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
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
“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.”
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
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
