The campus café was doing what campus cafés did best: selling caffeine at a markup and chaos at a discount.

  Noah stood in line with the patient expression of someone who had accepted, long ago, that waiting was a normal part of civilization. The menu board glowed overhead in aggressive fonts. Behind the counter, milk hissed. Someone at the pickup station was arguing with a paper cup like it had personally wronged them.

  He checked his phone. Ten minutes until his next class. Plenty of time, assuming the universe didn't decide to be funny.

  The universe, he realized a moment later, was already warming up.

  He sensed her before he saw her—not in a mystical soulmate way, but in the way you sensed a change in pressure, a shift in the air. A small, invisible tightening of his attention that happened any time Rachel Ellis was within a ten-meter radius.

  He glanced sideways.

  There she was, crossing the café with purpose, hair pinned back, glasses on, coffee-seeking focus in her eyes. She spotted him and—

  —smiled.

  Not the careful, work-safe smile she wore on campus.

  A real one.

  It arrived on her face before her brain could stop it, warm and unguarded and absolutely catastrophic for their continued employment.

  Rachel took two steps toward him like this was completely normal. Like she hadn't spent four hours ago pressed against his kitchen counter insisting she was "fine" in the same tone she used to grade lab reports. Like they hadn't broken the Sunday rule so thoroughly it would need to be completely rewritten.

  Her mouth opened. "Hey, No—"

  Noah's brain did a rapid, urgent calculation.

  Location: public.

  Witnesses: dozens.

  Risk: critical.

  Problem: Rachel was half a second from saying his first name like a person who knew exactly how it sounded when she was breathless.

  He pivoted, smoothly, into the only thing that would keep them both alive.

  "Oh," he said, brightening like a man who had never learned exactly how her laugh sounded when it was muffled against his chest. "Hi, Miss Ellis."

  Rachel froze mid-step.

  Noah could see the moment her brain caught up—caught the title, caught the proximity, caught the fact that she'd just approached him like they shared a bed and not a professional boundary.

  Her cheeks went faintly pink.

  Noah leaned into it, saving her from herself with the steadiness of someone who had learned early that you could talk your way out of almost anything if you sounded confident and didn't blink.

  "Here for coffee?" he added, friendly and bland and utterly innocent, like he definitely didn't know exactly how she took her sugar.

  Rachel blinked once.

  Then she inhaled, and her expression rearranged itself into something reasonable.

  "Yes," she said crisply. "I'm—yes. Coffee."

  Noah nodded with solemn understanding. "A noble pursuit."

  Rachel's mouth twitched. She slid into place beside him at what could, generously, be called professional distance. To anyone watching, it probably looked like an instructor who had spotted a student and decided to be approachable.

  To Noah, it looked like Rachel trying not to grin.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "How's your morning?" she asked, tone casual.

  Noah kept his face neutral. "It's been—"

  He caught the tiny flick of her gaze to his mouth—quick, automatic, like her brain had briefly re-checked a fact it already knew.

  Which was fair, considering that fact involved them and his kitchen counter—because they’d both agreed the bedroom was a responsible idea and then immediately behaved like it was on another continent—approximately four hours ago.

  "—productive," he finished.

  Rachel made a sound that might have been a laugh if she hadn't swallowed it on instinct.

  The line shuffled forward. They moved with it, shoulder to shoulder, the kind of comfortable alignment that had become dangerously normal in the last six weeks.

  "You have class?" Rachel asked.

  "In ten minutes," Noah said. "Chem 1013."

  Rachel's eyebrows lifted. "Is that with Wainwright?"

  Noah's eyes slid to hers. "Indeed it is."

  Rachel's voice dipped, quiet enough that only he could hear. "My condolences."

  "I'll accept them in the form of emotional support," Noah said, deadpan.

  Rachel's lips pressed together, fighting a smile. "I'm your instructor. I'm professionally obligated to remain neutral about your professors."

  "Neutrally, then," Noah amended. "You could neutrally acknowledge that his lectures are an endurance test."

  "I neutrally acknowledge nothing," Rachel said, but her eyes were bright with suppressed laughter.

  The person ahead of them finished ordering and stepped aside. Rachel moved forward to the counter.

  "What can I get you?" the barista asked.

  "Latte, please," Rachel said. "Oat milk, one sugar."

  The barista nodded and rang it up. Rachel paid and stepped aside, rejoining Noah as he moved up to order.

  "Noah?" the barista said, already reaching for a cup.

  "Hey," Noah said. "Same thing as always, please."

  She tapped it in without comment, writing his name with the ease of someone who'd done it a dozen times before.

  Noah paid and stepped back to wait with Rachel.

  He caught the moment Rachel's attention sharpened—not obvious, just a slight shift in focus. Her gaze flicked to the barista's hands writing his name, then to the cup itself, then back to Noah's face.

  Her expression stayed carefully neutral, but something in her eyes had gone assessing. Cataloguing. Like she'd just learned a fact she hadn't asked for and wasn't entirely sure what to do with it.

  Noah saw it anyway.

  They moved to the pickup counter. The espresso machine made indignant noises. Someone's drink was called out with the emphasis of a judge delivering a sentence.

  Rachel shifted her weight slightly, hands clasped together, as if remembering she was supposed to look unbothered in public.

  Noah leaned a fraction closer—still safe, still professional, still something no one could accuse him of—just enough that his voice could be soft.

  "You're doing that thing," he murmured.

  Rachel didn't look at him. "What thing."

  "The thing where your face is calm and your eyes are conducting an investigation."

  Rachel's jaw tightened. "I'm not."

  Noah hummed like he accepted that.

  He did not.

  Rachel finally glanced up at him, her expression very carefully neutral. "She knew your name."

  Noah lifted his brows. "They write it on the cup."

  "Before you said it," Rachel clarified, still quiet.

  Noah fought the urge to smile, because it would make her defensive, and he'd rather keep her warm. "It's a café. They learn regulars. It's not intimacy. It's capitalism."

  Rachel stared at him for half a beat, then—despite herself—her mouth curved.

  "Besides," Noah added, because he couldn't help himself, "she doesn't know how I take my coffee at home some mornings."

  Rachel's cheeks went pink so fast it was almost impressive.

  Noah, sensing he'd pushed the envelope to its absolute limit, looked very interested in the pastry case.

  "Noah!" the barista called, setting his cup on the counter.

  He took it with a nod of thanks and turned back to find Rachel watching him with an expression that was trying very hard to be professional and failing in the most endearing way possible.

  Her drink appeared a moment later. She picked it up with the composure of a woman who had never once been flustered in her life—a charming lie they both agreed to maintain.

  Rachel stepped back slightly, giving him space. "You should go. You'll be late."

  Noah glanced at the clock, then back at her. "I should."

  They hovered for half a second anyway, as if neither of them liked the idea of breaking the little bubble they'd accidentally made in the middle of a crowded café.

  Rachel's fingers brushed his wrist—light, quick, barely there.

  It meant everything.

  She didn't smile, not fully. But her eyes softened in a way that made his chest feel too warm.

  "Have fun with Wainwright," she murmured.

  Noah deadpanned, "That's not what anyone calls it."

  Rachel's breath hitched in something close to a laugh.

  Noah backed toward the exit, cup in hand. "See you later, Miss Ellis."

  Rachel's mouth twitched, and this time she didn't quite hide it. "Later."

  Noah left the café caffeinated, on time, and privately delighted.

  Three days ago he'd told this woman he loved her. Yesterday, as a result of breaking the Sunday rule thoroughly, they'd both been late to the Monday lab. This morning she'd pinned him against his kitchen counter with the kind of focus she usually reserved for solving problems with seventeen backup plans.

  And just now, in the middle of a campus café surrounded by witnesses, Rachel Ellis had experienced what could only be described as jealousy over a barista knowing his name—and recovered with the dignity of a woman determined to remain professionally employed.

  Noah took a sip of his coffee and headed toward CHEM 113, grinning like an idiot the entire way.