“Did you know?”
He bit into his apple. “Yes.”
If this weren’t so serious, this would be the part where Bea started mentally drafting an obituary.
His.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“You’d already stayed six nights,” he said. “The seventh just happened.”
She remembered now: the seventh had been her idea. Georgie hadn’t gone home, and neither had she.
“That’s when it happened? During my internship?”
He nodded.
“Georgie thought that was ten nights consecutive.”
“It used to be. Thresholds were lowered last year.”
The wordloweredmade her pulse spike. Like she’d fallen into something that had shrunk just enough to catch her.
Her voice stayed even. “Why didn’t you tell me when I asked you if I could stay the extra night?”
He looked at her. “Would you have gone home?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “But I would’ve liked to know what I was walking into.”
“You weren’t walking into it,” he reasoned. “You were already in it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Even if you’d only stayed six, you’d hit eight cumulatively. That’s Tier Three.” He spoke clearly, without heat. “The seventh consecutive just meant the system recognized what we already know.”
“And what’s that?”
“That this is serious,” he said. “That we make decisions together.”
“Doyouget alerts telling you to check in withmewhen you travel?” she snapped.
It wasn’t loud. But it was sharper than anything she’d ever said to him. And once it was out, it hovered in the air between them.
He paused. Peered at her.
“No,” he said, calm. “But since we’ve been together, I’ve informed you whenever I had the intention to leave the country.”
He always traveled for work.
And he wasn’t the one who had booked flights home to Canada for ten weeks for the summer without telling him first.
He didn’t say either of those things, he probably didn’t even mean to imply them, but she heard them just the same.
Her heart was beating too fast. She inhaled through her nose, trying to slow it. She studied him while she did. Every muscle in his face was composed, but his eyes were watching her. Alert.
He turned his body toward her, tugged her elbow gently so she was facing him. Bea let herself be moved, but her shoulders were stiff.
“You’re upset at me.”
