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He stays.

“I’m not done,” he says. “With us. I know I don’t get a vote this morning. But I’m not done. I’m so fucking sorry the first time you heard this was in that song, but it’s true. I fucking love you, Bea. I can’t give that up.”

“Don’t say that! You cannot do that to me. You can’t say it in a song and then in an argument. That’s a really shitty thing to do.”

My heart pounds and tears well in my eyes, but I can’t let them flow.

He throws his hands in the air. “Well, I don’t know when else to say it, Bea. I should’ve told you sooner. I love you, I’m in love with you, I love the person you become every single day. I love you when you’re correcting me. I love the doctor you’re going to be. I love the woman you already are. I want us to have an impossible fucking magnificent life together.”

“That’s the difference between us,” I say, already turning, “I live in the real world.”

I close the door and lean against it.

He stays on the other side before I hear him leave.

Upstairs, my question bank is still open to number five. Without thinking, I sit down and pick up my pen.

Sydney’s room is mercifully silent.

I get five right. Then six.

Number seven, I read four times, and the words will not assemble, because the question is about the chambers of the heart, and there is no version of my heart that I haven’t already wholly given to Callum Fox.

I put the pen down.

I put my head down on the desk, on top of the diagram, and I do, finally, in the privacy of my room, let myself cry.

I cry and cry and blubber until there are no tears left in me.

Then I sit up. I wipe my face with my sleeve.

The laptop, open beside me, makes the university email sound.

From: Dr. Priya Ahuja,

Subject: Meeting — tomorrow, 9 AM

Beatrix,

Please come to my office tomorrow morning at 9. This concerns your Learning Assistant assignment.

Priya

Well, shit.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Cal

Giving Bea the space she wants is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.

Every part of me wants to go to her house, knock on the door, and explain it again until I find the combination of words that makes her understand why I did it. But she told me to leave, so I left. Now I’m trying to respect that, instead of turning up and making my guilt another problem she has to deal with.

I have no idea whether she’ll forgive me.

The only thing stopping me from losing my mind is work. Harrison and I have been passing the lyrics for Notes of Attraction back and forth, keeping the spine of the song but stripping out anything personal.

It’s coming together well.