Chapter 57 - The Validity

The low hum of the laptop fan was the only sound in the quiet guest room. Steve scrolled through another dense webpage about Duke’s biology program, the words blurring into an indecipherable mess. He’d been at it for hours, his focus brittle and thin. Every time he tried to concentrate, a phantom sensation would pull him back—the memory of his mother’s hand on his thigh, the look in her eyes as she’d unbuttoned her blouse.

He slammed the laptop shut with a sharp clack. The sudden silence felt heavy, oppressive. He’d been back for a few days, and the house was a minefield of unspoken tension. He performed his duties, shared meals, and even held his fiancées at night, but his heart wasn’t in it. His enthusiasm, that driving force that usually animated his every move, had vanished, leaving a hollowed-out shell.

A soft knock came at the door. “Steve?” It was Heather’s voice, gentle but laced with a concern he’d come to recognize.

“It’s open.”

The door swung inward and she stepped inside, her gaze immediately sweeping over him, taking in his slumped posture, the discarded textbooks, the general air of neglect that clung to the room. She was dressed in a simple, elegant sweater that did little to hide the anxious set of her shoulders.

“You missed lunch,” she said softly, closing the door behind her. “We were getting worried.”

“Just buried in all this transfer paperwork,” he muttered, gesturing vaguely at the closed laptop. It wasn’t entirely a lie. He had been speaking with Rachel almost daily, the logistics of his move to Duke a welcome, sterile distraction from the emotional chaos at home.

Heather moved further into the room, her presence both a comfort and a reminder of everything he was doubting. She stopped behind his chair, and her hands came to rest on his shoulders. Her touch was warm, familiar, and for a terrifying second, he felt that old, magnetic pull, that chemical reaction Dr. Inoue had described. He stiffened.

Her fingers stilled, sensing his resistance. “It’s more than the paperwork, Steve. We can all feel it. You’re here, but you’re not here.”

He let out a long, weary breath, the fight draining out of him. “I know.”

“I’ve convened the Council,” she said, her thumbs beginning to knead the tight muscles at the base of his neck. The motion was meant to be soothing, but it only made him more aware of the electric potential of her touch. “But you know how it is. These are powerful, influential people. They can’t just drop everything and meet on a moment’s notice. It takes time to arrange.”

“I know that, too.” The Council. The very source of his genetic predicament. The thought of facing them was a knot of dread and desperate need in his stomach.

Her hands slid from his shoulders down his arms, a whisper of contact that made his skin prickle. She leaned down, her voice a soft murmur near his ear. “They will provide answers, my love. I promise you. But in the meantime ... we are here. I am here. Our love for you isn’t a phantom. It’s not some chemical trick.”

She turned his chair to face her, her expression fierce with conviction. Her eyes, usually so calm, were bright with emotion. The pale green of them seemed to see right through the walls he was trying to build. “What you feel from us, what you’ve always felt ... it’s real. The ... augmentation might heighten it, might make the connection more intense, but it didn’t create it from nothing. You have to believe that.”

He wanted to. God, how he wanted to. He looked at her, at the woman who had given him so much, and the guilt was a weight on his chest. He was pulling away from the very people who wanted to anchor him.

His phone buzzed on the desk, shattering the moment. Rachel’s name flashed on the screen. The real world, with its practical demands, was calling.