A Bigger Bang Theory: Clean & Wholesome Women of STEM Romcom Romance by Jordan Riley Swan & K.C. Norton

Author:Jordan Riley Swan & K.C. Norton [Swan, Jordan Riley & Norton, K.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Story Garden Publishing
Published: 2024-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Jessica had been close to tears just a moment ago. He was sure of it.

Gene leaned on one elbow, watching her face, trying to make sense of the sudden pinch of pain that had passed over her expression without warning.

She lay on her back, with her hair fanned out around her face. The pain he’d seen there receded, and her mask slipped back into place. He’d been amused when she screamed into the pillow at his office the day before and wanted another peek behind the curtain . . . but not if it involved her being in pain.

Unless she was hurting all the time and only occasionally let the truth slip out. Then he’d want to know, because how could pain ever be treated unless she admitted she was injured in the first place?

The projected stars of the planetarium reflected in the lenses of her glasses, obscuring her eyes, but he could tell by the set of her mouth that she’d moved on already.

“In the beginning,” Jessica said, then paused. “Gene, lie down. You need to be looking at the stars for this.”

“Right.” He did as she asked, wishing there wasn’t a charcuterie board between them. With all those snacks in the way, it would be difficult for him to engineer an “accidental touch.” Nothing out of bounds. Just a brush of his knuckles against her pinkie, or a little tap of his shoe against hers.

Just a little something to let her know that she wasn’t alone.

“Okay.” He crossed his hands over his stomach. “I’m ready.”

“In the beginning,” Jessica said, “the whole universe was contained in an ultra-dense ball of matter the size of a marble, give or take. No one knows what came before it, and nobody knows what started it, but one day that marble went . . . ” She held her fists toward the ceiling, then flicked her fingers outward. “Bang. And the universe started doing its thing.”

“Fourteen billion years ago,” Gene said. “I remember.”

Jessica sighed. “Are you telling the story, or am I?”

“Sorry.” He snuck himself another olive. “Please continue.”

“For billions of years, matter whirled around, cooling and separating and eventually resulting in life, the origins of which were hotly debated until, hmm, 2066 AD or so.”

He laughed. “Specific.”

“Well, I’m hoping to still be alive by then, so I tried to pick a date inside a plausible lifespan but before the human race is wiped out by our indifference to climate change,” Jessica explained.

“Sensible.” Gene crossed his ankles. “I think that might count as a spoiler for the timeline of the universe, but I’ll allow it.”

“How kind of you. Anyway, so all sorts of things happened in between the Big Bang and that scientific breakthrough in 2066, but eventually humans evolved. Homo sapiens sapiens. Like the rest of pretty much everything in existence, they were made of star stuff.”

“Because all matter had started off with everything smashed together?”

“Commingling, yeah. And energy cannot be created or destroyed, so all of their energy was also present at the beginning.

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