatement.

Andreas must have perceived my indecision, because he leaned forward, voice dipping low. “You deserve your father’s company. Not them, not me, not my father. You’re getting a Ph.D. in genetics, just like your parents. There has to be a reason for that. I’m offering you a chance to take back what should be yours by birthright. Why say no?”

I shook my head, suddenly exhausted, and not just from lack of sleep.

Yes, I would do almost anything to screw over his family and I’d gladly watch them suffer, but I wasn’t completely morally bankrupt. I wouldn’t involve an innocent—my own child—as a means to an end. That was some next-level evil strategic bullshit.

“I’m not bringing a child into the world just to spite your family and take control of a company. I would never do that.”

He reached across the table and placed his hand on mine, his big palm completely dwarfing my fingers, and I flinched at the feel of it, yet was unable to pull away. The contact was warm and electric. It paralyzed me. A tingling heat coursed up my arm and my breath turned to fire in my lungs. My body’s unexpected reaction to his touch threatened to incinerate the blanket of numbness I’d been clinging to, and that was unacceptable.

“You don’t ever have to see my family.” He squeezed my fingers in a way that felt insistent and familiar. Comfortable and yet also alarming. “I would not let them near you. Trust me, Samantha.”

“That’s not the point,” I croaked out, because—maybe it made me irrational—but I did trust Andreas. Careful to keep my voice just above a whisper, I said, “The mere idea of conceiving a child out of spite, especially with you, is loathsome”—I didn’t miss how he winced, or how his eyes dropped to the table, but I wasn’t finished—“to me. How could I do that? How could you even suggest it?”

His shoulders rose and fell, and his attention remained on the table as he added, “You don’t have to see me after, if you prefer. We can arrange everything in writing.”

Now I flinched, his words felt like a slap.

I found I had to swallow several times to gain control of my voice before I could trust myself to speak. “By ‘after,’ you mean after we are married and conceive a baby. Isn’t that right? Are you telling me you want to have a child with me and then disappear from my life, from our baby’s life?” While I spoke, I glanced at his hand covering mine, then at him, then back at his hand. I needed to pull away.

Any minute now.

Andreas’s eyes cut to mine. He stared at me, giving none of his thoughts away. Or maybe he was giving his thoughts away. Perhaps he was broadcasting them loudly, but I couldn’t read them, or him. I felt too many things I didn’t usually allow myself to feel. And I was sleep-deprived. I couldn’t think.

Finally, heart hammering, I pulled my hand back. I felt the loss of his touch and our contact in a way I dared not analyze.

“Exactly,” I said, deciding to assume his silent stare meant that he would not, in fact, feel perfectly at peace with never knowing his own kid. Cupping my cappuccino, I didn’t lift it for a sip. My hands felt unsteady. “I appreciate the offer to conspire to bring down your family, but no.”

Face unreadable, his gaze shifted to some point over my shoulder. “This can be the beginning of the conversation. We don’t have to decide anything right now.”

Exhaling a humorless laugh, I set the cup down with a clatter and stood up, shoving my chair back with more force than necessary. It was well past time for me to leave.

“No. This isn’t the beginning of anything.”

He also stood. “Samantha—”

“You need to let it go.” I looked around for my belongings, anywhere but at him, and wrapped my scarf around my neck even though my chest felt hot and achy.

“I cannot let you go, or let this go. The company should be yours.”

I shrugged, still not looking at him. “Yeah, and people shouldn’t be starving or unhoused in first world countries, marine animals shouldn’t be choking on plastic, babies shouldn’t be dying of preventable diseases, but neither you nor I can fix the inherent unfairness of life.”

Andreas walked around the table and stood in front of me, his hands fisted at his sides. I could feel his restraint as though it were a tangible thing.

“Please, if I find another way, may I call you? May I—”

Yanking on my coat, I cut him off. “Sure. If you find a way that doesn’t involve us getting married or having a baby together, be my guest.”

“Wait.” He grabbed and held my wrist, pausing until I—unenthusiastically—gave him my eyes. For once, his didn’t look bored. They were wide and imploring. “If either Tobias or Henrik contact you, you must let me know. You have my number. Call me.”

No. No way. I had no desire to relive this level of emotional upheaval. Not ever.

Disentangling myself from his grip, I shook my head again, firmer this time. “You won’t be hearing from me.”

“Sama—”

“Please. Leave me alone. Okay?” I hated that my voice wavered and cracked, but I seemed to no longer have control over my vocal cords.

Thankfully, Andreas made no move to grab me again. He didn’t say another word. But I felt his eyes on me as I gathered my things, walked around him, and fled the café. My heart and lungs hurt, as if they were encased in rubber bands.

Feelings are THE WORST!

Outside, the cold felt bracing. I stood on the sidewalk, eyes stinging, lungs burning, and realized that I had never, in all my years of therapy, been this profoundly unsettled by a single conversation. I walked back to my department building. My hands shook, so I stuffed them in the pockets of my jacket. My stomach felt sour, and my mouth tasted bitter. And I had a headache.

I tried to convince myself sleep deprivation was the culprit, but even I didn’t buy it.

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