"Hey." He kicks off his shoes and sets the bags on the counter. "I got the green curry because the last time you ordered pad thai you ate half of mine anyway, so I just got two curries and—" He turns around. Sees my face. Stops. "What happened?"
I should ease into this. I should be careful and thoughtful and choose my words.
"Albright knows," I say.
The color leaves his face. "Knows what?"
"About us. Or she suspects. She cornered me at the mixer. She mentioned you specifically, by name. Said people notice."
He sets the food down slowly. "Okay. That's not— she didn't say she knows for sure. She could just be—"
"Jude, she cornered me at a party to say it to my face. That's not small talk. That's a warning."
He's quiet for a moment. I can see him working through it, figuring out how scared he should be. "So what do we do?"
"I submitted a transfer request today. To move you to another TA's section."
"You what?"
"Before the party. I was already worried, and then she— I just filed it. You'll be in Hartley's section starting next week."
His jaw tightens but he nods, once, short. "Okay. That's annoying but fine. That's a practical thing. What else?"
What else. Because he can see it on my face. He always can.
"I think we need to pull back," I say. "Until the semester ends. We stop being visible together. You don't come to my office, I don't come to yours. We don't walk together on campus. No texting during the day. And maybe..." I swallow. "Maybe you don't stay here during the week. Just weekends. Until the semester's over."
The apartment goes very quiet.
"Six weeks," he says.
"Six weeks. Then the semester ends and I'm not your TA anymore and none of this applies."
"Six weeks of what, exactly? Pretending we don't know each other? Pretending this doesn't exist?" He touches the bite on his neck. The one I put there. The one that's healed into a permanent scar that marks him as mine. "How am I supposed to pretend this doesn't exist?"
"It's not about pretending. It's about being smart. If Albright reports this, I could lose my position. I could lose my references, my shot at the PhD program, everything."
"Right. Everything." He nods, slow and deliberate. "So when you say everything, you mean your career. Not me. Not the nest. Not the key you put in my hand and the thing you said about this being our home."
"That's not fair—"
"What's not fair is you making a decision about us without talking to me first. You filed a transfer. You decided we need to go dark. And you did all of that before I walked through that door. You weren't asking me, Rhys. You were informing me."
"So your solution is to hide me," he says.
"That's not what I'm—"
"That's exactly what you're doing." His voice has gone flat. Not angry. Worse than angry. Flat and cold and measured, which on Jude sounds wrong in a way that makes my stomach lurch. Jude is loud. Jude is bright and sharp and too much on purpose. This quiet, controlled thing is something else. This is the wall going up. "You're telling me to be invisible. You're telling me not to come to our apartment. The one you gave me a key to. The one where I built us a nest."
"Jude—"
"I have been someone's secret before, Rhys." His chin lifts. His eyes are bright and hard and dry. "I have been the fun hookupthat nobody takes seriously. The loud omega who's good for a story but not good enough to keep around when it actually counts. I promised myself I would never be that again. And you're asking me to be exactly that. For six weeks. While you figure out if your career can afford me."
I open my mouth. Close it. "That's not what this is."
"Then what is it?"
"It's me trying to protect us."
