“Ow-ow!” a frat-ish guy hollered from behind me.
Cam jerked up her head. “Shut up or you’re kicked out. ”
I slumped on a stool. “Oh my God. I’ve never said ‘I love you’ before. ”
Cam started putting together something blue and high-proof. “That’s ridiculous. ”
“No, it’s true. Who would I say it to? My parents? My dad and I don’t. My mom. I can’t remember. I think she tells me, occasionally—noticeably when she moved out, but I don’t. And you’ve been my best friend for seven years. ” I shook my head. “I’m emotionally stunted I’m a freak. Maybe a sociopath. ”
“You are not a sociopath. ”
“Maybe I am!”
“Stop it. ”
I took a deep breath. “He said he loved me, and I wasn’t able to say it back. ”
She raised her brows. “Maybe you don’t actually love him. ”
I met her gaze, and her face softened. “Oh, Natalie.
“I just miss him so much and I want to see him and I don’t know how. ” I tried to subdue the misery in my tone.
I must not have done a very good job, because Cam handed the blue concoction to me along with a sympathetic smile. “Maybe you’ll run into him somewhere. On the subway. ”
I smiled wryly in return. “Maybe. If we lived in a rom-com. ”
“God, I wish. Then work would always just be a montage of me doing dishes and pulling pints but thirty seconds of fast music later I’d be out having fun. ”
“I don’t think dishes would make it into the montage. ”
“Huh. Yeah. I guess they’re usually about the couple moping. Like you’re doing! Aw, what a cute montage moment. ”
“Maybe I should just give up. ”
She set down her cloth and focused entirely on me. “Why? Because you’re scared?”
“Because. . . ” I gestured wildly, unable to get rid of the tight, frantic feeling in my chest. “I don’t know what to do with it. It’s too big. It’s pointless. Maybe I should just shelve it. It seems so unnecessary. ”
“Natalie. I love you. You make me happy, and laugh, and think, and I like spending time with you. Is that pointless? Is joy pointless? No. Tell him. ”
And she was right. I knew she was right.
But first, I had to get through the conference.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The American Academy of Archaeology Conference took place in the Javits Center in New York, a complex on the Hudson River within spitting distance of the Leopards’ Stadium, if you were a very excellent spitter. It had little charm, lots of space, and thousands of archaeologists and grad students frantically running around.
I arrived with a half-dozen grad school friends. We picked up our badges on the ground floor, one of the few places flooded with natural light. I took a moment to admire the blue highlight across my name that marked me as a panelist, while my friends oohed appreciatively.
Then the panic set in.
Without Jeremy, I’d be carrying this all by myself. I’d never presented a field report entirely alone before. I wasn’t even sure if anyone would show up, now that Jeremy wasn’t appearing since Kilkarten had nothing to do with Ivernis.
We spent the morning wandering around the floor, picking up the few free pens and bags and hoping and failing to find free food. We broke up to attend different lectures, but they all promised to come see mine, and at two o’clock I made my way to a small room hidden off a side hall. I’d almost reached it when a harried organizer hurried up to me, frowning down at her tablet and then back at me. “Ms. Sullivan?”
I stopped. “Hi. Yes?”
“We’re moving you to 1C. One of the larger exhibition halls,” she clarified when I looked at her blankly. “You’re up in twenty. ”
“What? Why?”
She shook her head. “More people than we expected want to see your lecture. There’s a line forming outside right now. ”
“Really?” But I was just a grad student with a tiny little site in Ireland. . .
We stared at each other, and then recognition bloomed on her face. “Oh. You’re that model dating the football player. ”
“No—I’m not, that was my mother—I mean, yes, I dated—”
She shook her head, not interested in my muddy clarification. Not, apparently, all that interested in me now that she realized I was the nightclub singer sidekick.
I followed her to the back entrance, and then waited there while the current speaker finished up. He walked past me when he left, and I did a double take, since he’d just wrapped a miniseries on the Olmecs. He grinned. “Ah, the model. You’re up next?”
“Yes, sir. But—”
“Aren’t you dating the Leopards’ running back?”
I drew up my shoulders. “No, but I am working on the excavation at Kilkarten. ”
He looked confused but nodded genially before continuing on his way. “Good luck up there. ”
I stared after him, and then threw a quick excuse at my guide before dashing toward the closest bathroom.
I splashed water on my face, the cold liquid sharp against my hot cheeks. They were here to see a celebrity, not me. That should have made it better, not worse. Should have taken the pressure off presenting.
Still, I’d expected a crowd of about twenty, and even if most of those gathered weren’t experts in Iron Age culture or Ireland, it would still be my first public appearance where I didn’t know the names of ninety percent of the audience.
Then I straightened my shoulders, and pulled my hair over my shoulders, half on each side, blown out to that sheen. No makeup other then a touch of lipstick, but my dress was the same shade as my eyes.
You’re Athena, I reminded myself. You’re a strong and intelligent and brave. You’re the Gray Eyed Goddess.
I took a deep breath, and then walked into the conference hall.
Two hundred faces turned my way.
I almost stopped. Instead, I pulled up my chin and walked to the podium.
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The first rows were filled with the usual suspects; men and women whom I knew as professors and peers. My friends from Columbia, who gave me discrete thumbs up. One held up a tiny “I Heart You!” sign briefly. And then others I recognized. I’d gone to Dr. Martin’s lectures, I’d co-author a paper with Shannon Andrews, I’d read Professor Levy’s books.
But in the back, a wall of press filled the space.
Usually, at lectures this large, there was some introduction, a little patter of noise to give added importance and tout awards and accomplishments. But I’d been planning on a little lecture, where I walked on, waved and launched into a speech after clearing my throat once.
Now I closed my eyes, startling by the way my stomach turned and keeled. I pictured Kilkarten, the green fields, fresh dirt. Smelled the salt and sea and wind.
Saw Mike.
For a moment, my chest ached, clenching around the broken pieces of my heart, and then it relaxed as his grin crooked up, his eyes bright, his warmth steady.
No matter what had happened, he had always believed in me. We were both lost and confused and broken, but we believed in our passions. He believed in me. I believed in Kilkarten.
I opened my eyes.
The microphone picked up my voice, and the audience quieted. “Hi, I’m Natalie Sullivan. Welcome to Discovering Kilkarten: A Sixth Century Settlement. ”
* * *
I stopped seeing the audience after five minutes. They blurred out, ceased to exist, and it was just me and my slideshow. Once or twice, they came through with laughter and I remembered they were there, but most of the time I just expanded on the site. I explained the process I’d gone through to locate the section, the geophysical testing, the units. And then I went further in-depth on what we had discovered, before finishing with our future plans.
And then I was done.
When I was nineteen years old, I went gorge jumping. I jumped off a sixty-foot cliff and plummeted into the pools carved out by glaciers thousands of years ago. I thought my heart would stop. I thought my bones would break. When I resurfaced from the shocking, freezing water, from the silence and the dark, I expected the entire world to be different. For the students on either side of the gorge to be clapping thunderously at my epic leap. No one was. Life continued as normal. “Why didn’t anyone clap?” I’d asked Cam, and she’d shoved me lightly. “They did, stupid. But you were underwater, so you didn’t hear it. ”
This was like that. I fell back from the podium, and the lights turned up, and everyone started clapping. I just stood there, the noise washing over me, breathing rapidly as I tried to reemerge from that strange, paralyzing state.
Then I broke through the water and saw the faces, focusing first on the familiar ones, then the strangers. No one looked blown away, but no one looked comatose, either. I smiled and leaned back into the microphone, glancing at the clock. “I think we have about twenty minutes left for questions. So—”
“Is it true your mother is Tamara Bocharov?”
I tried to make out the person that had shouted from the back, slightly disappointed. “I don’t see how that’s relevant. ”
“Are you really dating Michael O’Connor?”
“Also, not relevant. ” I took a deep breath, scanning for someone who didn’t look like they’d harass me about my personal life. A stodgy academic. Someone in tweed. Someone like—
Like the man standing now.
The press ignored him, still waving for my attention, but my eyes, like those of every academic in the room, had been captured by Professor Henry Ceile. He smiled but didn’t wait for me to invite him to speak. “I thought you were excavating this site looking for Ivernis with Jeremy Anderson. What happened to that? Why isn’t he here with you?”
Murmurs passed through the room.
I leaned forward until the podium cut into my stomach. “Dr. Ceile. I would have thought you’d have better things to do then attend a nightclub singer’s song-and-dance. ”
He granted me a slight nod and smile. Point to me. “It turned out I didn’t. But where’s the professor?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Dr. Anderson is still in Ireland working on research. ”
“But not about this site, is that right? Because there was nothing related to Ivernis here. ”
Heads swiveled back my way.
I swallowed. I wasn’t ready for a faceoff with Dr. Ceile, especially not in a room filled with everyone I could possibly want to work with for the rest of my life, and the press to boot.
And then I saw Mike.
He’d picked a spot near the back of the room, hidden by the lights, a hat pulled down over his bright curls. But I saw him now as his entire stance shifted. He’d forgotten he was trying to be nondescript, invisible, and instead he sat straight, shoulders back as his eyes burned into Ceile. He turned to look at me, like he would urge me on with just the power of his gaze and his will.
Our gazes locked. His eyes flared wide, and a flutter started deep in my belly. And then he smiled, a smile filled with such belief, such love, that I felt courage turn my spine to iron.
“Dr. Ceile. ” I spoke slowly, carefully, loudly. “I appreciate you coming here today and your interest in the site, but I don’t think this is an appropriate forum to discuss Ivernis. ”
“So you’re saying that this is not Ivernis. That there is no relation to Ivernis. ”
My eyes sought Mike’s. “It’s not Ivernis. It’s Kilkarten. But if the only reason you’re here is to continue your feud with Jeremy, I think you should leave. ”
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He looked smug. “I just want the community to recognize that even Jeremy’s prodigy—the one who secured funding for his latest craze—has left his side. ”
I came around from behind my podium, standing at the edge of the stage. “You’re talking about this the wrong way, Dr. Ceile. I haven’t left anything, and I’m not setting out to prove anything. We’ve uncovered an amazing site. My purpose isn’t to prove a colleague wrong or put my name in the history books or get a TV deal. It’s to make a positive impact on the people directly affected by the excavation or the history—whether that’s descendants, or the local population, or the scholarship of the period. ”
Dr. Ceile sat.
I leaned forward and found Mike again. “Thank you for coming. ”
* * *
The press had already swarmed the back door by the time I exited. Reporters pressed recorders in my face and shouted questions about my mother and Mike and Jeremy and Kilkarten and Ceile.
And then the clamor hit a feverish pitch and Mike was there, shouldering his way through the crowd. Then he was by my side, his arm wrapped around me, and we pushed through the crowd.
“This way,” I said once we’d cleared the worst of it, and we dashed for the panelist room, set aside for speakers to relax and get a bite to eat or just, in this case, escape.
We collapsed at one of the large round tables, and Mike fetched us bags of water and bags of chips and pretzels. “Who knew archaeology fans were as rabid as football fans?”
I let out a shaky laugh. “I think most of them were media junkies. I’d be flattered if I thought that many people actually cared about Kilkarten. ”
He was silent, and I wondered if he’d known that when I’d said It’s not Ivernis. It’s Kilkarten, I’d been talking about him. I opened my mouth to say so, but he beat me to it. “So that was Ceile. ”
Oh. Right. I guzzled down the tiny water cup. “In the flesh. ”
“I wanted to punch him. ”
That drew a real laugh out of me. “I know. I want to on a regular basis.
A new voice joined us, and we started guiltily. “Don’t let any sense of propriety hold you back. ”
I pushed to my feet. “Professor Ceile. ” We’d been introduced as previous conferences, but Jeremy had always been between us. I tried to think of something to say.
But I’d already said everything from the stage, and I didn’t want to babble. I didn’t want to create meaningless words out of nothing for the sake of filling an awkward silence. Let him be the uncomfortable one tonight.
His attention drifted to Mike, and he formed a dry smile. “I’m a fan. ”
Mike didn’t smile back. “Thanks. ”
Ceile inspected his hands, then the wall, and then finally settled on me. “You probably think this is personal. ”
“I don’t appreciate you mixing my mother’s background with my professional life. ”
“Jeremy Anderson spent years getting thousands of dollars to excavate unimportant plots o
f land. Universities and non-profits sank money into him because he was young, and charismatic, and supported America’s romantic idea of Celtic Ireland. They spent money earmarked for the Iron Age, or Ireland, and none of that money went to actual digs.
“I have artifacts sitting in storage because I can’t afford to sort them and categorize them. I have evidence for sites that have never been funded. We all do what we must, one way or the other, Ms. Sullivan. And I must keep Anderson from sinking our entire discipline. I’m sorry if you felt your character had been assassinated. But if you weren’t going to leave him, I had to make sure you weren’t able to suck more money away from projects that really needed it. ”
I couldn’t even breathe.
He shrugged. “But it seems you aren’t as young and naïve as I thought. You figured out Jeremy was a fool on your own. Good on you, for your work on Kilkarten. ” He extended his hand. “I hope we’ll be able to collaborate in the future. ”
His hand loomed large in my sight, skin tanned and weathered from long hours outside, fingers blunt and square. I took it, feeling numb. And then something uncurled inside me, and I met his pale blue eyes straight on. “Jeremy fostered a love of learning and knowledge in me. He gave me opportunities and responsibilities, and I respect him and admire him. ”
I took a moment to mull over my next words, and they came out slowly spaced. “I understand acting drastically when you think you have no other option. But I am still deeply offended by what you said. Still, I am committed to my work at Kilkarten. I am excited about the future. And I would like to be civil colleagues. ”
“Then we will, Ms. Sullivan. ” He nodded at me, and he nodded at Mike, and started away. I’d almost let the tense breath out when he stopped and looked back with bright eyes. “I did not mean the Willie Scott comment maliciously, Ms. Sullivan. In fact, I always admired your mother very much. ”
He vanished.
My legs folded and I landed shakily in my seat.
Mike dropped in the seat beside me. “Never thought I’d feel any sympathy for Jeremy. ”
I let out a shaky laugh. “Never thought I’d feel any empathy for Ceile. ” I shook my head to clear it. “Thank you for coming. It meant a lot to me, to see you there. To see you now. ”