The Boy Who Has No Faith (Soulless 5)

I was proud of myself.

I’d just saved him…at least five hours.

When Derek was finished for the day, he stepped into the office. “How’d it go?”

“Good. Exams are graded. They all did well.”

“They’re already graded?” His hands moved to his hips, and he examined me with a slightly quizzical expression.

“Yep.”

He walked to his binder on the desk then flipped through it, browsing through their answers and the marks I’d made in red.

“Safe to say I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

He closed the binder and turned to me, a slight smile on his face. “I don’t like to admit when I’m wrong.”

“Of course, you don’t.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at me for a while, a long pause turning into an interminable silence. “But I was wrong.”

My gloating smile faded.

He looked out the glass windows to where the guys were packing up for the day. “I’m staying late tonight. I have to work on a few things.”

“Oh…by yourself?”

“I do it all the time. Don’t worry about it.”

“But what if something falls on you? You get hurt?”

His eyes narrowed on my face. “That won’t happen. I’m very meticulous.”

I watched his colleagues leave the lab through the windows. “Anything I can help with?”

He shook his head. “I’m working on the transmitter sequence. I fucked it up today, and if I don’t fix it before tomorrow, it’s going to slow everything down.”

If I left, it would feel like abandonment, like I was leaving a soldier behind. “You know, I still have to catch up on all your pages. I may as well stay here and do that since I’ll just be doing it at home anyway.”

He looked at me with that focused stare, as if he needed a moment to process what I’d offered. “Just because I work around the clock doesn’t mean you need to as well. Go home. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I felt morally obligated to stay. “Derek, I can’t leave.”

“Why?”

“I feel really uncomfortable leaving you here alone when something could explode and there’s literally no one here to help you.”

“Emerson, nothing—”

“I’m staying. Just let me make a call.”

He gave a quiet sigh, like he was annoyed but would be even more annoyed if he wasted his time and argued. He excused himself from the office, so I had privacy to make my phone call. I called my mom. “Mom, I’m sorry, but I’m going to be late tonight.”

Once my eyes were too tired to read another page, I returned my laptop to my bag and stepped into the lab.

Derek sat on a stool as he looked down at a large schematic. The whiteboard in front of him was covered in gibberish. Well, gibberish to me. He was so focused that he didn’t even notice me approach until I pulled up a stool beside him.

He didn’t lift his head, but his eyes flicked up to look at me. It was a sexy look without his even trying. He didn’t have to do anything, not smolder or give a brooding stare to look hot. He was just hot—all the freaking time.

“It’s nine…just so you know.”

“Fuck, really?” He moved his watch into his line of sight. “A minute ago, it was five.”

Not for me. “How far did you get?”

“I think I fixed it, but I didn’t troubleshoot it. I’ll do that tomorrow.”

“Do you ever go on vacation?” I blurted, too tired to think clearly. The fluorescent lights made my eyes blur, and I probably looked like shit right now.

“What do you think?” He straightened on his stool then dropped his pencil.

“You’re a billionaire. You should enjoy it.”

“I do enjoy it—by working.”

“Seriously, what do you do for fun?”

“This.”

I gave him an incredulous stare.

“I don’t have a lot of time to get this done. I have to hustle.”

My eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by that? How do you not have enough time?” He wasn’t sick or something, right?

“One lifetime just isn’t enough to accomplish everything I want to do.”

“And what are you trying to do?”

“A lot of things. But one is to develop the technology to get us to an exoplanet.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “An exo-what?”

“Exoplanet,” he said. “A habitable planet similar to earth. The closest one is thousands of light-years away.”

“And why is that important to you?”

He dropped his gaze and released a deep sigh.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“No, it’s not that. I just… It’s stupid.”

Now all my fatigue disappeared, and I was completely absorbed in this fascinating man. “Tell me.”

He turned his gaze back to me, like he was studying my sincerity.

I held his gaze without blinking.

“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated by the universe, space travel, anything in those fields. That’s why I wrote my novels, because that’s the only feasible way I can explore it—with my imagination. But the secrets of the universe, our purpose, what’s out there, how it works…I want to know before I die. I know that’s not going to happen, but I still try.”