The sentence lingered in me, unsettling in its truth. I closed the book and drew my notebook closer, letting the familiar weight of the pen ground me. But my thoughts refused order.They spun, colliding with fragments of memory, of his voice, measured, assured, and impossible to silence.
Professor Stone. Hayden. The name alone carried too much gravity, too much quiet danger.
I tried to write, to build a barrier of words and structure, but concentration slipped from me each time I tried to hold it. Halfway through a line I hadn’t meant to write, I felt it, a change in the air. Not sound, not motion, but presence, something that pressed against the edges of awareness before reason could catch up.
My pen stopped. I looked up.
Professor Hayden Stone stood in front of me, far nearer than propriety allowed. His coat hung open, his scarf loosened at the collar, and the faint winter light from the window carved sharp planes across his face. Shadows seemed drawn to him, companions that moved at his pace and obeyed his silence. He didn’t appear to belong to the library so much as it belonged to him.
For a moment, neither of us spoke. His gaze moved from the open notebook in my lap to my face, precise and unreadable. Those eyes held a weight that could unravel thought, and when they met mine, the air shifted again.
“Miss Carter,” he said at last, his voice measured and low.
“Professor,” I replied, steadying my tone though something in me faltered.
He regarded me with quiet intent, his expression composed yet searching, as though he were trying to trace the outline of something beneath the surface. “Didn’t expect to see you here,” he said finally, though there was no surprise in it.
“I could say the same.”
His gaze drifted to my notebook again. “Writer’s block?”
“Not exactly,” I said, keeping my voice even. “Just trying to put thoughts in order before they start dictating their own.”
A pause followed, long enough to register but too brief to break. His expression shifted slightly, a hint of thought passing across his features before vanishing as though it had never existed.
I should have looked away, should have returned to my notes and pretended indifference. But I didn’t. I remained where I was, my spine straight, my pulse betraying me with its unsteady rhythm.
He inclined his head. “Enjoy your writing, Miss Carter.”
Then he turned, his movements quiet and assured, vanishing between the shelves until only the faint disturbance in the air hinted that he’d ever been there at all.
I sat motionless, my breath shallow, the world narrowing to the space he had left behind. The quiet no longer felt the same. It carried his echo, his voice, his stillness, the gravity of his presence. And somehow, I knew he would find me again.
Chapter Three
Edwina
Themomentheturnedaway, the air in the library shifted. Cold seemed to seep beneath my skin, threading through me until it settled just beneath the surface. I stared at the space he’d left behind, the outline of his presence still imprinted in the quiet. My pen remained between my fingers, though the page before me was untouched, the ink waiting for words that refused to come.
Professor Stone.
I repeated the name in my mind, as if repetition could impose order on something that refused to make sense. But nothing about today followed reason. Neither the coffee, nor the class, nor the way he had looked at me. I tried to steady my breathing, to reclaim composure, to find safety again in the act of control.Yet the silence around me no longer felt like refuge. It had turned heavy, suffocating, filled with thoughts I couldn’t silence.
I closed my notebook harder than I meant to, the sound too sharp in the stillness, then slipped it into my bag and stood. I couldn’t stay. The tension humming through me wasn’t entirely his doing. It was something older, something buried, the restless ache that always rose when I felt too exposed beneath someone else’s gaze.
My boots struck softly against the polished floor as I walked out of the library and into the cold. The air outside bit into my lungs, fierce and immediate, the kind that carved awareness back into the body. Washington in winter was all iron-grey skies and wind that wound around the throat with quiet persistence, leaving the skin raw but awake.
I tightened my scarf as I crossed the main path of Greystone University. The familiar sprawl of red brick and climbing ivy stretched around me, its beauty disciplined into symmetry, its calm deceptive. The campus always appeared serene in the cold, but I knew better. Beneath its surface, it pulsed with ambition, fear, longing—the quiet chaos of people trying to make sense of who they were. It was why I had come here. My choice, my escape.
I pulled out my phone and opened Aster’s chat.
Edwina:
Leaving the library. Needed air.
A few seconds passed before the typing bubbles appeared.
Aster:
