Confusion tightened in my chest.
“But… why? I’m in the middle of a lecture.”
“I know,” she said. “They said it was urgent. I don’t have any details.”
I studied her face for a moment, hoping for some explanation that might make sense of the situation. There was none.
“Alright,” I said finally.
I turned back toward the students.
“I’ll need to step out briefly,” I told them, keeping my tone composed. “Please continue reviewing the material on the screen. I’ll return shortly.”
Mrs. Harrington had already stepped away toward her office, leaving me to walk the rest of the corridor alone. The administrative wing of the building was subdued than the rest of the department. The sounds of student conversations faded behind me as I approached the polished wooden door at the end of the hallway.
Dean’s Office.
My steps slowed.
A strange uneasiness settled somewhere deep in my chest, something I could not quite explain yet could not ignore either. Giselle’s voice from earlier that morning echoed faintly in my mind.
A new dean. From the United States.
I exhaled slowly.
It meant nothing. It had to meannothing.
Still, the feeling remained. I lifted my hand and knocked. A voice came from inside.
“Come in.”
My fingers tightened around the handle before I pushed the door open. The moment I stepped inside, my breath stilled. For a second the room blurred slightly around the edges, thepolished desk, the tall windows, the bookshelves lining the walls dissolving into background noise as my gaze fixed on the man standing on the other side of the office.
Hayden.
It was him, unmistakably him, and every excuse my mind had tried to build collapsed at once.
Hayden Stone stood behind the dean’s desk, one eyebrow raised, posture calm, expression unreadable, dark gaze already fixed on me as though he had been waiting for this exact moment.The door closed behind me.
Five years collapsed into a single breath. For a second neither of us spoke.
And in that suspended silence I understood the strange feeling that had followed me through the hallway.
The new dean of Ashcroft University had arrived from the United States. And his name was Hayden Stone.
Chapter Four
Hayden
Shemightbelongtosomeone else now.The thought sent anger through me so fast I had to sit with it for a second, jaw tight, hands still, every ugly part of me rising before reason could do a damn thing about it. I had no right to feel that way. Losing her had been my own doing.That did not make the thought any easier to swallow.
She could have married. Rhodes could belong to some fucker who had taken the place I once believed was mine, waking beside her, hearing her voice in the morning, touching the parts of her life I no longer had the right to know.
Or maybe it was something else.
Whatever the truth was, one thing remained clear. I had found her again. The universe, with its cruel sense of humor, haddragged her back into my path in the same city, at the exact moment I had almost convinced myself she was gone for good.
I leaned forward, resting my forearms against the desk. I had not searched for her all this time just to lose her again. Maybe she hated me. Maybe she loved someone else. Maybe she had built an entire life to keep me the hell out of it. None of that changed the fact that she was here.
