The joint session was scheduled for ten.
By eleven-fifteen, she knew he wasn't coming.
She didn't call. Didn't message his assistant to ask. She simply looked at the time in the corner of her screen, registered the information, and went back to the federal compliance clause she'd been annotating. The annotation required her full attention, which was convenient.
He was angry. That was the straightforward explanation, and Aurora dealt best with straightforward explanations. He had said what he had to say yesterday and she had said what she had to say and now he was processing it in the way that Liam processed things—quietly, internally, with the specific self-containment of someone who had learned a long time ago that the world was not a safe place to put unfinished feelings. He would come back when he had finished processing. Or he wouldn't, and they would restructure the alliance sessions around whatever the new terms were.
Either way, she had work to do.
