diff --git a/packages/socket-mode/test/integration.spec.js b/packages/socket-mode/test/integration.spec.js
index 51493cffb..e6b74ca0e 100644
--- a/packages/socket-mode/test/integration.spec.js
+++ b/packages/socket-mode/test/integration.spec.js
@@ -205,7 +205,7 @@ describe('Integration tests with a WebSocket server', () => {
       // crucially, the bug reported in https://github.com/slackapi/node-slack-sdk/issues/2094 shows that on every reconnection attempt, we spawn _another_ websocket instance, which attempts to reconnect forever and is never cleaned up.
       // effectively: with each reconnection attempt, we double the number of websockets, eventually causing crashes / out-of-memory issues / rate-limiting from Slack APIs.
       // with the bug not fixed, this assertion fails as `close` event was emitted 4 times! if we waited another 20ms, we would see this event count double again (8), and so on.
-      assert.equal(closed, 2, 'unexpected number of times `close` event was raised during reconnection!');
+      const retries = closed;
       await client.disconnect();
       await new Promise((res, rej) => {
         // shut down the bad server
@@ -214,6 +214,7 @@ describe('Integration tests with a WebSocket server', () => {
           else res();
         });
       });
+      assert.equal(retries, 2, 'unexpected number of times `close` event was raised during reconnection!');
     });
   });
   describe('lifecycle events', () => {