Not in Love (Not in Love, #1)

by Ali Hazelwood

“Fair warning: if you don’t stop pushing me, I’m going to bend you over this bench and show you exactly what I’m into.”

“Because I didn’t love her the way she wanted to be loved.”

“Maybe. Or maybe some people are too broken. Maybe…maybe things have happened in their lives, in their past, that have damaged them so bad, they’re never going to get happy endings with the loves of their lives.”

“Maybe some people are meant to be tragedies.”

“I owe everything to Florence. My job. My scientific freedom. My financial stability. The fucking shawl that she’s knitting. And in return

I’m here, in the bedroom of someone who’s been making her life impossible, having meals with him, because…”

“Because I’m selfish, and careless. Because I want to be.”

“This is the real reason. I like her. She’s a wonderful lay and she smells amazing and I love having her around.

I…I’m not very good with people I don’t know.”

“Did you…” I swallowed. “Did you know that the Harkness founders are chemical engineers? At UT. Grad students in the department when you still taught there.”

fundamentally trusted him not to hurt me, and he seemed to trust me just as much.

“I got custody of her when she was eleven. The court gave me the right. Literally.”

“She’ll always resent me a little, and maybe I’ll always resent her. But the pain of it has dulled. I truly enjoy watching her doing her shit. She’s way smarter than I was at her age. She’s resilient. She’s determined. She’s kind. And, the whole experience gave me something very important.”

“A total lack of interest in having children.”

“Do you think that maybe there’s another version of us, somewhere in another timeline? Where we’re not just a messed-up lump of scar tissue, and we’re whole enough to be capable of loving others the way they want to be loved?”

“I just don’t think that we need another timeline to be able to do that.”

“We were Florence’s grad students.”

If she says she doesn’t remember us, it’s a deliberate lie.”

“Then she stole our work.” Only a single, slow blink betrayed Rue’s surprise. “Not the fermentation tech. That was her idea.” “The fermentation tech was Minami’s idea. Florence’s idea, the one she’d gotten millions of dollars to test, dead-ended in year one of the grant. Florence had to pivot. Hark and I needed a new lab, and no one else had the funds, the expertise, or frankly the will to take us on. Florence was barely older than us, had never had graduate mentees, but she was obviously a talented engineer. We had to choose between working with her and leaving the program. It was a no-brainer.”

Mine is that, intellectually, Minami was very much leading the project. Florence was a great sounding board, but was busy. We never stopped asking her for advice, but over time we transitioned to mostly reporting our progress. Her grants covered stipends and materials. She also rented off-campus lab space. Which did seem odd, but she said that renting pre-equipped labs was less expensive than buying new equipment, and the funding institute had recommended it. Fair enough, we

thought.

“At first we just couldn’t get in touch with Florence. She wouldn’t reply to emails, answer phone calls. We were worried about her, so we went to our department head. That’s when we discovered that Florence had quit, and there was an ongoing dispute between her and the university regarding the rightful owner of the tech. Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 and that shit. Meanwhile, the three of us are glancing at each other, wondering what the fuck is going on.”

Florence refused to meet us, or to otherwise acknowledge our existence, for the past decade. There was no closure for us, which made it even harder to move on. Once, Minami waited by her apartment, hoping to confront her. She went on her own, figuring Hark and I might come across as intimidating.” “And?” “Florence called the police on her.”

I don’t believe Florence planned to cut us out from the start,” he said. “Hark disagrees.” “Why do you believe that?”

She was openly unhappy at UT. The biofuel tech could be brought to market and get her out, but Florence needed to own the patent. And the only way she could keep it was by proving that she hadn’t developed the tech with federal funds. Unfortunately, our stipends were on record, paid with federal grant money.”

Even worse. Hark and I were asked to leave the program. Minami’s contract wasn’t renewed. We had no money. We saw two lawyers, and they both told us that we didn’t have a case. And then my father died, and that shit seemed like the least of our problems.”

Eli liked his current job. Private equity was a shitshow that left destruction in its wake, and he felt proud of the priorities they’d set for

themselves. They cared about their portfolio. They focused on the long-term health of companies. They made some difference.

“This is the only way we had to take back...

It was the only way we could get the tech back. I’m not going to lie, Rue. Things are not looking great for us, and Florence is withholding key documents and making our lives impossible every step of the way, but I still hope we can get the tech back. It’s been years, and we haven’t spent every breathing second resenting Florence. But we kept an eye on Kline. And when the loan went up for sale…” He shook his head at his own idiocy. So many words just to say, “Yeah. I guess this is revenge.”

In the ideal scenario, Florence’s loan defaults. We take control of Kline, appoint a board with actual expertise. No employment shrinkage, no reduction of wages. Better science.” “And you own the patent?” “And we own the patent.”

“That when it all went down, ten years ago, what hurt him the most was not being able to understand the actions of someone he trusted. He’d never wish this on you, and thought I should give you an explanation.”

the UT job was really bad. I realized that despite my grants and my output, they weren’t going to offer me tenure. It had

happened before, to people more qualified than me.

Florence, having it hard doesn’t give us a pass to cheat other people out of their work, especially not to screw over people who have it harder.”

“The only correct way to atone is to give Minami credit.”

“It’s not my forgiveness you need,” I said.

“Tell me that all we’re doing is fucking, and I’ll make you come.”

“You explain to me why you don’t want to say it, and I’ll spend the rest of the night fucking you. I’m going to devote the rest of my natural life to making you come so hard, we’ll both lose our minds.”

“Rue. My sad, beautiful fortress girl.”

“It’s not just fucking,” I said. In the quiet of the room, my voice was like shattered glass. “But I—I don’t know why, and I don’t—”

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said into my ear. “You’ll figure it out. I’ll help you, okay?”

Hark impatiently gestured him inside from the glass window of a conference room. “Do you ever pick up your damn phone?” he asked before Eli had even closed the door. “Not during meetings, no.”

“Florence’s fucked, Eli. She’s underwater on her ratios, the audited financials might as well have been written in crayon on a diner menu, and she’s got fifteen material contingencies under the couch cushions. But you know what’s fucking brilliant?” Eli shook his head. “The insolvency clause. If Kline is unable to meet its financial obligations or pay off its debts, the lender will be able to convert the debt into equity—or claim ownership.” “We knew about that already.”

“Florence knows she’s in deep shit. She might even know that Rue gave us the books—I don’t

know. But she’s aware that her only choice is to pay back the loan before the quarter ends.”

the only way for her to generate cash is by selling company assets.”

“She can’t. I already asked Rue about that—she has a written agreement with Florence that she will retain ownership of whatever tech…”

“She has a contract.” “That was never ratified by the board.”

“The contract isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on,” Sul said. “Florence can sell the patent, and she will. She has a buyer.”