“At your birthday last year,” he said, voice even. “I told you the next move was taking on international expansions, but that before I go, I needed to close a deal in the UR first.”
She stared at him. And slowly, she remembered.
That perfect day. That ridiculous, thoughtful day. She’d told him her birthday felt wrong in spring. In Toronto, it was fall—fiery trees, crisp air. So he’d found a private estate filled with Japanese Bloodgood maples and organized a picnic lunch for her under a canopy of red.
“The deal wasme?”
Gage nodded once, as though that single motion could shoulder the magnitude of it. “We’d barely been together five months then. I wasn’t going to hand you that kind of decision when you didn’t even know what it meant.”
“And now?”
His cutlery stilled. “I can’t delay it again.”
Not won’t.Can’t.
She nodded slowly, the meaning sinking in. “And you want me to come.”
He paused long enough that she looked up. When he spoke, his words were precise. “Not as my girlfriend.” That was…not ominous at all. “If you come, you come with my name.”
Her brain short-circuited. Fully rebooted.
Please hold.
Everything stilled. The table. The restaurant. The music.
Had she just been…pre-proposed to? Mid-sea bass?
The air between them was heavy with everything he wasn’t saying. Not a proposal. Not yet. But definitely its spiritual cousin.
“Does it have to be that way?” She gestured helplessly, like the words were just out of reach. “I mean, could I just come with you as me? Does it have to be so…final?”
It wasn’t even that she didn’t want it. But this had gone from personal to global in a heartbeat.
His gaze didn’t waver. “This life only works if you commit to it.”
Translation: there was only one way this was going to happen. This wasn’t a plus-one situation. This was change-your-last-name-on-your-passport-level serious.
She didn’t look away from him, but she didn’t speak, either. Mostly because her mouth was busy doing absolutely nothing while her internal organs were screaming into a pillow.
One breath. In through her nose. Out, steady. The kind she took before opening exam results.
“What would it look like for me?”
“You’d finish your degree in London,” he said, cutting into his steak. “We’d find a school that would take your credits. I’d handle the paperwork.”
“I’d have to leave St. Ives,” she said, gripping the napkin in her lap.
“Yes.”
“My scholarship.”
He nodded.
“And my job at Monaghan and Stowe.”
“They’d write you a recommendation.” He sipped his sparkling water, then added, “Or you could not work, if you don’t want to.”
She smoothed her napkin, one corner at a time. “I’d have to leave Nico.”
