Chapter 99 Bonus Chapter 27: The People Who Stayed

Chapter 99 Bonus Chapter 27: The People Who Stayed
He was alone in the lab. The lights were on, the fluorescent tubes overhead humming softly and flickering every so often. Instruments made their different little sounds around him. He sat at the bench, staring at the data on the screen, and slowly found the rhythm again.
He had once loved this feeling.
Inside that rhythm, he could forget everything else.
No assignments. No exams. No worries waiting outside the door.
Only data.
Only logic.
Only the next step.
Today, he did not love it.
Today, it was too quiet.
Quiet enough that he could hear his own heartbeat.
Quiet enough that he remembered all the small sounds Chloe used to make when she waited for him in the lab.
Now, all those sounds were gone.
He sat alone in the lab and worked in silence.
Until two in the morning.
When he left the building, it was raining.
He remembered the rainy nights when Chloe came to campus to see him and the two of them shared one umbrella. Chloe was shorter than him, always lifting the umbrella handle as high as she could to match his height. Her arm would ache. The umbrella would tilt. Eventually, he would take it from her, hold it himself, and wrap his other arm around her shoulders, covering her entirely beneath it.
Chloe would tuck herself into his arms like a little rabbit burrowing into its nest, smiling as she said, “Nathan, you’re so tall.”
Back then, he had thought this was the life he wanted.
Someone curling into his arms on rainy days.
Someone taking his arm on sunny days.
Someone slipping her hands into his coat pockets for warmth in winter.
Now he stood alone in the rain.
No umbrella.
No one waiting for him to come home.
He walked into the rain without a word.
At two in the morning, Chicago was almost empty.
A few streetlights burned along the road, washing the asphalt pale. In the distance, the lake was black and heavy. Nothing could be seen except the occasional flash of light across the water, as if the surface had turned over in its sleep.
Nathan pulled out his phone and opened his messages.
The latest one was still from that day five years ago.
Honey, I should be home around four or five tonight. How about Popeyes for dinner? I want the Cajun chicken sandwich, four spicy tenders, and a large red beans and fried rice. Love you! XOXO!
He looked at that message for a long time.
The wind outside was strong enough to make the glass hum.
He put the phone away.
Dawn joined Nathan’s lab the year after he had already won the Lasker Award.
By then, she was famous in academic circles. She had done her postdoc at Harvard, served as an assistant professor at Stanford, and later been recruited by a major pharmaceutical company as a director of research and development.
She came to Nathan’s lab in the name of collaboration. Two labs would develop a new project together, share data, and share results.
Officially, that was the reason.
In reality, everyone could tell she had come for Nathan.
She had liked him since college.
Nathan knew.
He was not blind. He noticed the way Dawn looked at him, the tone she used when speaking to him, the fact that she always chose the seat across from him in group meetings.
He knew all of it.
He said nothing.
Because professionally, Dawn was exceptional.
Her sensitivity to data was extraordinary. She could pick the crucial clue out of a mess of numbers before anyone else even knew there was a clue to find. Her papers were clear and rigorous. When she submitted them, they were almost always accepted with minor revisions.
Nathan needed someone like that.
So he did not reject her collaboration proposal.
Privately, he kept his distance.
Once, Dawn stayed late in the lab, and Nathan was there too.
Only the two of them remained. Instrument lights glowed in the dim room. The refrigerator hummed. Beyond the windows, Chicago’s night was deep, with only a few towers still lit.
Dawn came over and stood beside him.
She wore a lab coat, her hair tied up, exposing the pale line of her neck. She stood close enough that her perfume reached him, faint and floral.
“What do you think of me?” she asked.
Nathan did not look up. His hand held the pipette, his eyes fixed on the liquid in the tip.
“Your work is excellent,” he said.
“I mean as a person.”
Nathan stopped.
He set the pipette back on the rack slowly and carefully, as if the movement mattered.
Then he turned and looked at her.
Dawn’s eyes were bright. She wore light makeup, and her lipstick was a muted rose shade that suited her well. She stood there watching him, her expression calm, but Nathan saw her fingers tightening around her coffee cup.
“Dawn,” he said, “you’re a wonderful person. But we’re not right for each other.”
Dawn froze.
Maybe she had not expected him to be that direct. Her lips parted, as if she wanted to say something, but nothing came out.
“I know you love someone,” she said after a while, voice low, as if afraid someone might hear. “But she’s gone.”
Nathan said nothing.
He turned back, picked up the pipette, and continued the experiment.
Dawn stood there for another moment. The hem of her lab coat moved slightly. Then she turned and left, her footsteps fading down the hallway until the elevator arrived with a soft ding.
That was the last time she spoke to him alone.
Afterward, she still worked in his lab. Still ran her project. Still sat in the front row during group meetings. Still asked sharp questions. Still wrote beautiful papers.
But she no longer asked him to dinner.
No longer brought him coffee.
No longer asked what he was doing over the weekend.
She gave up.
Nathan knew.
He was relieved.
Not because he disliked her. He did not. She was brilliant, hardworking, kind, and beautiful. If he had not met Chloe, if Chloe had never walked into his life, perhaps he might have liked Dawn.
Perhaps.
But he had met Chloe.
So there was no perhaps.
He did not reject Dawn because Chloe was gone.
He rejected Dawn because he did not want her to wait.
He knew what waiting tasted like.
It was too bitter.
He did not want anyone to taste that bitterness because of him.