“You argue like you’ve been cornered before.”
The words slide in under my defenses.
I slow despite myself. “Excuse me?”
He doesn’t look at me. His gaze stays forward, posture loose, unbothered. “Not academically,” he adds. “Personally.”
“That’s a reach.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Another almost-smile ghosts at the edge of his mouth. Itagitates me how close to the truth he is, and he doesn’t even know me.
I stop near the edge of the path where the ivy starts swallowing the stone walls of the older buildings. He stops too—but not immediately. He takes one more step, then turns, giving me space like he’s aware of how close istooclose.
I exhale slowly through my nose, scanning the path behind him, the shadows between trees. My pulse ticks faster than it should.
“You keep showing up where I am,” I say carefully. “That makes this feel less like coincidence and more like intent.”
“And if I said coincidence,” he asks, “would you believe me?”
“No.”
A pause. Charged. Weighted.
“Good. I’d be disappointed if you did.”
Something hot and sharp flares in my chest—anger, mostly. Something else underneath it that I don’t want to name.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“To understand you.”
“That could mean a lot of things.”
“Then let me be clearer.” He tilts his head, studying me like a puzzle that refuses to be broken. “I’m not here because I’m curious,” he admits. “I’m here because you felt unfinished.”
The world seems to stutter.
Not a full stop—just a hitch, like time catching on something sharp. My breath snags halfway in, shallow and useless, and for a terrifying second I forget what I was about to say.
Unfinished.
The word settles low in my chest, heavy and invasive. It isn’t curiosity I hear in his voice. It’s certainty. Like he’s naming something I didn’t know could be seen from the outside.
I force my shoulders to stay loose, my expression neutral.Years of training snap into place—don’t react, don’t reveal, don’t give him anything he didn’t earn.
But my pulse has other ideas. It skids, stumbles, then starts racing, loud enough that I’m sure he can hear it.
“You don’t get to decide that,” I say, even as the ground beneath me feels less solid than it did a moment ago.
Because the worst part—the part that makes my skin prickle—isn’t that he said it.
It’s that some quiet, traitorous piece of me wonders if he’s right.
The silence stretches.
