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Cas started working backwards, examining the order of kisses, shared confidences, making love.

“A fling, Casildo. That’s what we agreed.”

It was never a fling for me. That’s why I went slowly. I love you.

* * *

Bea closed her eyes. Why had she ever thought she should keep this from him. Why hadn’t she anticipated this?

Because she hadn’t dared think they had a chance beyond this month, hadn’t dared to believe he could want more from her than a fling, that he might love her. Because she didn’t want him to see her as another potential burden, as a gold digger, like Monique. Because she’d never stopped him when he’d talked about his family’s assets.

“Where are you, Casildo?”

“The bulk of my wages go directly to the bank to pay my parents’ mortgage.”

She’d whispered the words while trying to make herself invisible, bewildered by how they’d started the evening with lovemaking and ended up in this conversation.

She’d been thinking non-stop about how to tell him since they’d taken each other to bed the first time.

I didn’t plan to tell you this way.

I love you.

I stop thinking when I’m with you.

I don’t know how you feel about me.

But he’d asked her to stay.

She grabbed a pillow and, pressing it to her face, screamed into it, until she was hoarse.

I love you.

Enough to wish I’d never made the promise to my parents, to fantasise about the good fairy of the lottery, or the demon of the deep to magically transfer ginormous sums of money into my bank account. But her life wasn’t like that.

She was crying, huge gulping sobs that stole her breath, and she couldn’t make them stop.

This isn’t me. I don’t throw tantrums.

She stomped her feet. That was her before Casildo. Losing him was a physical ache, making her limbs heavy, her movements slow. She forced herself to shower, her tears carried away by the running water, brushed her teeth and screamed—silently this time—finally dressing in old jeans and one of Casildo’s sweatshirts.

I’m only half-whole without you.

“Do something,” she chastised herself, but she didn’t know the woman she was berating. A woman who cursed her family, her history, her failure to see that she might have other better options if she abandoned her parents to manage by themselves.

As my sisters have. No, no, no.

She made herself do an inventory of supplies in the apartment, then took the list to the all-night supermarket and bought replacements for those staples she and Casildo had used. Not many. Neither of them had wanted to trespass on Anna and Hunter’s generosity beyond the obvious gift of free rent.

Didn’t that tell him anything about her?

Bea had only taken him home to meet her father and sisters the once.

Because she worried they might guess she was in love.

Because she’d built in the end of the relationship before she began. Casildo wouldn’t see her as batshit crazy for helping her parents, but he wouldn’t see her as honest either.

Back at the apartment, she busied herself making a simple pasta and a complicated chocolate dessert, and only realised she was crying again when tears rolled off her chin and onto the benchtop.