Bea smiled, even as her stomach dropped to her knees. “Hey.”
Maya was already stepping over. “We were just talking about you! Come sit. Who are you—” She stopped midsentence, eyes catching on the man beside Bea.
Jenna looked up too. One of the guys nudged the other. And then Logan stood, slower than the rest, his gaze fixed on Gage.
Bea swallowed the fist that had lodged in her throat. “This is Gage,” she introduced.
“TheGage,” Jenna said a little too brightly.
“Nice to meet you.” Maya took another step forward. “We’ve heard a lot. Sort of. I mean, Bea’s been cagey.”
Gage didn’t smile, but his nod was genial. “Good to meet you.”
They were already pulling extra chairs up before Bea could protest. Maya tugged on her wrist, grinning. “Come on. You’re not leaving now.”
Bea glanced at Gage.
“If you want to sit, we’ll sit,” he said, calm.
So they did.
Conversation flowed easily, layered with old jokes and too many overlapping questions. Maya and Jenna did most of the talking, asking about St. Ives, the UR, the weather.
“So wait—tell me again, winter is summer and summer is winter? And the school yearstartswhen you go back in February?” Jenna asked.
Bea nodded. “Yep. And they have daylight savings from October through March. We went to a Christmas market and the sun still hadn’t set at eight p.m. I was wearing a sundress inDecember.”
Once the topic steered to work and money, the questions naturally circled to Gage.
“So what do you do?” Jenna asked, chin in her hand.
“I work in capital investment,” he said.
“Private firm?” Logan asked, drinking his beer.
“My family’s.”
Bea had the sneaking suspicion Gage already knew exactly who Logan was, even though no one had really made introductions.
“What’s it called?” one of the guys asked.
“King Global Capital.”
Even the background noise seemed to hush.
“Wait.King Global Capital?” Maya echoed. “And you’re—GageKing?”
Bea looked down at her glass.
“Yes.”
One of the guys gave a low laugh. “So you’re what…a billionaire?”
Déjà vu. Bea winced inwardly. How many times was she going to make him sit through this exact script?
“On paper,” Gage replied calmly. “I’m a shareholder.”
Bea felt the table recalibrating around her. Not merely because of Gage’s money, but because of how unbothered he wasby it. Like he didn’t need anyone here to understand him. Like he had nothing to prove.
