“Jax!” Grinning, Alice pressed forward and touched his face with her tiny hands. “My Jax.” She stroked his face and wrinkled her nose to feel two days’ worth of growth.
His eyes prickled, and he pressed his face into her soft baby curls. “Yes, your Jax.” Their frequent FaceTimes had been a poor replacement for getting to hold this precious baby girl. Alice squirmed, and Jax loosened his grip so she could lean back to see his face again.
George returned from the bathroom, and Jax shook himself out of his reverie. “Sorry. Come, sit.” He brought them into the living room. Jax and Alice kept their eyes locked on each other. He wasn’t sure how many minutes were lost to their stare down, but Jax never wanted to take his eyes off her again.
Though when Sam suggested Alice was in a need of a diaper change, Jax gladly handed her over to her dad.
“You’re looking good, Jax.” Sam shifted closer on the couch.
“You too.”
She touched his hair as though she couldn’t help it—it was getting long, but he’d gotten out of the habit of regular cuts. “How are you doing? Really.” Her eyes were searching. Jax doubted that she missed the premature gray in his beard—plague stress. “Please tell me you’ve taken a proper rest now that your big brain isn’t needed to analyze an international crisis.”
He exhaled shakily. “I’m trying.”
“Good. Still working at the bar?”
“Yeah. It’s nice.”
“I bet.” Her lips twitched with a smile, but her blue eyes stayed grave. “Getting to show off. You used to love playing piano for Mom’s guests.”
“I can’t say that’s a lie.”
“Attention whore.”
“Maybe.”
They smiled at each other, and for a moment, Jax enjoyed the silence and the weight of her presence. His big sister was here.
“What about your PhD?”
Jax pressed his lips together and looked away.
“Jax….”
“I can’t.” Jax hadn’t been back to Cambridge since the day they closed the campus. Even now that it was open again, he couldn’t bring himself to return. He hadn’t been able to bear the thought of Grayling’s empty office, and he’d avoided it for the past year, but the thought of the office being occupied by someone new hurt even more.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Either? Both?” What did it matter? The result was the same.
She said nothing for a long moment, probably studying his face. She did that a lot. “You’re almost done—”
“I know.” Jax was all too aware of how close he was to finishing his PhD. The only thing left was his defense. But talking about his mathematical program for predicting the growth of various populations in ecosystems seemed pointless after spending a year modeling pandemic spread and death rates. “I’m just… tired.”
“I know.” Sam ran her hand over his head again. “But you can’t tell me you want to stay an ABD forever.”All But Dissertation.Once upon a time, he’d mocked people for failing to go the distance—privately, in his own head. He wasn’tthatmuch of an asshole.
“I’m not twenty anymore,” Jax pointed out. Having the paper didn’t seem important somehow.
“Jax, Grayling wouldn’t want—”
“Don’t tell me what he would have wanted. You didn’t know him.” Sam had never visited him in Cambridge.
“Maybe not in person, but I knew him through you. And everything you have ever told me leads me to believe that he would want you to finish what you started.”
A sharp pain seized his heart, and Jax scowled. He would not feel guilty. But before he could open his mouth to reply, the front door opened.
“Jax? Whose car is in the driveway?”
