By the Time He Noticed, I Was Gone

“Claire, Adrian needs these test logs tonight, so I’ll have to trouble you with them. Make sure every entry is tagged before you leave the engineering building, okay?”

Sienna Reed smiled as she dropped a portable drive beside my keyboard.

I took it without protest. “Sure.”

Apparently, that wasn’t enough to satisfy her.

“Oh, and Adrian and I have a reception with the trustees tonight,” she added. “Once you finish, put everything on his desk. And could you replace the propellers on Drone Three and clean up the demo area before you leave? The press will be here tomorrow morning.”

Then she slipped into Adrian’s varsity jacket and walked out in her ankle boots.

The lab fell silent.

My teammates looked at me with pity, but none of them knew what to say.

Everyone at Kingsley knew Adrian Hale was my boyfriend. We’d grown up together, been dating for years, and everyone expected us to get engaged after graduation.

Everyone also knew how blatantly he favored Sienna.

Six months ago, Adrian had personally recruited her to the student council and placed her on the search-and-rescue robotics team I had founded.

Sienna couldn’t even read basic control code, yet he made her the team’s official spokesperson. Then he handed her the lead creator position for the National Robotics Challenge—the position I had spent an entire year preparing for.

I objected, so Adrian called an anonymous team vote to decide who deserved the role.

Twelve people voted for me.

Sienna received one vote.

Adrian’s.

Instead of reconsidering his decision, Adrian flew into a rage. He accused me of using my seniority to turn the team against a younger student.

Then he removed me as captain and cut every teammate who had voted for me from the spring exchange program.

After that, no one dared say another word.

That night, Adrian held me in his arms and explained that, as student council president, he had to remain fair. He couldn’t allow Sienna to be excluded simply because he had recruited her.

At first, I believed him.

Now, I only found it laughable.

Sienna’s control program crashed nine times out of ten. Even the newest freshman in the lab was more capable than she was.

Everyone could see that this had nothing to do with fairness.

Adrian was the only one who refused to admit it.

Footsteps sounded on the stairs.

I looked up and saw Adrian coming down from the conference room. He had traded his usual gray hoodie for a sharply tailored black suit. Silver cuff links gleamed at his wrists.

Sienna had given them to him for his birthday last month.

Adrian had always complained that cuff links were stiff and old-fashioned. He refused to wear them even to formal trustee dinners.

Tonight, naturally, he had put them on.

As he passed the lab, he glanced at me once before continuing toward the door without a word.

I knew he was doing it deliberately.

He wanted me to notice.

This had started after I accidentally saw the late-night messages between him and Sienna.

She had called him [my hero].

He had replied, [Go to sleep, troublemaker.]

I asked him only one question.

Were they getting too close?

For that, Adrian decided I needed to be taught a lesson.