“Miss me,” I said, my voice lower than usual, roughened in a way I made no effort to soften.“My little Flare?”
The words cut through the space between us and something shifted immediately. I felt it in my chest, sharp and sudden, making me tense before I could stop it. Her jaw tightened and her shoulders pulled back, her body bracing as if she expected something to follow. That reaction struck deeper than it should have.
Fuck.
She faltered for a second, and the documents in her hands slipped before she caught them, the soft sound breaking the silence between us. It was quick, almost careless, but it gave her away. I saw it happen, the brief crack in her composure before she forced herself back under control, the same way she used to when something got too close.
Then she said my name.
Not the way sheused tosay it. She chose the formal version, her tone distant, controlled, placing space between us as if that distance could rewrite what had been there before.
It shouldn’t have mattered. It did. And it pissed me off more than I was willing to admit.
“Professor Stone.”
Not Hayden. Just a professor now. That was all I was to her.
The way she said it settled wrong, colder than it should have been, and it got under my skin faster than I cared to admit. A faint, humorless smile touched my mouth.
“PhD candidate now,” I said, my gaze dropping briefly to the conference badge resting against her chest before returning to her eyes. “Congratulations.”
She did not thank me.
Up close, I could see that composure on her was no longer fragile. It had hardened into disciplined, earned through years I had not been allowed to witness, and yet beneath that control I detected the faintest tremor in her breathing that betrayed the fact that my presence had not gone unnoticed.
“You look surprised,” she said, her voice even. “What were you expecting,Professor? That I’d still be stuck after you lied to me?”
“I did not expect to find you on another continent with a different name,” I answered, allowing the weight of that final word to settle between us. “Rhodes.”
The surname tasted foreign and unwelcome, and the most obvious interpretation pressed forward with an ugly clarity that I could not entirely suppress. Five years could turn absence into vows, rings, and another man’s claim on what I had once believed was mine.
“People change,” she replied.
“Yes,” I agreed, my tone darkening despite myself, “they do.”
Silence thickened, dense with everything unsaid.
“You disappeared,” I said, my voice low, tight with something I wasn’t trying to hide. “Five years without a word isn’t change, Edwina. It’s you leaving me behind like I didn’t fucking matter.”
Her composure fractured then, easy to miss for anyone who didn’t know her, yet I saw it in the brief tightening around her eyes.
“You received what you wanted,” she said, and there was restrained accusation in her voice now. “Your career. Your reputation. Yourfiancée.”
“You think that was the point,” I said, stepping closer without touching her, closing the distance until it felt tight with tension. “You really think I’d just replace you because it was easier?”
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
“I looked for you everywhere, my little Flare,” I said, my voice rough, anger breaking through. “Don’t you dare fucking twist that into something easier just so you don’t have to face what you did.”
The corridor felt smaller than it was. Her breath caught, subtle but undeniable.
“Don’t call me that,” she said, her voice quieter now. “You lost that right a long time ago.”
“My little Flare,” I repeated, the words rough, grounded in something I had never given up. “You were never something I could switch off.”
The honesty in that sentence unsettled both of us. Footsteps echoed faintly at the far end of the corridor, reminding us the world still existed beyond this confrontation, this was still a professional event, and boundaries were expected here.
She stepped back first. “Do not do this here,” she said.
