The Love Hypothesis

“Olive.” He shook his head again. Then his hand left her waist and came up to his lips, as if to touch the kiss they’d just shared, make sure it had really happened. “This is . . . no.”

He really was right. But . . . “Why?” she repeated.

Adam’s fingers pressed into his eyes. His left hand was still holding her wrist, and she wondered distractedly if he was even aware of it. If he knew that his thumb was swiping back and forth across her pulse. “This is not what we’re here for.”

She could feel her nostrils

flare. “That doesn’t mean that—”

“You’re not thinking clearly.” He swallowed visibly. “You’re upset and drunk, and—”

“I had two beers. Hours ago.”

“You’re a grad student, currently depending on me for a place to stay, and even if not, the power I have over you could easily turn this into a coercive dynamic that—”

“I’m—” Olive laughed. “I’m not feeling coerced, I—”

“You’re in love with someone else!”

She almost recoiled. The way he spit out the words was that heated. It should have put her off, driven her away, once and for all drilled into her head how ridiculous this was, how disastrous an idea. It didn’t, though. By now the moody, ill-tempered ass Adam meshed so well with her Adam, the one who bought her cookies and checked her slides and let her cry into his neck. There might have been a time when she couldn’t quite reconcile the two, but they were all so clear now, the many faces of him. She wouldn’t want to leave behind any of them. Not one.

“Olive.” He sighed heavily, closing his eyes. The idea that he might be thinking of the woman who Holden mentioned flashed into her mind and slipped away, too painful to entertain.

She should just tell him. She should be honest with him, admit that she didn’t care about Jeremy, that there was no one else. Never had been. But she was terrified, paralyzed with fear, and after the day she’d had, her heart felt so easy to break. So fragile. Adam could shatter it in a thousand pieces, and still be none the wiser.

“Olive, this is how you’re feeling now. A month from now, a week, tomorrow, I don’t want you to regret—”

“What about what I want?” She leaned forward, letting her words soak the silence for drawn-out seconds. “What about the fact that I want this? Though maybe you don’t care.” She squared her shoulders, blinking quickly against the prickling sensation in her eyes. “Because you don’t want it, right? Maybe I’m just not attractive to you and you don’t want this—”

It nearly made her lose her balance, the way he tugged at her wrist and pulled her hand to himself, pressing her palm flush to his groin to show her that . . . Oh.

Oh.

Yeah.

His jaw rolled as he held her gaze. “You have no fucking idea what I want.”

It took her breath away, all of it. The low, guttural tone of his voice, the thick ridge under her fingers, the enraged, hungry note in his eyes. He pushed her hand away almost immediately, but it already felt too late.

It wasn’t that Olive hadn’t . . . the kisses they’d exchanged, they were always physical, but now it was as if something had been switched on. For a long time she’d thought Adam handsome and attractive. She’d touched him, sat on his lap, considered the vague possibility of being intimate with him. She’d thought about him, about sex, about him and sex, but it had always been abstract. Hazy and undefined. Like line art in black and white: just the base for a drawing that was suddenly coloring on the inside.

It was clear now, in the damp ache pooling between her thighs, in his eyes that were all pupil, how it would be between them. Heady and sweaty and slick. Challenging. They would do things for each other, demand things of each other. They would be incredibly close. And Olive—now that she could see it, she really, really wanted it.

She stepped close, even closer. “Well, then.” Her voice was low, but she knew he could hear her.

He shut his eyes tight. “This is not why I asked you to room with me.”

“I know.” Olive pushed a black strand of hair away from his forehead. “It’s also not why I accepted.”

His lips were parted, and he was staring down at her hand, the one that was almost wrapped around his erection a moment ago. “You said no sex.”

She had said that. She remembered thinking about her rules, listing them in his office, and she remembered being certain that she would never, ever be interested in seeing Adam Carlsen for longer than ten minutes a week. “I also said it was going to be an on-campus thing. And we just went out for dinner. So.” He might know what was best, but what he wanted was different. She could almost see the debris of his control, feel it slowly erode.

“I don’t . . .” He straightened, infinitesimally. The line of his shoulders, his jaw—he was so tense, still avoiding her eyes. “I don’t have anything.”

It was a little embarrassing, the amount of time it took for her to parse the meaning of it. “Oh. It doesn’t matter. I’m on birth control. And clean.” She bit into her lip. “But we could also do . . . other things.”

Adam swallowed, twice, and then nodded. He wasn’t breathing normally. And Olive doubted he could say no at this point. That he would even want to. He did put up a good effort, though. “What if you hate me for this, after? What if we go back and you change your mind—”