I was trying. God, I was trying. Trying to let this weekend mean nothing more than escape. To forget the shape of hishands, the sound of his voice, the gravity that seemed to pull me toward him no matter how much distance I carved between us. But he lived somewhere in the quiet between my breaths, beneath the calm I pretended to wear. His silence filled the space between thoughts, heavy and sharp, refusing to let me rest.
I told myself he wouldn’t come. That he was too controlled for this kind of gathering, too bound by professionalism and reputation to walk into a weekend surrounded by students. And yet, under the quiet rhythm of that reasoning, something small and traitorous pulsed. Doubt. And beneath it, worse still, hope.
I rose, feet pressing against the cold wood floor, and crossed to the mirror. My reflection stared back, pale light brushing over the faint bruising of exhaustion beneath my eyes. I ran my fingers through my hair, pushing it away from my face, the gesture automatic, mechanical. The girl in the glass looked composed enough to fool anyone else, but I knew better. I saw the tremor beneath the surface, the flicker that hadn’t gone out since that night in the studio.
He had looked at me as though he saw every fracture I’d tried to disguise. And worse, he had nearly kissed me. And I had leaned in. There was no undoing that. No pretending the air between us hadn’t broken open. No rewriting the truth of that breathless moment that still lingered, pulsing under my skin.
As I pulled on my clothes, each movement felt heavier than it should have, weighted not with dread but with the kind of tension that coils quietly beneath the skin and waits to break. It wasn’t fear, not quite, and it wasn’t regret either. It was that thin thread of anticipation that hums when something inevitable is on the horizon. I told myself it was nothing, just the altitude, the cold, the exhaustion from the drive. But the truth pressed deeper. Some instinct already whispered what my mind refused to say aloud, whatever calm I’d hoped to find on this mountain would fracture the moment he appeared, if he came at all.
The cafeteria pulsed with a muted sort of chaos, the weary rhythm of bodies trying to adjust to morning after travel. Conversations drifted in fragments, chairs scraped against wood, the dull clatter of cutlery carried through the air in uneven waves. Frost clung to the windowpanes, catching the pale winter light, and the scent of coffee hung thick, tangled with cinnamon and the faint trace of wet snow melting off boots near the door. I sat with Aster at one of the long wooden tables, the steam from my tea ghosting upward, disappearing before it could touch my face. My fingers toyed with the handle of the cup, restless, betraying the tension sitting low in my stomach no matter how still I tried to keep them.
Sleep had been a failed experiment. The bed had swallowed me whole, too soft, the pillow too stiff beneath my neck, and the quiet had been anything but kind. The night had left a residue in my body, a stiffness in my shoulders, a faint tremor beneath my ribs, a memory of the road that hadn’t quite left. Every sharp curve on the way up here had scraped at old ghosts I’d buried too deep, and though the wheels had stayed steady, my mind hadn’t.
Aster had tried to make it better, filling the car with music, her voice rising over the hum of the heater as she scrolled through playlists. “We’re chasing the brooding bastard out of your head,” she’d declared, and I had laughed, said something flippant. But the sound had felt hollow even to me. Because silence, the kind that stretched too long between songs, had its own language. It crawled beneath my skin, whispered of the memory I kept pretending didn’t still live there. The crash. The metal folding in on itself. The moment the world stopped breathing.
Now, I sat tearing apart the croissant on my plate piece by piece, shredding it until my fingertips were dusted in flakes. Across from me, Aster scrolled through her phone, her leg hooked under the other, that ridiculous red beanie still damp around the edges.
“You gonna eat that or just torture it to death?” she asked, her voice drifting somewhere between a tease and concern, eyes never leaving her screen.
I shrugged, reaching for the tea. “Still waking up.”
It wasn’t a lie. Just not the full truth either.
Across the room, Gwen sat with Zayn in the far corner, heads bent together, their laughter blending softly into the background noise. The sight stirred something tight in my chest, small but sharp, the kind of ache you pretend not to notice. I looked away.
And then the shift came. Subtle, nearly imperceptible My fingers stilled on the rim of my cup. The faint hairs along my neck rose in quiet warning.
“Hey,” a voice cut in. Not his. A different tone entirely.
I turned, and found two male students standing across the table. The first—tall, lean, with a mop of chestnut curls that defied gravity, was grinning with the easy charm of someone used to being liked. His tray was crowded with food, eggs, toast, muffins stacked with careless balance, and yet he managed it one-handed, confidence in every movement.
The second stood beside him, broader, steadier in his stance, his navy fleece pulled taut across his shoulders. His hair was neat, his jaw shadowed in a way that felt purposeful. His gaze moved across the table, pausing on Aster, then flicking briefly to me before settling again, the faint curve of a half-smile tugging at his mouth, measured, practiced, knowing exactly what effect it carried.
“Mind if we join you?” he asked.
The noise of the cafeteria faded to a hum, the scent of coffee thick in my lungs, and somewhere beneath the practiced calm of my nod, a pulse began to race that had nothing to do with caffeine. Aster looked up from her phone, one brow curving upward in a gesture that balanced amusement and appraisal, her expression saying more than words ever could.
“Sure,” she said, sliding along the bench to make room, her tone laced with that effortless confidence she wore like a second skin. “But only if you come with a side of good conversation.”
The boy with the dimples grinned, a flash of mischief cutting through the lazy ease of his posture. “That depends,” he said, dropping his tray onto the table. “Are you more of a ‘should pineapple be on pizza’ kind of crowd?”
It drew a laugh out of me before I could stop it, unguarded and unexpected, the sound catching on the air between us. They sat down with the kind of familiarity that belonged to people who assumed they’d be welcomed anywhere, movements casual, practiced, unconcerned with permission. Trays clinked against the wood, steam coiling from mugs, conversation swelling in the small pocket of space we’d made at the table.
I laughed when they did. I answered when I was supposed to. I tilted my head, smiled, responded, performed the part of someone present. But even in the rhythm of that moment, something deeper began to pull taut beneath the surface. It wasn’t reason. It was instinct, an internal tightening, that subtle, invisible ripple in the atmosphere when something shifted, when a presence entered and the air forgot how to breathe.
My pulse stuttered once, twice. My body recognized him before my mind caught up. And then I turned.
He stood just inside the doorway, framed in the spill of morning light and melting snow. The dark strands of his hair clung damp against his forehead, his coat hanging open enough to reveal the soft black knit beneath. He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just was, and somehow, that was enough to strip every sound from the room.
Hayden.
He was here.
The world contracted to a pinpoint. The laughter at our table dulled into background noise, distant and irrelevant. My fingersfroze around the handle of my cup. My throat tightened. The air between us, the entire length of the dining hall, shifted into a single line drawn too tight. His gaze found me with unflinching precision, and everything else fell away.
Then, it happened, the smallest, sharpest thing. His eyes dropped. To the boy beside me. To the space our elbows nearly shared. And something inside his expression hardened. His jaw flexed once, muscle ticking under the surface, a motion barely there but too loud in its intent. A warning. Not to me. To him.
Noah, the one with the grin and the dimples, was saying something, his voice an easy hum, but I couldn’t hear a damn word. All I felt was Hayden’s focus slicing through the noise, narrowing, darkening, fixing on the small, harmless distance between me and someone else. Jason, the quieter one, leaned back slightly, sensing it before he could name it.
