Her head shot up. “What? How do you know that?”

I smiled, happy to deliver the good news to her. “I made a few phone calls. I know a guy who’s on the fundraising committee who knows the dean—”

She squinted at me. “You called the Dean of Admissions on a Sunday morning—”

“No, I called my friend who knows the Dean of Admissions.”

“Because your friend is on the fundraising committee.”

I paused, studying her body language. Her hands were curled into fists, her back ramrod straight. At the back of my head, I thought I could see a flashing red alert sign and hear the words Danger, Adam Drake! Abort! Abort! Abort!

But like an idiot I had to push it. “I just called because I figured you’d want to know—”

“No. You figured you’d want to know.”

I shrugged. “Well, yeah. I did want to know. It’s a logical choice for you. Comparable program. You’re definitely in. And it’s here—”

Her forehead wrinkled. “How much did you promise your fundraiser ‘friend’?”

I opened my mouth and then closed it. “I didn’t promise him anything.”

She laced her hands together and fidgeted, clearly trying to force herself to remain calm. “Okay, how much would you have promised him if I hadn’t gotten in?”

“I wouldn’t do that. I didn’t need to. You were already short-listed. I just wanted to know. I figured you would, too. So you could make the most informed decision.”

She massaged her forehead, her eyes closing. “I don’t believe this.”

“What? That I’d try to get all the information I possibly could? This is important. This is our future.”

She blew out an exasperated sigh. “This is my decision and you can’t make it for me.”

My fist closed on the table top between us. “You and I are an ‘us.’ And that means work and compromise.”

She scoffed—almost laughed, laughed. A flame of irritation burned in my chest. “Adam, I swear to God that word does not mean what you think it means.”

I arched my brow, unamused by her paraphrase of the famous quote from The Princess Bride. “Oh? What do I think it means?”

She looked right through me, her eyes darting into mine like arrows. “It means you get your way and I deal with it.”

I rubbed my forehead, blowing out a tight breath. “I don’t have time to deal with bullshit, Emilia. I’ve got a serious threat to my company, my dream. I can’t be away from work, I told you that. I’ve done the best I can to control that need to be there all the time. But right now I can’t compromise in the way that you want me to.”

She shrugged, threw up her hands. “How can this even be possible, then?”

“How can what be possible?” I said between clenched teeth, not liking the direction she seemed to be headed in.

“Us. This. Our relationship. What we want and need out of this isn’t even compatible if we can’t learn to give and take.”

“This isn’t a ‘should we have red wine with dinner or white?’ type of decision. We’re both new to this and this is a major decision that will affect our lives for a very long time.”

“So I need to change what I want if I want to be with you?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. Not one that she would like. So I didn’t say anything.

After a few more minutes of massaging her forehead and waiting for me to answer, she finally shook her head. “I’m so tired I can’t even think straight right now. I need to go to bed.”

“So what happens tomorrow when we wake up?”

She shrugged, standing up. “I guess we figure that out then. We’re smart people. We should be able to figure it out.”

That cold fear was back. My mind raced through all the possibilities, attempting and failing to find a quick answer.

I knew what I wanted. I wanted her. And I wanted to stay here—with my family, my friends, my company, my entire life, including her. I swallowed and decided I’d have to dedicate more thinking to the task. Sun Tzu’s wisdom had to be worth something in cases like these. I wished to God that someone had written a book called The Art of Love that I could file in the back of my brain and draw inspiration from instead.

***

Throughout the next week, we were like ships passing in the night. We drove to work separately because she didn’t know when I’d be coming home and she had various appointments in the morning, doctor or dentist or something. At work, I was preoccupied by the potential legal mess and all the red tape we needed to navigate in order to try and head off the inevitable. And, of course, the impending doom of this decision weighing over us.