Page 39 of Duty Compromised

“You can sit there and talk to me.” I found olive oil, garlic. Not much, but it would add a little punch of flavor. “Tell me something.”

“Like what?”

“What was your life like growing up?”

She went still. “What do you mean?”

“Stanford at sixteen. PhD at nineteen. That’s not exactly a normal childhood.”

“Normal is a subjective construct based on societal expectations?—”

“Charlotte.”

She stopped, fingers playing with the edge of the blanket. “It was…lonely.”

I kept my hands busy with the cooking, giving her space to continue. Sometimes the best way to get someone talking was to not look directly at them.

“I started kindergarten when I was three,” she said quietly. “Skipped grades until they ran out of grades to skip. By the time I was twelve, I was taking college courses. Mentally, I was years ahead of everyone. Emotionally? Socially?” She shrugged. “I was still just a kid who wanted friends.”

The water started to boil. I added the pasta, stirring to keep it from sticking.

“The other students at Stanford thought I was some kind of mascot at first. This tiny sixteen-year-old in their quantum physics classes. The professors took me seriously, at least academically. But making friends?” She laughed, but there was no humor in it. “How do you relate to twentysomethings worried about bar hookups when you’re still trying to figure out if you’re supposed to like boys yet?”

“That must have been hell.”

“It was…challenging.” She watched me work, her expression thoughtful. “By the time I was twenty, I had two doctorates and zero social skills. Vertex recruited me straight from graduation. Suddenly, I was supposed to lead teams, manage projects, interact with people who saw me as either a curiosity or a threat.”

I drained the pasta, added it back to the pot with the sauce. Simple, but it would do.

“Is that why you’re…” I searched for the right word.

“Prickly? Standoffish? Difficult?” She supplied the words with a self-deprecating twist to her mouth.

“Guarded,” I finished. “You’re guarded.”

She accepted the bowl I handed her, inhaling the steam. “When people constantly underestimate you or treat you like some kind of performing seal, you learn to keep distance. It’s easier.”

We ate in companionable silence for a few minutes. She was hungry, wolfing down the pasta with single-minded focus. When she finally slowed, I asked, “Do you remember when we first met?”

Color crept up her neck. “When you thought I was the receptionist?”

“Yeah, about that?—”

“You were trying to put me at ease,” she said suddenly. “I was having a complete meltdown about you arriving early and the badge and everything else, and you were trying to help.”

I set down my fork. “How did you?—”

“It took me a while to figure it out. You’re not actually oblivious. You read people too well. Which means you knew I was panicking and tried to defuse it by being…” She waved her fork vaguely. “Charming. Disarming.”

“Did it work?”

“For about thirty seconds. Then I realized you had no idea who I was and got defensive.”

“In my defense, you don’t exactly look like someone who runs a world-class quantum computing lab.”

She raised an eyebrow. “What do I look like?”

The question hung between us, loaded with more weight than she’d probably intended. I looked at her—really looked. The bandage at her temple, the exhausted shadows under her eyes, the way the oversized blanket made her seem smaller, younger. But also, the intelligence that sparked in her gaze, the stubborn set of her jaw, the way she held herself even when everything hurt.