The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

“I did . . .” He pressed his lips together. “Not well enough.”
He was silent for a long moment, his gaze locked somewhere
outside the café’s window. “Then again, nothing was ever
good enough.”
It seemed impossible that someone might look at Adam’s
scientific accomplishments and find them lacking. That he
could ever be anything less than the best at what he did. Was
that why he was so severe in his judgment of others? Because
he’d been taught to set the same impossible standards for
himself?
“Do you still keep in touch with him? Your adviser, I
mean.”
“He’s retired now. Tom has taken over what used to be his
lab.”
It was such an uncharacteristically opaque, carefully
worded answer. Olive couldn’t help being curious. “Did you
like him?”
“It’s complicated.” He rubbed a hand over his jaw, looking
pensive and far away. “No. No, I didn’t like him. I still don’t.
He was . . .” It took him so long to continue, she almost
convinced herself that he wouldn’t. But he did, staring at the
late-afternoon sunlight disappearing behind the oak trees.
“Brutal. My adviser was brutal.”
She chuckled, and Adam’s eyes darted back to her face,
narrow with confusion.
“Sorry.” She was still laughing a little. “It’s just funny, to
hear you complain about your old mentor. Because . . .”
“Because?”
“Because he sounds exactly like you.”
“I’m not like him,” he retorted, more sharply than Olive
had come to expect from him. It made her snort.