The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood

unresponsive to my brain’s commands. I stand there, terrified,
paralyzed, and close my eyes as a jumbled chaos of thoughts
twists through my head. Is the cat okay? Am I going to die?
Oh God, I am going to die. Squashed by a tungsten anvil like
Wile E. Coyote. I am a twenty-first century Pierre Curie, about
to get my skull crushed by a horse-drawn cart. Except that I
have no chair in the physics department of the University of
Paris to leave to my lovely spouse, Marie. Except that I have
barely done a tenth of all the science I meant to do. Except
that I wanted so many things and I never oh my God any
second now—
Something slams into my body, shoving me aside and into
the wall.
Everything is pain.
For a couple of seconds. Then the pain is over, and
everything is noise: metal clanking as it plunges to the floor,
horrified screaming, a shrill “meow” somewhere in the
distance, and, closer to my ear . . . someone is panting. Less
than an inch from me.
I open my eyes, gasping for breath, and . . .
Green.
All I can see is green. Not dark, like the grass outside; not
dull, like the pistachios I had on the plane. This green is light,
piercing, intense. Familiar, but hard to place, not unlike—
Eyes. I’m looking up into the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen.
Eyes that I’ve seen before. Eyes surrounded by wavy black
hair and a face that’s angles and sharp edges and full lips, a
face that’s offensively, imperfectly handsome. A face attached
to a large, solid body—a body that is pinning me to the wall, a
body made of a broad chest and two thighs that could
moonlight as redwoods. Easily. One is slotted between my legs
and it’s holding me up. Unyielding. This man even smells like
a forest—and that mouth. That mouth is still breathing heavily