“What is he—” was all Olive managed to say, before he came to a stop, put his hands on the back of the truck in neutral, and started . . .

Pushing.

His shoulders and biceps strained his Henley. The firm muscles of his upper back visibly shifted and tensed under the black fabric as he bent forward and rolled several tons of truck across . . . quite a bit of a distance and into the closest empty parking space.

Oh.

There was some applause and whistling from bystanders when the truck was out of the way, and a couple of faculty members from neuroscience clapped Adam on the shoulder as the line of cars started driving out of the lot.

“Fucking finally,” Olive heard Greg say from behind her, and she stood there, blinking, a little shocked. Had she hallucinated it? Had Adam really just pushed a giant truck all by himself? Was he an alien from planet Krypton who moonlighted as a superhero?

“Ol, go give him a kiss.”

Olive whirled around, abruptly reminded of Anh’s existence. “What?” No. No. “I’m good. I just said goodbye to him a minute ago and—”

“Ol, why don’t you want to go kiss your boyfriend?”

Ugh. “I . . . It’s not that I don’t want to. I just—”

“Dude, he just moved a truck. By himself. On uphill ground. He deserves a damn kiss.” Anh shoved Olive and made a shooing motion.

Olive clenched her teeth and headed in Adam’s direction, wishing she’d gone ahead and drawn twenty dicks all over Anh’s face. Maybe she did suspect that Olive was faking her relationship with Adam. Or maybe she just got a kick out of pressuring her into PDA’ing, that ingrate. Either way, if this was what one got for masterminding an intricate fake-dating scheme that was supposed to benefit a friend’s love life, then maybe—

Olive halted abruptly.

Adam’s head was bent forward, black hair covering his forehead as he wiped the sweat from his eyes with the hem of his shirt. It left a broad strip of flesh visible on his torso, and—it was nothing indecent, really, nothing unusual, just some fit guy’s midriff, but for some reason Olive couldn’t help staring at Adam Carlsen’s uncovered skin like it was a slab of Italian marble, and—

“Olive?” he said, and she immediately averted her eyes. Crap, he’d totally caught her staring. First she’d forced him to kiss her, and now she was ogling him like some perv in the biology parking lot and—

“Did you need anything?”

“No, I . . .” She felt her cheeks go crimson.

His skin, too, was flushed from the effort of pushing, and his eyes were bright and clear, and he seemed . . . well, at least he didn’t seem unhappy to see her.

“Anh sent me to give you a kiss.”

He froze halfway through wiping his hands on his shirt. And then he said “Ah” in his usual neutral, unreadable tone.

“Because you moved the truck. I—I know how ridiculous that sounds. I know. But I didn’t want her to get suspicious, and there are faculty members here, too, so maybe they’ll tell the department chair and it will be two birds with one stone and I can leave if you—”

“It’s okay, Olive. Breathe.”

Right. Yes. Good suggestion. Olive did breathe, and the act made her realize that she hadn’t done that in a while, which in turn made her smile up at Adam—who did his mouth-twitch thing back at her. She was really starting to get used to him. To his expressions, his size, his distinctive way of being in the same space as her.

“Anh’s staring at us,” he said, looking over Olive’s head.

Olive sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I just bet she is,” she mumbled.

Adam wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

Olive squirmed. “So . . . Should we hug or something?”

“Oh.” Adam looked at his hands and down at himself. “I don’t think you want to do that. I’m pretty gross.”

Before she could stop herself Olive studied him from head to toe, taking in his large body, his broad shoulders, the way his hair was curling around his ears. He didn’t look gross. Not even to Olive, who was usually not a fan of dudes built like they spent a double-digit percentage of their time at the gym. He looked . . .

Not gross.

Still, maybe it was better if they didn’t hug. Olive might end up doing something egregiously stupid. She should just say goodbye and leave—yes, that was the thing to do.

Except that something absolutely insane came out of her mouth.

“Should we just kiss, then?” she heard herself blurt out. And then she instantly wished a stray meteorite would hit the exact spot where she was standing, because—had she just asked Adam Carlsen for a kiss? Was that what she’d done? Was she a lunatic all of a sudden?

“I mean, not like a kiss kiss,” she hastened to add. “But like the last time? You know.”

He didn’t seem to know. Which made sense, because their other kiss had definitely been a kiss kiss. Olive tried not to think about it too much, but it flashed in her mind every once in a while, mostly when she was doing something important that required her utmost concentration, like implanting electrodes inside a mouse’s pancreas or trying to decide what to order at Subway. Occasionally it would pop up during a quiet moment, like when she was in bed and about to fall asleep, and she would feel a mixture of embarrassment and incredulity and something else. Something that she had no intention of examining too closely, not now and not ever.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded, even though she wasn’t sure at all. “Is Anh still staring at us?”

His eyes flicked up. “Yes. She’s not even pretending not to. I . . . why does she care so much? Are you famous?”

“No, Adam.” She gestured at him. “You are.”

“Am I?” He looked perplexed.

“Anyway, no need to kiss. You’re right that it would probably be a bit weird.”

“No. No, I didn’t mean that . . .” There was a droplet of sweat running down his temple, and he wiped his face again, this time with the sleeve of his shirt. “We can kiss.”

“Oh.”

“If you think that . . . If your friend is watching.”

“Yeah.” Olive swallowed. “But we don’t have to.”

“I know.”

“Unless you want to.” Olive’s palms felt damp and clammy, so she surreptitiously wiped them on her jeans. “And by ‘want to’ I mean, unless you think it’s a good idea.” It so was not a good idea. It was a horrible idea. Like all her ideas.

“Right.” He looked past Olive and toward Anh, who was probably in the middle of doing an entire Instagram Story on them. “Okay, then.”

“Okay.”

He stepped a little closer, and really, he was not gross. How someone this sweaty, someone who’d just pushed a truck, still managed to smell good was a topic worthy of a Ph.D. dissertation, for sure. Earth’s finest scientists should have been hard at work on this.

“Why don’t I . . .” Olive inched slightly into him, and after letting her hand hover for a moment she rested it over Adam’s shoulder. She pushed up on her toes, angling her head up toward him. It helped very little, as Olive was still not tall enough to reach his mouth, so she tried to get more leverage by putting her other hand on his arm, and immediately realized that she was basically hugging him. Which was the exact thing he had asked her not to do a second ago. Crap.

“Sorry, too close? I didn’t mean to—”

She would have finished the sentence, if he hadn’t closed the distance between them and just—kissed her. Just like that.

It was little more than a peck—just his lips pressing against hers, and his hand on her waist to steady her a little. It was a kiss, but barely, and it certainly didn’t warrant the way her heart pounded in her chest, or the fact that there was something warm and liquid looping at the bottom of her belly. Not unpleasant, but confusing and a bit scary nonetheless, and it had Olive pull back after only a second. When she eased back on her heels, it seemed like for a fraction of a moment Adam followed her, trying to fill the gap between their mouths. Though by the time she’d blinked herself free of the haze of the kiss, he was standing tall in front of her, cheekbones dusted with red and chest moving up and down in shallow breaths. She must have dreamed up that last bit.