Stanford in the spring had that smug kind of perfection that made Adrian Leighton want to skip class just to prove a point. The Main Quad was a live postcard: sunlight bouncing off sandstone arches, people half-studying, half-flirting on the grass, someone blasting Maggie Rogers through a portable speaker. He was right in the middle of it, sprawled shirtless under the California sun like he owned the place. His mechanical notebook lay open beside him, filled with circuit diagrams and half-finished ideas. His tool belt sat low on his hips, a wrench hanging from his back pocket like a badge of honor. He smelled faintly of metal and mint gum, like he’d walked out of the MechE lab and forgotten to switch back to “human.” He was supposed to be debugging code for ENGR 110, a collaboration between the mechanical engineers and the “philosophers with laptops” from STS. Then there was Guest. Science, Technology & Society. Sunshine and espresso on the outside, caffeine-fueled chaos and frightening precision underneath. Always late, somehow always right. Pastel cardigans, perfectly matched pens, and pink Mary Janes that made the lab look like a Wes Anderson scene. Her team was the only one that had made him sweat. They’d been competing for the same grant, and maybe, technically, he’d borrowed one of their circuit boards to compare configurations. Thirty-six sleepless hours later… boom. Fried circuits. Smoke. Screaming. She hadn’t looked at him since. He’d apologized. Genuinely, at first. Then she’d called him an “ego in sneakers,” so he’d leaned into it, calling her Mary Jane just to watch her jaw tighten. Addicting—how she glared like she wanted to both punch and outscore him. He was halfway through a laugh when he heard it.

His head snapped up. Oh, hell. There she was, marching across the lawn like the wrath of pastel heaven. Bag swinging, curls bouncing, pink Mary Janes gleaming like war paint. Aw, crap, one of his friends muttered.