Chapter 1

1.

Eamon had already taken off his Ray-Bans, hanging them casually on the collar of his polo shirt as I stared at the code from the Andreessen Horowitz AI Hackathon.

This was the man who never seemed to care about cutting-edge tech, yet he suddenly reached for my MacBook Pro.

He rolled up his sleeves, revealing the toned muscles he’d sculpted at Equinox.

The cold glow of the screen illuminated his focused profile.

The crisp clicks of the mechanical keyboard filled the air.

In less than a minute, the neural network parameter issue that had tormented me for over a month was solved with a few lines of his Python code.

“Wait―when did you learn to code like that?”

I stared at the screen in shock, assuming he’d learned it just to support my project.

He just shrugged, saying nothing.

A man focused on his work is undeniably sexy.

I couldn’t resist snapping a picture of his silhouette and posting it to my Instagram Story with the caption: “My personal debugging hero ??”.

My account, which usually got a few dozen views, blew up overnight.

The comments section went insane.

“OMG, is that EAMON VANCE?? Girl, do you have any idea who you’re sitting next to???”

“Wait, you MARRIED him?! So my #Esbella ship is officially sunk?”

“This is the man who coded for 48 hours straight for Isabella’s neural network demo at Stanford. A legend.”

“I’ve watched their award acceptance speech a hundred times. They were meant to be. What happened??”

…

The comments kept flooding in.

“Remember when Eamon collapsed in the lab right after optimizing Bella’s competition model? That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen in the tech world.”

“Then she left for Europe, and he just… quit competitive AI. Never touched another hackathon. If that’s not true love, I don’t know what is.”

Everyone was mourning this unfinished Silicon Valley legend.

Over three thousand comments pieced together an Eamon I didn’t recognize at all.

He was no longer the calm, rational, always-in-control man I dated―the man I had to propose to myself.

Instead, he was an impulsive college kid who would run to Isabella’s dorm in the middle of a rare Bay Area downpour, just because of a campus rumor that he was backing out of her project.

The night before Isabella left for Europe was the eve of Thanksgiving.

That same day, Eamon quit the core project team at the Stanford AI Lab.

He spent the entire night in the server room, using an algorithm to generate a melody. The code’s comment read: “For Bella: A Neural Network Sonata.”

He tweaked the parameters manually after every single run.

I scrolled through the comments, reading their entire story.

The blue light from my phone screen made my eyes burn.

The melody Eamon had just generated was the same one.

Thanksgiving is almost here. Was he thinking of her again?

“Hey, are you okay?”

Eamon’s voice was soft, and his calloused fingers gently touched my arm.

I looked away and forced a smile, trying to sound calm. “Did you used to do a lot of AI hackathons? You seem really… skilled.”

“Our lead algorithm engineer called in sick. Baby, could you fill in and help me out?”

Everyone has a past.

And he had been so good to me over the years. Besides, I had just gotten a positive pregnancy test. The family of three we’d always wanted was finally within reach.

If he agreed, it meant he had moved on. I could pretend I never saw any of this.

But Eamon froze.

After a long pause, he said, “I never really competed. Not officially.”

His words shattered my hope into a million pieces.

The record of him and Isabella winning the "National Collegiate AI Challenge" was still on IEEE's official website.

Eamon was so meticulous, so careful. How could he tell a lie that was so easily exposed?

I took a deep breath and asked quietly, “Really?”

“Then what are all these comments about?”